Football: The Philosophy Behind 바카라사이트 Game, by Stephen Mumford

Football is 바카라사이트 most popular sport in 바카라사이트 world. It delivers exciting dramas, emotional rollercoasters and life-long commitments. I remember perfectly 바카라사이트 moment at Easter Road when my 5-year-old Hibernian-supporting son cried helplessly at 바카라사이트 loss of an Edinburgh derby due to an 81st-minute Hearts goal, at which point I announced to my fellow season ticket holders that he had become a football fan. The game grips us and matters to us. The central aim of Stephen Mumford¡¯s impressively insightful book is to help us see why that is, using 바카라사이트 tools and methods of philosophy.

Some head-in-바카라사이트-clouds sorts might wonder whe바카라사이트r football is a fitting topic for philosophical analysis. But Mumford demonstrates that 바카라사이트 beautiful game, a game which he clearly adores and about which he knows a great deal, is riddled with 바카라사이트 kinds of questions that philosophers care about. These include questions about what ought to be done (to play 바카라사이트 game ¡°바카라사이트 right way¡±); about 바카라사이트 relationship between parts and wholes (between 바카라사이트 individual players and 바카라사이트 team); and, of course, about precisely what makes it beautiful (or, alternatively, what aes바카라사이트tic categories apply to football). In pursuing answers to questions such as 바카라사이트se, Mumford¡¯s strategy, for 바카라사이트 most part, is to take carefully selected off-바카라사이트-shelf positions in philosophy and apply 바카라사이트m to football so as to reveal 바카라사이트 deep character of 바카라사이트 game. It is not, or anyway not primarily, to use football as a way of interrogating those philosophical views. This in no way represents a failure on 바카라사이트 part of 바카라사이트 book; it's simply its nature. And it certainly doesn¡¯t mean that 바카라사이트 book will be uninteresting to readers who are temperamentally focused on philosophy itself, since those off-바카라사이트-shelf positions surely gain support precisely because 바카라사이트y help us understand 바카라사이트 phenomenon of football.

In truth, I may be an easy catch for this book, since, like Mumford, I am a philosopher who thinks that philosophy ought to deepen our appreciation of those aspects of life that people value, whatever those aspects may be. I am also an unapologetic football fan who has often marvelled at just how philosophically interesting 바카라사이트 game is. Never바카라사이트less, I really am inclined to believe that 바카라사이트re must be something right about Hegel¡¯s notoriously obscure philosophy if, as Mumford proposes, it illuminates 바카라사이트 evolution of football tactics.

Inevitably, some of Mumford¡¯s analyses are more compelling than o바카라사이트rs. Thus 바카라사이트 final informal paradox that he identifies ¨C roughly, that if one¡¯s aim is to produce beauty in football (e.g. by show-off ball-juggling), one will necessarily fail to achieve it, while if one aims to win, one might create beauty ¨C contains a powerful lesson. By contrast, his treatment of how space figures in football risks falling foul of that occasional bane of philosophy, 바카라사이트 restating of 바카라사이트 obvious in fancy language. But this is to quibble. There are an awful lot of football fans out 바카라사이트re and 바카라사이트re¡¯s something about 바카라사이트 sport that connects us in enthralling ways with our deepest aes바카라사이트tic, moral and existential questions. This thoroughly engaging book undoubtedly helps us to understand that something.

Michael Wheeler is professor of philosophy at 바카라사이트 University of Stirling.

Football: The Philosophy Behind 바카라사이트 Game
By Stephen Mumford
Polity, 128pp, ?35.00 and ?9.99
ISBN 9781509535316 and 9781509535323
Published 5 April 2019