Aesthetics of Sport

The Body-machine from Michael Phelps to Oscar Pistorius discusses in retrospection the utilitarian view about the body that should be productive. From a utilitarian perspective, the body is not personal belonging but is separated from the human and transformed into a working machine. This view about the body raises many ethical problems especially for people that are not so productive such as handicapped people. Evidence for this can be found in professional sport. This process is essential for athletes. In the early 20 th century the athlete's body-machine was produced for the needs of professional sport. Those new athletic body-machines have become very important because they produced symbolic capital for their countries. The products, achievements, and especially the Olympic medals of athletes fulfill the nationalist agenda which, in Europe, was especially influential in that period. Athletes' achievements from international sport competitions produce symbolic capital in a similar way to archeological artifacts or the works of " national " writers. The gold medal and the world record can stimulate national dignity and consolidate people from a certain community. Top athletes are very famous and can become decision makers. However, very often this symbolic capital serves the purposes of state propaganda. Such examples are provided in this paper. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the inhumane practice of using athletes as gold producing machines rather than letting them develop fully their human potential.

The paper, which is the result of the aesthetics seminars I gave at The University of Physical Education in Budapest during this spring semester, investigates the aesthetic potentials of sporting experiences from a Deweyan point of view, also drawing on Richard Shusterman's somaesthetics, a perspective surprisingly missing from the discussion on the aesthetics of sport, even though it could offer a fertile ground for thought.

The Body-machine from Michael Phelps to Oscar Pistorius discusses in retrospection the utilitarian view about the body that should be productive. From a utilitarian perspective, the body is not personal belonging but is separated from the human and transformed into a working machine. This view about the body raises many ethical problems especially for people that are not so productive such as handicapped people. Evidence for this can be found in professional sport. This process is essential for athletes. In the early 20 th century the athlete's body-machine was produced for the needs of professional sport. Those new athletic body-machines have become very important because they produced symbolic capital for their countries. The products, achievements, and especially the Olympic medals of athletes fulfill the nationalist agenda which, in Europe, was especially influential in that period. Athletes' achievements from international sport competitions produce symbolic capital in a similar way to archeological artifacts or the works of " national " writers. The gold medal and the world record can stimulate national dignity and consolidate people from a certain community. Top athletes are very famous and can become decision makers. However, very often this symbolic capital serves the purposes of state propaganda. Such examples are provided in this paper. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the inhumane practice of using athletes as gold producing machines rather than letting them develop fully their human potential.

An attempt to define a physical being as opposed to the mental being that we, as creatures, are most of the time. This is not entirely a purely physical being, but with a very reduced component of thought and an underdeveloped mental life. One could envision such a being thinking of simples things like the way athletes move, talk and act, or automata figures like Frankenstein or the golem, whose verbal expression is particularly contained, or simply by observing the behavior of any human being when a physical necessity takes over, such as hunger or exhaustion. This a different creature from the fully mentally operative rational being that most human beings are most of the time. It’s not an entirely stupid creature, just more body and physically oriented. It’s not inhuman, perhaps not even less human, just very constrained on its field of action. And it’s also strangely familiar and not exactly evil. This is the creature of sport, of war, of many kinds of work, but not entirely of lust, nor of wickedness, which is mental.

Kung Fu is an ancient Chinese martial art and world renowned for its principles of teaching ethics and aesthetics, standing out with a profound philosophical singularity poured into values. However, very little literature deals with these issues deeply. In this qualitative study a systematic review was carried out in order to identify the literature on ethical and aesthetic education through Kung-Fu. We found 36 articles and almost all approach ethics and aesthetics in a generic and abstract way. Only four were in Portuguese. Many cite ethics and aesthetics as historical philosophical aspects, but do not address these issues when they enter sports competitions.