ABSTRACT
Ideas stressing the importance of personhood may be found in recent sports ethical discussions concerned with understanding the nature of competition. To assert their respect for persons argument, Tuxill and Wigmore (1998) describe the Kantian and Lockean origins of personhood, which use notions of rational will and self-determination. Kantian ideas have informed a substantial amount of work in sports ethics with respect to understanding what may be considered as sporting moral obligations and duties (Fraleigh, 1984b). In the context of performance enhancement, Arnold (1997: 27) notes that drug use is alarming because it calls into question the ‘participant’s status as a person’. Simon (1984, 1991) goes further, arguing that drug use is morally wrong because it reduces athletic competition to competition between mechanised bodies rather than total thinking, feeling and acting persons.
