http://www.publicbooks.org/going-deep-ba...hilosophy/
EXCERPT: [...] It is not just imaginary philosophers who love baseball, and it is not just me. The great John Rawls, who revolutionized political philosophy, believed that “baseball is the best of all games” and once recounted reasons why. In 1982, Chicago philosopher Ted Cohen expressed his love for the game by claiming to have found a contradiction in the rules. He petitioned the league to resolve the matter, without immediate success. But the rules were silently changed, removing the apparent inconsistency, in 2010. Mark Halfon, who teaches philosophy at Nassau Community College, has written two books about baseball, *Can A Dead Man Strike Out?* and *Tales from the Deadball Era*. And now Mark Kingwell, a philosopher at the University of Toronto, has published *Fail Better*, which concludes, “Baseball is […] the most philosophical of games.” Finding improbable depths in the game of baseball has become an intellectual performance art. This review is my contribution. Baseball is the most philosophical of games because, like philosophy at its best, it harmonizes meaning with meticulous analysis....
MORE: http://www.publicbooks.org/going-deep-ba...hilosophy/
EXCERPT: [...] It is not just imaginary philosophers who love baseball, and it is not just me. The great John Rawls, who revolutionized political philosophy, believed that “baseball is the best of all games” and once recounted reasons why. In 1982, Chicago philosopher Ted Cohen expressed his love for the game by claiming to have found a contradiction in the rules. He petitioned the league to resolve the matter, without immediate success. But the rules were silently changed, removing the apparent inconsistency, in 2010. Mark Halfon, who teaches philosophy at Nassau Community College, has written two books about baseball, *Can A Dead Man Strike Out?* and *Tales from the Deadball Era*. And now Mark Kingwell, a philosopher at the University of Toronto, has published *Fail Better*, which concludes, “Baseball is […] the most philosophical of games.” Finding improbable depths in the game of baseball has become an intellectual performance art. This review is my contribution. Baseball is the most philosophical of games because, like philosophy at its best, it harmonizes meaning with meticulous analysis....
MORE: http://www.publicbooks.org/going-deep-ba...hilosophy/