Sport and the philosopher

Politique Internationale — Sport does not immediately look like a subject for philosophy, unlike culture or major societal issues. How can this reticence be explained? Is it considered less noble than others as a subject?

Robert Redeker — Sport is indeed more the domain of sociologists. Philosophers are more reluctant. Wrongly so; as Montaigne points out, nothing that is human should be excluded from philosophy. Sport is the complete human universe in miniature, illustrating it for better and for worse. The best, for example, lies in the mutual assistance that is visible within a rugby team; or else in the fair play of the Irish public in remaining silent when a Toulouse striker takes a penalty kick, to take the case of a match last spring in which Stade Toulousain faced off Munster. The worst refers, among other things, to the fanaticism of some branches of supporters, to the oversized egos of certain champions or the excesses of the business of sport. I do not necessarily include doping in this category of the worst: first, because doping has always existed, ever since Antiquity; and then, because the act of cheating, whether we like it or not, is inherent to human action. It is not a question of scorning sport on the pretext that athletes manage to dope; rather, we should be lamenting the laxity of certain federations in this domain.

Sport is also a subject for philosophy because it is a subject of total thought. Look at the variety of fields that come into play: industry, with the construction of new tools and equipment; chemistry, with the use by some athletes of molecules that are more or less lawful; even the media, with the inflation in sports broadcasting. Leibniz is a philosopher that I particularly like: he sees the world as a meeting of spiritual and material monads, the most sustained of which is the reflection of the universe in its entirety. Sport is part of this reflection. Sport can be compared, through its ability to reflect, to the Leibnizian monad.

P. I. — When thinking about sport, should we consider individual sports and team sports differently?

R. R. — The distinction emerges quite quickly: individual sport immediately seeks personal performance, motivated by the desire to shine, even by the desire to crush the competition; team sports flourish more in sharing, exchanging, the combination of skills. However, nuance is essential: a cycling team at the start of a major tour is not the sum of eight people perched on their bikes, each pedaling for themselves; on the contrary, they all work for each other. When a team brings its sprinter to within a few kilometers of the finish, the cyclists sacrifice themselves for the benefit of their faster teammate. In a different genre, a 100- metre champion has a whole team behind him: a trainer, a physiotherapist, a data specialist, a nutritionist ... And in a race over 5,000 or 10,000 metres, team strategy is not an empty concept: African runners from the highlands are past masters in the art of setting the pace to progressively eliminate their competitors.

P. I. — Given its historical roots, is an event like the Olympic Games likely to bring sport closer to philosophical reflection?

R. R. — It is complicated to answer. Over the years, the Olympics have taken on an institutional, commercial and economic dimension that is likely to distance them from collective enthusiasm. And I’m not even talking about their political instrumentalization: with Hitler, who used the Berlin Olympics in 1936 as an aesthetic showcase for the Nazi regime, rendered in images by the terrifying cinematographic talent of Leni Riefenstahl; during the Cold War, with the threats of a boycott, whether realized or not; or, more recently, with Putin, who campaigned successfully with the sporting bodies to have the Winter Games held in Sochi. Still, the Olympics coincide with an unparalleled planetary celebration. Is there another event where citizens from all over the world can come together, managing to combine rivalry and fraternity? This perspective opens up spaces for reflection. In a way, the Olympic Games make us proud to belong to the human species: on the fringes of the communion among athletes, the beauty of the exploits in the stadium – and the dazzling beauty of the bodies which carry them out – is very real. The beauty of our species excites me.

P. I. — Did the ancient philosophers turn the Olympics into grounds for reflection?

R. R. — The Olympic Games did not immediately become a theatre for bringing most of the world’s nations together and allowing all cultures to express themselves. In Antiquity, the Games were part of a cultural process – for paying homage to the deities – and witnessed the Greek world’s celebration of itself. Much more than the philosophers, it was the poets, like Pindar, who were in the front line: their poetic songs greeted the victors while proclaiming the semi-divine dimension of the event. Conversely, someone like Aristotle, philosopher par excellence, paid absolutely no attention to the Olympic Games. Plato, Aristotle’s elder, had a more nuanced perception: he professed that gymnastics was to the body what music was to the soul, a form of ordering, a search for global harmonization.

P. I. — Beyond Antiquity, when does the history of philosophy find an anchor in sport?

R. R. — You have to wait until the end of the 19th century. At that time, there was a current of thought that began to take an interest in the ancient world. It was starting to emerge from limbo. The Olympic Games make up one part of this horizon that was gradually rediscovered by historians, men of letters and educated minds in general. At the end of the 19th century, you have an acceleration in the industrial revolution: sport was seen as a good way to discipline the working masses. At the beginning of the 20th century, physical exercise in France became subject to a struggle between the clergy on the one hand, and the teachers on the other; the first saw it as an element of pastoral care, while the latter sought to counteract its momentum. The two institutions, the State, via the schools, and the Church, via patronage and the catechism, used sport to supervise and train the country’s youth. Philosophy was not far behind in wanting to use sport to support the education years.

On the fringes of these major currents and confrontations, eminent thinkers were practising physical exercise on a daily basis. Is it widely known that Descartes was a very skilled swordsman? Moreover, he is also the author of the treatise: Art d’escrime, d’épée comme de sabre, pour bien défendre sa vie en chevalier (the art of fencing, sword and saber, for the good defense of one’s life as a knight). Once, his blade even allowed him to settle a score with some brigands who wanted to hold him to ransom on his boat. As for Kant, not one of his days went by without his taking a good hour-long walk. History tells that he gave up this pastime on only a single occasion: on the day he learned of the storming of the Bastille. Closer to us, Michel Serres was a genuine rugby aficionado. Not to mention Alexis Philonenko, a boxing fan!

P. I. — It’s an understatement to say that athletes, including the greatest champions, are sometimes mocked for their rather basic oral expression. So much so that some commentators claim that athletes have no capacity for abstraction. Is doing high-dose physical exercise so antagonistic to philosophical reflection?

R. R. — That judgment is oh so reductive. The cyclist Guillaume Martin (1) holds a Masters degree in philosophy specializing in Nietzsche. This outstanding double trajectory – sporting and academic – is no doubt an exception, but it prevents you from making fun of the athletes’ word. There are mitigating circumstances: first, they are often of humble social, and sometimes immigrant, origin; then, their training often takes place in ‘champion factories’, where there is not much room for any outlook other than sporting success; in the case of football, young people are totally focused only on the round ball. Finally, these apprentices suffer from extreme pressure, that inflicted by their close entourage, which is hoping that their performances will lead to increased material comfort, even to glory membership in the world of the stars. But for all that, is sport an exception in the quest for high-level achievement from an early age? We single out those children or teenagers who dream only of exploits in the stadium or gymnasium, but no one gets worked up about the pace that is equally demanding in the artistic sectors, in dance and music in particular. Practising scales indefinitely when you are seven or eight years old: is the pianist better off than the athlete? This terrible constraint is nevertheless essential to the excellence of the few who bring joy to all.

P. I. — On a personal note, do you remember the first occasions that gave you a taste for sport?

R. R. — That goes back to primary school. I remember the day when a student kept repeating the name, Fausto Coppi. It was January 1960; the great Italian cycling champion had just died. I inquired and found out who Coppi was: one of the greatest cyclists in history, the campionissimo, the first to have achieved the Giro-Tour de France double in 1949 before repeating the performance in 1952. A little later, the kid of the South-West that I was discovered the rugby of the villages. ‘You never recover from your childhood,’ sang Jean Ferrat. Mine allowed me to nail a double passion for rugby and cycling which never left me. Admittedly, from one era to another, you can be disappointed by the progress of a competition, the behavior of a champion or the development of one’s favorite discipline, but the real enthusiasm does not change. Sport, which has become an economic sector in its own right, has not put me off. Some say ‘it was better before’; I do not share that opinion. Immerse yourself in a rugby match from thirty or forty years ago, thanks to the INA’s images. You will see that apart from some beautiful sequences of play, the rhythm of the matches is often boring: touch kicks abound, rather than the passes. In comparison, today’s matches are of a whole different intensity: there is almost never any downtime. Less friendly, they are more beautiful.

P. I. — There may never be a decrease in the pace of today’s rugby matches, but on the other hand, the contacts are impressive enough to dissuade parents from introducing their children to the sport. Can a philosopher cope with a gladiator fight?

R. R. — Rugby players have changed in size. Previously, whether you were small, tall, fat or thin, you had your place on a team. This sport did not suffer from any physical discrimination: everyone could meet on the field. Today, the forwards are 1.95 metres tall, weigh 110 kilos and run 100 metres in less than 11 seconds. If you are not cut out to take it in the gut, they’ll break you in two. Inevitably, the morphology of rugby players has undergone considerable changes. Are they gladiators, for all that? That would mean that their life was limited to combat. That is not the case. Some follow university courses, others speak publicly on social issues, still others have an artistic bent. Jean-Pierre Rives (2) is a talented painter and sculptor.

P. I. — You’ve reminded us that doping is a form of cheating that is part of human nature. Does the fact that doping no longer spares any discipline not erode your taste for sport?

R. R. — I’m not minimizing doping; I’m putting it into perspective. I minimize it all the less because it has become one of the principle changes to modern sport. Thirty or forty years ago, doping arose somewhat unexpectedly: we knew it existed but we considered it a bit of an epiphenomenon, or the prerogative of a few disciplines that were decidedly too demanding. These days, it is part of an institutionalized system. There are networks, methods and organized fraud in many sports. Sometimes this form of cheating, as was the case in the days of the East Germany, is even orchestrated by the public authorities. Sport reflects human nature in all its dimensions. There are criminal organizations in society, and there are in sport

– that’s normal. I use this word in the sense given to it by Émile Durkheim, when the father of French sociology wrote: ‘Crime is normal because a society that would be exempt from it is quite impossible.’ Durkheim clarifies his thought thus: ‘Crime is therefore necessary: it is linked to the fundamental conditions of all social life, but, for that very reason, it is useful; for the conditions to which it is bound are themselves indispensable to the normal evolution of morality and law.’ (3) Three words matter: normal, necessary, useful. They also apply to cheating in sport. Doping, which is a form of crime, is thus part of the conditions of existence for sporting activity as a collective activity. He is in solidarity with it. Nevertheless, we must fight it with all the energy we are capable of. On the other hand it would be foolish, and even fanatical, to imagine being able to eradicate it. To love sport is to fight its mistakes, which are the same as the mistakes of any human society.

P. I. — Does watching a competition on television – or in a stadium

– as a philosopher imply anything in particular? Do other facets of the sport come to the fore?

R. R. — I attend a competition as a sports fan, not at all as a philosopher. I believe it is the same attitude that is adopted by a painter, a writer or an architect in the moment before a sports spectacle. The desire to paint, to write, comes later. As Guy Béart’s song, as sung by Carla Bruni, says, ‘it’s afterwards that it happens’. Does philosophically observing a sports spectacle mean keeping a neutral eye, a measured vocabulary in all circumstances and an Olympian calm? In that case I’m far from it, like many. When I watch a Stade Toulousain match, it’s in the spirit of a fan. This chauvinism can be practised without excess. Returning to the Olympic Games, which combine rivalry with fraternity: the supporters support their team, but that should not stop them from recognizing the opponent’s merits.

P. I. — Are athletes the heroes of modern times?

R. R. — Compared to artists, politicians or the great scientists, athletes have a huge advantage: they are ordinary men and women, with characteristics and an existence with which everyone can identify. Let’s leave famous footballers aside, some of whom don’t live on the ground but in a parallel universe resembling that of the jet set. In short, the trivialization of sports figures hauls them up more easily onto a pedestal: we admire them all the more because they are not light years away from the man in the street in the way they behave. But the term heroism is inappropriate. Real heroes are those Ukrainians risking their lives to defend their country against the Russian invasion. Athletes are elements of a star system that makes the eyes of millions of people shine.

P. I. — Do philosophers prefer healthy sports to competitive sports?

R. R. — The two worlds are in opposition. While the search for performance forces you to push your limits, healthy sport promotes health and equilibrium. But to what extent do we appreciate moderation?