| Popis: |
During the World Cup in Russia 2018, Zlatko Dalić, coach of the Croatian National Football Team, pointed out two virtues as the most important for competitive success – humility or humbleness and modesty. In his media appearances, he was continuously repeating the crucial role of two virtues as a necessary precondition for sporting success, but also as the proper attitude towards their opponents, the sport of football and the event of World Cup. In this paper, I will analyse the virtue of humility in sports from the Christian ethics viewpoint. As a competitive practice, in the Christian literature sport was mainly considered in a negative light and in relation to pride, which is the direct negative opposition to the Christian ethical ideal of being humble. However, during the last decade, new tendencies arose in which humility was considered a virtue compatible with and even necessary for sports. On the other hand, I will point out that within the sports philosophy and ethics, only McNamee has discussed humility, in connection to hubris and honour, in a book chapter in which the extensive literature overview on the topic was provided (in Parry et al 2007). I will propose connecting the virtue of humility and the ethical ideal of mutualism in competitive sports ; and I will claim that humility has a potential to provide the proper, if not necessary, attitude in striving for the realization of the ideal in actual sports practice. |
