DAVID HITCHCOCK
COMPETITION
1. Its nature
A competitive situation is one in which the actions or attributes of two
or more entities determine at least partially how an excludable and
diminishable good is shared out among them. In such a situation, the entities
compete with one another for the presumed good, and are said to be rivals or
competitors. (In common with the Oxford English Dictionary, I treat ‘rivalry’
and ‘competition’ as synonyms; the words are often used interchangeably.)
1.1 For something excludable and diminishable
To appreciate the just-mentioned conception of competition, it is
helpful to notice what it includes and what it excludes. The good that is being
shared out must be diminishable, in the sense that whatever share of it goes to
one competitor is no longer available to be distributed. Thus there can be no
competition for a non-diminishable good like information; the fact that one
person possesses some information does not make it unavailable for others. The
presumed good must also be excludable, in the sense that it can be granted to
one competitor without simultaneously being granted to the others. Thus there
can be no competition for a non-excludable good like breathable air in the
atmosphere.
Against the claim that
competition is always for a diminishable good, it might be objected that there
is no theoretical limit to the number of times an individual can compete.
Theoretically, for example, a star athlete could keep on winning gold medals
without limit. But each new medal would be awarded in a different competitive
situation. In a single competitive situation, if success is winning the gold
medal, a gold medal given to one competitor is not available to be given to
another competitor.
1.2 For a good
That which is shared out in a competition must be a good, either in the
sense that the competitors actively pursue it or in the sense that it benefits
its recipients. A common object of competition is recognition as the best in
some respect, as when a group of boys compete to see who can pee the farthest;
victory in such a contest is a good of sorts, even if it is not constitutive of
generic human excellence. On the other hand, trees in a forest that compete for
sunlight do not consciously strive for it, but it benefits them, in the sense of
helping them to flourish. There cannot be a competition for things that are
neither actively pursued nor beneficial to their recipients. For example, a
prison may have a limited number of solitary confinement cells, to which
prisoners are assigned for misbehavior; but under ordinary circumstances the
prisoners cannot be said to compete for solitary confinement.
1.3 Among rivals of many sorts
The entities that compete, the rivals, need not be individual human beings. Teams of human beings may compete with one another, as in a soccer game or a debating contest. Human organizations may compete with one another, as when businesses compete for customers, universities for students, or managed care organizations for ‘merit trust’ (Buchanan 2000). Non-human animals compete with one another, as when bovines and horses engage in friendly dueling (Caillois 1961, 16), males of a particular species compete for a mate, or hungry animals compete for food. Plants compete with one another, for example for sunlight. According to Weber’s so-called ‘competitive exclusion principle’, different species in an ecosystem compete with one another: ‘Species with insufficiently differentiated fundamental niches cannot coexist at equilibrium.’ (Weber 1999, 76) In scientific and scholarly research, rival hypotheses or theories or research traditions compete with one another for acceptance by members of a scholarly or scientific community. In machine learning, and perhaps in human and animal learning as well, if-then rules abstracted from previous experiences compete for endorsement by the learner in situations where each predicts a different outcome (Meidan and Levin 2002). In moral reasoning, ethical principles or maxims compete for acceptance in situations where a decision-maker cannot abide by both; for example, the principles of autonomy and non-maleficence compete with one another when a patient wishes to be told the whole truth about her condition but the caregiver has good reason to believe that telling the whole truth will be harmful to her. In a free and pluralistic society, ends and social standards accepted by different individuals or groups compete for broader acceptance, in a process that enables us to confirm how much each contributes to the preservation of civilization (Hayek 1972, 36). One may even speak about objects in a visual field competing for the attention of the observer, as in ‘biased competition’ theories of visual search, object segregation and attention (Vecera 2000). One can also speak about competition for medical time and expertise between different kinds of medical care (Audi 1996). In the latter sorts of cases, the condition of benefit by the object of competition is attenuated; only in an extended sense of being benefited can we say that an ethical principle is benefited by being adhered to in a particular situation or that an object in a visual field is benefited by capturing the attention of an observer.
One can of course take
the view that competition requires active striving for the object of
competition, in which case one would regard as metaphorical any talk of
cultural memes competing (Jahoda 2002), or ends and social standards, ethical
maxims, objects in one’s visual field, or kinds of medical care.
1.4 Opposed to distribution by chance
Situations where an excludable and diminishable good is shared out among
two or more entities as a result of chance, or independently of the actions or
attributes of those individuals, are not competitive situations. A lottery is
not a competition. Nor is the ‘lottery of life’, in which each of us human
beings receives a genetic endowment not of our own making and encounters
circumstances not of our own making. As the French anthropologist Roger
Caillois points out, competitive games and games of chance correspond to very different
personalities: ‘Agôn, the desire and effort to win a victory, implies
that the champion relies upon his own resources. He wants to triumph, to prove
his supremacy. Nothing is more creative than such an ambition. Alea, on
the contrary, [the principle of games of chance—DH] seems to be a foregone
acceptance of the verdict of destiny.’ (Caillois 1961, 77)
1.5 Not necessarily victory-oriented
Not all competitive situations require that there be just one winner.
For example, in a given sector of an economy many competing firms can be
simultaneously successful. And members of a household who compete for the
attention of some family member can each end up getting enough attention.
Nevertheless, a competitive situation implies a conflict of interest among the
rivals: whatever share of the presumed good goes to one competitor does not go
to any other competitor.
1.6 An irreflexive, symmetric and almost
transitive relation
Formally, competition is a four-term relation: where competition exists,
there is a situation a in which b competes with c for some presumed good d. For
example, in the 100-meter dash at the 2004 Olympic Games (a) a sprinter from
Canada (b) may compete with a sprinter from Greece (c) for the gold medal (d).
Or in the tourism market (a) a hotel on the island of Spetses (b) may compete
with another hotel (c) for paying guests (d). Or in a research grants
competition (a) one scientist or scholar (b) may compete with another (c) for a
grant (d). Given a particular competitive situation and a particular good, the
relation of competition is irreflexive, symmetrical and almost transitive. It
is irreflexive: no individual competes with themselves for one and the same
good in one and the same competitive situation. It is symmetrical: if x is
competing with y for a specified good in a specified situation, then y is also
competing with x for that good in that situation. And it is almost transitive:
if x competes with y and y competes with z for a specified good in a specified
situation, then x competes with z for that good in that situation, provided
that x is not identical with z.
Against the claim that competition
in a given situation for a given good is irreflexive, one might object that we
sometimes talk of people competing with themselves, as when an athlete strives
to achieve a personal best or a novelist tries to write a better novel than
previously. But it is rare and odd to refer to such people as competing with
themselves; the usage seems best construed as metaphorical. In competitive
situations as we ordinarily understand them, it is initially possible for any
one of the competitors to succeed. In situations where a person tries to do
better than before, however, only that person can succeed; if the person fails,
we would not say that someone else (e.g. the same person in the previous
situation) succeeded. ‘Competing with oneself’ is more like emulation than
competition.
1.7 Distinct from emulation
Competition may be confused with other relations. Striving to live up to
an ideal, or to be at least as good as some role model, shares many features
with competition, but can be called competition with the ideal or role model
only in an extended sense of ‘competition’. For it lacks the symmetry of the
competition relation; the ideal or role model is not striving in a similar way.
Furthermore, there is no diminishable good being distributed among a group of
competitors. Emulation of an ideal only becomes competition when several people
vie with one another to see who can come closest to the ideal. Thus, what
Keekok Lee (2004) calls ‘internal competition’ does not fall under the concept
of competition articulated in the present paper.
1.8 Compatible with cooperation
Competition is usually contrasted to cooperation. The 19th century
sociobiologist and political theorist Peter Kropotkin, for example, maintained
that social cooperation rather than Darwinian egoistic competition was the key
to species development; for Kropotkin, sociability, the desire of
members of a species to be in relationship with their own, and the quality of
life they get from these relationships, is primary, and all species development
flows from this sociability (Glassman 2000). Some philosophers (e.g. Patterson
2000) identify the Daoist principles of yin and yang with cooperation and competition
respectively; in the way of ‘yin mana’ (cooperative standing), all parties are
supposed to gain through their participatory activities. A cooperative
situation is one in which the actions or attributes of two or more entities
contribute jointly to the production of some presumed good in which all share.
Cooperators have a common interest in the production of the good; they are
working together to produce this good, rather than against one another to get
something that the others cannot have. Thus the common contrast of competition to cooperation is correct; two
entities cannot at the same time compete and cooperate in the same respect for
the same good. But competition in one respect can be compatible with cooperation in another. In team
sports, the members of each team cooperate to help their team defeat its rival;
thus participation in team sports combines training in cooperation with
training in competition. In business, competing firms in a sector can cooperate
to advance the interests of the sector as a whole, for instance through common
institutions like cheque clearing centers, agreements on industry-wide
standards, and trade associations. Competition is compatible not only with
cooperation but also with acts of beneficence towards one’s rivals; competition
is not hostility or enmity. In athletic competitions, for example, people
routinely help rivals to their feet after a fall, show concern if they are
injured, and so forth. After the attacks on the World Trade Center in September
2001, brokerage firms helped their competitors from affected premises to
continue in business. On the other hand, actions designed to harm a rival in
sports or in business go beyond the limits of fair competition, and are rightly
stigmatized. The point of victory-oriented competition, in particular, is not
to harm the rival but to show that one is best in some respect. In fact,
seriously meant combat between human beings or groups of human beings—street
fights, civil wars, wars between states, guerrilla wars fought by ‘freedom
fighters’, terrorist attacks—is not competition, though it is often treated as
such. The structure of such combat is not that of rivalry for an excludable and
diminishable good, but that of an effort to achieve through the defeat of an
enemy some more ultimate end; whereas the goals for which success in
competition are pursued are extrinsic to that success, the goals for which
victory in serious combat are pursued are intrinsic to that victory. Our
customary speech conforms to this distinction. For example, we would not speak
of revolutionaries in the Greek war of independence competing with the Ottoman
Empire, or of Osama bin Laden in his terrorist activities competing with the
United States.
2. Its extent
2.1 Characteristic of civilizations
Cultures vary in competitiveness. Caillois, in his fascinating study of
human play and games (1961), sees the spirit of different types of games as
reflected in, and reflective of, the culture in which they are played. He
divides play and games into four types, defined by the principles of
competition (agôn), chance (alea), simulation (mimicry)
and vertigo (ilinx). According to Caillois, the birth of civilization is
an emergence from a culture based on simulation and vertigo to one based on
competition and chance. In contemporary democracies, he points out, ‘The
competitive spirit has indeed become dominant. Good government consists of
legally assuring each candidate of an identically equal chance to campaign for
votes. One concept of democracy, perhaps more prevalent and plausible, tends to
consider the struggle between political parties as a kind of sports rivalry…’
(110) In fact, according to Caillois, ‘all of collective life, not merely its
institutional aspect, from the moment when mimicry and ilinx have
been suppressed, rests on a precarious and infinitely variable equilibrium
between agôn and alea, or merit and chance.’ (110) Caillois
praises the contemporary trend ‘to enlarge the domain of regulated competition,
or merit, at the expense of birth and inheritance, or chance,’ as ‘an evolution
which is reasonable, just, and favorable to the most capable.’ (114)
2.2 Spectator sports as paradigms?
The Canadian philosopher John McMurtry (1977) propounds a more specific thesis about the relation between games and culture: that a society’s major spectator sports are its paradigms. The underlying principles of those sports, McMurtry claims, are versions of the underlying principles of the ‘social game’, and in fact cause the social order to be maintained ‘by evangelizing in popular form its essential structure of action’. (McMurtry 1977, 11) The reflective part of this thesis is difficult to refute, because there are so many ways in which one can formulate underlying principles, both for a given sport and for a given social order. By attending to some aspect of any game, one can find on some level of abstraction a principle which a given social order exemplifies; for example, the long process of developing hockey skills through childhood, followed by tryouts for a professional team, getting a position and finally retiring, corresponds to the long process of education as a child, following by applications for jobs, getting a position and finally retiring. The vagueness of McMurtry’s reflection claim makes it not only difficult to refute but empty of substance. The causal claim, on the other hand, is very hard to substantiate. Relevant evidence might be, for example, the frequency of occurrence of sports metaphors or analogies in justification of the social order. But in fact such metaphors and analogies occur infrequently, at least in my experience. Sports are in fact distinguished by being, in themselves, play activities, games that have an inner structure but no purpose qua games beyond the playing of them.
2.3 Competition in classical
Greece
Classical Greece, and especially classical Athens, seems to have been a
very competitive culture. The Constitution of Athens, perhaps written by
Aristotle himself, notes that Athens had 10 Commissioners of Games, who were
responsible among other things for supervising musical contests, gymnastic
contests and horse-races (Constitution of Athens 60; Barnes 1984, 2378).
Plato’s writings refer to competition (antagvnia, diagvnia) in the context of war, trials before
a jury, debates in a legislature, question-and-answer examinations, public
speaking contests, musical and dramatic contests, erotic pursuit, athletic
competitions, and fights among animals. In similar vein, Aristotle mentions as
examples of contests or competition public performances of plays (Poetics);
wars, including civil wars (Politics); rival educational programs in
different cities (Politics Y4.1338b37); musical performances in the theatre (Politics Y7.1342a18); competition for money (Rhetoric
A9.1366b8); public speaking (Rhetoric G1.1404a5); and question-and-answer disputation
(Sophistical Refutations 3.165b11). Plato’s Laws in particular
contains extensive discussions of contests (764c-765c, 795d-796d, 829e-835b,
955a-b.). The Platonic writings sharply distinguish a conversation oriented
towards victory from a discussion (diatribh) oriented towards truth.
3. Its value
Is it a good or a bad thing for societies to be so competitive, and for
human beings and human groups to compete with one another? Since opinions on
the value of competition differ so markedly, it will be helpful to approach the
question by examining critically the reasons for and against competition.
3.1 Reasons for competition
3.1.1 In society in general
Caillois perhaps articulates best the view of those who see competition
as something good:
Agôn, the principle of fair
competition and creative emulation, is regarded as valuable in itself. The
entire social structure rests upon it. Progress consists of developing it and
improving its conditions, i.e. simply eliminating alea, more and more…
chance is not only a striking form of injustice, of gratuitous and undeserved
favor, but is also a mockery of work, of patient and persevering labor, of
saving, of willingly sacrificing for the future—in sum, a mockery of all the
virtues needed in a world dedicated to the accumulation of wealth. As a result,
legislative efforts tend naturally to restrain the scope and influence of
chance. Of the various principles of play, regulated competition is the only
one that can be transposed as such to the domain of action and prove
efficacious, if not irreplaceable.’ (Caillois 1961, 157)
But these remarks over-extend the scope of the principle of competition.
Work, saving, perseverance, sacrificing for the future, and other middle-class
virtues may be opposed to a reliance on chance. But they are not necessarily,
or even typically, practiced in a spirit of competition. Likewise, as pointed
out already, creative emulation is not the same as competition. In contemporary
advanced industrial societies, Caillois’ praise of competition applies to the
more limited sphere of selection for such benefits as admission to advanced
education and training programs, employment, and promotion. In such situations,
competition based on merit is fairer than selection based on personal
connections, and produces better results.
3.1.2 In the economy
The Austrian economic liberal Friedrich Hayek regards competition as the best principle of economic organization, for two reasons: ‘not only because it is in most circumstances the most efficient method known but even more because it is the only method by which our activities can be adjusted to each other without coercive or arbitrary intervention of authority.’ (Hayek 1944, 36) But, as Hayek points out, a carefully thought out legal framework is required to make economic competition beneficial; in other words, economic liberalism is not just a matter of leaving firms free to act as they wish. Further, Hayek himself advocates other methods of guiding economic activity in cases where competition cannot be made effective. He cites seven requirements for effective economic competition:
Where this last condition is not met, direct regulation by authority must be substituted for regulation by the price mechanism. Further, although he maintains that attempts to control prices or quantities of a commodity deprive competition of its power to coordinate individual efforts effectively, Hayek notes that restrictions of allowed methods of production, and extensive social services, are compatible with competition. Thus even Hayek’s wartime diatribe against socialist economic planning leaves considerable room for activist governments to promote environmental protection and social welfare.
Hayek’s warning against the authoritarian implications of central planning has been vindicated by the experience of dirigiste economies. But he exaggerates the effects on personal liberty of limited involvement of government-owned monopolies in the production of goods and services. Government medical and hospital insurance, for example, is much more efficiently administered by a single government payment agency than by a host of competing insurance companies, and hardly less respectful of personal liberty. A monopoly on the sale of spirits by a government agency has many social advantages, and also does not seriously erode personal liberty. Such examples could be multiplied. Whether competition, regulated monopoly (government or otherwise) or regulated oligopoly is the best system should be decided on a case-by-case basis for each economic sector in each jurisdiction, in the light of local circumstances. There is at best a presumption in favour of competition. It should be noted, too, that competition is compatible with a variety of forms of ownership of the rival firms: owner-operated, joint stock, worker cooperative, government-owned.
3.1.3 In sports
Competition in sports has been defended as ‘a mutual quest for
excellence in the intelligent and directed use of athletic skills in the face
of challenge.’ (Simon 1991, 35) According to Simon, it ‘may have intrinsic
worth as a framework within which we express ourselves as persons and respond
to others as persons in the mutual pursuit of excellence,’ (35) and is one of
the most universally accessible and fully involving of such frameworks. Such
competition can express and illustrate such values as dedication, teamwork,
courage and loyalty. (19) It can reinforce the development of such desirable
character traits as mental fitness, resilience and strength (18), as well as of
such undesirable traits as low altruism (selfishness) and linking one’s sense
of self-worth entirely to achievement (18). While Simon’s qualified ethical
commendation of competition in sports is nuanced and plausible, it is worth
noting that there can be a mutual quest for excellence without competition, as
when the challenge is to meet or exceed some designated standard, and no
antecedent limit is placed on how many can do so. The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award
(2004) is a fine example of such a non-competitive alternative.
3.1.4 Overall
It is a matter of everyday observation that competition tends to induce
human competitors to put greater effort and thought into developing the
qualities which contribute to success in the competition. The tendency
increases with the strength of the desire for the presumed good for which the
competitors vie, as well as with the intelligence of a given competitor and/or
the competitor’s advisors, and is particularly noticeable in team competition.
The rigorous and carefully calculated training regime of a competitive athlete
or of a professional musician or dancer is one manifestation of this tendency.
So is the attention to quality and cost control of a firm in a strongly
competitive sector. In contrast, absence of competition induces lassitude and
indifference. One can imagine the quality of the performances at the Olympic
Games if every participant received a gold medal and stood on the podium while
their country’s anthem was played. Similarly, in monopolistic and oligopolistic
sectors of an economy, the quality of the good or service provided tends to
suffer, and its cost tends to rise. Regulation can compensate only to some
extent for this tendency.
3.2 Reasons against competition
At the same time, competition has many negative features. It causes
unpleasant and ignoble emotions. Already in the 4th century BCE,
Aristotle pointed out that rivals—especially those who are quiet, dissembling
and unscrupulous—arouse fear (Rhetoric B5.1382b12-14, 20-22), and that
ambitious people envy their competitors, their rivals in love, and in general
those who are after the same things as they are (Rhetoric
B10.1388a14-16).
Among contemporary writers about
competition, Kohn advances the strong thesis that ‘competition by its very
nature is always unhealthy. .. rivalry of any kind is both psychologically
disastrous and philosophically unjustifiable … the phrase “healthy competition”
is a contradiction in terms.’ (Kohn 1980, 15, 49; italics in original; cf. Kohn
1986)
He has five independent arguments
for this thesis.
3.2.1 Incompatibility with cooperation
First, he claims, competition and cooperation are mutually exclusive
orientations; it is even doubtful how full and deep are the relationships
resulting from the supposed camaraderie among players or soldiers on the same
side. As pointed out already, however, although rivals cannot both compete for
and cooperate in securing the same goal at the same time in the same respect,
competition in one respect is compatible with cooperation in another, and is in
fact observed to happen.
3.2.2 Exclusion of rivals from human community
Second, Kohn maintains that those on the other side are excluded from
any possible human community. ‘When my success depends on other people’s
failure, the prospects for a real human community are considerably diminished.’
(49) This point is however exaggerated; it applies only to all-consuming
victory-oriented competition, which is exceptional and deviant. Rivals in
sports, or business, or love, can and do have good friendships with one
another.
3.2.3 Displacement of other goals and values
Third, Kohn maintains that the desire to win tends to edge out other
goals and values, such as truth in debate, non-maleficence in athletic
competition, truth in political campaigning, the Geneva Convention restrictions
in war, and honesty and fairness in business. ‘Whenever people are defined as
opponents, doing everything possible to triumph must be seen not as an
aberration from the structure but as its very consummation.’ (49) With this
objection to victory-oriented competition, Kohn is on strong empirical ground.
He is on weaker ground, however, in taking winning at all costs to be part of
the structure of victory-oriented competition. If the point of victory-oriented
competition is to demonstrate the winner’s superiority in some respect, then
winning at all costs is not part of its structure, but is a corruption; it does
not demonstrate superiority, but the appearance of superiority. As Aristotle
comments: ‘Just as unfairness in a contest (h en agvni adikia) has a form and is a sort of unfair
fighting (adikomaxia), so
eristic is unfair fighting in disputation; for in the former case those who
choose to win at all costs grasp at anything, and in the latter case eristic
people grasp at anything.’ (Sophistical Refutations I.11.171b22-25, my
translation)
3.2.4 Inducement of anxiety
Fourth, Kohn argues that a person whose success depends on being better
than others is caught on a treadmill, destined never to enjoy real
satisfaction, anxious and insecure. Such a person begins to see their
self-worth as conditional on how much better they are than so many others in so
many activities, and thus can become mentally ill, because unconditional
self-esteem is a requirement for mental health. Kohn here echoes the claims of
the psychoanalyst and social theorist Erich Fromm (1941) and of the
psychologist Rollo May (1977). In his classic work Escape from Freedom,
Fromm claims (1941, 48) that competitive individualistic ambition leads to
self-alienation; the individual’s own self-evaluation depends upon his
achieving competitive success. He sees as a consequence of the new freedom ‘an
increased isolation, doubt, skepticism, and–resulting from all these—anxiety’.
(48) Rollo May maintains (1977, 41) that competitive individualism is the chief
source of anxiety in contemporary western culture. According to May, a
stringent drive for competitive success characterizes contemporary individuals;
the intensive individualistic competition of modern capitalism and industrialism
has reinforced the competitive tendencies of individuals in our society.
Because individual success is defined in a competitive culture inversely to
that of the community, ‘…competitive individualism militates against the
experience of community, and that lack of community is a centrally important
factor in contemporaneous anxiety.’ (191; italics in original)
What are we to make of this claim
that the competitive individualism of contemporary culture leads to anxiety? It
is a truism that people who define their sense of self-worth by their
competitive success will feel anxious if they believe that they are not
succeeding or may not succeed. And much in contemporary consumerist culture
reinforces the idea that competitive success, as indicated by the superiority
of one’s possessions to those of others, is crucial to self-worth. This idea
obviously reflects a shallow conception of the good life; when one looks back
over one’s life, what will count for a person free of serious emotional or
cognitive pathologies are one’s relationships with family and close friends,
one’s achievements, one’s manner of conducting oneself in one’s various roles,
and the quality of one’s experiences. None of these depend on competitive
success, still less on one’s possessions. So the psychologists’ indictment of
competitive individualism as leading to anxiety is correct. It is important to
note, however, that it is an indictment of defining one’s sense of self-worth
by one’s competitive success, not an indictment of all striving to succeed in
competition and of all competitive aspects of a culture.
It is worth noting as well that
non-competitive striving to live up to an ideal or to achieve a personal goal
can also induce anxiety and depression if the effort seems likely to fail.
Emulation of this sort is more under the control of the individual, however,
through the adoption of realistic goals.
3.2.5 Poisoning of personal relationships
Kohn’s fifth reason for the unhealthiness of all competition is that the
competitive orientation poisons personal relationships: ‘We bring our yardstick
along to judge potential candidates for lover, trying to determine who is most
attractive, most intelligent, and … the best lover.’ (Kohn 1980, 49) Clearly
such an orientation, if applied to all potential friends and acquaintances as
well as potential lovers, would make it difficult to develop and sustain
personal relationships of any kind. But this defect does not show that all
competition is unhealthy, only that applying a competitive orientation to all
one’s personal relationships is unhealthy.
3.2.6 Overall
Taken together, the arguments against competition have considerable
force. But they are arguments against an all-consuming desire for competitive
success, one that thrusts asides the values of personal relationships, of
personal integrity, of cooperation and community. We do not need to follow
Kohn’s recommendation to construct a competition-free society. In some spheres
of social life, in fact, competition is the best option: in admission to advanced
education or training, in hiring, in promotion at our place of work, selection
by merit in fair and open competition is clearly superior to the alternatives
of cronyism or a lottery. We should however heed the warnings of social
theorists that there is too much emphasis in contemporary western culture on
individual competitive success. In the realm of sports, for example, it would
be desirable social policy to put much more emphasis on non-competitive
activities like the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award than on competition, including
extravagant spectacles of competition like the modern Olympics. We should
recognize that arguments for the advantages of competition in one sector of
human life may not apply to some other sector.
3.3 Virtues and vices of competition
As a character trait, competitiveness may be a virtue or a vice. Here
Aristotle’s conception of a virtue as a mean between a vice of excess and a
vice of deficiency applies. The sphere of competitiveness is participation in
competitions. People are deficient in the way they participate in competitions
if they shy away from competitions where they have a good chance of succeeding,
or make no effort to put in a good performance in the competitions they do
enter, or are absolutely indifferent to whether they succeed or not in such a
competition. The various forms that such deficiencies take may be collectively
labeled as vices of uncompetitiveness; their common fault is indifference to
whether one does well. People go to excess in the way they participate in
competitions if they make ordinary encounters into competitions when there is
no point in doing so (i.e. when the competition serves no function), or take
friendly competitions such as social bridge games too seriously, or use unfair
tactics in their attempts to succeed in competitions, or let their desire to
succeed in a competition interfere with their moral obligations and with
morally commendable behavior (e.g. courtesy to fellow competitors), or have an
all-consuming intense desire to succeed in the competitions they enter. The
various forms that such excesses take may be collectively labeled as vices of
hyper-competitiveness; their common fault is to push competitive striving
beyond the point where it serves a positive function. Aristotle’s advice for
the formation of character applies here as elsewhere. Although there is no
mathematical formula for finding the mean, a person should steer away from the
more common vice and from the one to which they are personally inclined. In
advanced industrial democracies, especially in North America, the culture
promotes hyper-competitiveness, not only in business and sports but also in
attracting members of the opposite sex (or of the same sex, if that is the
inclination). In general, then, it is appropriate for people in these cultures
to avoid turning every situation into a competition and to make sure in
situations that are inherently competitive that they do not use unfair tactics,
that they treat social competition as just social, that they maintain common human
courtesies, and so on. Only in rare cases of personal disinclination to compete
and disinterest in doing so does there seem any need to steer oneself in the
opposite direction.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
For helpful comments and discussion, I thank Constantinos Athanasopoulos,
Inga Dolinina, Moschos Lankouvardos, Keekok Lee and Ronald Polansky.
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DAVID HITCHCOCK
PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY
DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY
McMASTER UNIVERSITY
HAMILTON, CANADA