Ethics of Sports: Do Sports Morally Matter?

While sport sometimes is dismissed as frivolous, it not only raises fundamental ethical questions, such as what counts as fair play, but is an important cultural phenomenon attracting the interests of millions of people around the globe. Love sports or hate them, their cultural role or influence cannot easily be dismissed. In this course, we will explore some of the fundamental ethical issues raised by sport, ranging from investigation of the nature of sports to see what values, if any, sports do and should promote and the educational significance of sports especially in higher education in the U.S, violence in sports, gender equity in sports, and the ethics of using performance enhancing drugs. We hope that through brief lectures on videos, hearty debate in the discussion board, interactive media, and some selected readings to promote not only better understanding of the ethics of sport, but also appreciation for the role of reasoned discourse in advancing our understanding of ethical issues and how to approach them.