Preliminary communication UDC 17:796(045) doi: 10.21464/sp34202 Received: 14 November 2018 Lev Kreft University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, Aškerčeva 2, SI–1000 Ljubljana [email protected] From Kant to Contemporary Ethics of Sport Abstract The paper aims to establish a link between Kant’s ethics and the ethics of sport by connect- ing the concept of Anthropocene as the contemporary epoch during which natural history is becoming cultural history and the ethics of hope as presented in Kant’s The Critique of Judgement. The crucial moment in Kant’s argument is that choosing culture is the proper way of human progress towards civil society and cosmopolitan unity. Is sport this kind of culture? Can sport become an important moment in the contemporary ethics of hope? The answer is conditionally positive because there are obstacles present. Firstly, one of the reasons is that the modern Olympic sport was inaugurated to keep social conflicts in bal- ance. That this purpose can be achieved suggests that the hierarchical order of excellence involved with sport competition should strengthen social hierarchies. Secondly, sport is one of the most popular and most profitable global entertainments, but it is governed by aristocratic elites with the enormous potential for the abuse of power. Thirdly, global sports organisations have a lot of political power hidden behind the Olympic mantra of the exclu- sion of politics from the sport. Keywords ethics of hope, The Critique of Judgement, cosmopolitan character of sport, ethics of sport, Anthropocene, Immanuel Kant 1. Why Kant? Because We Live in Anthropocene From where did the Anthropos of Anthropocene come? It used to be Homo sapiens, and it emerged as anatomically finalised species of Homo sapiens sapiens. Simply put, this species was just another animal with special natural abilities. However, it is the only natural being to exist in culture as a native habitat autonomously created. By expanding its culture over the entirety of this planet’s nature and beyond, this species turned natural history into the environment of their history, and the whole Earth’s nature into their culture.1 1 Anthropocene was introduced in contempo- Anthropocene does not mean the centrality of rary scientific discourse as a geological pe- the ‘Anthropos’. It is not an anthropocentrism riod which started some 200 years ago with (...). What marks the turning, the break into industrialisation and accelerated moderni- another kind of time, is that the Earth is not sation. In contemporaneity, it results in the marked by human intention but by unintended conclusion that “mankind will remain a major effects of collective human labor.” – McKen- geological force for many millennia, maybe zie Wark, General Intellects, Verso, London millions of years to come”. – Paul J. Crutzen, – New York 2017, chapter 9; quoted from Ta- Eugene F. Stoermer, “The ‘Anthropocene’”, dej Troha, “The Age of H: Towards the An- Global Change Newsletter 41 (2000), pp. thropocene Imperative”, Filozofski vestnik 39 17–18, p. 18. McKenzie Wark explains: “The (2018) 1, pp. 121–134, p. 126. SYNTHESIS PHILOSOPHICA L. Kreft, From Kant to Contemporary Ethics 68 (2/2019) pp. (253–265) 254 of Sport Such a state is what the concept of Anthropocene denotes. This change cre- ated a mass of problems in nature, in culture, and in the relationship between human nature and culture as one of the most shaken and dangerous contempo- rary relationships on Earth. Bioethics is dealing with these mass of problems, and integrative (bio)ethics’ effort is to integrate all the ethical aspects of these troubled relationships into the redefinition of Anthropos and Anthropocene environment, to put an end to the destruction of both nature and culture. Sci- ences can deal with these problems in layers, but only an integrated approach can deal with the core of the problem. To approach the core, we have to ques- tion the origin of this Anthropos of Anthropocene. Anthropos is not the result of natural selection (as Homo sapiens and Homo sapiens sapiens are); it is the result of cultural selection, an extremely brutal process of cultivation and civilising, a process which created Anthropos as a concept. Before this process, at least in Western Christianity, humans saw themselves as imago Dei, and the whole Creation as a field cultivated by humans in the name of God and within the rules of the ethics of care, which promoted humans into shepherds of creation, not into its masters. After they promoted themselves into Anthropos, humans (the Western white Christian male heterosexual taking themselves to be the universal representatives of all human race) saw nature as their playground which they have to re-shape and re-organise after their image and treat nature as the creation of their judge- ment.2 Kant’s Critique of Judgement is an exemplification of the concept of Anthro- pos and its final cause (causa finalis), which includes the cultivation of nature into a playground for human freedom. Kant’s understanding of relation and difference between theology and philosophy demanded the development of philosophical argument without any reference to God’s will, solely from the human being and its abilities. Consequently, here is where the search for the evolution of Anthropos should start. Looking for the answer to the most important question of enlightenment, about a priori foundation of humanity’s hope for the better, Kant transformed it into an examination of nature’s purposefulness – the final cause. He could not say outright that nature has a purpose because that would have a flavour of pantheism and an unhopeful character of determinism. Otherwise, he did not want merely to ascertain that God’s providence makes such expectations plausible because that would trump human potential, and it would be just another determinism. Kant wanted to build his argument on the safe founda- tions of free will to provide the possibility of human freedom as a reason for the existence of Enlightenment. Instead of arguing for nature’s purposeful- ness or God’s providence, and relying on Linné’s System of Nature and its taxonomy,3 Kant argued that human being is the final cause of nature because humans are the only natural beings to escape pure causality. Humans are de- termined not just by natural causality but also by their freedom of choice, and their freedom of choice does not function (only) as a consequence of previ- ously existing causes but represents their ability to choose while taking into account the not-yet-existing final cause of their doing and being. This makes their free choice purposeful: human beings can be the cause of consequences which are sur-natural. Anthropos is a being with final cause. Following this line of argument, Kant arrived at a crucial point: are humans able to choose their better future freely? Again, Kant’s criticism does not aim at the promise of a certain future. Kant’s final cause, if you pardon the pun, is to establish SYNTHESIS PHILOSOPHICA L. Kreft, From Kant to Contemporary Ethics 68 (2/2019) pp. (253–265) 255 of Sport just an a priori possibility of human choice to make the world better. Para- graph 83 of Critique of Judgement argues for this possibility. Here is how it begins: “In the preceding we have shown that we have sufficient cause to judge the human being not merely, like any organized being, as a natural end, but also as the ultimate end of nature here on earth, in relation to which all other natural things constitute a system of ends in accordance with fundamental principles of reason, not, to be sure, for the determining power of judgement, yet for the reflecting power of judgement.”4 Humans are the final cause of nature (ultimate purpose – letzte Zweck), but that cannot remain the final statement of reflective judgement. The critique has to find out what kind of human choice of human’s final cause is possible. There are two possible ways, that of happiness and that of culture. According to Kant, happiness is not a good choice. It is just a pure idea which cannot be realised under empirical terms. It is unstable, always changing and longing for something else. And it belongs to nature. In contrast, as the final cause of nature, Anthropos should choose something beyond nature – sur-natural or supra-natural – to be its purpose. Thus, culture5 remains the only acceptable choice. Kant offers a definition: “The production of the aptitude of a rational being for any ends in general (thus those of his freedom) is culture.”6 It has to be pure culture, defined in a negative way as the freedom from the despotism of desires. In itself, culture is not a freedom for something because a choice of purposes belongs to the free will: the purposefulness of choice may be for good or for the worse of humanity. Kant is interested in the pos- sibility of the right choice, not in its necessity. And, as the previous events of human development exemplify, the way of progress is much more troubled than the way of happiness. The path of culture as the development of skills for arbitrary purposes demands inequality – the numerically tiny elite enjoys the results of progress, and all the others are limited to a kind of animal life. One cannot expect that troubles of humanity will diminish as cultural progress continues: “But with the progress of this culture (…), calamities grow equally great on both sides, on the one side because of violence imposed from without, on the other because of dissatisfaction from 2 3 A critical view of the modernist divinisation Karl Linné, Systema Naturae, Salvius, Stock- of (hu)man belongs to postmodern philoso- holm 1758.