BookJan Tolleneer, Sigrid Sterckx, Pieter Bonte, editors.
Summary: The book provides an in-depth discussion on the human nature concept from different perspectives and from different disciplines, analyzing its use in the doping debate and researching its normative overtones. The relation between natural talent and enhanced abilities is scrutinized within a proper conceptual and theoretical framework: is doping to be seen as a factor of the athlete's dehumanization or is it a tool to fulfill his/her aspirations to go faster, higher and stronger? Which characteristics make sports such a peculiar subject of ethical discussion and what are the, both intrinsic and extrinsic, moral dangers and opportunities involved in athletic enhancement? This volume combines fundamental philosophical anthropological reflection with applied ethics and socio-cultural and empirical approaches. Furthermore it presents guidelines to decision- and policy-makers on local, national and international levels.
Contents:
Self, Other, Play, Display and Humanity: Development of a Five-Level Model for the Analysis of Ethical Arguments in the Athletic Enhancement Debate / Jan Tolleneer, Paul Schotsmans
Is Human Enhancement Unnatural and Would This Be an Ethical Problem? / Christian Lenk
Dignified Doping: Truly Unthinkable? An Existentialist Critique of 'Talentocracy' in Sports / Pieter Bonte
Transgressing the limits of human nature
Subhuman, Superhuman, and Inhuman: Human Nature and the Enhanced Athlete / Eric T. Juengst
Prometheus on Dope: A Natural Aim for Improvement or a Hubristic Drive to Mastery? / Trijsje Franssen
Outliers, Freaks, and Cheats: Constituting Normality in the Age of Enhancement / Darian Meacham
The normative value of human nature
Doping Use As an Artistic Crime: On Natural Performances and Authentic Art / Andreas De Block
Something from Nothing or Nothing from Something? Performance-Enhancing Drugs, Risk, and the Natures of Contest and of Humans / M. Andrew Holowchak
Transhuman Athletes and Pathological Perfectionism: Recognising Limits in Sports and Human Nature / Michael J. McNamee
Socio-cultural and empirical approaches
"Definitely Not for Women": An Online Community's Reflections on Women's Use of Performance Enhancing Drugs in Recreational Sports / Marianne Raakilde Jespersen
Toward a Situated and Dynamic Understanding of Doping Behaviors / Denis Hauw
Restoring or Enhancing Athletic Bodies: Oscar Pistorius and the Threat to Pure Performance / Tara Magdalinski
Practices and policies
Sports Physicians, Human Nature, and the Limits of Medical Enhancement / John Hoberman
Anti-doping Policies: Choosing Between Imperfections / Bengt Kayser, Barbara Broers
A Simple Regulatory Principle for Performance-Enhancing Technologies: Too Good to Be True? / Roger Brownsword.