It might seem as though sports ethicists spend a great deal of energy finger-wagging and condemning actions in sport, labeling them unsportsmanlike, immoral, odious, etc. In part, this is where the interesting intellectual work happens and where many subtleties and nuances of sport reside. But it would be a great oversight to ignore the beauty and richness of the moral lives of some of sport’s most profound moments: those actions which we categorize as morally praiseworthy, as they provide a rare moment for moral courage.
Watch THIS video and enjoy. Fifty-eight seconds of goodness.
In it, you see two teams from Germany’s top professional soccer league this season in a heated contest. With fifteen minutes remaining, Werder-Bremen forward Aaron Hunt is awarded a penalty kick for allegedly being tripped in the penalty box. Seconds later, Hunt informs the referee that he wasn’t touched by the defender which results in the referee’s rescinding the award. “I fought with my conscience for a moment,” Hunt recalled after the game, “But I don’t want to win that way.”
Interestingly, in that same game, a Nürnberg player admitted to having touched the ball before it went out of bounds thus causing the referee to overturn a wrongly-awarded corner kick. The referee then gives the player a “thumbs-up” and, in both situations, the opposing team’s defenders go out of their way to honor the two players for their actions with a sincere handshake, a thumbs-up, and a clasping of the hands in gratitude.
And thus arises that nice, warming feeling we have as we witness wrongs being righted and moral order restored. Writing in the 1700’s, Scottish philosopher David Hume defended the notion of a universal moral sentiment throughout humankind. He wrote that virtuous actions “have a natural beauty” which allows us to deem them virtuous.
So, that feeling you had (hopefully) while watching this video and others like it taps in to this notion of Hume’s emotivism. Interestingly, modern-day neuroscience meets this out. Brain scans demonstrate that, most often, we first derive a moral conclusion emotionally and then look for arguments to support that conclusion. We feel that what this player did was morally praiseworthy and then go on to assert the reasons why.
This fact, though, is a fact about human biology. It’s descriptive in nature, demonstrating what is the case in moral deliberation as opposed to the project of ethical discussion: what ought to be the case. In the example here, the fact that we react so favorably is not sufficient to assert that this is what Hunt ought to have done. This requires a rational defense. To save you the trouble, I defend this in an earlier article, “Thou Shalt Not Lie to the Referee.” And, to summarize: attempting to acquire something to which one has no right is unethical (and, in most walks of life, called stealing).
What’s important to recognize here is the richness of this player’s actions and all those like it. Regardless of your position on deceiving referees, we can agree that Hunt exhibited what can best be referred to as moral courage. In the face of a moral dilemma, Hunt acted on behalf of some greater moral precept and, in doing so, forfeited an outcome otherwise in his best interest. This is the likely locus of our positive moral sentiment—it’s our brain’s way of celebrating the more profound goods, goods even more profound than a penalty kick in a professional soccer match. That feels pretty good.