Resumen de Empatia e Vontade de Vencer: Dois Polos em Tensão Permanente no Esporte
Elizabeth Pedrosa Ribeiro, Marco Antonio Oliveira de Azevedo
In competitive sport, the pursuit of victory seems to require athletes a degree of "immorality." Intentional simulations and fouls, as well as teasing and even aggression are not exactly rare in team sports. Are these behaviors intrinsic to the practice of sports? It seems that such behaviors depend on a certain nullification or blockage of the empathic mechanisms in our brain, that is, for there to be a "will to win," less empathy is required than morality requires. However, empathic feelings are fundamental conditions for appropriate moral behavior. In this article, We will argue that during a competition, it is inevitable that athletes express conflicting sentiments and that there is an inherent tension in the sport between the will to win and empathy. These two impulses are always present in the sport, since they represent, on the one hand, the desire of the sportsman to be successful and, on the other, the desire to respect the adversary, in order to guarantee a fair competition. Combining these two features without making them void is perhaps the greatest value of competitive sport.
