Abstract
What is the good life? Or: how are we to live? Since ancient times the answer to this question usually is that we must work on ourselves and improve ourselves by way of training. This practical and practiced philosophical investigation will focus on one particular dimension of this striving for human perfection by means of ‘asceticism’ (a derivative from the ancient Greek askēsis, meaning exercise or training): endurance sports, such as long distance running, cycling and triathlon. These are all sports that flourish by dedicated training rather than sheer motor talent, which makes them not only accessible but also increasingly popular among the crowd.
Especially the phenomenon of cycling has brought endurance sport within reach of the masses. Almost everyone can ride and afford a bicycle, a high tech artefact, which according to Ivan Illich “outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well” (Energy & equity. Harper & Collins, New York, 1974, p. 60). This energetic economy makes the bicycle a straightforward tool for a more sustainable lifestyle. But the stakes of a life that is to be fully lived in endurance are higher. How can endurance sport at large and cycling in particular contribute not only to self-knowledge, but also to self-improvement and to sustainability?
Because of its competitiveness and agonistic characteristic—at first sight the very opposite of peaceful sustainable coexistence—sport usually has a negative connotation in environmental philosophy or ‘ecosophy’ (a contraction of ecology and philosophy), a term coined by Arne Naess in the seventies and applied to sport by Sigmund Loland in the nineties. Inspired by Loland’s attempt to sketch an ecosophy of sport, and strengthened by Peter Sloterdijk’s analysis of man as an upwardly oriented training animal, set forth in You must Change your Life: On Anthropotechnics (2009/2013), as well as insights from historical phenomenology (or ‘metabletics’), hermeneutics and pragmatism, I will argue for a vertically challenged life in what William James has called ‘the strenuous mood’: serious and hard pushing, instead of pedalling around just a little. This results in an upwardly oriented ecosophical life, leading to qualitative growth, human flourishing, durability and a change for the better. Agonistic sport and environmental sensitivity: the twain shall not only meet but merge into a strenuous consequential truth.
Bicycles let people move with greater speed without taking up significant amounts of scarce space, energy, or time.… They can get the benefits of technological breakthroughs without putting undue claims on the schedules, energy, or space of others.
(Ivan Illich 1974, p. 63)
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
This refers to ‘Friluftsliv’, the typically Norwegian predilection for unpolished outdoor-life.
- 2.
With a capital S and an exclamation-mark, indeed.
- 3.
In 2017 bicycle manufacturer Cervélo launched the P5X as the ‘ultimate tri bike’, which costs approximately 15,000 euro’s.
- 4.
“A sport record is a performance, measured in exact mathematical-physical entities (meters, seconds, or kilograms) within a standardized spatio-temporal framework defined by sport rules, that is better than all previous performances measured in identical ways” (Loland 2001, p. 128).
- 5.
The 100 metre dash is considered the highlight of the modern Olympic Games: explosive, athletic, highly concentrated, and often performed by athletes with great commercial value and charisma. At the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro sprinter Jamaican Usain Bolt, for instance, received more exposure and media coverage than Kenian Eliud Kipchoge, the winner of the men’s marathon. While at top level both disciplines require a lot of natural talent, in endurance sport training, perseverance, dedication, steadiness and phronēsis (practical wisdom), are also essential characteristics, which, I argue, have special benefits to offer for a full-blown ecosophical take on sport.
- 6.
The third category of sports Loland mentions is constituted by ‘games’, such as soccer, tennis and handball. There seems to be another, fourth category, however: so-called juried-sports, such as gymnastics and platform diving. One might furthermore question if combat sports (e.g. boxing, mixed martial arts, free fighting) are a mixture of games or contests and juried sports or a separate category In the more methodologically en theoretically oriented Chapters (especially Chap. 5) I will address the problematic issue of categorising human activities people are inclined to call ‘sport’ in more detail, among others by reconsidering Bernard Suits’s tricky triad of games, play and sport (1988).
- 7.
An Ironman triathlon consists of 3,8 kms of swimming, followed by 180 kms cycling and rounded with running a marathon (42.195 kms).
- 8.
It is debatable to use the term ‘record’ here, since there are no standardized arenas in triathlon. Triathlon is a quasi-record sport in Loland’s grammar: “The Boston Marathon is rather different from the one in Oslo. The conditions and trails of cross-country ski races vary from race to race. We talk of records here but in an accurate way. Events with exact performance measurements but without strictly standardized frameworks shall be referred to as quasi-record sports” (Loland 2001, p. 128).
- 9.
Due to severe cooling most competitors can’t do this by themselves. To my knowledge, in all other long distance triathlons help from outside is forbidden. Unlike in professional cycling, competitors in a triathlon are supposed to be self-supporting, except for the so-called ‘energy labs’, where the athletes can stock up on food and fluids.
- 10.
A term coined by Karl Marx, meaning ‘man the maker’. In this study homo faber will reveal him- or herself as a homo asceticus, an inevitably practicing man or woman. In human life it is not about the things that are made, it is about the making—so process rather than result—a point which often seems to be overlooked in sport philosophy (Cfr. Aggerholm 2016).
- 11.
Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger are Sloterdijk’s main philosophical role models. Overall one might call his style eclectic, exuberant and distinctive, however. A more comprehensive reading of Sloterdijk’s philosophical style will be provided in Chap. 5 Ascetic Practices, Hermeneutical Cycles and Ecosophical Endurance.
- 12.
Roughly as of his Spheres Trilogy, published together in 2005 as Being and Space, a reference to Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927/2008).
- 13.
Sloterdijk shares Heidegger’s habit of enriching the already richly worded German language with witty but often somewhat enigmatic linguistic findings. He does so, however, with a more light-hearted touch, I contend.
- 14.
In the Chaps. 6, and particularly 7, I will raise the issue of how to increase the physical resilience of humans, so that they will take less refuge with an unsustainable life-setting. A physically more active life may result in less polluting ways of travelling and probably also to a more food conscious consumption: “less meat more veggies” (Peter Sloterdijk in Giesen 2011). From a moral point of view it seems reasonable to not only shift the blame to our vulnerable planet, but to take responsibility ourselves. Of course developing homeo-technology seems fair, but on the other hand we should not stop questioning our own behaviour, restrain ourselves and ponder over the idea of an ‘appropriate withdrawal’, which will be taken up further on.
- 15.
In Driven by Technology. The Human Condition and the Biotechnology Revolution (2008) Pieter Lemmens, furthering Sloterdijk’s findings, contends that technology is constituent of the human condition since the very beginning. Humans are essentially technological, not accidentally.
- 16.
As expressed in Aristotle’s concept of εὐδαιμονία (eudaimonia), best translated as ‘well-spiritedness’.
- 17.
It has to be noted that José Ortega y Gasset’s ideas on asceticism and technology, already formulated in the nineteen-thirties, look similar to Sloterdijk’s, who doesn’t mention the Spaniard’s work in You must Change your Life once. However, there is at least a difference of emphasis in the interpretation of asceticism of both authors. Whereas Sloterdijk paves the way for the beneficial ‘democratising’ wider implications of ascetology, in The Revolt of the Masses (1932/1993) Ortega seems at least hesitant about the beneficial range of true asceticism for all.
As one advances in life, one realises more and more that the majority of men—and of women—are incapable of any other effort that that strictly imposed on them as a reaction to external compulsion. And for that reason, the few individuals we have come across who are capable of a spontaneous and joyous effort stand out isolated, monumentalised, so to speak, in our experience. These are the select men, the nobles, the only ones who are active and not merely reactive, for whom life is a perpetual striving, an incessant course of training. Training = askesis. These are the ascetics. This apparent digression should not cause surprise. In order to define the actual mass-man, who is as much ‘mass’ as ever, but who wishes to supplant the ‘excellent’, it has been necessary to contrast him with the two pure forms which are mingled in him: the normal mass and the genuine noble or man of effort (pp. 65–66).
In other words: mass asceticism always bears the traits of reactive and external ‘horizontality’. Jesús Ilundáin-Agurruza elucidates that (like Sloterdijk’s) Ortega’s ratio-vitalistic asceticism comes with a substantial vertical effort. “This ethos embraces challenges that demand suffering and discipline” (2014, p. 289). In the end Ortega y Gasset’s asceticism remains in noncommittal ‘ludic’ spheres, however, Ilundáin-Agurruza contends: “It also values activities non-instrumentally, for what they are, focusing on the process not the result” (p. 289). For Ortega sport is “the most exalted, serious, and important part of life, while labour ranks second as its derivative . . . life, properly speaking, resides in the first [i.e., sportive activity] alone; the rest is relatively mechanic and a mere functioning” (Ortega y Gasset 1941/2002, p. 18). Whilst also Sloterdijk is anything but a result fetishist, I still argue that his general vertical ascetology is more susceptible for a massive behavioural change for the better, since it implicitly also aims for concrete results: a more sustainable world. It is bottom-up mass (endurance) sport that will change our life for the better, rather than (‘ludic’, playful) top-down elitarianism.
- 18.
Agon means, among other things, ‘fight’ ‘or ‘struggle’ in Ancient Greek. Further on I will elaborate the concept of agon, notably in Chap. 7.
- 19.
Initially rebirthing just referred to a type of curative breathing technique invented by Leonard Orr, who proposed that correct breathing can cure disease and relieve pain. I contend that this ode to the benefits of proper breathing techniques perfectly fits in Sloterdijk’s suggestion for a physically oriented ascetological framework. Things definitely went wrong, however, when Orr devised rebirthing therapy in the 1970s after he supposedly re-lived his own birth while in the bath. His claim that breathing techniques could be used to purge traumatic childhood memories that had been repressed has been thoroughly criticized and unveiled as unscientific and only attractive for an irrational clientele by Margaret Singer and Janja Lalich in Crazy Therapies: What are they? Do they Work? (1996). In 2006, a panel of over one hundred experts participated in a survey of psychological treatments considered rebirthing therapy to be discredited.
- 20.
‘Must’ (musst) is not very common in written German, in which there is a strong preference for the more indirect ‘should’ (sollst).
- 21.
- 22.
Thus spoke Sloterdijk in an interview concerning the Tour de France (Gorris and Kurbjuweit 2008).
- 23.
‘Pushbike’ is a British-American expression I came across during a coast to coast cycling trip in the US in 2001. This expression distinguishes the bicycle from a motor-cycle, on which one just has to sit, and not to push the pedals. It is the lifting of the knee and the pressure on the calves and quads that makes the difference between supposedly feeling free and truly being alive. While both the motor-cyclist and the push-cyclist have developed a routine of photographing themselves next to sign that indicates the height of a climb, their physical experience of the way to the top is totally different: stepping on the gas versus intensely pedaling with sore calves and quads. Other than Robert M. Pirsig suggests in his novel Zen and the Art of Motor-cycle Maintenance (1974), I argue that riding a push-bike is the best way to actually understand the United States in the footsteps of Lewis & Clark. I will take up this argument in the final Chapter, entitled Epilogue: Turning in the Widening Gyre.
- 24.
In long distance endurance sport events many ‘competitors’ do not aim for a high ranking, they just want to finish the race within the time limit.
- 25.
The Danish sport philosopher Kenneth Aggerholm (2016) has undertaken a well-designated effort to link Sloterdijk’s ascetological findings with a plea for a less result-oriented and more process-oriented virtuous approach in the philosophy of sport. Other than his generalist and still quite ‘ludic’ approach, I will argue for a more specific endurance sport oriented interpretation of ascetic ‘aretism’, or virtue, however. I will elaborate on this in Chapter 8 .Epilogue: Turning in the Widening Gyre.
- 26.
- 27.
Van den Berg may be considered a radical conservative with sometimes questionable, and anything but egalitarian thoughts. Still, for the same reason one might argue that his provocative thoughts open up challenging new societal horizons, for instance when it comes to our apparent inclination to turn towards technological fixes, rather than bridling ourselves and returning to a life that is less consumptive—a striving which also often shows up in ‘leftist’ eco-philosophy, with its incompatible . In this sense Van den Berg’s critique echoes Arne Naess’s plea for human modesty and the anti-hedonistic undercurrent in his ‘non-anthropocentrism’. I will elaborate on this in Chap. 4 Metabletics of Spinal Sport: When Poion meets Poson.
- 28.
The philosophy of sport suffers from a semantic confusion when it comes to game-playing and sport Suits himself speaks of a ‘tricky triad’ consisting of play, games and sport. 1988. This will be discussed in more detail in Chap. 5 Ascetic Practices, Hermeneutical Cycles and Ecosophical Endurance.
- 29.
Metaballein means ‘to change’ in ancient Greek.
- 30.
A special issue of Sport, Ethics and Philosophy has been solely dedicated to sport and hermeneutics (Lopez Frias and Edgar 2016).
- 31.
I propose this generic term for a criticism of our high tech and literally inhumane society which largely overlaps with Heidegger’s Seinsvergessenheit (‘forgetfulness of being’ or ‘oblivion of being’), as well as to some extent Sloterdijk’s already mentioned criticism of allo-technology, and the more frequently used ‘critique of technical reason’ (E.g. Van den Bossche 1995).
- 32.
This is an explanatory weakness metabletics shares with ‘classical’ phenomenology. The attempt to get to the core of things paradoxically leads to alienation of the matter in question. The Dutch philosopher of technology Laurens Landeweerd stipulates that the famous dictum of the founding father of phenomenology Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), ‘Zu den Sachen Selbst’ (towards the things themselves) “is notorious because for those who follow him, his phenomenological ideas seem to imply a reduction of knowledge of things to knowledge of appearances” (2016, p. 1). “In stressing the textu(r)al nature of our reality, and analyzing the underlying structures of our understanding of reality as more fundamental than that reality itself, the above schools of thought tend to reduce things to contextu(r)ality, thus robbing us of the ability to experience their ‘thingly’ nature. As such, they echoed the death of metaphysics (as the philosophy of being) and its replacement by the discursive, something already premeditated by Ludwig Feuerbach. As early as 1848, he stated that his age held ‘a preference for the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, fancy to reality, the appearance to the essence’” (p. 11).
- 33.
Not be confused with ‘crude pragmatism’ in sports coaching: “the view that the right approach to coaching is the one that gets results’, most obviously on the scoreboard or on the clock” (Devine and Knight 2017, p. 35).
- 34.
Prospero, the right duke of Milan, already argued in a similar tone of voice on the impossibility of separating things from thoughts or nominal words from universal ideas: “We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep” (Shakespeare 1983, p. 19).
- 35.
Van den Bossche argues that pragmatism is not exclusively an Anglo-Saxon case. Heidegger’s philosophical toolbox also accommodates pragmatic chisels. Cfr. also Okrent (1988), Drabinski (1993) and Pollock (1995) for other attempts to integrate the phenomenological-hermeneutical tradition with pragmatism. I will elaborate on this line of reasoning further on, in particular in Chap. 7 On Agon and Ecosophical Endurance: Finding your Own Pace.
- 36.
Unless one crashes or rides knee-devastating gears, of course.
- 37.
‘Athlete’ usually refers to a natural born talent for sport, in particular the athletic disciplines, that can be enhanced by but are not totally reducible to training practices. I argue that in long distance endurance sport genetic predisposition is far less important than the willingness to train over and over again. It is the true ascetic attitude that counts.
- 38.
Cfr. Loland (1995): “Coubertin’s perhaps best known aphorism is actually a quote from a bishop of Central Pennsylvania, Ethelbert Talbot, who, during a pulpit sermon during the 1908 London Games claimed that ‘...the important thing in these Olympiads is less to win than to take part in them’”(p. 64). On the same page Loland concludes that Coubertin’s real concern was the sporting record, the ‘external axiom’ of Olympianism. This winning mood is perfectly exemplified in the Olympic motto Citius, altius, fortius (faster, higher, stronger). The Games are about winning.
References
Aggerholm, K. 2016. On practising in sport: Towards an ascetological understanding of sport. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 43 (3): 350–365.
Devine, J.W., and C.J. Knight. 2017. Beyond ‘crude pragmatism’ in sports coaching; Insights from C.S. Pierce, William James, and John Dewey, A commentary. International Journal of Sport Science and Coaching 12 (1): 35–37. https://doi.org/10.1177/1747954116684405.
Drabinski, J. 1993. Radical empiricism and phenomenology: Philosophy and the pure stuff of experience. Journal of Special Philosophy, New Series 7 (3): 226–242.
Fusche Moe, V. 2014. The philosophy of sport and continental philosophy. In The Bloomsbury companion to the philosophy of sport, ed. C. Torres, 52–65. London: Bloomsbury.
Giesen, P. 2011, April. Peter Sloterdijk, Duitse filosoof: Naar de sportschool om de planeet te redden. De Volkskrant 30 (2011): 7–8.
Gorichanaz, T. 2016. Beautiful and sublime: The aesthetics of running in a commodified world. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 43 (3): 365–380.
Gorris, L., and Kurbjuweit, D. 2008. Philosopher Peter Sloterdijk on the Tour de France: “The Riders are Just Regular Employees.” Der Spiegel Online International. http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/philosopher-peter-sloterdijk-on-the-tour-de-france-the-riders-are-just-regular-employees-a-565111.html. Accessed 9 September 2017.
Heidegger, M. 1927/2008. Being and time. New York: Harper & Row.
Hochstetler, D., and P. Hopsicker. 2012. The heights of humanity: Endurance sport and the strenuous mood. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 39 (1): 117–136.
———. 2016. Normative concerns for endurance athletes. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 43 (3): 335–350.
Illich, I. 1974. Energy & equity. New York: Harper & Collins.
Ilundáin-Agurruza, J. 2014. José Ortega y Gasset: Exuberant steed. Sport, Ethics and Philosophy 8 (3): 285–314. https://doi.org/10.1080/17511321.2014.981361.
James, W. 1907. The energies of man. The American Magazine (reprint).
———. 1976. The works of William James: Essays in radical empirism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Krabbé, T. 1978/2016. The rider. London: Bloomsbury.
Landeweerd, L. 2016. Das verborgene Leben der Dinge/The hidden life of things. Unpublished lecture/Artistic Object.
Lemmens, P. 2008. Gedreven door techniek. De menselijke conditie en de biotechnologische revolutie (Driven by technology. The human condition and the biotechnology revolution). Oisterwijk: Box Press.
Loland, S. 1995. Coubertin’s ideology of Olympism from the perspective of the history of ideas. Olympika: International Journal of Olympic Studies 4: 49–77.
———. 1996. Outline of an ecosophy of sport. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 23: 70–90.
———. 2001. Record Sports: An ecological critique and a reconstruction. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 28: 127–139.
———. 2006. Olympic sport and the ideal of sustainable development. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 33: 144–156.
Lopez Frias, J., and A. Edgar. 2016. Sport and hermeneutics. Sport, Ethics and Philosophy 10 (4): 343–349.
Meinberg, E. 1991. Die Moral im Sport, Bausteine einer neuen Sportethik. Aachen: Meyer & Meyer.
Meyr, K. 2016. Isklar Norseman extreme triathlon: Results 2016. https://nxtri.com/wet-wet-cold/. Accessed 5 February 2018.
Okrent, M. 1988. Heidegger’s pragmatism. Understanding, being, and the critique of metaphysics. Ithaka: Cornell University Press.
Ortega y Gasset, J. 1932/1993. The revolt of the masses. New York/London: W.W. Norton.
———. 1941/2002. The sportive origin of the state. In Toward a philosophy of history, ed. J. Ortega y Gasset. Urbana/Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Pollock, A. 1995. Pragmatism and hermeneutics: Rorty, James and Gadamer on truth. Ottawa: University of Ottawa.
Shakespeare, W. 1983. The complete works of William Shakespeare. London: Henry Pordes.
Singer, M., and J. Lalich. 1996. Crazy therapies. What are they? Do they work? San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Sloterdijk, P. 2005. Sphären: Eine Trilogie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Sloterdijk 2009/2013. You must change your life: On anthropotechnics. Cambridge: Malden.
Suits, B. 1978/2005. The grasshopper: Games, life and utopia. Ontario: Broadview Press.
———. 1988. Tricky triad: Games, play, and sport. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 15: 1–9.
Tuncel, Y. 2013. Agon in Nietzsche. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.
Van den Berg, J.-H. 1973. De reflex: Metabletische tegelijk maatschappijkritische studie. Nijkerk: Calllenbach.
Van den Bossche, M. 1995. Kritiek van de technische rede. Een onderzoek naar de invloed van techniek op ons denken. Utrecht: Jan van Arkel.
———. 2001. Ironie en solidariteit. Een kennismaking met het werk van Richard Rorty. Rotterdam: Lemniscaat.
———. 2010. Sport als levenskunst. Rotterdam: Lemniscaat.
Van der Hout, S. 2014. The homeotechnical turn: Sloterdijk’s response to the ecological crisis. Environmental Values 23: 423–442.
Welters, R. 2011. Van Eyserbosweg naar Eyserbosweg: Fietsfilosofische plaatservaringen. In Filosofische beschouwingen over plaats: Verbondenheid met natuur en landschap, ed. R. Van den Born, M. Drenthen, P. Lemmens, and T. Van Slobbe, 51–70. Zeist: KNNV.
———. 2014. Sport and the environment: Ecosophical and metanoetical intersections. In The Bloomsbury companion to the philosophy of sport, ed. C. Torres, 163–179. London: Bloomsbury.
———. 2016. On ascetic practices and hermeneutical cycles. Sport, Ethics and Philosophy 10 (4): 430–444.
Zwart, H. 2016. What comes next? The operator theory as an operationalisation of the Teilhardian view on cosmogenesis. In Evolution and transitions in complexity, ed. G.A.J.M. Jagers op Akkerhuis, 253–267. Cham: Springer.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Welters, R. (2019). Prologue: The Good Life, Asceticism and Sustainable Cycling. In: Towards a Sustainable Philosophy of Endurance Sport . Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy, vol 37. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05294-2_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05294-2_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-05293-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-05294-2
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)