ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how corporeal alteration in sport, through the use of enhancement technologies, relates to sports’ spiritual dimension. A decisionist approach to enhancement and doping ethics in sport neglects the spiritual dimension and can fail to critically address the assumption that winning is everything. While winning is important, and winning can even enhance sports’ spiritual dimension, winning is not everything. Underlying the question of what makes us better are values. In normative North American culture, an extreme individualism that goes hand in hand with an emphasis on winning influences sport culture. But effort, hope, deeper meaning, and other qualities and values, are also significant features of sport. As a result, I propose a virtue ethics approach to the sport enhancement conversation. I argue that the question of what we think makes us better is at the root of how we evaluate the use of enhancement technologies. While questions about conformity to rules and policies are morally relevant, questions about what makes us better people and athletes are pressing, especially when sports’ spiritual dimension is valued and engaged.
