Sport, Ethics and Philosophy

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On the Moral Value of Physical Activity: Body and

Soul in Plato's Account of Virtue

David Carr

To cite this article: David Carr (2010) On the Moral Value of Physical Activity: Body
and Soul in Plato's Account of Virtue, Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, 4:1, 3-15, DOI:
10.1080/17511320903264222

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Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, Vol. 4, No. 1, April 2010

ON THE MORAL VALUE OF PHYSICAL

ACTIVITY: BODY AND SOUL IN PLATO’S
ACCOUNT OF VIRTUE

David Carr

It is arguable that some of the most profound and perennial issues and problems of philosophy
concerning the nature of human agency, the role of reason and knowledge in such agency and
the moral status and place of responsibility in human action and conduct receive their sharpest
definition in Plato’s specific discussion in the Republic of the human value of physical activities.
From this viewpoint alone, Plato’s exploration of this issue might be considered a locus classicus
in the philosophy of sport. Indeed, it is in this place that Plato offers a highly distinctive account of
the value of physical education in terms of its vital contribution to the development of a part of
the soul that he characterises in terms of ‘spirit’, ‘energy’ and/or ‘initiative’. Drawing on more
recent work in ethics and philosophy of action, this paper sets out to revisit and evaluate Plato’s
argument. While concluding that Plato’s case ultimately flounders on fundamental uncertainty
regarding the logical role of spirit in the explanation of agency, the paper concludes that there is
much to be learned – in the philosophy of sport and elsewhere – from the instructive failures of
Plato’s argument.

Zusammenfassung
Man kann darüber streiten, ob einige der tiefsten und zeitlosen Fragen und Probleme der
Philosophie, die die Natur menschlicher Handlung, die Rolle der Vernunft und des Wissens in
solchen Handlungen sowie den moralischen Status und Ort der Verantwortung für menschliches
Handeln und Verhalten betreffen, am besten in der entsprechenden Erörterung über den
menschlichen Wert sportlicher Betätigung in Platons Republik definiert werden. Folgt man indes
dieser Sichtweise, dann könnte Platons Exploration dieser Frage als ein locus classicus der
Philosophie des Sports gelten. Und tatsächlich offenbart diese Stelle in Platons Werk eine klare
Beschreibung des Wertes der Leibeserziehung in Bezug auf ihren bedeutenden Beitrag
‘‘ ‘‘
zur Entwicklung der Seelenteile, die er mit Begriffen wie Geist‘‘, Tatkraft‘‘ und/oder
‘‘
Entschlossenheit‘‘ charakterisiert. Im Hinblick auf neuere Arbeiten im Bereich der Handlung-
sphilosophie, Ethik und Philosophie der Tat kommt dieser Artikel zu einer Überarbeitung und
Neubewertung von Platons Schlussfolgerungen. Trotz des Fazits, dass Platons Fall letztlich
aufgrund grundlegender Unsicherheiten hinsichtlich der logischen Stellung des Geistes in der
Erklärung von Handlungen ins Schwimmen gerät, kommt dieser Aufsatz zu dem Schluss, dass die
Sportphilosophie und andere Disziplinen eine Menge von den instruktiven Schwächen in Platons
Argumentation lernen können.

ISSN 1751-1321 print/1751-133X online/10/010003–13

ª 2010 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/17511320903264222
4 DAVID CARR

Resumen
Se puede argumentar que algunos de los temas más profundos y perennes de la filosofı́a
concernientes a la naturaleza de la agecia humana [capacidad de acción], el papel de la razón, y
el conocimiento en tal agencia, ası́ como el estado moral y el lugar de la responsabilidad en la
acción y conducta humana reciben su definición más aguda en la discusión especı́fica de Platón
en ‘‘La república’’ sobre el valor humano de las actividades fı́sicas. Por sı́ sola, la exploración de
este tema por parte de Platón podrı́a considerarse como un ‘‘locus classicus’’ en la filosofı́a del
deporte. Realmente, es en este lugar donde Platón ofrece una explicación inconfundible del valor
de la educación en base a su contribución vital al desarrollo de una parte del alma que el
caracteriza como ‘‘espı́ritu’’, ‘‘energı́a’’ y/o ‘‘iniciativa’’. Recurriendo a trabajos más recientes en la
filosofı́a de la acción, y ética, este artı́culo se propone evaluar de nuevo el argumento de Platón.
Mientras que concluye que la posición de Platón no se sostiene al final por su falta fundamental
de certeza con respecto al papel lógico del espı́ritu en la explicación de la agencia, el artı́culo
concluye que se puede aprender mucho todavı́a – en la filosofı́a del deporte y demás – de los
fallos instructivos del argumento de Platón.

Résumé
On peut discuter le fait que certaines des questions et problèmes les plus profonds et les plus
récurrents de la philosophie concernant la nature de l’agencement humain, le rôle de la raison et
de la connaissance dans un tel agencement et la place et le statut moral de la responsabilité dans
l’action et la conduite humaine reçoivent leur définition la plus aiguë dans la discussion spécifique
que Platon développe dans La République sur la valeur humaine des activités physiques. De ce
seul point de vue, on pourrait considérer l’exploration de cette question par Platon comme un
locus classicus dans la philosophie du sport. En effet, c’est précisément là que Platon offre un
bilan hautement singulier de la valeur de l’éducation physique en termes de contribution
essentielle au développement de l’âme qu’il caractérise en termes d’esprit, d’énergie et/ou
d’initiative. Fondé sur l’étude plus récente de l’éthique et de la philosophie de l’action, cet article
s’attache à revisiter et évaluer l’argumentation de Platon. Tout en concluant sur l’idée que le cas
de Platon manque finalement de solidité quant à l’incertitude fondamentale du rôle logique de
l’esprit dans l’explication de l’agencement, l’article maintient qu’il y a beaucoup à apprendre -
dans la philosophie de sport et ailleurs - des échecs édifiants de l’argument de Platon.
 THE MORAL VALUE OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY 5

KEYWORDS Plato; soul; spirit; virtue; physical education

Socrates: ‘Have you noticed,’ I asked, ‘how a lifelong devotion to physical exercise, to the
exclusion of anything else, produces a certain kind of mind? Just as a neglect of it,
produces another type? . . . One type tends to be uncivilised and tough, the other soft
and over-sensitive.’ . . .

Glaucon: ‘Yes . . . excessive emphasis on athletics produces an excessively uncivilised type,

while a purely literary training leaves men indecently soft.’ . . .

Socrates: ‘What I should say therefore is that these two branches of education seem to
have been given by some god to men to train these two parts of us – the one to train our
philosophic part, the other our energy and initiative. They are not intended the one to
train body, the other mind, except incidentally, but to ensure a proper harmony between
energy and initiative on the one hand and reason on the other by tuning each to the
right pitch.’ (Plato 1987, book 3, part 2, 410c–412a)

Philosophising About Physical Activity and Sport

Observing a fairly familiar (though by no means straightforward) distinction between
‘pure’ and ‘applied’ philosophy, it is likely that the philosophy of sport (along with philosophy
of education or medical ethics) would have to be placed on the applied side of things. In this
light, philosophy of sport would appear to draw mainly – notwithstanding the importance of
political and aesthetic issues and problems – on work in the philosophy of mind and action,
epistemology and ethics or moral philosophy. Indeed, questions about the understanding
and explanation of human agency and action, the role of reason and knowledge in such
agency and the moral status of conduct – though clearly of considerable relevance to most if
not all spheres of human life – would appear to have particular significance for any clear
understanding of contemporary professional and other sporting behaviour. It is also arguable
that so-called ‘analytical’ philosophy has contributed much over the years to the clarification
of such problems. By ‘analytical philosophy’, moreover, is here meant the kind of work
published in leading present day academic journals of philosophy which is also demonstrably
continuous with a long mainstream philosophical tradition going back to such ‘founding
fathers’ of western philosophy as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.
To be sure, such continuity of analytical philosophical concern is perhaps nowhere so
apparent as in the attention given from antiquity to the present to the nature of so-called
‘practical reason’. Ideas of practical reason (as forms of moral and productive deliberation)
were first explored by Aristotle in response to issues raised by Plato, they have never been
far from centre stage in the work of major Western philosophers (such as Hume and Kant)
and they were integral to a significant mid-twentieth century (post-Wittgensteinian) revival
of interest in the philosophy of action in which such analytical philosophers as Elizabeth
Anscombe, G.H. von Wright and Donald Davidson explicitly returned to Aristotle’s ideas on
6 DAVID CARR

agency. More precisely, ideas of practical reason were invoked to explain the very
possibility of human (rational) agency, to show that there are important forms of human
knowledge besides theoretical knowledge and to clarify the anatomy of human moral
reason and conduct. With regard to this last issue, indeed, much ethics and/or moral
philosophy from antiquity to the present has turned on questions concerning the precise
logical status of the premises and conclusions of practical arguments – on whether, from a
psychological perspective, these are to be construed as thoughts, beliefs, intentions,
desires or even actions. It is arguable, however, that these and other questions about
action, knowledge in action and the ethics of action are traceable back to an explicit
discussion – quoted at the start of this paper – of the value of physical activity and
education in Plato’s Republic. In short, some of the most profound questions of Western
philosophy are thrown into sharpest relief in one of the earliest explicit attempts to
account for the value of physical activity – sports, games and other movement – in human
affairs. It is in this light that this early Platonic discussion might well be regarded as a locus
classicus of any serious appreciation of some of the key issues in the philosophy of sport –
and reason enough for revisiting Plato’s distinctive argument in what follows.

Soul, Body, Virtue and Physical Education

Although everyday experience seems to afford little evidence that professional
sportspersons or devotees of physical exercise are any more moral or virtuous than others,
the idea that disciplined physical activity may have something to contribute to moral
development has proved enduring. Indeed, the substantial contemporary literature on this
topic is a site of passionate arguments both for and against rather different (and perhaps
not entirely compatible) versions of this idea. Thus, for example, alongside a rather older
view that long runs and cold showers are somehow character-forming, there is the more
recent or modern view that the practice of rule-governed team sports conduces to the
development of cooperation and some sense of justice as fair play (see, for example, Aspin
1975). The latter idea has not fared well in recent days in the face of arguments – first
mooted, so far as I am aware, by the pioneer of post-war British analytical philosophy of
education Richard Peters (1966) – emphasising the morally insulated nature of team sport
contexts – and I will here merely record that I have also never regarded this notion as
particularly persuasive. This is all the more reason for focusing here on what seems to be a
version of the character formation argument in Plato’s (1987) pioneering treatment of the
moral value of physical education in the Republic.
What Plato sets out in the passage from the Republic that introduces this paper is a
quite ingenious argument for the general educational value – and the particular moral
educational value – of physical activities that is not without some prima facie credibility. It
may therefore be well worth spelling out the significant implications of this argument for
contemporary educational thought and practice. First, it has been a central claim of post-
war analytical philosophy – in defence of a conception of liberal education that is also held
(not implausibly) to have roots in classical Greek philosophy – that education is primarily
about the development of mind. Indeed, on this view, if physical education is about the
strictly physical development of the body, then the term ‘physical education’ could only be
a contradiction in terms. In short, while we could speak of the training of the body, we
could not speak coherently of educating it. To be sure, there are reasons for rejecting any
extreme statement of this view as overstated, since it is not hard to show that most
 THE MORAL VALUE OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY 7

physical activities involve some level of (practical and other) deliberation, ratiocination and
judgement. But the tougher nut of liberal scepticism about physical education is that such
reflection is not conspicuously conducive to any very educationally deep or significant
appreciation of human life and experience: in this light, it may be easier to appreciate how
attending a choreography of Euripides’s Medea might foster such appreciation than it is to
see how playing a game of squash might do so. It is on this deeper point, however, that
Plato’s argument might be thought to have some impact – that argument being that there
is more to mind or soul and its education than is involved in the development of such
capacities for ‘liberal’ reflection.
Following Socrates, it seems to be Plato’s argument that the main aim of any
educational acquisition of knowledge is the cultivation of moral virtue, but also – perhaps
somewhat departing from Socrates – that such virtue, while constitutive of a healthy state
of soul, is not entirely reducible to the acquisition of knowledge. Indeed, this more mature
Platonic view seems directly addressed to a familiar problem about an earlier, arguably
more Socratic, identification of virtue with knowledge as such. On this view, human life
and experience is a site of fundamental conflict between the physical or material human
body – the source of non-rational passions, desires and appetites – and a spiritual or non-
material soul identified more or less by Socrates with human reason. The moral health or
salvation of soul depends on the outcome of this conflict: if the agent continues to be
ruled by bodily passions and appetites – which Socrates and Plato both regard as sources
of sophistry, delusion and error – then the soul remains prey to vice; but if the appetites
are ruled by reason and knowledge, then the soul is virtuous. In the Republic, however,
Plato seems less certain that knowledge is sufficient for virtue, since someone may well
know the right thing to do without acting on such knowledge as a virtuous agent should.
The condition commonly called akrasia or (less accurately) ‘weakness of will’ seems to
show that human agents often act badly in full knowledge that what they are doing is bad.
Moreover, the contrary Socratic view that all wickedness stems from ignorance is hard to
reconcile with the familiar human practice of praising and blaming agents for their
conduct and may seem to absolve wrongdoers from responsibility for their actions.
It is worth mentioning here that Socrates’s opposition of reason to bodily appetite
and passion is probably not the same as the modern separation of thought as cognition
from emotion as no-cognitive affect. It seems likely that the Greeks – Socrates, Plato and
Aristotle – regarded appetites, passions and emotions as well as the desires based upon
these as informed by judgements that things are thus and so. The objection of Socrates
and Plato to such appetites and desires would appear to have been more that such
judgements were not – in advance of appropriate reflection – fully rational or subject to
rational evaluation. To be sure, for both Socrates and Plato, the deliberations of
courageous and temperate agents must also disincline them from feeling fear or lust, since
the responses to which such feelings are directed – panic and fornication – are not worthy
of the virtuous. But it is no small point here that in so far as passions and appetites are not
merely cases of blind affect and entail some measure of judgement, they are potentially
subject to the rational influence of education. All the same, it is just as clearly Plato’s view –
as evident in the above quote – that knowledge alone cannot be relied upon to influence
or control appetite and desire in the desired direction of virtue. Thus, while the ranks of
the non-virtuous are likely to include the ignorant and uncivilised they will also be swelled
by the ‘soft and over-sensitive’ – those akratic agents who have knowledge of the good
but lack the backbone to resist morally enfeebled or decadent backsliding.
8 DAVID CARR

In short, it is likely that Plato is here conscious of the hazards of what more recent
philosophers have called ‘reasons externalism’. In so far as (like Hume) Plato seems to
believe that the deliverances of human reason are in and of themselves unable to inspire
(moral or other) action, something of a more clearly motivational – affective or
desiderative – nature is needed for this purpose. What, in short, the would-be virtuous
require is not further doses of knowledge, but a different order of desire that will assist
their reason or knowledge to keep them on the virtuous path: this is precisely the power
or capacity that is variously characterised in different accounts and translations of Plato as
energy, spirit or initiative. In Plato’s Phaedrus (1961), spirit or initiative is one of the two
horses of, precisely, appetite and spirit that are harnessed to the chariot of reason –
though, in the Republic, it is more evidently the main role of spirit or initiative to control or
suppress feeling and appetite. It would therefore appear that Plato’s introduction of ‘spirit’
into his moral psychology is driven by a concern to avoid some perceived Socratic threat
of ‘reasons externalism’ and to secure the measure of ‘reasons internalism’ needed to show
how moral actions might reliably follow from moral motives (on this distinction, see Smith
1995).
However, it is also worth noting – in the interests of clear understanding of such
Platonic psychology – that we should resist any and all temptation to construe spirit or
initiative in terms of the more modern notion of will. Thus, while the Augustinian concept
of will as a site of primal spiritual choice between good and evil – an idea that arguably
finds its highest and most sophisticated expression in Kant’s (1948) ethics – has clear roots
in Judaeo-Christian theology, there is nothing precisely analogous to this notion in ancient
Geek thought (see Charlton 1988; also Carr 1999). That said, though the idea of spirit or
initiative is far from the Augustinian-Kantian notion of will as source of autonomous (self-
legislative) moral choice, it is less notably at odds with the widespread rejection of will or
volition (by Ryle 1949, Wittgenstein 1953 and others) in latter-day philosophy of action –
and, indeed, such more recent philosophising has explicitly returned to the ancient Greek
(particularly Aristotelian) account of human agency in terms of reasons for action. So, for
example, in her highly influential mid-twentieth century essay on the topic, Elizabeth
Anscombe (1959) explains the key notion of intention precisely in terms of reasons for
action rather than acts of volition or will.

Plato’s ‘Spirit’ and Physical Education

But now what role could Plato’s notion of spirit or initiative play in any account of
moral or other agency – and what contribution might physical activity or education make
to the formation of such spirit? As already said, the idea of spirit seems to be inherently
affective or desiderative, but supposed also to serve as a higher rational motive that is on
the one hand informed by knowledge of the good or virtuous life, and on the other
capable of ordering lower appetites and desires for virtuous conduct. In this regard, it may
resemble Harry Frankfurt’s (1971) idea of free action as the product of second-order
desires, or Gary Watson’s (1975) further construal of such desires in terms of what we
might more naturally call ‘values’. To this extent, the desires or values of spirit might be
regarded as – what I have elsewhere called (Carr 1991) – ‘principled preferences’: in so far
as they are principled such desires lie in the space of reasons – and hence have, in some
sense, moral epistemic status – but in so far as they are preferences they are also clear
motives for action. The motivational states of spirit are therefore hybrid: they occupy a
 THE MORAL VALUE OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY 9

rather uneasy – if not perhaps unstable – position between moral reason and/knowledge
(the intelligible realm) and direct practical engagement with the (sensible) world.
Still, one might say, couldn’t someone of such spirited desires be morally virtuous –
in the light of moral reason and understanding – without benefit of physical activity or
education as such: precisely, couldn’t one be a person of complete moral integrity and
probity without ever having run a marathon or played a game of hockey? The specifics of
hockey and long-distance running aside, however, it would seem to be Plato’s view that
one could not be a spirited agent without some form of physical exercise or engagement
(in Plato’s Laws (Book seven, 795–796), the emphasis would seem to be mainly on dance) –
and, further, that since spirit is an integral component of moral development, one could
not therefore be a fully moral agent without some such physical engagement. How or in
what sense is this so? While Plato does not give any very detailed support for this view in
the key passages of the Republic on physical education, there may be enough clues
elsewhere in his writings – in the Republic, Gorgias and other places – to piece together a
more complete Platonic story.
First, then, in his dialogue Gorgias (of especial interest for thinking about education)
Socrates is concerned to refute the claim of the sophist Gorgias that the art of rhetoric or
‘persuasion’ is of the highest value to human flourishing – precisely in so far as it may
assist human agents to get what they want or desire (Plato 1960). In the light of a key
distinction between soul and body, Socrates tries to show that in so far as rhetoric serves
only appetite, vanity and delusion it cannot be considered a humanly valuable art – or
even any sort of art – at all. In the course of pressing this point, Socrates observes a
difference between ‘arts’ of more and less relevance to bodily health and prosperity such
as cuisine, cosmetics, medicine and physical training. He argues that cookery and
cosmetics, unlike medicine and training, cannot be considered genuine arts in so far as any
expertise they may involve is concerned not to promote the genuine health of the agent –
or grounded in genuine knowledge of such health – but, precisely, to flatter and indulge
vanity and appetite. In short, for Socrates/Plato, cosmetics and cuisine are fairly evident
forms of rhetoric, which – since they are not obviously grounded in principled reflection or
knowledge about what is of real benefit to the agent – may not really be regarded as
genuine arts at all (Plato calls them ‘knacks’). By analogy, Socrates is concerned to show,
the sophist’s art of persuasion has to be regarded as of no benefit or value – even, as
compared to philosophy, as of some disvalue – to the health of the soul. Nevertheless, it is
here clear that Socrates and/or Plato do link physical training (along with medicine) to a
species of knowledge conducive to human flourishing – in addition to viewing physical or
bodily health as a part of that flourishing.
That said, for Plato/Socrates, such knowledge – whether of medicine or physical
training – is ultimately but a form of techne in the manner of sculpture, architecture or
boat-building. Further, it is merely concerned with the cultivation of the body which, at
least in the Gorgias, appears to be of little ultimate human concern – at least by
comparison with the health of the soul. On the contrary, the health of the soul – which is a
moral matter – seems dependent on a kind of reflection (more akin to Plato’s dialectic)
that transcends the practical, transient and perhaps utilitarian concerns of medicine or
physical training. In the Republic, however, Plato does appear to think that physical
training – and hence, presumably, our knowledge of how to promote it – is genuinely
contributory to, or constitutive of, moral virtue. In what sense might this be so? It is
possible that some further light may be shed on this question by looking here at what
10 DAVID CARR

Plato has to say about music – which, again in the Republic, he appears to invest with no
less moral and educational significance than physical education.
Initially, however, it is important to distinguish two different (albeit connected)
senses of music in both Plato and Greek philosophy in general. In the general Platonic (and
Greek) view of education as built on the twin pillars of music and gymnastic, music is a
generic term for the more reflective, academic or ‘liberal’ aspects of education – to be
contrasted, precisely, with forms of ‘gymnastic’ or physical training. In this sense, music
would be concerned with a broad range of literary and other studies, including much
more than the ‘music’ of latter-day ordinary usage. That said, Plato has much to say about
music in this secondary more particular sense and he is clearly much persuaded of its
moral and educational value. In short, he holds that exposure to the right kinds of music is
of the highest consequence for the moral health of the soul: that, indeed, exposure to the
wrong sorts of music may have morally disastrous consequences. Thus, for example, in
considering the various Greek musical modes of the Dorian, the Mixolydian and the
Phrygian, Plato expresses strong moral approval of the Phrygian precisely for its manly and
martial qualities, as well as disapproval of other modes for their morally decadent or
enfeebling qualities. It is here worth noting, by the way, that while Aristotle (1941c)
generally agreed with Plato in upholding the moral value of music, he explicitly demurred
from his master’s preference for the Phrygian mode, condemning its tendency to the
‘orgiastic’. However, both Plato and Aristotle clearly held that music does have real impact
on and implications for the moral health of the soul.
What is of some interest and relevance to present concerns is that music is here
supposed to have such moral consequence by virtue of its inherent formal and structural
properties rather than in terms of its (intentional) content. On the face of it, one could well
understand how a piece of poetic drama might serve to promote moral reflection (to some
actual moral benefit) on aspects of the human condition with which the drama deals – as,
indeed, Aristotle in the Poetics (1941b) held to follow from encounter with the works of
Aeschylus, Sophocles or Euripides. Or, again, one could see how one might derive some
moral educational benefit from reflection upon such musical works as Bizet’s Carmen or
Handel’s Acis and Galatea – or even from a song by Billie Holiday or Randy Newman. This
is, to be sure, in so far as all these musical works are focused upon topics or themes of
some moral interest: in the jargon of professional philosophers, they are precisely
‘intentional’ or ‘about’ something. But both Plato and Aristotle appear to have held that
music can have significant moral value and effects even when it is not especially about
something in quite this sense: when, perhaps as in the case of much if not most music, it is
entirely innocent of such themes – or when it is, in the term of Peter Kivy (1990), ‘music
alone’. In short, on this Platonic (and Aristotelian) view, music may have moral significance
or implications by virtue of its direct influence or effects on the emotional, somatic and/or
practical aspects of soul and agency. It is precisely in this space that Plato’s spirit or energy
also appears to operate.

Spirit, Order and Physical Discipline

At this point, it might be insisted that in so far as emotions are logically implicated in
judgements or evaluations of this or that state of affairs, any music that expresses or
evokes emotion would also have to be intentional: in this light, one could not have
musical emotion without musical intentionality. To be sure, much emotion is so implicated
 THE MORAL VALUE OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY 11

and there can be no doubt that emotional cognition has a significant role to play in Plato’s
account of moral education: it is indeed because much emotion is cognitive that it is
susceptible of (rational) educational influence. Thus, for Plato, agents may become more
courageous or temperate by coming to see that their worst fears of physical harm are
baseless and unfounded (since the fate of the body is of no spiritual significance) or that
their lusts or sensual desires are vain and delusory (since such desires are transient and
focused upon unworthy objects). That said, the extent to which emotion and/or desire is
intentional – or implicated in particular judgements – has been prone to much latter-day
overstatement. It seems equally clear that much emotion and desire is often quite general
and not especially focused upon particular objects or states of affairs. For example, people
may be dispositionally or temperamentally irascible, lascivious or anxious without precise
focus, in the grip of such states, on any particular objects of anger, lust or fear. Moreover,
in helping people to be less irascible or anxious, it may be insufficient to inform them that
their fear or anger with regard to this or that object is misplaced: what may rather be
needed is some way of reducing the general tendency. It is precisely here that Plato seems
to see a role for appropriate music. Music may indeed soothe the savage breast; but (for
Plato) it also needs to be the kind of music that does not undermine valuable qualities of
vigour, valour and manliness (andreia, though Plato did not generally endorse a gendered
view of qualities of spirit).
It is presently noteworthy that Roger Scruton (2002) has lately defended a view of
the moral impact of music that also links it (as Plato did in the Laws) closely to human
physical expression. Like Plato, Scruton seems to regard musical form, order and structure
as directly linked to emotional discipline, so that whereas (broadly) classical music is
conducive to the cultivation of ordered passion and sensibility, the unmelodic, discordant
and rhythmically primitive strains of much modern rock and pop can only be expected to
engender coarse, disordered and uncontrolled feelings. Here, Scruton makes much of the
decline of dance under the influence of such latter-day musical anarchy. In particular, he
laments the abandonment of individually and socially meaningful standards and
conventions of dance movement in favour of displays of self-indulgent self-expression.
Like Plato (and Aristotle), Scruton appears to regard the formal structure of music – and
that of the physical movement or action that music invariably inspires or influences – as
directly expressive or reflective of the moral order of the soul. Thus, for example,
sentimental or maudlin music is apt to be morally enfeebling and barbarous and ‘primitive’
rhythms are liable to engender crude and coarse passions; but – in general – ill-disciplined
music is clearly a source of moral disorder. All this is, to be sure, expressive of a particular
(normative) view of moral order and musical value (upon which Plato and Aristotle did not
entirely agree); but the general point that there are such correspondences between music,
movement and morality has clearly continued to be more compelling.
At all events, attention to such Platonic reflections on soul, morality and education
may assist further in grasping the role of physical activity and education in the
development of spirit. In so far as there is or should be correspondence between
‘sensible’ human agency or activity and ‘intelligible’ moral order, spirit is concerned with
ensuring that the former conforms to the guiding standards, rules and principles of the
latter. This crucially means training or conditioning physical nature in tendencies that
serve to weaken or inhibit contrary-to-virtue psychic states – which are also, however,
mainly conceivable as affective or desiderative states. Indeed, for Plato (as for later
Stoics) most if not all states of emotion and desire (with the exception of spirited
12 DAVID CARR

passions or desires for what is virtuous and noble) are contrary-to-virtue, since the
objects and ends to which natural inclinations are mostly directed are invariably infected
by vain delusion and/or false evaluation. On this view, the virtue and value of the
physical trainer and appropriate physical training would seem to be twofold. On the one
hand, the physical trainer (like the physician, but unlike the cook or beautician) is the
possessor of genuine expertise (or techne) concerning how to bring the physical aspects
of human being into an order that is (sensibly) analogous to (intelligible) moral order.
On the other hand, such order reflects intelligible moral order in so far as it (for Plato)
serves to inhibit contrary-to-virtue inclinations. Physical training and discipline, under the
guidance of morally informed spirit, may discourage those tendencies to softness and
dissipation that serve to weaken virtue. So, for example, those hardened to danger and
fatigue through adventure sports will be less prone to the coward’s excessive concern
for personal safety and those devoted to maintaining a healthy level of physical fitness
and efficiency should be less intemperately drawn to over-indulgence in drink or the
wrong kind of diet.

Some (Aristotelian and Other) Objections to Platonic Spirit

Plato’s account of spirit, of its role in moral development and of the contribution of
physical activity to that development might well appeal to theorists of the general human
value of physical sports and games – or of the ethical or moral dimensions of physical
activity in particular. First, Plato’s view that spirit or initiative is a key constituent or
dimension of moral growth gives a key role to physical activity in such development.
However, secondly, it is also clearer on Plato’s account, how such development may be a
matter of real educational significance. Thus, whereas the educational value of physical
education has been prone to contestation on contemporary liberal accounts of education –
since, on such views, physical activities cannot involve educationally relevant knowledge
and understanding – Platonic moral psychology provides a key role for knowledge (techne)
of physical training in the development of virtuous qualities of soul. It might also be
admitted that – at least in terms of some of the examples considered at the end of the last
section – the Platonic account does not seem wildly implausible. Psychologically and
morally speaking, we might indeed expect those who have proved their toughness or
endurance in challenging sporting or other recreational environments to be generally
more resolute or courageous, and/or those who are committed to a healthy and well-
balanced lifestyle to be resistant to various bibulous or dietary abuses.
On the other hand, past and present-day sports professionals have not always been
notable for their moral probity or self-restraint: apart from the more ludicrous spectacles of
sporting temper tantrums, we have witnessed the recent tragic alcoholism of high-profile
sportspersons and fairly regular tabloid exposures of the violence and sexual excesses of
off-duty (usually) sportsmen – not to mention the ongoing curse of athletic substance
abuse. To be sure, this might well appear Platonically explicable in terms of that neglect of
an academic or literary education which leaves a man rough and uncivilised: and, indeed,
it may well be that not enough sports-persons read Jane Austen and Henry James (though
perhaps they might be advised to stay well away from D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller or
William Burroughs). However, problems also clearly lie not only with reconciling
contemporary sporting behaviour to the Platonic view, but with that view of appropriate
moral (sporting or other) behaviour as such. Ultimately, for Plato, moral virtue consists in
 THE MORAL VALUE OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY 13

the strict rule, if not (as applied to the appetites) actual suppression, of desire by a pure
(intellectual) reason: in short, if reason was for Hume (1969) ‘the slave of the passions’, for
Plato the passions are no less slaves of reason. As is well known, however, Plato’s hyper-
rationalist account of moral order licenses not just a very ascetic ‘top-down’ view of
individual virtue, but also a highly authoritarian view of political order.
Some of the most serious shortcomings of Plato’s moral psychology are evident in
his conception or conceptions of desire. First, as already noted, his view of the passions or
appetites is mostly negative and his account of virtue inclines to their negation or
suppression. Such asceticism, it seems, follows from a Platonic or ‘Manichaean’ dualism
according to which the body and physically grounded appetites and desires cannot be
regarded as truly contributory to human flourishing: hence, the role of the spirit – and of
physical education – is to restrict if not deny the claims of appetite. This is one respect,
despite evident continuities in their thought, in which Aristotle’s naturalistic anthropology
departs fairly significantly from the Platonic view. For Aristotle (1941a), the proper
cultivation of passions and appetites is part and parcel of human flourishing and defects of
virtue may follow from deficits as well as excesses of desire or affect. For one thing, the
courageous are not those who are devoid of fear in dangerous or threatening
circumstances – such people would be merely reckless or foolhardy – but those who
feel appropriately measured and controlled fear: for another, though anger may often be
excessive and require rational control, there can be such a thing as righteous anger and it
may sometimes be a vice rather than a virtue not to feel angry or indignant. But
Aristotle is generally critical of any extreme (Platonic) asceticism that would deny proper
expression – within, that is, prudential, moral and legal bounds – of ordinary human
appetites for food, drink or sexual activity. From this viewpoint, Platonic asceticism seems
not just out of tune with any present-day conception of moral association and conduct –
for sportspersons or others – but at odds with any morally coherent or acceptable
conception of human flourishing.
But there would seem to be no less of a problem about Plato’s understanding of
spirit as some kind of control on the wayward tendencies of appetite which is concerned
to steer them in the direction of what is more (morally) fine and noble. As already seen,
spirit seems to be introduced by Plato in response to certain tendencies of the Socratic
idea of virtue as knowledge towards what might nowadays be called ‘reasons externalism’.
If knowledge of virtue is a purely cognitive or intellectual matter, how can we be sure that
any agent driven by contrary-to-virtue appetites or desires will be obedient to the voice of
virtue rather than prey to such desires: indeed, does not any and all inclination to blame
vicious tyrants or criminals for their crimes rest on the supposition that they knew what
was morally right but persisted in pursuing what they knew to be wrong? It would seem to
be in light of this recognition that Plato introduces the idea of spirit as a desire to do what
is right – a desire that is, in short, internally related to action – and secures a role for
physical education in the training of right dispositions. But it may be asked whether this is
a helpful or coherent move. To an extent, this strategy has more modern echoes in the
locus classicus of latter-day ‘reasons internalism’ – the moral psychology of David Hume.
For, as seen, Hume notoriously argued that in so far as reason may only inform us about
how the world is, it has no power to move agents to action and can only be ‘slave to the
passions’. Hume’s insistence on the need for some ‘internal’ connection between the
causes and outcomes of moral action (which Hume located in terms of certain universal
tendencies to positive association) has been followed in modern times by various forms of
14 DAVID CARR

moral ‘non-cognitivism’ that have also exhibited problematic tendencies to ‘subjectivise’

moral and other value judgements.
Still, while not departing from Hume’s view that our knowledge of the world is
motivationally inert, Kant argued that claims to moral objectivity may yet be secured by
recognition of self-validating moral reasons – the duties and obligations of the categorical
imperative – that rational moral agents could not find other than compelling. In short,
Kant sought to secure both moral objectivity and reasons internalism via recognition of a
distinctive species of moral desire that is rooted in non-empirical reason. At first sight,
Plato’s spirit seems concerned (like Hume’s moral emotions) to ensure ‘internalist’ moral
motivation, but also (like Kant’s categorical imperatives) to preserve moral objectivity via
desires that are informed by moral reason. In this regard, however, Plato’s spirit seems
neither fish nor fowl. On the one hand, supposing spirit to resemble Hume’s social
emotions it would seem just another passion or inclination with little objective moral
authority. On the other hand, however, to be considered more like Kant’s categorical
imperative it would have to be a self-authenticating source of practical reason that is also
independent of the speculative knowledge that Kant – with Hume – agrees is impotent to
engender moral action. But it seems evident that Plato’s moral knowledge is – no less than
the theoretical knowledge of Hume and Kant – a purely cognitive affair: as such it can have
no power in and of itself to compel moral action – which is what moved Plato to cook up
the notion of spirit in the first place. From this viewpoint, Plato’s spirit is a moral and
metaphysical fiction that does little genuine theoretical work. Either it is just another kind
of desire or appetite, in which case (like Hume’s social emotions) it has no special moral
authority; or it is Platonic moral knowledge under spurious volitional or affective re-
description. In the latter case, spirit totters on the brink of unstoppable regress: how could
we ensure the control of moral reason over spirit, except by interposing another
controlling desire between reason and spirit – and another between reason and such
further agency; and so on without end.
By way of brief conclusion, the best way out of this problem would seem to lie in a
direction that is neither Platonic nor Humean nor Kantian. What we find in the
Nicomachean Ethics of Plato’s pupil Aristotle is a conception of practical reason or moral
wisdom that is distinguished from Plato’s dialectical search for definitions of virtue, justice
and the good by its own direct concern with the cultivation of moral character. This seems
enough to preserve reasons internalism. On the other hand, Aristotle’s cultivation of moral
virtue is implicated in the search for objective moral reasons in a way that distinguishes
moral motives from non-rational Humean passions and desires. That said, Aristotelian
moral reasons are not – unlike Kantian categorical imperatives – sui generis or entirely
independent of other human reasons for action. Such reasons are, for example, informed
by (natural scientific) considerations about what might conduce to our best interests in the
light of available knowledge of our biological and social nature – as well as (no less) by
non-empirical evaluation of the moral ends of human life drawn from reflection on the
works of great poets and philosophers. (For Aristotle, in short, the surest basis for the
cultivation of moral virtue is a wide general or liberal education.) In this light, however,
though Aristotle famously gave a place to training in the cultivation of virtue, he accords
no special place to physical training. Thus, unlike Plato, Aristotle gives no specific role to
the physical discipline or suppression of the lower appetites in favour of the pursuit of
some ‘higher’ moral asceticism – and would not, to be sure, regard such suppression as an
unqualified good. Indeed, on Aristotle’s view – notwithstanding his high regard for the
 THE MORAL VALUE OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY 15

moral and other benefits of physical training – such training must ultimately be regarded
as but one human benefit among others. But how we perceive that benefit and how we
see it fitting – if at all – into the overall economy of human flourishing must also be left to
the (albeit informed) judgement of individual practical moral wisdom.

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David Carr, Professor, School of Education, University of Edinburgh, Holyrood Road,

Edinburgh EH8 8AQ. E-mail: David.Carr@ed.ac.uk