A Hermeneutical Analysis of the InternalistApproachin the Philosophy of Sport

Abstract

In this paper, we make a hermeneutical analysis of internalism, the dominant tradition in the philosophy of sports. In order to accomplish this, we identify the prejudices that guide the internalist view of sports, namely the Platonic-Analytic prejudice introduced by Suits, one of the forefathers of internalism. Then, we critically analyze four consequences of following such a prejudice: a) its reductive nature, b) the production of a unrealistic view of sports, c) the vagueness of the idea of excellence; and d) the leap from the descriptive analysis of the sporting phenomenon to the setting of normative requirements for the practice of sports.