The effort involved in playing sports calls for a hermeneutical reflection on the power that we have to move our bodies. Drawing on Paul Ricoeur’s phenomenology of the lived body and his later ontology of the flesh, I explore how athletic displays of agility, strength, and speed within the theater of sporting competitions exemplify the way that the effort made by athletes attests to their will and desire to succeed. The agonistic spirit of the Greek Olympics is evident in (...) sporting events where competitors or teams strive against one another. At the same time, the players’ willingness to enter the field of play has a counterpart in real-life situations over which we cannot exert complete control. The contingencies of the game in which the players are caught up are a model of the absence of aseity that is a mark of all human existence. By setting the playing field off from the concerns of everyday life, the game places this feature of the human condition on stage. The players’ physical exertion is the sign of a form of consent that sets the will, desire, and effort to exist against the wish for absolute freedom. Sporting competitions are therefore a theater for dramatizing the misery and grandeur of a specifically human freedom. (shrink)

Argument of this text is that: to develop aesthetics of sport, we should not begin with aesthetics as philosophy of art but with aesthetics of everyday life; to start with aesthetics of sport, we should not begin with beautiful of ‘pure aesthetics’ but with the dramatic; to analyze the dramatic in sport, we should not open the analysis with analogy between theater and sport, but with sport as a sort of performance; to get at (...) the meaning of sport as a drama, we have to discuss different meanings ‘drama’ has in theory and everyday communication; to map the dramatic in sport as performance, we have to discuss some features of sport which determine its dramatics first, and its potential as spectacle later. To proceed with the argument, we have to take into account contemporary state of aesthetics, recent development of aesthetics of everyday life, and theory of performance, together with Bernard Suits’ definition of game, Gadamer’s idea of play, and Lévy-Strauss’ account on conjunctive and disjunctive ritual. (shrink)

Question: Where, when and under what circumstances did the two of you get to know each other?Fischer: It was in the early seventies, in Frankfurt, after the dissolution of the gauche proletarienne and while there were still leftist groups in Germany. It must have been 1972. Question: Was that a private visit?Glucksmann: We had private discussions. We also participated in rallies and demonstrations.Question: That was in the late phase of the student movement.Fischer: We kept in contact through my old room-mate, (...) Daniel Cohn-Bendit. He was our link to France, so to speak.Question: And was this the link between the French and the German Left that existed then? (shrink)

Many philosophers of sport maintain that athletics can contribute to our understanding of ourselves and the environments in which we live. It may be relatively easy to offer accounts of how athletes might acquire self-knowledge through sport; however, it is far more difficult to see how sport could add to the general understanding of human individuals, cultural frameworks or the material world. The study of sport as a way of worldmaking is helpful in understanding how (...) class='Hi'>sport can contribute to the pursuit of knowledge in such areas. The position I present is based on arguments made by Gunter Gebauer in his 1993 presidential address to the Philosophic Society for the Study of Sport, 'Sport, theater, and ritual: Three ways of worldmaking', and in my explanation and interpretation of Gebauer's position, I rely heavily on Nelson Goodman's Ways of worldmaking . Gebauer's work is focused on traditional sports, and he argues that such sports create worlds that represent fundamental attitudes and values of the cultures that produce them. I argue that alternative sports are well suited to create new and original worlds that instantiate value systems in opposition to mainstream culture. I argue further that nature sports such as climbing and surfing represent relationships between humans and natural features, and that such sports, as a subcategory of alternative sports, are in a position to create new and original frameworks that can help us to better comprehend our relationships with natural environments. (shrink)

What is unique and essential about theatre? What separates it from other arts? Do we need 'theatre' in some fundamental way? The art of theatre, as Paul Woodruff says in this elegant and unique book, is as necessary-and as powerful-as language itself. Defining theatre broadly, including sporting events and social rituals, he treats traditional theatre as only one possibility in an art that-at its most powerful-can change lives and bring a divine presence to earth. The Necessity of Theater analyzes (...) the unique power of theatre by separating it into the twin arts of watching and being watched, practiced together in harmony by watchers and the watched. Whereas performers practice the art of being watched-making their actions worth watching, and paying attention to action, choice, plot, character, mimesis, and the sacredness of performance space-audiences practice the art of watching: paying close attention. A good audience is emotionally engaged as spectators; their engagement takes a form of empathy that can lead to a special kind of human wisdom. As Plato implied, theatre cannot teach us transcendent truths, but it can teach us about ourselves. Characteristically thoughtful, probing, and original, Paul Woodruff makes the case for theatre as a unique form of expression connected to our most human insticts. The Necessity of Theater should appeal to anyone seriously interested or involved in theatre or performance more broadly. (shrink)

Trust is a topic of longstanding philosophical interest. It is indispensable to every kind of coordinated human activity, from sport to scientific research. Even more, trust is necessary for the successful dissemination of knowledge, and by extension, for nearly any form of practical deliberation and planning. Without trust, we could achieve few of our goals and would know very little. Despite trust’s fundamental importance in human life, there is substantial philosophical disagreement about what trust is, and further, how trusting (...) is normatively constrained and best theorized about in relation to other things we value. This entry is divided into three sections, which explore key (and sometimes interconnected) ethical and epistemological themes in the philosophy of trust: (1) The Nature of Trust; (2) The Normativity of Trust, and (3) The Value of Trust. (shrink)

The article summarizes the theoretical and methodological knowledge about ecotourism as one of the viable types of tourism in the postmodern era, clarifies the patterns of its formation and development, a variety of approaches to its interpretation, interaction with other types of tourism, features of motivation and management in ecotourism. On the basis of the generalized data a number of perspective educational conditions is modeled: the orientation of the maintenance of pedagogical education on formation of steady positive motivation; updating the (...) content of professional training; availability of educational and methodical support; interrelation of competence, system and personal-activity approaches. Diagnostic methods relevant for postmodern education are selected: methods of diagnosing students' learning motivation; methods of diagnosis of value orientations in career; tests to determine the levels of formation of the components of professional competence. It is proved that the professional training of teachers who are able to use ecological tourism in their professional activities at a high level is one of the important conditions for increasing the interest of children and young people in physical education, tourism and sports, ensuring the necessary physical activity, developing, maintaining and strengthening their health, adaptation to the flexible postmodern society. (shrink)

The contributors to _Somaesthetics and Sport_ explore our embodied experiences of watching and playing sport, including sport’s beauty; the place of exercise in our sense of living a good life; and how we cope with pain and suffering.

This collection explores the link between theater and human flourishing. It interrogates both the social good of theater and the personally restorative work of a range of live embodied performances. It brings together the disciplines of theater (and performance studies) and psychology, especially positive psychology, to explore the social benefits of theater. These benefits include the formation and participation in community, opportunities to engage in political speech and thought, and the experience of being entertained (or offended) (...) by both the creative work of artists and the individual responses of fellow audience members. (shrink)

The analysis of the reciprocal relations of the discipline of philosophy and other cultural phenomena requires a few disclaimers. First of all, the characterization of philosophy as a cultural phenomenon along with literature, music and theater, or culinary arts, fashions and sports, rejects claims that philosophy somehow relates to absolute truths which transcend the limits of any particular cultural context and mean the same things for anyone who manages to reach the heights and/or depths necessary for that purpose. This (...) also entails that any pursuit of philosophy, including Buddhist philosophy in Japan, is only possible within the network of textualities and cultural practices that surround it, and the people engaged in it relate to the cultural codes and institutions of their environment just as they relate to the internal rules of their philosophy and its received heritage. Secondly, we have to acknowledge two major aspects in approaching any cultural phenomenon, namely, its texts and its practice. The texts produced by the people engaged in, say, philosophy or literature or cooking are distinct from, yet always related to, the practical aspects of that phenomenon, which determine who produces these texts, how and why they are produced, and how they are used and disseminated. Alternatively, seen from the aspect of practice, texts are a sort of by-product of what people do; for example, reciting Buddhist sutras does not imply a deep understanding of their semantic, textual, and philosophical content. Both of these aspects are equally relevant to the phenomenon as a whole, and neither can be sufficiently analyzed without the knowledge of the other. In this article, I will focus on some key categories and issues mainly as they have been reflected in the domain of literature, especially since it can be argued that literature is the filter through which Buddhist influence, and its philosophical aspect, in particular, has been mediated to other spheres of culture. (shrink)

The issues surrounding ethical controversies in sport have filled the media recently. This book of invited original essays by mainstream philosophers as well as philosophers of sport will provide the reader with a discussion in ethics and sport based on a sound philosophical footing. It will be accessible to a wide range of teachers and students in the field of sport and leisure studies. Contributions from international, highly regarded experts in the fIeld provide the reader with (...) systematic treatment of the ethics of sport from a diverse perspective. (shrink)

Had I been willing to run the risk of multiplying cuteness beyond necessity, this article would have worn the title “So you are one of those naṭs!.” The Hindi word naṭ, which helpfully sounds like the English nut, represents the way most of us in contemporary India pronounce the Sanskrit word naṭa. When we notice that a nut, in English, is someone crazy, pointing us toward the divine madness that a Dionysian performer might be expected to manifest — while on (...) the other hand no known classical Indian theory essentially associates the theater with madness — the contrast between conceptualizations of the theatrical in classical India and in classical Greece comes into view. Relative to what has come to.. (shrink)

Philosophy and Sport brings together the lectures given in the Royal Institute of Philosophy's annual lecture series for 2012–13. In the Olympic year, it seemed fitting to consider some of the many philosophical and ethical questions raised by sport, and to bring together contributors from both philosophical and sporting worlds. This ground-breaking volume considers many different areas connected to sport and its practice. These include the watching of sport, drugs in sport, the Olympic spirit, (...) class='Hi'>sport and risk, sport as a moral practice, rivalry and glory in sport and the importance of sport in human life more generally. (shrink)

This paper argues that there is a relationship between the structure of live theater and the question of whether human beings have free will, and that the practice of live theater and the pursuit of philosophical certitude regarding free will are both constructive human experiences coalesced around roughly the same set of sensations.

Official documents, such as the Word Anti-Doping Code (WADC), argue that sport can be deemed a homogenous and unitary concept. Even where different sports have varying characteristics, the homogenous view of a given sport (‘a sport’ or ‘the sport’) persists. The WADC, international and national sport associations aim to protect the spirit of (the) sport. In this picture, the intersection of sporting integrity and legal processes occupies a vital place. The article will posit that, (...) from a legal perspective sport is heterogeneous due to its governance, regulation, adjudication, and enforcement structures. International and national associations, such as sport federations and leagues, have separate normative orders. These normative orders lead to differences in ensuring sporting integrity. A plural normative environment is inherent in sport; thus, we need to deal with it. The article will conclude that although harmonising norms and interpretations related to sporting integrity through national and global institutions may be acceptable, these must be achieved by promoting good governance and human rights. (shrink)

Philosophy and Sport brings together the lectures given in the Royal Institute of Philosophy's annual lecture series for 2012–13. In the Olympic year, it seemed fitting to consider some of the many philosophical and ethical questions raised by sport, and to bring together contributors from both philosophical and sporting worlds. This ground-breaking volume considers many different areas connected to sport and its practice. These include the watching of sport, drugs in sport, the Olympic spirit, (...) class='Hi'>sport and risk, sport as a moral practice, rivalry and glory in sport and the importance of sport in human life more generally. (shrink)

More and more research reports assert that sport experience has an influence on shaping the personality of athletes. This paper aims at validating the connection between personality and sport experience. The research subject of were young Polish male athletes aged 20–29, out of 42 sports disciplines, with sport experience ranging from 3 to 12 years. In order to test the personality of the research subjects, a five-factor model of personality called the Big Five was applied. Statistical calculations (...) and analyses were carried out with ver. 25 of the IBM SPSS Statistics software. The research has shown that all personality traits correlate in a statistically significant way with sport experience : there is a negative correlation of sports experience with neuroticism and a positive correlation with traits such as extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Thus, we have identified a relationship between sport experience and personality traits of the researched Polish male athletes—the longer the sport experience, the lower level of neuroticism and higher levels of extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Duration of sport experience has a considerable influence on forming the personality of Polish male athletes. However, the interpretation of just the results regarding high level of extraversion and conscientiousness distinguishes Polish male athletes from the Polish male population of non-training people. (shrink)

The oil-rich nation-states of the Arabian Peninsula are investing large sums in the development of an international sports industry for the region. In an effort to field its own national sports tea...

From the Federal Theater Projects of the Great Depression to the disruptive performances of the 1960s and 1970s, theater has played an important role in American radicalism. This special issue of_ _Theater_ reports on socially conscious, politically active theaters in the United States. Despite the evaporation of Cold War passions and the rise of conservatism in the 1980s and 1990s, such theater work remains a persistent and evolving presence on the political landscape. Since the first inauguration of (...) George W. Bush, new opportunities have arisen for political performance and for significant new challenges to these artists. T_heater and Social Change_ not only tracks the historical evolution of political theater but also explores the current state and future prospects of different modes, including agit-prop, demonstrations, solo performance, Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed, and community-based production. With such notable contributors as Anna Deavere Smith, Jonathan Kalb, Holly Hughes, and Tony Kushner, the issue offers a diverse assemblage of personal statements, conversations, photographs, interviews, and performance text. _Contributors include:_ Reverend Billy, Jan Cohen-Cruz, Arlene Goldbard, Sharon Green, Lani Guinier, Holly Hughes, Jonathan Kalb, Tony Kushner, Judith Malina, Robbie McCauley, John O'Neal, Claudia Orenstein, Bill Rauch, Julie Salverson, Anna Deavere Smith, Alisa Solomon, Roberta Uno. (shrink)

The first systematic collaboration between cognitive scientists and sports psychologists considers the mind–body relationship from the perspective of athletic skill and sports practice. This landmark work is the first systematic collaboration between cognitive scientists and sports psychologists that considers the mind–body relationship from the perspective of athletic skill and sports practice. With twenty-six chapters by leading researchers, the book connects and integrates findings from fields that range from philosophy of mind to sociology of sports. The chapters show not only that (...) sports can tell scientists how the human mind works but also that the scientific study of the human mind can help athletes succeed. Sports psychology research has always focused on the themes, notions, and models of embodied cognition; embodied cognition, in turn, has found striking confirmation of its theoretical claims in the psychological accounts of sports performance and athletic skill. Athletic skill is a legitimate form of intelligence, involving cognitive faculties no less sophisticated and complex than those required by mathematical problem solving. After presenting the key concepts necessary for applying embodied cognition to sports psychology, the book discusses skill disruption ; sensorimotor skill acquisition and how training correlates to the development of cognitive faculties; the intersubjective and social dimension of sports skills, seen in team sports; sports practice in cultural and societal contexts; the notion of “affordance” and its significance for ecological psychology and embodied cognition theory; and the mind's predictive capabilities, which enable anticipation, creativity, improvisation, and imagination in sports performance. Contributors Ana Maria Abreu, Kenneth Aggerholm, Salvatore Maria Aglioti, Jesús Ilundáin-Agurruza, Duarte Araújo, Jürgen Beckmann, Kath Bicknell, Geoffrey P. Bingham, Jens E. Birch, Gunnar Breivik, Noel E. Brick, Massimiliano L. Cappuccio, Thomas H. Carr, Alberto Cei, Anthony Chemero, Wayne Christensen, Lincoln J. Colling, Cassie Comley, Keith Davids, Matt Dicks, Caren Diehl, Karl Erickson, Anna Esposito, Pedro Tiago Esteves, Mirko Farina, Giolo Fele, Denis Francesconi, Shaun Gallagher, Gowrishankar Ganesh, Raúl Sánchez-García, Rob Gray, Denise M. Hill, Daniel D. Hutto, Tsuyoshi Ikegami, Geir Jordet, Adam Kiefer, Michael Kirchhoff, Kevin Krein, Kenneth Liberman, Tadhg E. MacIntyre, Nelson Mauro Maldonato, David L. Mann, Richard S. W. Masters, Patrick McGivern, Doris McIlwain, Michele Merritt, Christopher Mesagno, Vegard Fusche Moe, Barbara Gail Montero, Aidan P. Moran, David Moreau, Hiroki Nakamoto, Alberto Oliverio, David Papineau, Gert-Jan Pepping, Miriam Reiner, Ian Renshaw, Michael A. Riley, Zuzanna Rucinska, Lawrence Shapiro, Paula Silva, Shannon Spaulding, John Sutton, Phillip D. Tomporowski, John Toner, Andrew D. Wilson, Audrey Yap, Qin Zhu, Christopher Madan. (shrink)

tad aikṣata, bahu syām prajāyeyetiIt thought, May I be many, may I grow forth.rūpaṁrūpaṁ pratirūpo babhūva tadasya rūpam praticakṣanāyaThe prototype has assumed various forms, and such is its form as that which it adopts for its manifestation.prathamaṁ śūnyatābodhiṁ dvitīyaṁ bījasaṁgrahṁ tṛtīyaṁ bimba niṣpattiṁ caturthannyāsamakṣaraṁFirst is the void; second the seed; third the emanation of the image; fourth the articulation of the syllable.… rest and play alternate in the divine perfection as they must. … Ātman-Brahman must also be conceived not as (...) resting but playing in and as the thought.The aim of this article is to meditate philosophically on the very nature and significance of the trinitarian conceptions of.. (shrink)

For elite athletes seeking a winning advantage, manipulation of their own genetic code has become a realistic possibility. In Genetic Technology and Sport, experts from sports science, genetics, philosophy, ethics, and international sports administration describe the potential applications of the new technology and debate the questions surrounding its use.

It is argued that the increasing interest in the use of phenomenological methods in sport psychology could help rescue research in this area from its current obsession with measurement and prediction. Phenomenology proceeds from a very different set of philosophical assumptions from the natural science approach that underlies most research and practice in sport psychology. Phenomenology insists that psychology should focus on meaning and investigate the essence of human experience. The concept of anxiety occupies a central position within (...) phenomenological perspectives in psychology. This paper examines the experience of anxiety in sport by drawing on applied sport psychology work undertaken with professional footballers in the English Premier League (EPL). The phenomenology of anxiety is considered by distinguishing between May's psychological account and Heidegger's philosophical perspective. Anxiety is viewed positively by both philosophical and psychological phenomenology due to its links to the idea of authenticity. This is discussed in depth in the paper and consideration will be given to how this connects to important sources of meaning and identity in sport, such as spirituality and religious belief. (shrink)

An account of the intrinsic value of sport from previous work (McFee 2004; 2009) is sketched, presenting it as a ?moral laboratory?, as well as a scholarly attribution of such an account to Pierre de Coubertin, in explanation of his view of the moral educative potential of the Olympic Games (McFee 2011a).Then aspects of that account of intrinsic value are elaborated, and its educative possibility is defended, along with the possibility of its generalising beyond the sports field or stadium: (...) these are fundamental to its ascription to Olympism. Yet, for de Coubertin, the impact of the Olympic Games was understood primarily in terms of its participants: the modern-day Olympics, by contrast, have an immense impact through the size of their television audience. But how is that impact theorised? The paper urges that, despite key differences, some of the same resources for the ?moral laboratory? can be deployed by audience members, understood in terms of the narratives they construct to explain the sporting behaviour they observe. Although not strictly a consequence of the Olympic context, that context makes it more likely that ? from the audience's perspective ? the actions of sports players are explicable from a morally aware viewpoint. As such, Olympism has an additional possibility of delivering a kind of moral education; although the fact that there are only observers here (not agents), and hence that there is no responsibility for actions performed, means that this possibility is relatively weak. Some features of a research agenda here are introduced; and its Wittgensteinian pedigree defended. (shrink)

Marxism, Cultural Studies and Sport assesses the contemporary relevance of Marxist approaches and offers a unique and diverse examination of modern sports ...

Inherent in the cultural naturalism of John Dewey is a deep connection between experience and nature. Experience is the humanly possible interplay with nature, “a means of penetrating continually further into the heart of nature”. Nature is the bedrock of experience, captured in a concept that no longer refers to a “block universe” —an essentially given, firmly established order of things, beings, and species—but rather “a realm of existence, composed of events”, temporally and spatially situated appearances which can be given (...) a meaning, evolving as the realization of natural potentials within the framework of evolutionary interplay. Every existence is therefore an event—nature, the... (shrink)

The three social practices – democracy, philosophy and sport – are more similar than we might initially suspect. They can be described as ‘essentially agonistic social practices’, that is, they are manifestations of ‘agon’ (contest). The possibility to participate in agonistic social practices derives from the human condition, i.e. from the necessity to care for one’s existence, which requires ongoing attention and decision-making, and which sometimes means going against others. We call this character of human existence by the ancient (...) Greek term ‘polemos’ (struggle), which can be manifested through various types of agon. If society cherishes agonistic social practices, it enables its citizens to compete to prove themselves and achieve goals (e.g. to push through a persuasive argument, or to win in sport) in a respectful, peaceful and productive way. Believed to have played a significant role in ancient Greece, agon presents itself in both intellectual and physical forms – in philosophy, democratic politics and sport – suggesting that the relationship between these practices is deep-rooted and significant. This paper explores the idea that developing our understanding of polemos and agon can enhance our experience of agonistic social practices and enable our existence to proceed in a more free, pro-social and enriching way. (shrink)

The three social practices – democracy, philosophy and sport – are more similar than we might initially suspect. They can be described as ‘essentially agonistic social practices’, that is, they are manifestations of ‘agon’ (contest). The possibility to participate in agonistic social practices derives from the human condition, i.e. from the necessity to care for one’s existence, which requires ongoing attention and decision-making, and which sometimes means going against others. We call this character of human existence by the ancient (...) Greek term ‘polemos’ (struggle), which can be manifested through various types of agon. If society cherishes agonistic social practices, it enables its citizens to compete to prove themselves and achieve goals (e.g. to push through a persuasive argument, or to win in sport) in a respectful, peaceful and productive way. Believed to have played a significant role in ancient Greece, agon presents itself in both intellectual and physical forms – in philosophy, democratic politics and sport – suggesting that the relationship between these practices is deep-rooted and significant. This paper explores the idea that developing our understanding of polemos and agon can enhance our experience of agonistic social practices and enable our existence to proceed in a more free, pro-social and enriching way. (shrink)