Sport as Mirror on Modernity (original) (raw)

2001, Journal of Social Philosophy

Sport is a form of game. In games we waste time, energy, and ingenuity on pointless and childish tasks. Even the most performance-oriented game remains unproductive. It is all show, a display of excellence for the sake of excellence in activities that are completely irrelevant to life. That which is not, or is no longer, important for "real" life is precisely that which is boisterously celebrated: physical power, skill. Some suspect that there is something wrong with people who are fascinated with this sort of thing. Perhaps it is a form of psychological immaturity, obsessive behavior, or an infantile compulsion for order? Alternatively, is it a form of mass hysteria urged upon us and manipulated by entertainment giants? However, none of these reductionist explanations makes the extraordinary attraction of sports in modernity understandable. This attraction points rather to elements that aptly appeal to modern persons, not in their aberrations, regressions, and infantilisms, but to the very basis of their scale of values and to the heart of their culture. However, how can we be appealed to by that which seems irrelevant to life and apparently is without any meaningful purpose? Precisely because the game is outside of life, and is eminently not real, it can be a symbol. Because it is nothing, it can mean everything. The way that modern Western persons experience relationships to themselves, to their fellow persons, to nature, and to society is pregnantly staged in their games. We catch the modern person in an unguarded moment, a moment of spontaneous fervor, when engaged in activities that are not in service of urgently vital interests. Sports could be compared to that other unguarded moment when the censor and the demands of reality are weakened: the dream. The game is a lived phantasm. 1 Moreover, there is a second reason why sports can so accurately stage modernity. Being separate from life, the game is not affected by life's ambiguities either. In daily life every meaning is ambiguous, every value stained, every task a risk, every victory an injustice, every law an oppression. Not so in a game. The rules of the game separate it from this dark everyday ambiguity. Amidst the confusion of life, it offers what Huizinga calls a 'limited perfection'. 2 All ambiguity is cleared away. The game is ruled by the clarity and univocality of a closed formalism. The rules are logically exhaustive. Every case is solvable. One could object that real games are never completely separated from life. Actors are real human beings with their own idiosyncrasies, their own