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This thesis is concerned with understanding sport theory based on art theory. In so doing, in extending their relationship, a deeper appreciation of both may result. In turn, this may enhance our lives. While postmodern theories of art somewhat devalue the rarefied status of art, at the same time art’s openness is particularly well appointed to understanding other aesthetic domains. Scholarly attention to the so-called aesthetics of the everyday of which sport is an example, is a relatively recent paradigm shift that attempts to give philosophical weight to common, ordinary experiences as aesthetic. Art as the paradigm case of aesthetic experience is therefore useful in illuminating such experiences, one of which is sport. The results of this study are: Like art, sport idealises in its desire for perfection. Like art, sport is a second-order mimetic activity that is autonomous and reflects extra-aesthetic concerns. The implications of the postmodern language turn for art, namely detotalising and/or meaninglessness can be applied to sport. Drawing from Wittgenstein, art and sport are culturally embedded within institutional frameworks and quite simply are learnt ways of thinking and doing. Expressive theories of art were introduced which, it was found, has resonance with sport, as it can be similarly described as an expression of “aesthetic ideas”, to use Kant’s phrase. The artistic formalist perspective and the realization of form led to describing sport as aesthetically beautiful in many ways. One might apply Zangwell’s moderate aesthetic formalism to sport where formal qualities, representation and content co-exist, thus somewhat combining the above conclusions. An analysis of this kind suggests that sport may derive its meaning from an artistic perspective, at least in theory. At the same time, though not the primary focus of this thesis, one might describe the relationship between art and sport as an oscillation, if at times a dialectic, in which case boundaries between them inevitably become more complex. It is conceivable that within that complexity/struggle/play there can be self- realization and world-bettering. It is also conceivable that this is a result of the emergence of a new sub-discipline, namely sports art. / Art History, Visual Arts and Musicology / D. Litt. et Phil. (Art History)

Film has always been an integral part of the culture of surfing. In the early 1960's, a film by the name of The Endless Summer ushered in the wide acceptance of the medium of film by the culture. As the years progressed and the sport radically adopted new styles, attitudes and lifestyles, surfing films changed along with it. This thesis will show how the aesthetics of surfing films both are shaped by the culture from which they are found and how, in turn, they continually reshape the culture. By looking at the aesthetic theories of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Leo Tolstoy and Walter Benjamin, this thesis will academically survey the aesthetics of the films The Endless Summer, Momentum, and the works of filmmaker Jack Johnson and his studio The Moonshine Conspiracy. This study will provide insight into the significant aspect of , film in a culture so strongly defined by aesthetics, both from within and without.

In recent years, there has been an undeniable shift in how we think about nonhuman animals. A growing philosophical literature on animal rights has encouraged a deep consideration of the moral status of animals, while scientific research has simultaneously confirmed the fact that many animals have complex cognitive, emotional, and social capacities that strongly mirror our own. Although there is still disagreement about what all this implies in terms of our responsibilities to animals, the idea that animals can experience physical or emotional pain or pleasure is the starting point and not the conclusion of the present inquiry. Many species of animals are sentient beings who possess a viewpoint from which they experience and act in the world around them - and hence may be said to be agential. My dissertation explores what it means for us to extend, conceptually and morally, agency to animals. I address this "extension of agency" predominantly from an aesthetic perspective, although in doing so I in no way intend to limit the range of related philosophical concerns. On the contrary; to extend agency to animals, I argue, calls for a revised understanding of our habitual spectatorial stances--how we look at animals. To grasp these stances, I investigate how animals have been looked at in literary works of art. Does the literature show our spectatorship to extend agency to animals or do we objectify them so as to deny their capacities as agents altogether? My dissertation focuses on excerpts from three significant works of literature--works by Nathanael West, Ernest Hemingway, and Leo Tolstoy--each of which stages a specifically athletic engagement involving animals, in this way bringing focus to the issue of our spectatorship. Each excerpt serves as philosophically illuminating material and as an exemplary case regarding humanity's willingness or refusal to extend agency to animals. I am particularly interested in the role of animals in human-engineered sports, and in how extending agency to animals in sports changes or ought to change the way we watch sports that involve animals. Within the philosophy of sport, the accepted approach has been to liken animals to sporting equipment or tools, and thus to make no substantive distinction between animal and non-animal sports. This, I argue, reflects a refusal to extend agency to animals, which has led also to an oversimplification and mischaracterization of sports involving animals in the first place. Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust takes up cockfighting, Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises centers around bullfighting, and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina includes a memorable, emotionally stirring, steeplechase episode. In addition to investigating what I refer to as the "extension of agency" to animals in these literary works, I revise some of the basic assumptions that have recently guided the burgeoning subfield of the philosophy of sports. I argue that we must acknowledge that there exists a fundamental difference between the modes of spectatorship that accompany sports that only involve humans, and those that involve animals. For to extend agency is to extend the moral domain to that or those who are "other" than ourselves. Once animals are introduced into a sport, they imbue the sport with all the aesthetic complexities that come with looking at an animal outside of sport: the unique exotic beauty of the animal body and its fitness to function, but also its vitality, wild autonomy, expressiveness, and reciprocity of gaze. This means that our interactions with animals, even in the case of organized sport or performance, are not purely aesthetic in a formal artistic sense; they are also expressive and communicative. The concept of the formal aesthetic that many employ when talking about art - the formal qualities that we attribute to the arts - is not sufficient to accommodate sports that involve animals and a spectatorship of animals. Animals are expressive, and this expressiveness is fundamental to correctly understanding our spectatorship of them. Animals are far more than our equipment. The aesthetic of animal sports must, I conclude, accordingly incorporate expressiveness and empathy, such that we see animals in fellowship with us as participants in sports. Extending agency to animals is the core concept of a morally inflected aesthetic of inter-subjectivity.