Doping has been a major factor in the recent discovery of sport by philosophers. Doping seems to be an ethical problem in sport, and philosophers are experts in ethics. Therefore, many philosophical publications on sport assess the moral implications of doping in sport. Usually, this topic is discussed by using ethical terms such as “justice”, “fairness”, “equality” or “health” within a framework of discussions on human enhancement. The main part of this article will address some of the results of these philosophical debates. The main goal, however, is to open up new perspectives on a related problem of sport that is underlying and far more fundamental than the problem of doping. My main thesis is that the principal problem in sport is the fact that an attitude, which one could call “amateurism”, has been increasingly lost or forgotten. Without reinstalling the humanistic value of sport, we will not find any intellectually satisfactory and conceptually sound solutions to the doping problem. The humanistic values of sport are undermined by a modern version of sport that is obsessed with specialization and scientific capability enhancement and the mathematization of results and events.
KEYWORDS: Sport. Ethics. Doping. Human enhancement. Amateurism. Presence
