Bullying, Basketball, and Courage

What I consider to be some good news came out of my home state recently -- actually occurring a year ago, but back in public view again just this last week.  By now likely many readers have already glimpsed  in their news feeds the inspirational (but all too brief) story coming out of Kenosha, Wisconsin.

It is about three middle-school basketball players coming to the aid of one of their classmates -- a cheerleader with Downs syndrome who was being made fun of by some fans attending a game.  The players walked off the court in the middle of a game, and up to the stands, where they confronted those fans, and told them to "knock it off."  That would seem to both require and exemplify a certain kind, or at least measure, of courage.  It also raises a number of interesting questions, particularly when we add in some additional background information -- at least from a virtue ethics perspective.

Big Think: Chess Life, or Why Getting Beaten Can Be Good

In a recent interview with the Big Think, chess-player Maurice Ashley, celebrated as the first African-American grandmaster, briefly narrates his development in the game of chess, from novice to master.  His recollections and reflections are interesting from a Virtue Ethics perspective for several reasons.

The game of Chess is in fact one the very practices examined by contemporary virtue ethicist Alasdair MacIntyre in his seminal book After Virtue.  He didn’t pick chess by chance or whim — chess does in certain ways exemplify the sort of practices that bear important and educative analogies to traditions of moral inquiry, like those of Virtue Ethics.   A practice, in the way MacIntyre famously reconfigures the term, denotes: