Scylla and Charybdis: the purist’s dilemma.

This paper explores the view that, on Mumford’s account of the purist, to the degree that the purist adopts an aesthetic perspective, he or she doesn’t watchthe sportin question, and to the degree that he or she does watch the sport, there is a loss of aesthetic appreciation. The idea that spectators oscillate between partisanship and purism means that the purist is unable to avoid either the Scylla of not actually watchingthe sport, or the Charybdis of loss of aesthetic appreciation at any given point. Ultimately there seems to be both a sport-shaped hole and an aesthetic-shaped hole in Mumford’s account of the purist. It is argued that oscillation is incapable of dealing with the problem precisely because it is disjunctive in nature and entails the spectatoreitherwatching sport from an aesthetic perspectiveorfrom a partisan perspective at any given time. An alternative conception of the aesthetic is considered that offersone wayof dissolving the purist’s dilemma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]