Philip L. Smith (The Ohio State University)
Frederick L. Goodman (University of Michigan)

Our contention is that participants in elite sport cultures have an advantage that participants in standard educational settings are typically denied when learning moral concepts, such as justice, honesty, and respect. We want to make clear at the start that by calling these cultures "elite" we do not mean to claim that they should be restricted by talent, but rather that the requirement is one of attitude and commitment. That is to say, participation in these elite sport cultures is not for recreational purposes, or merely for fun. The intent is to achieve excellence by the highest standards of that activity. Participants are expected to be serious about what they're doing, not frivolous. If there's a better term than 'elite' for describing this sort of thing, we'll gladly adopt it. We believe that our analysis has validity across the board. But our particular focus is on elite sport when it takes place under the auspicious of educational institutions, especially at the collegiate level.

An elite sport culture requires participants to use their minds along with their bodies to express what they mean and value in doing what they do. This is not trivial remark. It's an irony of modern life, still based largely as it is on a Cartesian mind-body dualism, that while attributing great significance to things of the body, to sensations, feelings and emotions, as the mode through which we encounter the natural world (as contrasted with, say, reason, faith or tradition), it still regards knowledge of the highest kind as generated primarily if not exclusively by the mind, as something that could never be acquired or aptly expressed through a physical body or its behavioral manifestations.

Participants in elite sport cultures are better positioned to overcome this dualism than those who struggle to learn and express themselves coming from the other direction, from the direction of reason, faith, tradition, or-to say it again in philosophical terms-a Cartesian mind-body dualism. They're provided a pathway for understanding what extends beyond the concerns of a particular game. It's not just the frequently cited character traits and skills commonly associated with sport participation that we're referring to here, but the whole array of concepts that have for so long been associated with a liberal education. An example of what we mean here is the idea that equals should be treated as equals and unequals should be treated as unequals, the textbook definition of 'justice.' In the world of elite athletes, there's no such thing as social promotion. One either gets it or is left behind.

The critical difference between serious engagement in traditional sport games and similar engagement in standard educational settings is that, for better or worse, the former characteristically reflect de facto social and cultural conditions that lie outside the game itself. Standard educational settings (e.g., schools and universities) can also be influenced by outside circumstances. The difference is that these settings are usually designed primarily to promote idealized forms of knowledge and cultural life that are presented predominately in a formal and/or academic fashion. Traditional sport games are structured around bodily performance and, therefore, require awareness of what the body is doing, in addition to knowledge of the actual conditions, good or bad, under which the game is played. Unencumbered by the burden of promoting the ideals of a perfect world, and because of their close association with everyday affairs, traditional sport games have an extraordinary potential, when played at elite levels, to exercise a counter influence on the larger culture. It's a double-barreled dialectical capacity, beyond the reach of standard educational setting, to generate meaning and value within the larger society as well as reflect it. Schools and universities that focus mainly on the mind-side of the mind/body dualism inevitably undermine the incentive to use the mind in behalf of bodily activities, or to seriously think about the experience that results. A separation emerges between knowing through the physical and knowing that comes about through other more analytical modes of understanding, with the latter always assumed to have greater authority.

That elite sport cultures characteristically tie into the larger society and its surrounding culture means they can also display its pathologies. But there's a built-in check on this problem. The physical arts required for elite sport performance tend to resist or even correct these pathologies, owing to the fact that they inevitably have an adverse effect on athletic performance. It's discouraging to be associated with a defective game, especially for the players. When push comes to shove good performance in elite sport settings is difficult or impossible to fake. Elite athletes and knowledgeable fans are usually the first to insist on competent officials to enforce rules and make competition fair. They're equally quick to support regulatory bodies to ensure a proper relationship between elite sport games and "outside" influences. Salary caps, revenue sharing, free agency, collective bargaining agreements, scholarship limitations and eligibility rules have all been recognized at one time or another to be necessary elements of adjudication that are needed to assure that the important goal of winning remains a "satisfactory" experience, as well as "satisfying" one. The distinction here is one the philosopher John Dewey discussed at length. In summary, what's "satisfying" gives immediate pleasure and fulfillment. What's "satisfactory" is infused with thought and awareness of consequences. It's an as end-in-itself, or what Dewey called a "consummatory experience." What's satisfying can be superficial, temporary and illusory, whereas what's satisfactory is always more substantial and reaches beyond a particular moment, immediate feelings, or impressions.

The question of substance can have pertinence on many different levels, as was demonstrated by the French enlightenment philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who raised it in regard to culture and healthy human development. A giant among modern thinkers, he was nonetheless critical of much of what he saw emerging in modern life. He believed that modern cosmopolitan values and attitudes actually harmed the human sprit and made us lesser human beings. They separated our conscious awareness from our natural body-based inclinations. So, for example, modern people had a propensity to rear their children in contrived and vapid circumstances, emphasizing ridiculous competition and phony sophistication. They impose simple-minded forms of understanding on the young that forces them merely to ape adult behavior, rather than cultivate authentic body-based dispositions that mature their natural inclinations.

Premodern people lived with plenty of handicaps, but this was not one of them. Rousseau believed it was because they lived closer to their bodies and relied on their bodily experience far more than modern people to inform their understanding. We use our bodies more exclusively as instruments or tools in the service of contrived interests and needs. They're not typically used to enlighten us about the ends we pursue, nor are the ends we pursue often thought to be relevant in judging how they might be achieved. Rousseau was convinced that our modern understanding of property and ownership were good illustrations of this point. He wrote brilliantly about how they have damaged healthy human relationships. Those without property are made dependent on others in a way that's completely artificial and out of kilter with what's naturally good. People see themselves through the uniformed eyes of others, instead of their own embodied understanding. Owners and non-owners alike surrendered their primal self-regard, which Rousseau understood to be the love and concern that every vigorous animal must have for itself in order to survive and prosper. Knowingly or not, they submit to the arbitrary opinions of others who have neither the capacity nor concern to actually understand or care about them.

Rousseau recognized there was no turning back. What he proposed to rectify the mistakes of modern life was to reorganize society into a self-ruling community of equals, a society where private interests would be subservient to "The General Will," or to what was good for everyone. Exactly what this meant and how it was to be brought about were questions Rousseau didn't address in any practical way. But it's safe to say he would have been shocked, even appalled, by the societal conditions under which elite sport cultures operate today. Our mega-corporatized world has become an autonomous abstraction having precious little to do with anything our bodies can tell us. What to do about it? Rousseau, as indicated above, offered us no real guidance. While he helped fuel the most radical event of the 18th century-the 1789 Revolution-and famously inspired other enlightenment giants to make freedom their ideal (Immanuel Kant, for example), he also unwittingly helped pave the way for the likes of Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety, who employed Rousseau's idea of a self-ruling community of equals to rationalize what historians have come to refer to as "The Terror", the execution of thousands of people, mostly on flimsy grounds, who were branded as counter-revolutionaries and enemies of freedom by a small group of individuals who happened to be powerful enough at that moment in history to decide what constituted "The General Will."

Rousseau's point here was similar to Dewey's. It's easy for human beings to go wrong when higher authority and other outside forces are removed as controlling factors in what they think, feel, and do. This happened during the French Revolution when Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety gained control of the State and, solely as a function of their power, proceeded to interpret Rousseau's ideas in bizarre and brutal ways. This sort of thing has become increasingly common, even though, because of better technology, the use of direct physical force is less frequently relied upon be. What's still pretty clear is that ideas can be "distorted" or interpreted rather easily in ways that suit the desires of powerful agents or captivating personalities to serve their own purposes, especially when those ideas have the glow of authority that precedes their use in new situations, as was the case with Rousseau's ideas. The same thing happened to the ideas of Nietzsche, Freud, and Dewey, among many others. Furthermore, the problem is inherently difficult to avoid. To start with, ideas can't be simply given or transferred to others intact, except, perhaps, as algorithms or recipes that order conduct with no real comprehension or understanding. There's always some degree of interpretation involved.

To grasp an idea, to understand its meaning, it has to be given a "spin," so to speak, by the person whose understanding it is. The process is essentially the same as coming up with an idea in the first place. Meaning is constructed or built by an active mind, not a passive one that merely copies what's already there. Recognizing this has led many of the best thinkers in the modern world to reject the theory that ideas represent an independently existing world, as if it stood apart from the way we picture it in our minds. But they still insist there's a critical difference between trying to connect up in satisfactory ways with reality as we experience it and trying to control or dominate every aspect of the word, both around and within us, by defeating or destroying whatever we happen not to like it. It's hardly a stretch to suggest that almost everyone nowadays is affected by this situation in some way or another. Our culture has been geared to maximize individual freedom on the assumption that we can do the first thing, without falling victim to the second. We've become convinced that liberating our mind is not enough. We need to liberate our bodies, too, and encourage its expression as much as possible, all in the name of self-creation and self-development that is supposedly a social benefit as much as a personal one. Our position is that it depends on what kind of freedom we're shooting for. Will it take us past what we find satisfying in a determined and effective search for what's satisfactory? Our position is that elite sport cultures can be a model for this.

We've been suggesting there are two ways freedom is understood in modern life. The first defines freedom as the absence of obstacles. If there are no external impediments blocking a person's path, then that individual is incontrovertibly free. The second defines freedom as matter of self-determination, which is to say that freedom must accord with the aims of proper human development. Then and only then is it authentic. In ordinary situations these two ways of looking at freedom frequently overlap, or even coincide with each other, but not always. While someone could be free in the first sense and simultaneously be doing what was good for them in the second sense, the absence of external obstacles doesn't guarantee that a person's decisions will be consistent with desirable outcomes. It would be silly to say that people were free if they were uninformed in vital ways about what was actually good for them, or if they were delusional, in denial, obsessive, or simply lazy about who they were and what they might become. That's the problem with the first definition of freedom. It fails to recognize that freedom presupposes a process of virtuous development that has its own goals and imperatives. One way or another, the goal of human freedom is for a person to become, metaphorically speaking, "Captain of his or her own ship" in a world that's never entirely of one's own making. Freedom for human beings is an achievement, not a gift. It's acquired through an arduous process of continual adaptation, reinvention, and renewal, directed initially by others who work an individuals behalf, then later directed primarily by the person whose freedom it is.

As it turns out, there's a problem with the second definition, too. It's difficult to know what constitutes a true or better self, or what a "self in process of becoming" actually looks like, even assuming there were such a thing. There have been countless occasion, besides France in 1789, when answers that were confidently to these questions proved to be disastrous. Whatever one thinks for instance, of Kant's attempt to figure this out on abstract philosophical grounds, it has no single translation for practice and has been used by despots besides those who made up the Committee of Public Safety (who ended up, by the way, executing Robespierre as a counter-revolutionary) to impose their own warped sense of what a freedom-loving human being should look like. But wait! Before we give up on the idea of freedom as self-determination, let's remember there is a problem with the first definition of freedom, too. Each conception has its drawbacks. When freedom of the first kind goes wrong (absence of obstacles) the result is chaos. When freedom of the second kind goes wrong (self-determination) the result is abuse.

Freedom in the first sense amounts to freedom "from" culture, whereas freedom in the second sense comes down to freedom "through" culture. The distinction between "freedom from" and "freedom through" can be thought of in terms of the desirability of subtracting constraints or adding constraints. In the case of African-American youth, for instance, it might contribute more to the enlargement of their powers if they experience freedom by having sensible game rules added as constraints on their behavior as they strive to free themselves from the residual effects of racism that still exist in the larger culture. Our position is that freedom presupposes standards of substance to serve as a medium through which it can develop, as contrasted with criteria that are arbitrary and self-referential. What we call a "culture of substance" involves two additional features: One is that the culture has a sufficient degree of virtue, or excellence, build into it prior to its use as a vehicle for cultivating freedom. The other is that it cultivates disciplined bodily expression, if not always through elite sport involvement, then through involvement in physical activity that has an equivalent potential.

There are those who insist that a culture of substance cannot be democratic. They might concede that democratic procedures could be used when dealing with practical matters of everyday life, but if a culture is to be a trustworthy source of meaning and value that enriches group life, it has to have authority that stands apart from individual ambitions and special interests. Otherwise its coherence and stability will be constantly threatened and easily brushed aside in favor of personal concerns and popular sentiment. It would be like a game where the participants could change the rules to suit their convenience, or on a whim. Dysfunction and confusion would be inevitable. When it's pointed out to these critics that change is built into the structure of our world and that the consequences can be hard or impossible to predict or control, they say we should minimize the risk and put more trust in proven cultural authority, instead of treating change as a challenge for everyone to work together and make something worthwhile out of what's new and different.

We hope it's clear that this is not our view. We believe that cultural democracy can build and sustain a culture of substance that outstrips the potential of any alternative, just as we believe that elite sport cultures can be democratic. Of course, democratic cultures can fail or degenerate. But that's no different than striving for satisfactory experience or freedom through self-determination. They're also hard to secure and preserve. It's because they're achievements, not gifts. They depend on pragmatic virtues, such as socialized intelligence, an experimental attitude, determination, moral courage, patience, tolerance, and cooperation. Some measure of luck is no doubt helpful, too. In any event, these virtues were in short supply in France in 1789, precisely when they mattered the most. People were evidently still weighted down by the pathologies of their feudalistic heritage. They had no real experience with freedom, modern or otherwise. Thanks in large part to Rousseau and the French Revolution we've been more fortunate. Our society was born modern. We're in a better position to recognize that freedom depends on individuals being allowed to express themselves without unwarranted fear, intimidation, or guilt.

This no doubt helps explain why so many people nowadays tend to see democratic culture as more permissive than demanding. They may accept practical constraints on their freedom, e.g., rules of the road and taxes, but when it comes to matters of culture, i.e., to questions of meaning and value, they expect to be given considerable discretion, even thought they may not always allow others the same latitude. For good reason modern people want to humble culture, to bring it down to earth, to make it work for them. But they make a mistake when they believe that while their culture should always serve them, they should never have to listen to it. Removing the substance from a culture is not by itself a liberating act. The heavy-handed grip of unintelligent and disembodies cultural authority is surely something to fear. But so is a culture that lacks its own integrity, that's no more than a vocabulary for expressing personal preferences, or a framework for making self-serving social contracts. Rousseau knew what would happen when freedom without substance was unleashed on the world and he complained about it mightily. At the time no one who mattered would listen. Rousseau himself was partly to blame. His believed the substance of a culture could be read directly from nature. But culture is the source of meaning and value, not nature. The inscrutability of his claim made it easy for others to construe it any way they wanted. Sadly, because his prominence made him so useful to those who were fighting for change, Rousseau's plea for freedom "through" culture was taken to mean freedom "from" culture during the time of the "Great Terror."

Given his temperament and the culture of his time, Rousseau turned out to be more interested in celebrating natural expressions of the human body than in trying to figure out exactly how disciplined bodily activity could be achieved once artificial encumbrances were eliminated. John Dewey worked harder trying to figure out how our actions could enhance our understanding and he proved to have a deeper commitment to a culture of substance than most of his critics seemed to realize. Alas, there's no evidence that Dewey ever thought much about elite sport cultures per se, or that he had any serious interest in athletic participation. Apparently he preferred to express himself through his typewriter. But he deserves plenty of credit for helping to undermine the Cartesian mind-body dualism and for arguing that an embodied socialized intelligence operating within disciplined democratic structures could produce an impressive culture of substance that spawns both functional freedom and enlightenment for those who participant.

Success is elusive and failure looms large for anyone who participates in culture of substance. Standards are clear and unyielding to all but the most compelling criticism. Those who operate within elite sport cultures learn quickly that they don't decide the merits of their actions on their own, regardless of their talent or stature. Standards are internal to the practices of the culture. In the case of an elite sport culture, they're internal to what the game requires when played at the highest level possible. Expectations are relentless. Not many are good enough to even get the game. Those who do, typically fail more often than not. An elite-level baseball player who hit safely 30% of the time would be ranked among the best in this facet of the game, yet he would still be likely to face criticism that was constant and stern for not being even better. Some would see a culture that condones such stringent fault finding as incompatible with the values of democratic life, deeming it to be too exclusive, too intolerant, and insufficiently pluralistic. But these accusations have no more validity when directed at a culture of substance than when they're directed at a culture without substance. The demands of a culture of substance are best seen as a challenge to those who participate in it, where there's always some risk of failure. It's important to remember that risk implies the possibility of success, as well as failure. Where there's no risk, there's no challenge, either; and challenge is the mother of motivation. It gives us purpose and direction, serving as the engine of growth, even when success is not attained.

Whether a risk is worth taking or a challenge warrants the effort are matters to be decided pragmatically. But trying to live risk-free and turning away from every challenge makes a mockery of the educational enterprise and jeopardizes the quality of life, as well as its longevity. It should be easy to see on these grounds that there's no automatic contradiction between participating in an elite sport culture and the goals democratic living, or for that matter, faith in the common man. Recall that the French Revolution floundered for the lack of a nuanced and progressive culture of substance. Despite impassioned declarations about the "authority of reason" and the "natural rights of man" found in the Enlightenment literature of that day--and as brilliant as that literature may have been--too many of those who declared themselves to be on the side of freedom and democracy were unable to rise about their own flawed or damaged subjectivity. And if we're honest, we have to acknowledge that the lack of important features in a nuanced and progressive culture of substance has led to moments of failure and shame in our own democratic experiment.

How is it possible for elite athletes to fall short of success and still benefit from participation in an elite sport culture? If the culture hasn't already been corrupted by outside influences and the athletes are motivated at least in part by the aesthetics of good performance, they're usually quick to recognize that their success or failure is determined by those with whom they compete, who face the same circumstances and are bound by the same rules, not by some mysterious "higher authority" that makes judgments about them at a distance. Blame is the stock in trade of journalists, commentators and fans, who often arrogantly take it upon themselves to explain the failures of those who actually play the game, without recognizing that, as outside observes, they're disconnected from the reality of those being judged. But it's the athletes themselves who understand what competition is actually like and who use failure as a platform for improving their performance. Failure teaches them to take less for granted and to become more aware of what's required for success. They learn to be brutally honest in assessing their strengths and limits, as difficult and unpleasant as that can be, believing it will make them smarter, stronger and more likely to succeed. Billy Martin, the major league baseball player and manager, who lived with intensity and guile on the field and off, and who seemingly had to learn everything the hard way, lacked many of the natural gifts--and some would say the "common sense"-possessed by the majority of his peers. Nonetheless, he accomplished a great deal during his career, more than most, and was reported to have said: "education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence."

Competing on the level of elite sport, with and against gifted individuals who are committed to success on standards internal to the practices of that sport, gives elite athletes a deeper and more dramatic understanding of what is just and fair then they would have been likely to gain in a less challenging environment. Partaking of a culture that's demanding but just, firm but fair, on the same terms as teammates and opponents who are equally dedicated to good performance, teaches elite athletes that failure per se is nothing to be ashamed of. Rather it's refusing to acknowledge the standards of the game when assessing the quality of one's own performance. There's nothing exclusionary about elite sport cultures understood in these terms. They're opened to everybody and serve as models for anyone who strives to do the right thing well, whatever that may be.

Most of those who attempt to compete at the level of elite sport come to realize they're not "good enough" and must adjust their expectations to fit, perhaps in a very Rousseauian way, what they're actually capable of achieving. What usually carries over from their participation in elite sport competition is an understanding that "being the best they can be" is not measured by comparing themselves to some generic picture of perfection, but rather by knowing how to find the place where their unique talents and skills are best utilized to make important contributions to the world around them. Having learned to assess their talents accurately and with candor in a culture where constraints are precisely defined and imposed without favoritism, they're primed to find a realistic role for themselves and to experience genuine satisfaction. They may have failed to excel in the arena of elite sport, but by sharpening their focus and putting themselves on a path with important and fulfilling results they achieved freedom through self-determination and acquired the essentials of a "liberal education" without ever having concentrated in a conventional or traditional way.