2^nd Lecture


                                                 2

                                        Philosophy of sport

     Ideology of sport. Analytical philosophy of sport.  Phenomenological philosophy of sport.
                            Critically historical philosophy of sport.


            Let me to summurize our last lecture.

            Firstly, we spoke about our need to define the concept "sport" in order to be able
handling with it. However, we couldn't present the list of features that every sport activity
should fulfill. We found these features: competitivness, spare-time, play (playing), game, movement
as important features, but we weren't able to generalize the definition because no sport activity
filfull all criterions. For example, the condition of spare-time activity don't comply with top
sports, the condition of movement don't comply with chess (and also pool and snooker in a sense).

            Secondly, we mused on meaning difference of words "game" and "play". We showed the
attempts to define this dissimilarity by specialists as Huizinga, Caillois, and in the first place,
Bernard Suits. We mentioned that most of philosophers or other specialists try to distinguish play
from game in similar way, in spite of the fact that their philosophical starting point is
different. For instance, Huizinga's point of view is close to the phenomenological analysis and
Suits' one is point of full-fledged analytical philosopher. Both camps insist on a common part of
defintion of play, which set play as a spontaneous, unforced activity that relocate sources of
human life and power to other aims than are the aims of everyday needs and demands. They imply from
this play to be an activity, which must not be done for benefit; we aren't doing it for some
profit. We are doing them for joy, or for pleasure coming from a play itself.

            Thirdly, at the end of the last lecture I spoke on typical ideology whose one of
displays is just this effort. The effort to see play as an autotelic, non-beneficial activity. This
activity is a first of stage of game. However, game, in contrary to play, is bound by rules. Here
is the problem or strangeness of this widespread opinion. Play is autotelic, free activity, without
specific aims to gain benefits, without boundaries and constrains, but we need it for game. It is
its part, the first stage. There is contradiction here. Play is part of game on the one hand, on
the other a play is play when, by definition, it has no rules beforehand.

             Fourthly, I asked why such different philosophers need to see play in the same way –
as being different from game because it is not directed by rules while at the same time they see it
as component of game. We could, of course, read this difficulty as saying: Play is a free, starting
moment of games. The moment of freedom; of making the world of play, which is different from the
everyday world. And just the next stage, i.e. setting of rules, transforms a play into a game.
However, why do we need so complicated explanations of concepts? Where are advantages, which
justify so intricate defining method? I was not able to find them in the last lecture.  It might be
the reason why I turned our attention to functions of these definitions.

            I found two main functions of the definition.

1)    To take control over play, which naturally tents to proliferate or change and hybridize its
rules. (This is charge of game.)

2)    To separate clearly the activities of working day and everyday life from the activities of
spare time and extraordinary time. (This is charge of play.)


            The first function has known from ancient times. If we want to establish and keep up
competition, we need stable and clear rules. The second one is more interesting. It has appeared
later, in 19^th century with the myth of ancient amateur athletes, by which sportsmen of higher
classes justified their efforts to exclude the lower athletes. (It might be that this tendency to
exclusion could be found in elder history also – for example, social exclusion members of lower
classes, slaves and women from ancient Greek gymnasiums or strict prohibition "knights' " way of
fighting for low-born people in 14^th century.) This exclusion had its social reasons. Sport could
help members of lower classes to break down its social position and achieve higher social status.
However, this process of social movement couldn't be stopped and after all, the second function
could start to serve as a base for "moral lectures". Both functions help to gain control over
sports and then use them for other goals – making money, creating heroes, manipulating people by
the help of sport, creating nations and so on.

            Besides positives, i.e. possibility of contest, first function has its dark side.
Strictly set rules immobilize or slow down natural free evolution of games. Thus, group of people
who could dictate change of game rules controls sports. These people could influence shape of a
game. Consider example of basketball. Up to 1970^th of the last century, it was almost non-contact
sport. Under the pressure of media and sponsors, it has changed itself radically. In these days,
only narrow group of people (often organized in national and international associations and sport
organizations) has impact on sports and thus controls not only competitions, but flow of money and
of power also. (See for example, Football Czech-Moravian Association headed by half-mafian
Chvalovsky and its uncontrolled power.)

            Yet, second function is more doubtful than the first one. We should see – and in our
next lectures, we are going to recognize it – that Europeans started to put moral values into sport
from the time of the 18^th century when sport began to serve as a tool of education. It doesn't
mean that respectives sports hadn't had certain apparent rules which players should have led. But
these rules of a game were in relations to the given sport. There weren't any general theory of
fair-play or theory of the right form of sport in the time before the 18^th century. Of course, in
the phase of overestimation and worshiping of competition (not only in sport, but in social life
generally it is a time of liberalism, theory of social contract with threat of war of all people
against all people, with invisible hand of market), we has needed this theory, but we should not
project it into all history of sport.


            With this critically historic analysis in mind, we easily see that sport is very hard
to characterize. It would be useful to notice that until late Middle Ages, humans hadn't had any
general name for activities we call "sport". In that time, the term "sport" arose from word
"disportare" that meant "to amuse" or "to entertain". There is connection between sport and leisure
time. However, we know that for a long time before (in the ancient time already) there were, in
fact, professionals doing sport for payment and other benefits. Even in so called "golden time of
Olympics" (see Young, 128–133).

            It indicates clearly, I think, that for understanding sport we need careful
historically philosophical analysis. In spite of that, in philosophy of sport we can meet other
attitudes – mostly phenomenological and analytical.


            In its nature, both mentioned philosophical approaches are ahistorical; they analyze
affairs and concepts synchronically only. They have done very much work in the field of sport.
However, they, in my view, haven't helped us to understand sport much better than we do when we are
just sporting.  Let me list some features of these philosophical method to support this. Please,
keep in mind that I will simplify the philosophies. Yet, our aim is not to become great
phenomenologists or great analytical philosophers, but to point out the basic features of both
philosophies and thus to show why the philosophers analyzing phenomenon of sport have failed yet.

            Phenomenology is a kind of philosophy founded by Edmund Husserl at the end of the 19^th
century and in first third of the 20^th century. It is a philosophy that attempt to study
consciousness and its structure.  Husserl guided by his teacher Brentano recognizes that main
structure of experience is given by intentionality. It means that if we speak, if we think we speak
about something, we think about something. Our language as well as our any mental activity is aimed
at something. For phenomenologists of Husserlian type, it is important that these intentional
"objects" – they call them "noema" – create their own structure and if we are able to analyze the
structure we could say something crucial about human thinking, speaking, about experience
generally. According to Husserl, we could do what Descartes and Kant wanted to in a sense.  We
could find not only borders and limits of our reason, but first of all, borders and limits of all
human experiences.

            At his second phase, Husserl wanted to progress his theory. He believed that thanks to
careful phenomenological analysis, we could find the true structure of world in our personal,
subjective experience or consciousness. We have no time to introduce the main principles of the
analysis, let me note only that twofold bracketing of our experience (epoché) could find lifeworld
(Lebenswelt). It is the world which is not disrupted by theories of sciences as well as by misuses
of everyday, indigested life. It is our original world. Therefore, according to phenomenologists,
we could find the true meanings of all our concepts if we analyze them through this ideal human
world.

            I hasten to assure you I admit that there are many important things, which come from
phenomenological analysis. On the other hand, I am suspicious when phenomenology starts to find the
true meaning of concepts, especially of sport concepts. If we open one of the most respected text
on philosophy of play – Eugen Fink's  The Ontology of Play – we find traditional equipment, a sort
of mystical insights into the nature of play. I am summarizing the text to document it: Play is
commonly connected with playing of child's games, however, the true meaning of the concept we
should seek in play of adult people. (Fink, 147–8) In play, adults suspend everyday world and
create "the world of play". (152–154) Human life is characterized by these constants – physicality,
work, death. We are fragile because our physicality and that is why we have to work in order to
avoid death. Yet, there is one more constant – play. Play is an oasis of our life. It has its
purpose in itself. It frees us from tragic character of life. Play gives us "present" (it means
that in everyday life we have to think forward, to think about future, in contrary the time we are
playing). Thus play constitutes fullness of human life. (148–150)  Of course, setting the play in
this way every activity of play, which mix play with concerns of everyday life, is adulterate play.
(149)

            There are nice passages on play in Fink's text those speak about representational
character of play. These sequences illuminate one of the most important features of play, which
help us to understand world. Play (or game – because Fink is not so strict in differentiation of
concepts play and game as Suits was) could symbolize our too complicated world, because it could
serve as a simplified model of our world. We will return to this interesting moment in the next
lecture. Except these passages, however, we have found the same characteristics as in Huizinga's or
Suits' theories:  A play is distorted when during the play, people pursue other aims than joy of
play itself. But I can't exclude from class of playing people those who is professional sportsmen,
or who is sporting for their health, or for reason that during some play they can meet their mates
and so on. These purist theories cannot help us to understand better such complicated phenomenon
like sport or human being or ecological niche.

            In approach of analytical philosophers, we could find the same, or (more precisely)
similar, purist approach to meanings of words. Elementarily, analytic philosophy attempt to find
under our confused thoughts or under our confused language their true structure which mirroring the
true structure of our world. In the last lecture we sketch Suits' analysis of play and his
unnatural differentiation of play from game. He uses the everyday narratives – remember his story
about Johnny who plays with potatoes, playing with potatoes could not be a game because  pushing
potatoes this or that way has no rules set beforehand – and then he analyze the narratives by the
help of separation the true meanings of words from the fictitious sediments.


            There are two kinds of presuppositions (I dare to say prejudices) that phenomenology
and analytical philosophy share:

1.      The true structure of the world is mirrored by the true structure of our language or of our
consciousness; (in case of analyticism, philosopher should carefully analyze the words or mental
states to get to something immutable; in case of phenomenology, philosopher should get into the
structure of our consciousness by bracketing of our world images and only this way he reaches
noemas; in this noemas, the true world and the given structure of our consciousness meet each
other).

2.      Since the structure of world as well as the right structure our language or our
consciousness are stable, timeless and ever-during we need not to use historical point of view.
Historical events have had no impact on these eternal structures. That is why we meet synchronic
approach only in both philosophies.

            Let me make a note in this place. Of course, I simplify the story because in both camps
there have been people who start to introduce historical events and their consequences into
synchronic plan of their studies. Recall Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Patočka on the one hand, on
the other Sellars, Davidson, or Putnam. However, at lowest level of works of all mentioned
philosophers, passion for finding something everlasting, unchallengedly true could be found
(Heidegger's Being, Patočka's care for soul, Sellars' analyticity of concepts, Putnam's inner
realism). Moreover, most of well-known philosophers of sport work in the synchronic space only.

            These prejudices are new varieties of very old philosophical thoughts stemming from the
time of Plato or Parmenides. However, neither of philosophers has yet justified these two
prejudices. How could we know that there is the stable timeless structure of our world and even if
it is there and it is a stable and timeless one, how could we know that our language or
consciousness function as a mirror, which reflects the structure?

            Of course, it could be both. Yet, it is hard to find warrantor for these answers. I am
afraid that phenomenologists as well as analytists go wrong direction. For both of camps don't
offer fair and gounded answers the questions stated above and at the same time, they ignore that
human experience arises, develops itself and changes itself in time, and in this way creates its
own history. To overlook this means to impose our supposedly "true" meanings on reality and thus to
distort it. This distortion manifests itself in our narrow-minded efforts to define univocally
concepts "sport", or "play", or "human being".


            What I propose here is a rival approach. It is historically philosophical analysis and
interpretation. This approach study carefully historical differences not only of words meanings,
but also practices witch are connected with the meanings and then it interprets the changes and
their consequences in social environment. For example, we will study what means exactly gymnastics
in ancient Greece, with which social functions it was related, how they was related to other
concepts (for example kalokagathia), how they were different from our understanding. We will study
conception of sport in Middle Ages and we will compare it with our limited comprehension of that
period.

            Historically philosophical approach does it without throwing away the good things of
analyticism or phenomenology. It analyzes meanings of words and texts as well as analytists, but it
doesn't assert that by the help of this analysis grasp the true world or the true structure. It
uses interesting and useful insights of phenomenology (for example, Fink's conception of play as a
symbol of the whole world), but it doesn't maintain that it is a part of true noema of this
phenomenon. It uses the insights as a good or helpful tool for interpretation.

            As it could be apparent now, critically historical philosophy cannot work with the term
"truth" as incoherently as the other philosophies. This analysis has no image of knowledge as
mirroring. It follows from this fact that there is no direct access to the only true structure of
world. Our analyses and interpretations are tools that are to help us in confused and complicated
situations. That is why we, in the next lecture, revive the concept "myth" as an important category
which is not in contradiction to the concept "truth", but in contrary, it is its important
complement.