In Sports, Humanity Resists Confinement and Seeks Transcendence | 5Y View

Sport is a form of human vitality. Through physical activity governed by the will, our strength and courage are preserved. Competitive athletics are not merely games and record-making; they are also a kind of sublimation, a spiritual restoration — in sport, humanity resists being bound, confined, and restricted.

In the competitive athlete we see: a person in continuous danger, as if engaged in real warfare; not crushed by an almost unbearable fate, but fighting vigorously for himself, straightening his body to hurl his spear.

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This article is reposted from the WeChat account "Storm and Stress"

Excerpted from Man in the Modern Age by Karl Jaspers, translated by Wang Defeng, Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 2013

As a form of vitality, sport gives people a place to realize themselves, finding fulfillment in training through the comprehensiveness of ability and the dexterity of movement. Through physical activity governed by the will, people's strength and courage are preserved; moreover, the individual who seeks contact with nature draws closer to the fundamental forces of the universe.

Sport as a mass phenomenon is organized in a way that everyone must obey, like a game played according to rules. It provides an outlet for impulses that might otherwise endanger the machinery of life. Sport occupies the public's leisure time, thereby keeping people calm. The spiritual condition of the age — the will to life, which moves in fresh air and sunlight — produces this collective enjoyment of life. It does not enter into a thoughtful relationship with nature, does not treat nature as a riddle to be solved; it also puts an end to the solitude that leads to consequences. The discharge of aggressive instincts, or the practice of the will to triumph in sport, demands the highest skill, for every competitor wishes to establish his superiority over others. For those stimulated by this impulse, the only thing that matters is record-making. Fame and applause are absolutely essential. The necessity of obeying the rules of the game leads to compliance with etiquette. Through this compliance, the rules that facilitate social intercourse in real life are likewise observed.

A sprinting scene carved on a 6th century BCE vase

The daring actions undertaken by individuals demonstrate what most humans cannot achieve, and what the public regards as heroic conduct — things they themselves would wish to do, if possible. Mountaineers, swimmers, aviators, and boxers are all models of heroic behavior, staking their very lives. These people are also sacrificial offerings, displaying their achievements for public spectacle. People are thereby excited, shocked, satisfied, and always harbor a secret desire that they too might accomplish something extraordinary.

But another factor that heightens the pleasure of sport may be the joy of witnessing danger and destruction befall someone whose fate is unrelated to the spectator's own — a pleasure that undoubtedly drew crowds to gladiatorial combat in ancient Rome. This manifests similarly in the fondness for detective novels, in the keen interest in reports of criminal trials, in the preference for the absurd, the primitive, and the obscure. In clear rational thought, everything is known or certainly knowable; fate no longer governs all, and only chance remains; life as a whole has become unbearably tedious and absolutely stripped of mystery — thus those who no longer believe they have any fate establish a connection between themselves and darkness, and a human impulse becomes active in them: they cannot help expecting all sorts of bizarre possibilities. The machinery of life then contrives to satisfy this impulse.

Nevertheless, the activities of modern people in sport cannot be fully understood merely by recognizing everything that the mass instinct can derive from it. Sport is an organized enterprise in which people, forced into the machinery of labor, seek only what corresponds to their immediate impulse of self-preservation. Yet in sport we still discover and feel something great hovering over the enterprise. Sport is not only game, not only the creation of records; it is also a sublimation, a spiritual restoration. Today, sport has become a demand made upon everyone. Even the most refined life must yield to the pressure of natural impulses and enter into sport.

Indeed, some compare contemporary sport with ancient sport. But in those earlier times, sport could be said to be the extraordinary person's indirect participation in his divine origin — an idea that no longer exists today. And yet even contemporary people wish to express themselves in one way or another; sport becomes a philosophy. Contemporary people rise up against being bound, confined, and restricted; they seek liberation in sport, although sport has no transcendent content. Despite this, sport still contains the aforementioned element of sublimation as a protest against rigidified conditions — an element that, though not a shared goal, is an unconscious wish. In an age when the machinery of life ruthlessly destroys people one by one, the human body is demanding its own rights. Thus modern sport radiates a brilliance that makes it similar in certain respects to sport in the ancient world, despite their different historical roots.

The contemporary person engaged in sport does not thereby become an ancient Greek; but neither is he merely a sports fanatic. When he engages in sport, what we see is a person: tightly wrapped in a life jacket, in continuous danger, as if engaged in real warfare; this person is not crushed by an almost unbearable fate, but fights vigorously for himself, straightening his body to hurl his spear.

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