Existential journey to the ring: the anthropo-philosophical meaning of the Olympic stadium

Authors

  • Antonio Sánchez Pato Catholic University of Murcia
  • Alejandro Leiva Arcas Catholic University of Murcia
  • Emanuele Isidori Università degli Studi di Roma “Foro Italico”

Keywords:

Anthropology, Philosophy, Stadium, Olympism

Abstract

In this work, we are going to develop an anthropo-philosophical analysis of Olympic athletics from three perspectives: 1) from the Cartesian doubt as a methodical doubt emerging from the human being’s interiority, by making ourselves doubtful about our senses when we try to interpret (from a subject-object perspective), and understand the meaning of athletic disciplines; 2) from the putting in parentheses of the concept of “human beingâ€; parentheses from which we will apply so-called “epochéâ€, by bracketing the data coming from common sense (from a subject-world perspective, where the human being is, as Heidegger says, “thrownâ€). Based on these pieces of information, we will normalise these exceptional actions that have lost their usefulness and perspective; 3) we will dive into the ontological meaning of athletics events by using Heideggerian categories of space and time, trying to understand so-called “dasein†of homo deportivus from a subject-world perspective where the human being is “ejectedâ€). That will reveal the process of cultural evolution concerning the human being, where the sport should not contribute to forget but to reaffirm the being. Consequently, the meaning of athletics events performed in a stadium will be analysed to understand that it is always the human being which makes them meaningful, and that sport is a very particular type of “dasein†which expresses the relationship of the human being with the world around.

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Published

2020-10-28

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Articles