Philosophical analysis demonstrates striving serves as a vital virtue against existential entropy in humans, indicating a democratic value for sport beyond perfectionist achievement.
This paper argues that striving is a cardinal virtue in sport and life. It is an overlooked virtue that is an important component of human happiness and a source of a sense of dignity. The human psychological capacity for striving emerged as a trait for addressing the entropic features of our existence, but it can be engaged and used for other purposes. Sport is one such example. Sport appears exceptional in being designed specifically to test and display our capacities to strive. Although striving is connected to pursuit of excellence in sport, it supports a more democratic conception of the value of sport than achievement-oriented perfectionist accounts.
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J.S. Russell (2020) studied this question.
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