Sport, a philosophical object

At the heart of the abundant literature today on sport lacked a strictly philosophical pretension and dimension work, that is to say taking the side of approaching as a philosophical object, and as a philosophical object only, this reputed non-philosophical object that is sport. The difficulty is of importance indeed. Identified from all sides, it seems, by sociological studies concerned with deciphering sport as “ social phenomenon “, By a critical sociology which, under the influence of Marxist thought, denounced, for three or four decades, this” Opium of the People “And icon of merchant capitalism that is sport, by historical, psychological, didactic research, not to mention the impressive corpus of publications” techniques “Always more specialized according to sports, gestures, innovations of equipment or training, the” Sports object »Dilies in its varieties and the angles of approach which target it, each having its legitimacy. It will be added that the saturation of the media, in particular television, by the sporting commentary, often tautological, and its scientist variant, the statistics, feeds the doxa. Until this observation, paradoxical: do we know what we are talking about when we talk about/sport ?

The starting point of this work is therefore as follows: show that beyond the kaleidoscopic aspect of speech on sport, it has a “ essence “, That the latter suggests a” unit Sport, identifiable in historical comparison, between antiquity and modernity, for example, as in the diversity of practices. The challenge is tremendously stimulating, which does not abandon the difficulties. The introduction quite rightly formulates the kind of quadrature that meets any test of definition of sport: 1) manage to specify sport as a philosophical object, outside or on the fringes, or in addition to the saturated socio-historical analysis ; 2) Establish a historical continuity of the sport, despite the obvious disparity of the contexts in which bodily practices (games, jousts, gymnastics, sports, physical education, etc.) were deployed. ; 3) Examine the assimilation (or reduction) of sport to physical exercise in the broadest and subordinate sense for purposes which exceed it ; 4) answer the question of the unit and/or multiplicity of the sports (s).

Even more, we propose here to think of sport not only as “ the effect or symptom of an ideology and a system, but (…) a practical whose intellectual repercussions are far from negligible ». The tone is set: combine the rigor of reflection, the meticulous chiseling of the concept with the sporting experience “ lived “, In solitude or the collective, experience of pleasure and pain, effort, sweat,” style ». The philosophers who collaborate in this work are all athletes and brilliantly combine diversity so specific to sport and philosophical research of foundations. Philosophy is therefore “ on the stadium “, Escaping” At the photo which links in conversely proportional capacities or activity on the one hand, and on the other hand intellectual power or spiritual exercise “, As at the cliché of a pejorative hierarchy between the things of the body and those of the mind. It is therefore from the stadium, the cycle path, the bitumen ribbon, the tennis or rugby field that sport thinks. It is in this tasty correlation between the “ sensations Sports and its conceptualization developed by the work directed by Denis Moreau and Pascal Taranto.

Think of the sports body

The book is organized in three parts: “ Approaches “,” Practices ” And “ Figures ». In the first, it is a question of the search for a “ essence », Difficulty of importance indeed, whose chapter written by Mathieu Haumeser, in particular, brilliantly takes up the challenge. Rather than endeavor to define a “ logical “(The characters composing a hypothetical” Essence of sport ), This author is attached, in fact, from the Aristotelian notion of the passage of the “ power “At” act “, To be released” A material above all sensitive ; a material in the literal sense, therefore, that of our body, including theuse which is done in sport, fundamentally diverse and irreducible to a determined reality, only traces the sphere of the concept which can proceed from it ». Power of effort, power of purposes to invent, power of its own uses and uses of the body, crossed by this “ desire for progress “” “ voluntarily left in indeterminacy “, This is sporting activity, neither only a game, nor only a competition or an educational pretext.

In the same part, Pascal Taranto notes the figures of the imaginary which constitute the sporting body, showing in particular how, in Christianity, sport (as physical exercise) represents the exemplary model of self -control, even more of the “ self -possession “,” permanent tension to tame the rebellious body, which is therefore addressed first to the real man ». As for Dominique Doucet, he establishes a rapprochement between sport and science fiction around the following thesis: “ Science fiction is to classical literature and science, which sport is to human daily activity: overtaking and relaxation. A relaxation of the tension caused by the submission to reality and an overcoming by the exaltation of a project on oneself emerging from this very weariness ». Correspondence always, therefore, between the figures of the body, the social models, the imaginary representations, the artistic experiences and what the activity “ physical ” Or “ sporting “Has” schematic In the Kantian sense: model, archetype, interface, purity for an understanding of man and environments that are his own. The same could be said of political operations of which the theater of sport gives a simplifying and regulated version. In this indeterminacy or “ power “, Which is also the responsibility of its universality, the sporting body, the plastic body, the body with the effort gives” to have “,” feel ” And “ to understand ».

The second part draws from the heart of “ Practices »: La Marche (Michel Malherbe), The style of the tennis player (Guillaume Durand), the Cyclosport (Jean-François Balaudé), the rugby (Robert Damien). These sporting specificities are highlighted, which are surpassing oneself in the solitary or collective effort, or the ways whose sporting gestures can take intellectual and aesthetic meaning. So, “ We do not know what in walking really prevails, from the on the ground or the freedom of the movement ». In the tennis game, “ The strength of the great stylist is never to go out, to always remain at the ultimate point of creation ». In cyclosport, “ Everything happens as if the mind absorbed completely in the body ; The result is not that the activity of the mind in this itself, but that the mind accesses, indistinguishable from the body, to an exceptional plan of existence ». To play rugby, finally, you have to “ Be at the same time and at the same time courageous and inventive, elegant and combative, impactful and dynamic, intelligent and committed, generous and controlled, explosive and concentrated … Antagonic requisitions for an exhilarating metamorphosis that a certain philosopher called joy ! Who has not known it does not know what happiness is … By which we see that it is from its practices that the meaning of sport is developed, each contribution supplementing a colorful palette, without ever losing sight of the requirements of the book: how to nourish philosophical reflection ? How the latter does she hollow the socio-historical and technical contributions that she chooses to bypass ? How, through these interactions between the “ stadium “And the” concept “, Speeds a” essence », Subtile and dynamic of sport ?

Sport and history of philosophy

The third and last part, in the aspect of an undoubtedly more classic reference to authors, tries the interpretation “ sporting From their texts. Robert Muller recalls the fundamental texts of Plato in the Laws and the Republic Regarding children’s education in gymnastics and music, this culture of the body crossed by the purposes that ancient Greece has attributed to gymnastics, military, medical and pedagogical, and how this teaching takes place in a global training, with intellectual and physical dimension. “” The body is honorable “And asserts himself the idea that the” beautiful “Corrèles with the” Good “, That the human being is a” All “Complex whose accession to the highest spheres of reflection and political and philosophical practice cannot miss this stage which is knowledge and mastery of the body. Denis Moreau offers a daring analysis of running at Saint Paul, insisting in particular on the ambivalence of sporting pleasure, on the intermingling of it with pain, as a compulsory passage or obstacle to overcome. “” In these exceptional moments provided by the effort of endurance, a Christian will therefore find as an anticipated enjoyment of the body of glory that his faith promises him for the other life. And more prosaically, it is possible that an effective practice of the endurance race has provided Paul his concept of glorious bodies and some of the elements that constitute it ». Parallel which illustrates here as well as possible the title of the work and expresses the reflexive, even meditative activity in the case of long tests such as endurance race, which can be required, as sport. Finally, Blaise Benoit proposes, to conclude, to link the idea of ​​” Create a higher body (Nietzsche) “To effective practices, of order” physio-psychological Which aim for rehabilitation of the body in Nietzsche. No carelessness or vulgar hedonism, but a form of asceticism, an energy control, the pipeline of original violence observed in ancient athletics. Again, the experience of walking exceeds simple physical exercise. It is a question of an inscription of the affective and intellectual dimension in the effort and, in return, of the fertility of this effort for intellectual development. Philosophy by walking is an adventure, with its share of risk, discovery, roughness too or dead end. In order to succeed in this business, “ Education is therefore required to promote the emergence of this lightness, a condition of additional finesse in the construction of the relationship that we have with the world ».

Taken in suspense by this adventure, now attentive to the fact that the movement of the body conceals from potential ideas, that the relaxation of the game opens up perspectives on oneself and on others, that the surpassing of oneself unfolds endlessly of the faculties of development of the ego and thought, we repeat the success of this work and its pleasure of reading. The bet is won: sport as a philosophical object appears in all the richness of its concept, the interest of its diversity, the link it has with thought and many major works.

Photo: (CC) Céline Aussourd