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(2013) Athleticenhancement, human nature and ethics, Dordrecht, Springer.
Dignified doping
truly unthinkable? an existentialist critique of "talentocracy' in sports
Pieter Bonte
pp. 59-86
As the activity of sporting has become deeply ensnared in cultures of hyper-competition and industries of shallow spectacle, many are unable or unwilling to consider how in healed sports (sub) cultures, doping may be done in dignity. To investigate this, I suspend all circumstantial issues surrounding doping, to see whether doping, in "the best of all possible worlds', would remain problematic. Analysing the required origins, processes and outcomes of a proper athletic accomplishment, I conclude that doping need not be debasing, mechanistic nor dehumanizing. The deep integration of artifice in one's body may even signify a courageous acceptance of the human condition of being "foundationlessly free and ruthlessly responsible'. As such, doping would be deeply dignified. In this light, I critique the deep attachment to natural talent in the justifications of anti-doping as attempts to sustain the comfortable but deceptive self-image of man as a creature which should follow the cues of its nature – develop its talents – to find purpose and meaning in life. Ironically, where "talentocrats' cultivate natural forms, transhumanists cultivate a natural formula: evolution, thus becoming strange bedfellows in trying to connect human existence to the comforts of a "naturally given purpose'. To be human, however, is to be denied such an existential cradle. Intriguingly, sport is claimed both as a deceitful dreamland of soothing purposefulness and as a testimony to our troubling but true purposelessness. A truly virtuous spirit of sport should insist it is the latter.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-5101-9_4
Full citation:
Bonte, P. (2013)., Dignified doping: truly unthinkable? an existentialist critique of "talentocracy' in sports, in J. Tolleneer, S. Sterckx & P. Bonte (eds.), Athleticenhancement, human nature and ethics, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 59-86.
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