The ethical problems of sports

Summary Sport, which is primarily an educational activity, becomes a strong social factor when it is institutionalised. It is generally desired that sports should have an integrating function in social relations; but in practice negative results are not exceptional. Those who first and directly experience and live through the problems are sporting people. They are followed by technicians, organisers, fans, spectators, and finally the public. Sportsmen and -women are motivated by values such as the development of their skills, the perfection of their aesthetical and technical abilities, and the achievement of the good, the better and the best in their competitive activities. As in every life-activity, opposite valuations like good-bad, beautiful-ugly, right-wrong, appropriate- inapp ropriate are often expressed in sports. Economical relations which basically direct and form social relations are, ipso facto, determining factors in sport activities. Viewed historically, in almost every period of mankind, we meet various kinds of sport-like movements and their systematised, regulated forms for play. Both in ancient and modern Olympic games undesirable and even disgusting events occurred. These are behaviour cases irreconcilable with the character of virtue aimed to be formed by sport. In this study an analysis of the problems of sport ethics is tried to be made and formulated in five topics: the production and application of doping elements, cheating and conceit, misuse of professionalism, negative ambition for high performance, and sport as a commodity fetish. When the end of the sport is seen as the accumulation of money by trading muscles and lungs, it falls far away from being a joyful experience or a social entertainment. vnIn every concrete immoral case the regular setback is observable. It is the wrongly handled form of economic activity which seduces the sporting individual to defy the virtues of participation with free choice, healthy development physically and mentally and righteous competition. Whenever the incentive for money becomes an end instead of a means, then excessive ambition, cruel competition and absolute victory become motives for this end. Whereas sporting is in itseif a high value, the sportsman and -woman are confronted with and tempted by breaking records at the cost of one's health. The sole aim then becomes to be singled out and even to be worshipped as the strongest, the highest or the quickest. The ethical problems in sports are reflections of socio-economic and political problems as a whole. In the politically disbalanced situation of the countries of the world, it is improbable to minister sport activities independent of oppressive elements. Both world-wide and local sport organisations claim "The Olympic Spirit", "fair play" and "sport as a key to friendship and peace". Such slogans or mottos remain for the most part as lip-service to morality. But they also imply the increasing social and political importance of sport in international consensus. Immoral behaviour in sport, no matter how long it may be disguised, is doomed to be detected. But meanwhile it causes damage: it spoils both the sporting individual and the sport-loving public. Large-scale damage can only be removed or cured by large-scale means. As a result, the mission which the truly sporting individual, this unity of body and mind, assigns to his or her self, the mission of co-operation by competition, may, by the impact of will, contribute to the final unity of mankind. vmKeywords 1 -Sports :The totality of activities effected as individual entertainment as well as competition with the aim of developing one's physical and intellectual abilities as a whole. 2-Philosophy : The kind of knowledge which puts forth and tries to answer the most general questions arising from man's relation to man and to nature. 3-Ethic --?: The philosophical discipline which investigates the determination of behaviour by values. 4-Doping : The use of unnatural means and methods by the sportsman and -women with the aim of increasing performance strength. DC