The philosophical perspective on sport originated in Ancient Greece, having experienced a revival in the latter part of the 20th century[1] with the work of Paul Weiss and Howard Slusher.
[2][3] A philosophical perspective on sports incorporates its metaphysical relationships with art and play, ethical issues of virtue and fairness and more broadly sociopolitical.
Inadvertently, many non-philosopher proponents of physical education took on philosophical positions on teleology, mind-body dualism and metaphysics as part of their model of human agency and personhood.
One additional requirement proposed is that sport must demonstrate some physical skill of the participants, which the outcome is designed to reflect.
Issues of doping in sport such as steroid use focus on the ethics of medical intervention on athletic performance: what is acceptable versus what is not, and how boundaries can be drawn.
These and other issues are usually compared and contrasted through the lenses of three significant moral theories: consequentialism, deontology and virtue ethics.
Philosophers Stephen Kershnar and Neil Feit argue that the concept of the MVP is a fundamentally vague concept, but yet valuable in that it promotes the active discussion of different types of excellence found within a specific sport and the weight to be assigned these types, thus leading to a gain for the discussants.