Philosophy, Risk and Adventure Sports » (New)

With interest and participation in extreme and adventure sports growing year on year, the time is ripe for a thoughtful and analytical assessment of this phenomenon from a rigorous philosophical perspective.

This collection of essays is the first single-source treatment of adventure sports from an exclusively philosophical standpoint. The text offers students a uniquely focused reader of this burgeoning area of interest and provides scholars with a source book for further studies in this area.

Featuring contributions from well-respected writers in the field who each also have personal familiarity of participation in adventure and extreme sports, this is set to become a classic analysis of the intersections between philosophy and extreme experiences, encompassing essential related concepts of elation, danger, death, wilderness and authenticity.

List of figures     vii
Notes on contributors     ix
Acknowledgements     xiii
Adventurous activity, prudent planners and risk   Mike McNamee     1
The quest for excitement and the safe society   Gunnar Breivik     10
Legislators and interpreters: an examination of changes in philosophical interpretations of 'being a mountaineer'   Paul Beedie     25
Philosophy outdoors: first person physical   John (Michael) Atherton     43
Adventure, climbing excellence and the practice of 'bolting'   Philip Ebert   Simon Robertson     56
Reading water: risk, intuition, and insight   Douglas Anderson     71
Nature and risk in adventure sports   Kevin Krein     80
Aesthetic and ethical issues concerning sport in wilder places   Alan P. Dougherty     94
Outline of a phenomenology of snowboarding   Sigmund Loland     106
The performative avant-garde and action sports: Vedic philosophy in a postmodern world   Robert E. Rinehart     118
Extreme sports and the ontology of experience   Ivo Jirasek     138
Kant goes skydiving: understanding the extreme by way of the sublime   Jesus Ilundain-Agurruza     149
Can BASEjumping be morally defended?   Gunnar Breivik     168
Walking the edge   Verner Moller     186
Index     198