ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the relationship between pragmatism and the philosophy of sport. The philosophy of sport cropped up in a rather inhospitable environment. In the 1960s, sport enthusiasts remained largely unconvinced that philosophy could tell them something new about the experience and meaning of physical activity. Paul Weiss’s discussion reveals something important about the philosophy of sport and the way in which its assumptions converge with those of pragmatism. There is a great deal of secondary literature on pragmatism and the differences of interpretations on the writings of pragmatic thinkers. Weiss, with his seminal Sport: A Philosophical Inquiry, was among the first to do so in any thorough way, which was one of the reasons that he was appointed as the first president of the International Association for the Philosophy of Sport in 1972. Many scholars in the philosophy of sport have followed Weiss in his observation that habit formation plays a central role in sport activity.
