A few weeks ago, I blogged about a book, Soccer and Philosophy, which compiles 31 essays by scholars who also love soccer—exploring connections between, say, Sartre’s theory of loneliness and the job of the referee, or Kierkegaard’s theory of anxiety and the terror of taking a penalty shot.
The book is interesting to me, a half-committed academic, because I often get the sense that academic work becomes so insular that it loses touch with the real world. This week, I asked the man who dreamt up and edited this book, Ted Richards, how he got into soccer and philosophy and how he brought the two together.
Ilana Simons: As a philosophy professor at the University of Tennessee, you’re not just interested in abstract philosophy, but the practical or applied side of philosophy—in how philosophy relates to mundane daily life like soccer and watching apples fall from trees. Why?
Ted Richards: There are certain questions that come with being human. Questions like: What makes something beautiful and something else not? Is there such a thing as luck? Philosophers have been grappling with these questions, in different forms and different guises, for more than 2000 years. Thus, philosophy [is always as part of daily life, and] it can be “applied” to anything we do. (Of course, some things are more easily “philosophical” than others, but that’s just a difference of degree.) This is why the Soccer and Philosophy book was so rewarding. It allowed me to put this attitude to the test; to meld two seeming disparate human activities, to show how each illuminates the other, allowing for a richer appreciation of both. In this, I am very happy with the result.
IS: How’d you pick contributors to your book?
TR: Believe it or not, I did an open call for abstracts on a number of philosophy e-list. I put together a list of evocative topics [and] a description of the type of essays I was looking for—length, style, target audience, etc.. I wanted the essays to be philosophically informed, accessible to a general audience, and convey a passion and love for soccer. The balance was crucial; the essays had to get both the soccer and philosophy right and be good reads. The response was overwhelming. I had to reject two-thirds of the proposals.
IS: How’d you get into philosophy?
TR: I was a physics major as an undergraduate at Southern Methodist University. When I was there, the physics department had an experimental emphasis. My interests were more theoretical. At the time I was choosing schools, I didn’t understand the difference between those two approaches to physics, and thus it was a bit of a mis-fit. In filling out my education, I took an introductory philosophy course taught by Niall Shanks, who is a philosopher of science. He showed me that there was room—intellectual room—in philosophy to pursue my theoretical curiosity while also being grounded in empirical science. That, in fact, the two disciplines were often asking the same questions, just from different perspectives. So, I decided to get a philosophy degree while finishing my degree in physics. Since then, I’ve been lucky enough to be able to work in both areas, though recently I’ve been doing more philosophy than physics.
IS: How’d you get into soccer?
TR: I was introduced to soccer when I was about 10. At that time, in Brattleboro Vermont, there was a gentleman who ran a one week day camp every July. He was German. His son was playing in college. I learned the skills and strategy, watching him and his son. He also had video tapes of Pele that he would show during lunch, so I picked up a love of the aesthetics of the game as well. At the same time, Vermont Public Broadcasting was showing soccer matches from Europe every Sunday morning, which was where I saw the competition and fervor that accompanies the game. From then on, I was hooked. I’ve been fortunate enough to be playing ever since. I even did a bit of coaching and refereeing along the way.
IS: Is a certain personality drawn to playing soccer as opposed to, say, American football or long-distance running?
TR: In my experience, soccer doesn’t draw a particular personality. I’ve played with and against people of all different kinds. I think that it is more exposure to soccer—and more importantly what type of exposure—that draws people to the game.
IS: What are you working on now?
TR: As my next book-length project I am working with Eric Thompson on a historical introduction to metaphysics and epistemology. The concept is to introduce the central problems of metaphysics (the study of what exists) and epistemology (the study of knowledge) by looking at the ideas and arguments of Plato, Aristotle, Galileo, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Wittgenstein, and Quine. We’re writing it so that no previous philosophical knowledge is required, so it should be broadly accessible and of wide interest.
IS: Does getting a tenure track job in the university system often mean being out of touch with real-world passions like soccer? Does the career system in the university setting need to do something to make itself more relevant, and if so, how?
TR: I’m not sure that academia has a special problem in this regard. Any profession is which you are expected to become an expert, to dedicate your energies to one narrow task, carries with it the danger of becoming all-encompassing. The middle manager for Corporation-X is in as much danger of becoming out of touch with real-world passions as someone trying to move up the tenure ladder. We all need to create space for these passions, be it soccer or theater, or music, or gardening, or monster trucks. Where the danger might be a bit more for academics is that to make it through the Ph.D., their field of study must become a passion. The Ph.D. is so taxing, with so little to gain at the end, it must be a self-motivated process, it almost must become an obsession. It’s then tough to create space for other things, for passions you may have dropped to finish the dissertation. So, there is nothing essential about the career-tier system that requires that you drop other passions, but it's very easy to do. If you’re lucky, you never had to drop them, and ultimately an opportunity arises which allows you to combine them, like Soccer and Philosophy.
Ilana Simons is a therapist, literature professor, and author of A Life of One's Own: A Guide to Better Living through the Work and Wisdom of Virginia Woolf. Visit her website here.
