Lecture I:
New Media Ethics: Citizen Journalism as Olympic Justice

This lecture will extend from material presented in the third week, offering a connection between the socio-political and philosophical dimensions of the Games. It will outline the visible components of the Olympic philosophy within contemporary examples of the Olympic Movement’s activities. This will offer useful connections with the participatory philosophy of new media participations, as a form of agora and democratized, meritocratic space.

Lecture II:
Environmental Ethics: An Inconvenient Olympics

This lecture will explore questions of environmental philosophy as they relate to the Olympic Movement. As a core pillar of the Olympic Charter, the philosophical and ethical foundation of environmental concerns have become key concepts to understanding the contemporary foundation and political philosophy of Olympism.

Lecture III:
Bioethics & Human Enhancement Technologies in the Olympics

Moving from philosophical questions about the environment and ecosystem, this lecture explores a different form of biological concern – that of human biology – and how it is contextualised within the philosophy of Olympism. It also connects these concerns with the broader project of bioethics, which has found recent attention from work within anti-doping. Various issues are considered, from the prospect of gene doping to bionic prosthesis, described in the recent case of Oscar Pistorius, the South African disabled sprinter who campaigned to compete in the Olympics, rather than the Paralympics.

Lecture IV:
Human Rights: In what sense should they concern the Olympic Movement?

Questions about the body and human dignity lead naturally into discussions about human rights. This particular articulation of social responsibility are enshrined within the Olympic Charter, but the politicization of rights as a form of global governance limits their ability to flourish as an explicit articulation of Olympism. This lecture explores a range of questions associated with human rights, asking whether the philosophy of Olympism extends to the political project of human rights promotion.

Lecture V:
Universals & Particulars as the contested terrain of Olympism

The challenge from Olympism is to engage with the contested claims of universals and particulars. As a unifying philosophical project, the Olympic Movement must assuage to a series of relativist claims, which limit its capacity to fully aspire to the universal values of sport. This lecture explores the problem of universals and particulars to offer some conclusions about the range of issues presented throughout the four previous lectures. As such, the aim of this lecture is to present a unifying philosophy of Olympism, which satisfactorily takes into account the competing pursuit of universals and particulars. In so doing, it also endeavours to address the philosophical issues that underpin considerations in previous weeks within the postgraduate seminar.