It’s that time again when everyone starts running and jumping with excitement over the Olympic Games. I don’t mean running and jumping on the athletics track, either. This is not sports fever, it’s politics. Nor is the excitement about the next Olympics, but the one after the one after next. Yes, it’s that time when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decides which city will stage the world’s biggest sporting extravaganza eight years from now.
So why all the fuss? One simple answer – money.
National pride may have something to do with it, too; but money is the real driving force.
However, the truth is that neither money nor national pride should play any part in the debate. The Olympic Games rightfully belong in one country, Greece, for the very good reason that Greece is where the Olympic Games were invented and where the name comes from. This is not a political or an economic issue.
There is only one sensible and justifiable place to have the Games, and that is Athens, the capital of Greece – this time, next time and always.
Of course some of the competing nations will ask why
all the benefits of holding the Olympics, especially the huge revenue that they allegedly generate, should always go to one country. Alternatively, it is often pointed out that hosting the Olympics is a risky business, requiring massive investment to make it a success. A country the size of Greece cannot be expected to bear those costs every four years. Sharing the burdens, as well as the benefits of the Games, is the fair and proper way to do it, with the richer countries being the safest choice.
But these self-seeking and contradictory arguments are precisely what you would expect to hear from big business. Of course those with most to gain from the building programmes needed to provide the facilities and infrastructures will say that the present system is the most workable. It is a view that gets much of its support from North America and Western Europe, which have had more than their fair share of playing host to the Games. The economic case for retaining the existing
arrangement is therefore flawed from the start.
The Olympic Games, properly understood, are an international
movement dedicated to
friendship and peace worldwide.
The Games are no nation’s property. The countries that take part should pay for the Games according to their wealth, with the poorest nations contributing least and benefiting most. That approach alone would reflect the true Olympic ideal. But it is only possible if the Games have a permanent site.
Last but not least, there is a practical but compelling reason for returning the Olympic Games to their ancient roots, and that is the ever-present threat of terrorism. Everyone who is old enough remembers the tragic events that marred the 20th (Munich) Olympiad in 1972. Today the Games are an obvious target for an atrocity that would put 1972 in the shade, especially if the games are seen, rightly or wrongly, as a symbol of US world
dominance. By holding the Games in the historical location, rather than a different national capital every four years, the issue becomes depoliticised, and the danger of a terrorist attack is greatly reduced.
Janet Sender DOC 1
7.7 An argument under the microscope 297 ways. By the writing ‘style’, we mean the
claims as they are expressed in a particular piece of text, complete with any
emotional appeals, sarcastic touches, colourful phrases and so on. In paragraph 1 there are plenty; so it is more than just an introduction.
3 a One pragmatic reason the author offers is that a permanent site will, arguably, reduce the threat of terrorism by depoliticising the Games.
This would obviously be of practical benefit to athletes and spectators, and even to the organisers whose profits would be affected if the threat of a terrorist attack deterred people from attending the Games. The inclusion of the word ‘practical’ in the text marks this as a pragmatic reason.
b By contrast there is no obvious practical benefit behind the argument that Greece is where the Games were invented and where the name comes from. We are told that the Games are
‘rightfully’ the property of Greece for these historical reasons, and for that reason alone they should be held there. The general principle underlying this strand of reasoning is that the inventor or originator of something has a moral and/or legal ownership of it. This applies not just to this particular context, but to authors, artists, explorers and others – in fact any person or group who can claim to have discovered, created or invented something.
4 There is clearly an assumption in paragraph 2 that historical reasons should play a part in the debate. Without this assumption the conclusion just doesn’t follow. Another way to say this is that there is a missing premise. If the author wanted to spell this premise out it would have to be something like: ‘The issue is a historical one.’ Merely saying argument. If the reasons supported only
the claim that it was justifiable, without saying why it was also sensible, the argument would be unsound, because it would be incomplete. Similarly, if the argument didn’t establish that one permanent site was more justifiable and sensible than a different site each time, again the reasoning would be inadequate.
‘Athens should be the site of the next Olympic Games’ would not be a
sufficiently accurate and inclusive answer.
‘The Greek capital should be the
permanent home of the Olympic Games;
no other solution can be justified or makes sense’ would be fine.
2 The first paragraph is introductory. It sets up the context for the argument as a whole without giving either the conclusion or any supporting reasons.
You could describe the author’s style of writing in the first paragraph in a number of ways: for example, humorous, sarcastic, scornful, dismissive, pejorative. It is achieved by means of phrases like:
‘running and jumping . . . (not) on the athletics track’, which makes the excitement she is talking about seem childish; and the word ‘extravaganza’, which suggests that the current Olympic Games are over-glamorised. Janet Sender is probably trying to make the reader feel that the ‘fuss’ over the hosting of the Games is all a bit unnecessary, and a bit ridiculous. If it works, this can have the effect of ‘softening the reader up’ for the reasoned argument that is to come. In other words it is a rhetorical device, rather than straightforward reasoning.
When you are evaluating an argument it is important to look out for features of persuasive writing and distinguish between them and the reasoning itself.
By the ‘reasoning itself’, we mean the underlying claims, which could be expressed in any number of different
should have to bear the costs. But you could equally say that the counter- argument is simply looking at two possible outcomes, and claiming that either way it would be unfair. Thus the charge of contradiction does not really stick.
7 Paragraph 4 is a very weak response. In fact it is an example of a classic fallacy, known as an ad hominem argument, which was introduced in Chapter 4.9.
Argumentum ad hominem means the argument is directed at the person who holds the belief or makes the claim, rather than at the argument itself. It may be perfectly true that the economic argument for the present system does suit big business, and that it finds favour in North America in particular. But that does not make the argument bad; and it certainly doesn’t make it flawed, as the author concludes. The flaw is much more evident in the author’s argument than in the counter-argument she unsuccessfully tries to demolish.
8 This is a tricky question because it appears to have a very straightforward answer. In paragraph 2 the author says, quite plainly, that the Olympic Games
‘rightfully belong in one country, Greece’. This looks like a blatant contradiction of the later statement that they are the property of no one nation. And if it is a clear contradiction, it also appears to be a serious flaw in the reasoning. For surely, if the Games do belong to no single nation, then the present system of rotating the host country would seem the right one, and giving it permanently to Greece, as the author proposes, would seem to fly in the face of one of her premises.
But is it as blatant a contradiction as it seems? Not necessarily. You could defend the argument by clarifying what exactly is meant by the words ‘belong’ and
that it is not political or economic does not establish that it is historical.
5 Paragraph 3 is a counter-argument.
You may remember from Unit 4.8 that the strategy of anticipating a counter- argument – i.e. setting it up and then knocking it down – is a common argument strategy. That is clearly what the author is doing here.
Commentary
6 You can see what the author means when she brands the counter-argument
‘contradictory’. The way she has set up the counter-argument, it looks as if those who support it want it both ways: they want to say no one country should get the profits, and that no one country
Activity
The next five questions are evaluative. Again there are suggested answers in the
commentary that follows.
6 Is the charge of being ‘contradictory’
(paragraph 4) a fair assessment of the counter-argument?
7 Paragraph 4 is a response to the counter-argument (a counter-counter- argument). What is your evaluation of it?
8 In paragraph 5, the author writes: ‘The Games are no nation’s property.’ Is this claim contradicted elsewhere in the passage? If so, does the contradiction weaken the argument to any extent?
9 Bearing in mind exactly what the conclusion of the argument is, does the argument adequately support it?
10 ‘The ancient Olympic Games were for competitors from all over Greece. The modern Olympics are for competitors from all over the world.’ If true, what impact does this observation have on the argument?
7.7 An argument under the microscope 299 Games belong to Greece in the sense of
being Greece’s property. It is quite
sufficient for her argument to say that the Olympic Games belong in their
traditional location. And she has no need to deny that they also belong to the whole world, and should be governed by the International Olympic Committee as they are now. You would only insist on the worst interpretation if you wanted to find fault with the argument, which is a form of prejudgement. Under the principle of charity you assume the best interpretation; then if you still want to make negative criticisms, or present counter-arguments, they will be fair comment. Another way to put all this would be to say that accusing the author of a contradiction in this context would be a rather cheap objection. It would be like picking someone up for a slip of the tongue, or for saying something that they never really meant. In this respect it has some resemblance to the ‘straw man’
argument that you saw in Chapter 4.9.
9 No, the argument does not adequately support the conclusion. The conclusion is a very strongly worded claim that the only sensible and justifiable place for the Games is Athens – now and always.
Words like ‘only’ and ‘always’ require equally strong premises to underpin them. The weakness of the author’s argument is that she has not eliminated all the possible alternatives, or looked at all the possible counter-arguments. She could reasonably conclude that there is some justification for a permanent site in Athens, and that it makes good sense. For that she has provided some support. She has not come near to establishing that this is the only acceptable conclusion. You could say that this imbalance between reasons and conclusion amounts to flawed reasoning.
Alternatively, you could describe it as a
‘property’. ‘Property’ suggests ownership or possession. If the Games were the out-and-out property of one country, that country would presumably have the right to do as it pleased with them for its own benefit – choose the time and place, make the rules, keep all the profits. But the author is not saying anything as extreme as that. Just belonging somewhere is not the same as being a possession, especially when followed by the word ‘in’ rather than ‘to’. This may seem a small detail, but accurate analysis often depends on small detail: a word here, a phrase there. It might be perfectly reasonable to say that the Olympic Games belong in Greece, but that they are not the property of Greece.
In other words the Olympics remain the property of all the nations that compete in them, but historically their rightful location is Greece. It could even be pointed out that ‘Greece’ means a region of the world where the ancient Olympics took place, not the modern country called Greece; and that is all that it means to say the Games belong there. Under that interpretation there is no contradiction.
Of course, an opponent of the argument could just as reasonably reply that this is a quibble: ‘belonging in’, ‘belonging to’,
‘property of’ all mean the same when it comes to deciding whether the Games should be in one country or shared around. The author cannot have it both ways. If the Games don’t belong to Greece, they don’t belong in Greece either, and that is all there is to it.
Which of these is the right interpretation is ultimately for you to decide. In doing so, remember the principle of charity (Chapter 2.7, page 52). The way to apply it is to ask: Would the author have made these two statements if she thought they contradicted each other? The answer is, almost certainly, no. Why would she? She doesn’t need to say that the Olympic
thinking on your part. But they are also a bit of a luxury because they guide you in your analysis and evaluation. When you are confronted with real arguments – on
television, in print, or just conversation – you have to know what questions to ask, as well as how to answer them.
Many of the questions above are worth remembering because they, or questions very like them, will be relevant to most arguments, not just to this one. You will almost always need to ask questions such as: What is the main conclusion? Are there any missing premises (assumptions)? Are there
contradictions? Are the reasons strong enough to support the conclusion? What use does the author make of persuasive language, emotion, or popular appeal?
serious weakness. Either way, the right evaluation of the argument is that it falls short of its purpose.
10 The observation may be considered fairly damaging. The historical argument is an important part of the author’s case: she is using the fact that the Games were originally in Greece to support the conclusion that they should always be in Greece. If someone objects that the original Games were located in the region from which all the athletes came, and that this is no longer the case, that would be grounds for arguing that circumstances have significantly changed. However, the objection is not a fatal one. There are still defences that could be made: for example, the age of air travel has made the world a much smaller place. It probably takes less time to fly from Sydney to Athens than it took to travel from Sparta to Athens in ancient times. Therefore the place where the athletes come from is not really relevant to the case for a single permanent site.
Critical questions
Questions like the ones you have been
answering provide a useful way of focusing on the key features of an argument, which is why such questions are included in thinking skills examination papers. The questions were quite tough, and required some serious critical
Find an argument in a recent newspaper, or on the internet, and make a copy of it. Using some or all of the questions you were asked in this chapter, produce a list of questions based on the text you have chosen.
You can then either answer the questions yourself or exchange texts with a fellow student and answer each other’s.
End-of-chapter assignment
7.8 Critical writing 301
Critical writing
7.8
In the previous chapter you studied a single document and answered some specific questions on it. These tested your skills in analysis and evaluation.
In this unit we introduce a further skill that you need to develop for more advanced levels of critical thinking. It is the skill of bringing together information, evidence and opinion from a range of different sources to support an argument or conclusion. This is known as synthesis. In higher-level thinking skills examinations it is assessed by means of an extended piece of writing that you have to plan and construct yourself.
Synthesis requires first selecting and organising material that is relevant to a particular task. In the activity that follows, the task is to extend the debate on the Olympic Games that arises from Janet Sender’s article on page 296 (Doc 1). The questions she was addressing were fairly narrow ones: ‘Whose are the Olympics?’ and ‘Where should the
Olympics take place?’ Her conclusion was that they should be held permanently in Athens, and her reasoning was largely historical and political. Among its weaknesses was the fact that she gave little in the way of factual information, examples or evidence to support her claims.
The three new documents that follow are largely informative. Not every part of them is directly relevant to the debate, and there is more information in them than you would need for an argument on the specific question of where the Olympic Games should be held.
Nor do the additional documents enter directly into the debate, although they contribute to it.
Read the new documents now, and if necessary reread Janet Sender’s argument too.
Do this quickly, to get an overview of the material, rather than trying to take in every detail. Look out for the parts of the texts that are most relevant to the debate. Then move on to the activity that follows.
The history of the Olympic Games – ancient and modern
Introduction
The modern Olympic Games are always hosted by a city – not by a country. The first Olympic Games of the Modern Era were hosted by Athens (Greece). The Olympic Games were hosted by Beijing (China) in 2008 and by London (UK) in 2012.
Host cities and the calendar known as the Olympiad
The ancient Olympic Games were always in the same place – Olympia – a sacred city in western Greece known as Elis. The Games were a religious event, a festival that honored the Greek God Zeus. The ancient Games were hosted by the Elians who were the guardians of the sanctuary to Zeus. They tried – and succeeded for a few hundred years – to be neutral, that is, unallied to other Greek city-states, similar to modern-day Switzerland. But in the fifth century BCE (or BC) they allied themselves with Sparta and warred against their neighbors. The Elians lost control of the sanctuary to the Spartans, then to other Greek city-states, then finally to the conquering Romans. In 80 BCE the Roman general Sulla moved the Olympic Games to Rome and only a single race for boys was held at Olympia, the stade race. But then Sulla died and the next Games returned to Olympia in 76 BCE.
The ancient Olympic Games and the modern Olympic Games are quadrennial, meaning they are held every four years. This four year period of time is known as an Olympiad. To the ancient Greeks an Olympiad was their calendar, a way of designating time. However, this calendar was not used by every Greek city-state and there is great difficulty in studying ancient history because of the calendar and attempts to ‘date’
things. There was no accurate dating system in the ancient era and every civilization used a different calendar system. There were calendars for the Babylonians, Hebrews, Greeks and many others. The one thing the civilizations had in common was that they were conquered by the Romans. Julius Caesar created the Julian calendar in 46 BCE. Our modern calendar, known as the Gregorian calendar, is based upon revisions to the Julian calendar, made and instituted by the Catholic Church in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII.
This becomes an issue when trying to date the ancient Greek Olympiads from 776 BCE, which was ‘year one’ of the first Olympiad.
Just as in ancient Greece, the modern Olympic Games are held every four years at the beginning of the Olympiad. The First Modern Olympiad began in 1896 when Pierre de Coubertin revived the Olympic Games and they were held in Athens.
During the early years of the modern Olympic movement there was a disagreement over who should host the Olympic Games. The Greek government wanted the Games in Athens permanently while Pierre de Coubertin, the French ‘founder’ of the modern Olympic Games, wanted them to rotate around the world to major sporting cities. So the Olympic Games of the second Olympiad were held in Paris, France, and the Games of the third Olympiad were in St Louis, Missouri, USA. The Greeks went ahead and scheduled their own Olympic Games in 1906, a tenth anniversary celebration of the 1896 Games. At that time these Games were considered ‘official,’ in spite of the calendar – not being a quadrennial event. From a historical perspective, the 1906 Olympic Games must always be included in Olympic record-keeping. They happened – they cannot be ignored. However, they are not called the Games of the fourth Olympiad, because these DOC 2