Last Wednesday I was fortunate to be in the stands of Wimbledon’s court one on men’s semi-finals day. We witnessed an epic classic in which the imperious Roger Federer was ousted from the tournament by Kevin Anderson, playing the tennis of his life.
It wasn’t so much a day off philosophy for me as a field trip. Watching Federer play I found myself thinking about how sport vindicates two key ideas in the virtue ethics of both Aristotle and Confucius, but challenges a third.
Both Aristotle and Confucius believed that being a good person required the cultivation of character. More precisely, it requires developing virtues: habits or dispositions to act in the right way.
In Federer’s case, the importance of his strength of character is evident. Off the court he is courteous and thoughtful. On court he is calm but focused, determined but not anxious. Anyone who watches or plays tennis knows how important this is to success. If you allow yourself to become frustrated or angry you lose your concentration and inevitably also points.
Aristotle and Confucius believed that people are not simply born good or bad and so virtue could be learned. Whether you are musically gifted or physically strong is out of your control but anyone can become honest, trustworthy, diligent and so on. A documentary I saw a few days before the match supported this, revealing that Federer’s great character is not something that he was simply blessed with. As a junior he would frequently have tantrums in which he would scream, shout and break his racquet. His parents admitted to being deeply embarrassed by his behaviour. His widely admired character had to be built.
Second, both Confucius and Aristotle believed that virtue was context-dependent. What for some people, in some situations would be bravery would for others in different situations be rashness or cowardice. This is one aspect of their wider rejection of universal laws or principles in ethics.
This resonated with how the same documentary explored the differences between Federer and his great rival, Rafa Nadal. At one point Nadal described how he feeds on doubts. “I always have doubts,” he has said. “I believe that the doubts are good because when you have doubts, it’s because you aren’t too arrogant, because you have respect for your opponent, because you have respect for the game, and because you don’t consider yourself unbelievable good.” His doubts draw his attention to what he has to work harder on, driving him forward. For many with different personalities, however, doubt can be disabling. This year’s champion, Novak Djokovic, talked of his recent “doubt, disappointment, anger, frustration” as unambiguous negatives. And while Federer shares Nadal’s drive for continuous improvement, doubt doesn’t seem to be part of the mechanism.
It’s worth remembering this at a time when endless click-bait articles and books promise to revalue the secrets of success. All these “rules” ignore the fact that people are different and what brings out the best in one can bring out the worst in another.
However, there is one way in which I think our best sports people challenge the traditional virtue theorists’ ideas. Confucius and Aristotle assumed that a virtuous character affected everything you did, that virtue in one domain entails virtue in others. I don’t know how Federer and Nadal behave off-court but watching the other great sporting event of the summer, the soccer World Cup, I was reminded that sporting excellence does not necessarily combine with personal virtue.
I am reluctant to offer an example because like the vast majority of us I don’t know what these stars are like in real life. But we do know enough about the Portuguese striker Cristiano Ronaldo to conclude with confidence, if not certainty, that what makes for an incredible sporting character can also make for an unattractive personal one. Ronaldo is a model of exquisite talent, hard work and determination. On the football pitch he also unselfish, giving the ball to less able team mates who are in good positions. But with that comes an incredible arrogance and vanity, exhibited in his goal celebration when he pumps out his chest like he was a Greek god demanding awe and worship.
Confucius and Aristotle knew that virtue is context-dependent, so they ought to have worked out that a person being virtuous in one context would not necessarily translate to them being virtuous in others, even when, on the face of it, the kinds of behaviours they exhibit are very similar.
The upshot is that building character is even more difficult than the ancients believed. At least Aristotle had the conceptual framework to deal with this. Although he argued that virtues should be developed so that their exercise would become a habit, he never thought our behaviour should become completely automatic. Habit works in tandem with self-awareness and practical wisdom, using observations of how our actions play out to feed back and inform future ones. That’s something else that you see in Federer, Nadal and Ronaldo’s modus operandi of continuous marginal improvement. Building great moral character is not the same as building great sporting character, but the processes required for both are remarkably similar.
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