Sport as a common good: between politics and education

Abstract

In contemporary ethical and political discourse, so-called “common good” often appears as a rhetorical concept characterized by very general and metaphysical statements which define it in diverse ways according to the scientific perspective chosen to interpret it. Nowadays, common goods are investigated by human and social sciences. In recent years, political sciences, sociology, philosophy, and economics seem to be the sciences which have been more interested in the study and definition of common goods.

Recently, pedagogy has also begun to examine common goods from an epistemological perspective identifying in education the common good par excellence. Theology – mainly the Catholic one – has dealt with common goods to the point that they have been influencing for five decades the social doctrine of the Church.

Actually, a term such as “common good” seems to be an undefinable and untheorizable term which, when treated, turns into a pretext for facing and debating all main problems of complex societies. These problems deal with welfare, citizenship, equality (of gender and race), rights, access to resources, equity in the distribution of wealth. The issues dealing with common goods (or “commons”) refer to ethics, health, work, multiculturalism, social integration, peace, democracy, leisure, and so on. Often, the issues of common goods are analyzed using points of view tied to two main cultural interpretations: Neoliberalism on the one hand and Marxism on the other hand. These two arguments and views frame the debate on contemporary common goods between individualism and communitarianism.

Recently, the conceiving of sport as a human capital and set of social and individual rights tied to well-being has made of sport a common good that must be promoted and achieved by democratic societies. In contemporary culture, sport is conceived of as an essential right and set of values and goods which contribute to citizenship and represent the very goal of democracy. Moreover, nowadays sport is not seen just as the level of development achieved by a certain society, but as the parameter of the rights acquired and enjoyed by its citizens.

Sport bears intrinsic goods that educational and social agents must extricate and implement. It becomes a real common good when its values – which are tied to human, social and educational rights – are made available to its citizens and disseminated and used without discrimination in the access. The concept of “sport for all” that has begun to become popular in Italy in the 1950s is the very essence of the concept of sport as a “common good.” That is to say, a resource which is part of human education capable of contributing to the policies related to human life and health. In this essay, we aim to develop a critical reflection on sport as a common good and its intrinsic values using a hermeneutical approach and after a brief comparison with the general theory of common goods in a philosophical perspective.