ABSTRACT
Aesthetics, as a philosophical discipline, covers two related but distinct issues: beauty and art. Thus, on the one hand, aesthetics is concerned with the nature of beauty and other aesthetic qualities, and the perception of such qualities through the faculty of taste, wherever they may be found. On the other hand, aesthetics is concerned with the nature of art and our appreciation and interpretation of art works, regardless of whether beauty is a core quality of that work. This dichotomy leads to two areas of study for the aesthetics of sport: an evaluative inquiry into the nature and relevance of aesthetic qualities (beauty, grace, drama, and so on) to the experience of playing and watching sport, and an ontological inquiry into the nature of sport and its relationship to art. At its extreme, the latter argues that sport is one of the arts, and so to be judged and assessed as such.
