ABSTRACT
We are delighted to have co-edited this Handbook of the Philosophy of Sport, the publication of which coincides with a half-century or so of philosophical scholarship devoted to sport. We have enlisted an international team of leading scholars to address the main philosophical issues and concerns of the subject. We have tried to be as comprehensive as possible in our coverage of the relevant topics. Each chapter features an original contribution that summarizes and critically analyzes the best philosophical work to date relevant to the topic. Our intent throughout was to produce a major reference work for scholars interested in the philosophy of sport. We also sought to highlight the important normative and practical connections of these topics to issues that presently beset the world of sport, to assist serious observers and students of sport interested in the often outsized role it plays in their lives both on and off the field. By presenting a comprehensive picture of the intellectual development of sport philosophy to the present, we further intended the Handbook to serve as a guide for possible future theoretical advances in each of these topical areas. These are, admittedly, ambitious goals and, as such, hard to fulfil. So there will be inevitable gaps in our coverage and, no doubt, areas where readers will have wished for a different treatment of some of the topics discussed. Nevertheless, we believe that we have achieved our main goals, and that this compendium of work will prove useful to scholars, students, and interested parties alike, no matter their particular philosophical tastes or interests.
