Transhuman Athletes and Pathological Perfectionism: Recognising Limits in Sports and Human Nature
In recent discussions in sports and bioethics there it has been suggested that sports may become a site where the modification of human nature itself might be played out. In this essay I explore the desirability of the idea that there might be athletes wh
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Transhuman Athletes and Pathological Perfectionism: Recognising Limits in Sports and Human Nature Michael J. McNamee
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Introduction
One traditional way of conceiving sports is to think of them as perfectionist practices; sports challenge practitioners to extend themselves, to enhance the limits of their capacities and performances. What enhancements are possible and which are desirable are much disputed. The discussions and negotiations arise among and between various interested parties: athletes, coaches, sports scientists, sports medics, and of course national and international governing bodies of sports. Philosophers, and those who specialise in the ethics of sports too have a role to play in articulating, criticising, defending, and justifying what is good and right in sports. Of course, scholars follow and change fashion; some are conservative, others avant garde. In recent discussions in sports and bioethics there have appeared essays where it has been suggested that sports may become a site where the modification of human nature itself might be played out (cf. McNamee 2007; Miah 2003). In this essay I want first to probe the plausibility of entertaining seriously this issue by rehearsing an argument by Daniels (2009) to the effect that anyone making such a claim has failed to consider properly the nature of human nature. Secondly, were such transformation to be possible, we might think of the idea of a transhuman athlete as a realistic possibility. But what, and how, should we think of this possibility? I suggest that we would be forced to consider the normative status of human nature itself and the (potential) desirability of biotechnological modifications and the resultant transformations of our understandings of elite sports. To that end I argue here, tentatively, that such a desire is a failure to consider the goodness of human and athletic vulnerability. I argue against the idea of the transhuman athlete, and reject it as a form of pathological perfectionism.
M.J. McNamee (*) Department of Philosophy, Humanities and Law in Healthcare, College of Human and Health Sciences, Swansea University, Swansea SA2 8PP, UK e-mail: [email protected] J. Tolleneer et al. (eds.), Athletic Enhancement, Human Nature and Ethics, International Library of Ethics, Law, and the New Medicine 52, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-5101-9_10, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
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M.J. McNamee
“Will London 2012 Be the First Transhuman Olympic Games?”
There is nothing like a good headline to capture the imagination. The question that forms the title for this section is adopted from a web-based article by the British scholar, Andy Miah, who has written much about the fusions of technology, medicine and sports. In promoting a public engagement event between various interested groups, Miah writes of the – apparently- first Transhuman games: Today, elite sports find themselves in increasingly unchartered waters. More than ever before, athletes are using technology to optimize their biology for perform
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