The Ideal of the Stoic Sportsman

One need not be a scholar of ancient Greek philosophy to refer to “stoic” conduct or a “stoic ” approach to certain matters, because the vocabulary related to this apparently antiquarian view of life has seeped into our common language. Look it up. In the American Heritage Dictionary a Stoic is defined as “one who is seemingly indifferent to or unaffected by pleasure or pain. ” The qualification noted by “seemingly ” in the definition is necessitated by the dualism of the inner and the outer; it is stoic conduct or behavior that occasions such judgments about the psychology of the Stoic. The Stoic appears calm, cool, and dispassionate, perhaps in the face of situations that normally cause people to act quite differently: failure, tragedy, separation, loss, even death. In such situations we often believe it takes real character, strength of will, to act as the Stoic acts, because it seems natural to act and feel otherwise. Yet there might be some ambivalence in our evaluations of the Stoic’s character, whose conduct might merely mask an emotional indifference that is cold, mechanical, and inhuman. This evaluative ambivalence is mirrored in our responses to stoic conduc