ABSTRACT
‘Competition’ and ‘sport’ are not coextensive terms. Competition can be understood as the wider category, which suggests that competitive sport represents merely one instantiation of a basic type of human engagement. In economics, competition is a defining feature of market capitalism, even if this ideal is only approximately realized in practice. Competition of any sort, on this view, is simply regulated warfare. The institutional competitions involve a competitive element only as a structural mechanism, and their exercise does not guarantee achievement of the institutional ideals. The ‘self-competition’ approach seems vulnerable to the same criticisms that Ludwig Wittgenstein identified in his consideration of the possibility of private language, namely, that one cannot have epistemic certitude about the comparability of discrete experiences. Competitive sport is about nothing other than competitive sport; in principle, the antagonists seek out the struggle for its own inherent value and not as a means to any extrinsic reward.
