It's a good point. With sports it is clear that spectators nevertheless
participate in a larger social act of sport. We are trained to observe and
like sports, and this training prepares us to become good spectators, to
like the right things, and dislike things we should dislike. There is no
shame in cheering for your nation in a sports competition. What is more
curious is the notion of the "spirit of sports." One referee said in an
interview that he doesn't really take sides with any team in football;
rather, he's on the side of the sport itself. His role was to uphold the
code, but also the *spirit* of the game.
It sounds a bit outdated, doesn't it, like a relic from the days of amateur
sports? Nevertheless, there *are* those who watch sports for the mere joy
of the *sport*, and not to bask in the glory of "their" team winning, or
the "shame" when it loses. Pierre Bourdieu had a theory about it: he
distinguished between watching sports for extrinsic or intrinsic gain in an
attempt to capture a distinction between those who have little practical
training in the sport and those who have a more active memory of their own
participation. It's a good theory. One wonders how come Sports Philosophy
largely regards Dead Sociologists, such as Bourdieu, as *hopelessly
outdated*.
Mvh. / Yours sincerely,
Torgeir Fjeld <https://torgeirfjeld.com/>
~~ ereignis <https://ereignis.no/>: taking you to who you are ~~
On Mon, 15 Jun 2020 at 17:41, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
"Watching or Playing" . . . interesting concept when applied to war. I
dearly wanted to "play," attempting to join the USMC in 1951 when I was
16. When they discovered my age I was sent home until I was 17. I was
sent to an intelligence unit in Korea, but I planned to transfer to the
"front lines," essentially the 38th parallel which was still being
contested. I was informed that truce negotiations were going on and
transfers were no longer being approved. Being there during the last two
battle seasons I was entitled to wear two stars on my Korean War Ribbon.
So was I "watching" or "playing"?
"Vicarious understanding" . . . I was the McDonnell Douglas Project
Engineer involved in the delivery of the last Nigerian DC-10 (the last or
next to the last DC-10 manufactured. I was also the Project Engineer for
the delivery of a DC-10 to Pakistan. That one and the Nigerian were the
last two DC-10s manufactured) and got to know two Nigerian reps (one for
Engineering and the other of Product Support) fairly well. The Engineer
was a Catholic and the Product Support fellow was a Muslim. I had some
interesting discussions with the Muslim about Islam. The Muslim spoke of
inheriting a large parcel of land for some reason I didn't understand (he
was educated in Scotland and had a strong Scottish accent). After he
returned to Nigeria I received a phone message from him, but he didn't
provide enough information to enable me to return his call. It wasn't
inconceivable that he intended to offer me a job. If so, he may have
thought he could convert me to Islam. My MDC job was to take care of all
Engineering and Product Support needs and not argue about Islam, so he
never saw the argumentative side of me. I subsequently got a translation
of the Qur'an and puzzled through most of it. After 9-11 I was primed to
study Islam and Islamism more seriously. We had many discussions In
Phil-Lit on Islam and Islamism back then. I recall arguing with an adjunct
professor in something or other about whether Islamism originated out of
Sunni or Shia theology. I argued for a Sunni origin, believing Said Qutb
the prime Sunni theologian and the most potent force in the creation of
subsequent movements in various nations. The adjunct professor in arguing
for a Shia origin thought the Ayatollah Khomeini the source of Islamism.
We each had a vicarious understanding. I had read more Sunni oriented
books and he had read more Shia; so we argued. He was in the process of
founding an anti-Islamism organization, and so popped into Phil-Lit looking
for recruits. He sought to recruit me, but I merely argued with him. I
was not delivering any DC-10s to him & so felt free to argue. Was I
"watching or playing"?
Understanding Islamism is an ongoing enterprise. I have given it up, but
I did read from the June 1, 2018 issue of the TLS a review of four books on
the Qur'an by Eric Ormsby. The books reviewed are *The Koran in English*
by Bruce B. Lawrence, *Exploring the Qur'an *by Muhammad Abdel Haleem, *The
Qur'an *by Nicolai Sinai, and *The Sanaa Palimpsest *by Asma Hilali.
Ormsby writes, "if there is a single factor that explains the disparity
between Muslim and non-Muslim views of the Qur'an it lies in its language.
This disparity is not due simply to the differences between, say, English
and Arabic with the latter's more powerful expressive qualities, lexical as
well as phonic. Rather, the disparity arises from the specific idiom of
Qur'anic Arabic. It is a long standing article of Muslim belief that the
Qur'an is inimitable; indeed its inimitable (*i'jaz* in Arabic) has been
dogma at least since the days of the theologian al-Baqillani (d. 1013), who
codified it. This is the basis of the ban on translation; the Qur'an by
its very nature cannot be translated -- or rather, only its 'meanings' are
deemed translatable. Bilingual editions of the Qur'an in Saudi Arabia, for
example, are always identified as containing a translation of the
'meanings', as if to make clear that it is not the Qur'an itself that has
been translated. . . ."
I wondered if by chance Eric Ormsby was the fellow I argued with years
ago. Probably not, because the fellow I argued seemed younger than someone
born in 1941 (when Ormsby was born). At the time, the fellow I argued with
was languishing some place as an adjunct professor and saw no hope of
achieving a serious place in the academic world; so for this fellow to have
applied himself such that he became the Eric Ormsby I read about would be
remarkable. Also remarkable is the fact that Eric Ormsby, born in Atlanta
in 1941, is "a poet, a scholar <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholar>,
and a man of letters <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_of_letters>. He
was a longtime resident of Montreal, where he was the Director of
University Libraries and subsequently a professor of Islamic thought at the
McGill University Institute of Islamic Studies."
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGill_University_Institute_of_Islamic_Studies>
Just because I didn't apply myself single-mindedly, learn Arabic and
continue to study the Qur'an and Islamic theology, didn't mean that the
adjunct professor I argued with years ago didn't. And yet, unless he
became a Muslim and beyond that an Islamic theologian, isn't his
understanding (while admittedly much greater than mine) still
'vicarious.'? Isn't he still merely "watching"?
Lawrence
On 6/14/2020 11:38 PM, david ritchie wrote:
On Jun 14, 2020, at 11:16 PM, adriano paolo shaul gershom palma <
palmaadriano@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Dear David Ritchie, I am unsure about what ought to be exciting:
is that you have in mind watching someone playing or playing?
chess is rather exciting, many who played claim to be so excited as to be
insomniacs for days only to mentally picture the board positions
What a good question. For me playing is far more interesting than
watching, but I was thinking before your comment arrived in my mailbox
about the current claim that you cannot understand racism unless you have
experienced it on the receiving end. People make the same claim about
war. Most of the academic experience is about vicarious understanding,
watching and reading rather than being or doing it. I think I understand
some things about the First World War because I have read much of what has
been published and I interviewed veterans and I have stood on the ground
and looked. But I was not there. I think I now understand a bit about the
Six Day War and Yom Kippur because I have talked with some who were there
and I have begun reading. But not by some living measures.
David
