Writing in the New York Times‘ philosophy blog, the Stone, Gordon Marino, an active boxing trainer and professor of philosophy at St. Olaf College, makes the case for boxing as a tool for achieving “moral excellence”:
Doing the right thing often demands going down the wrong side of the road of our immediate and long-range self-interests. It frequently involves sacrifices that we do not much care for, sometimes of friendships, or jobs; sometimes, as in the case with Socrates, even of our lives. Making these sacrifices is impossible without courage.
Boxing has created a feeling of equality with men for me, because boxers appreciate other boxers on the love of boxing level–it has been an unexpectedly profound journey into the core of my humanity via the complete acceptance of the brutality of survival and the rejection of cloying sentimentality. I am one with the energy of the Universe, the life and death force, I am fully self-integrated, the sum-total of all that I am when I step into ring.
I find that often doing the right thing–as defined by my own conscience–often requires me to do that which I loath, the thing I fear the most. It also requires me to shed the skin of others’ perceptions of me. As Sam Shepard said in his book about acting, to “hit the mark, say the lines, and witness what happens next.”
Courage for me often means putting something at risk, something that I don’t want to lose. I have to decide what is more important what I want or who I want to be.