The Sport for All Ideal: A Tool for Enhancing Human Capabilities and Dignity

• Authors: Francisco Javier
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Sport, as a child of modernity, is intertwined with typically modern elements, such as the search for universality, competition, and the fascination for measurement. As modernity is essentially defined, in legal and moral terms, as a search for universally grounded moral principles or basic human rights, modern sports are widely seen as a means to promote typically modern values such as dignity. This paper conceives of the term "dignity" in light of the capabilities approach upheld by Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen. According to these authors, dignity is conferred according to certain human basic capabilities that we all are entitled to. This is the reason why this article explores how sport can be a tool for enhancing and exercising such human capabilities. In so doing, I shall argue that the Sport for All ideal provides us with a normative proposal to achieve such a task since it embodies the basic spirit and ethical goals of our modern society. Moreover, connecting the promotion of dignity to the capabilities approach will allow us not just to use sport as a means for development, but also to provide us with specific criteria to evaluate the impact of sport in the wider society regarding the promotion of people‘s dignity.

Keywords

EN

sport for all; philosophy of sport; olympism; human development; capabilities approach

• Publisher: De Gruyter Open
• Journal: Physical Culture and Sport. Studies and Research
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 63
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 20-28

Dates

published

1 - 9 - 2014

online

15 - 11 - 2014

Contributors

author

Francisco Javier

• López Frías University of Valencia, Spain

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/pcssr-2014-0019