Of Cabbages and Kings:continuing Conversation on Performance Enhancers in Sport

My focus in a recent essays has been on the use of performance enhancing drugs in sport. I have suggested the appropriateness of establishing a philosophical-cultural context within which to develop parameters for proscribing certain behaviors in sport (6), and, most recently, I have considered the use of performance enhancers as sufficient to warrant a (re)consideration of the question whether philosophy has anything meaningful to say to ordinary people (7). This question articulates both a traditional invitation to philosophy to actively rethink its nature, role, and understanding of the philosophic task, and a more specific challenge to philosophy to address current issues determined to be significant by the nonphilosophic community to which philosophers have some obligation to respond. One of the immediate stimuli for this question is a perceived inconsistency between anti-doping positions defended on a certain ordinary or common sense level and concerns about doping proscriptions as articulated on a certain philosophic level. One can defend a negative answer to the question of (the possibility of) philosophically meaningful contributions to common sense discussions if the question is posed in a typically rationalistic way, articulated within a traditional Enlightenment conception of philosophy in which the emphasis is placed on the logical rigor and internal consistency of the analyses provided. An affirmative answer can be defended only from within a refocussed perspective on philosophy in which the emphasis is placed on the social dialogue character of our reasoning in order to provide a “validating context” through which we might change the ways in which we think about our subjects. A successful refocussing of this type would result in the reinvigoration of practical wisdom as a philosophic goal.