olympism and positivism

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8/14/2019 Olympism and positivism http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/olympism-and-positivism 1/32 Excerpt from the book ³Philosophy of Olympism´ (pub.2004) by Ljubodrag Simonovi, Belgrade, Serbia. E-mail : [email protected] OLYMPISM AND POSITIVISM The positive thought of the 19 th century is the most important philosophical source and foundation of modern Olympism. Coubertin does not try to develop a  positive philosophy, but to use its original spirit and postulates that could contribute to an efficient struggle for preserving the ruling order. The "fullness" of Olympism is not primarily determined by positive philosophy, but by new "practical" challenges. In that sense, Olympism is not just an attempt to revive  positive philosophy, but it is also an attempt to give new positive answers, which means to develop a more efficient mechanism of power, according to new class relations, for holding the "masses" in submission. Modern Olympism is not just a conception of the world, it is above all an active (conserving) attitude to the world that appears in the form of a struggle against those who want to see that world changed. In spite of being a scribomaniac, Coubertin's basic intention was not to develop a theory, but a political practice. His writings are a peculiar elaboration of the strategy and tactics of the struggle against the working movement, colonized  peoples and women. Coubertin does not try to make the bourgeois more clever and noble, but to stir the "lazy animal" in him, to develop his greediness and incite him to set on new colonial exploits. That is why a fanatical conquering spirit became one of the dominant features of Olympism. Speaking of Comte's positive philosophy, Marcuse states: "Rarely in the  past has any philosophy urged itself forward with so strong and so overt a recommendation that it be utilized for the maintenance of prevailing authority and for the protection of vested interest from any and all revolutionary onset. (...) Positive philosophy is the only weapon able to combat µthe anarchic force of  purely revolutionary principles'; it alone can succeed in 'absorbing the current revolutionary doctrine'." And he continues: "The lords of earth will learn, also, that positivism inclines 'to consolidate all power in the hands of those who possess this power - whoever they may be'. Comte becomes even more outspoken. He denounces µthe strange and extremely dangerous¶ theories and efforts that are directed against the prevailing property order. These erect an 'absurd Utopia'. Certainly, it is necessary to improve the condition of the lower classes, but this must be done without deranging class barriers and without 'disturbing the indispensable economic order'. On this point, too, positivism offers a testimonial to itself. It promises to 'insure the ruling classes against every anarchistic invasion' and to show the way to a proper treatment of the mass." (1) Coubertin's relation to the antiquity, Christianity, the Enlightenment, the guiding principles of the French Revolution, the philanthropic movement, the democratic institutions and national cultures, expresses his endeavour to remove from history everything that creates

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Page 1: Olympism and positivism

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Excerpt from the book ³Philosophy of Olympism´ (pub.2004) by Ljubodrag

Simonovi, Belgrade, Serbia. E-mail : [email protected] 

OLYMPISM AND POSITIVISM

The positive thought of the 19th

century is the most important philosophical

source and foundation of modern Olympism. Coubertin does not try to develop a

  positive philosophy, but to use its original spirit and postulates that could

contribute to an efficient struggle for preserving the ruling order. The "fullness" of 

Olympism is not primarily determined by positive philosophy, but by new

"practical" challenges. In that sense, Olympism is not just an attempt to revive

 positive philosophy, but it is also an attempt to give new positive answers, which

means to develop a more efficient mechanism of power, according to new class

relations, for holding the "masses" in submission. Modern Olympism is not just a

conception of the world, it is above all an active (conserving) attitude to the worldthat appears in the form of a struggle against those who want to see that world

changed. In spite of being a scribomaniac, Coubertin's basic intention was not to

develop a theory, but a political practice. His writings are a peculiar elaboration of 

the strategy and tactics of the struggle against the working movement, colonized

 peoples and women. Coubertin does not try to make the bourgeois more clever and

noble, but to stir the "lazy animal" in him, to develop his greediness and incite him

to set on new colonial exploits. That is why a fanatical conquering spirit became

one of the dominant features of Olympism.

Speaking of Comte's positive philosophy, Marcuse states: "Rarely in the

  past has any philosophy urged itself forward with so strong and so overt arecommendation that it be utilized for the maintenance of prevailing authority and

for the protection of vested interest from any and all revolutionary onset. (...)

Positive philosophy is the only weapon able to combat µthe anarchic force of 

  purely revolutionary principles'; it alone can succeed in 'absorbing the current

revolutionary doctrine'." And he continues: "The lords of earth will learn, also,

that positivism inclines 'to consolidate all power in the hands of those who possess

this power - whoever they may be'. Comte becomes even more outspoken. He

denounces µthe strange and extremely dangerous¶ theories and efforts that are

directed against the prevailing property order. These erect an 'absurd Utopia'.

Certainly, it is necessary to improve the condition of the lower classes, but this

must be done without deranging class barriers and without 'disturbing the

indispensable economic order'. On this point, too, positivism offers a testimonial

to itself. It promises to 'insure the ruling classes against every anarchistic invasion'

and to show the way to a proper treatment of the mass." (1) Coubertin's relation to

the antiquity, Christianity, the Enlightenment, the guiding principles of the French

Revolution, the philanthropic movement, the democratic institutions and national

cultures, expresses his endeavour to remove from history everything that creates

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the possibility of developing a libertarian thought and stepping out of the existing

world. Olympism is more then a spiritual counterrevolution: it does not only deal

with the emancipatory heritage of the nineteenth-century civil society, but with the

cultural tradition of the West. Using Marx's "XI thesis of Feuerbach" , we could

formulate the following Olympic postulate: philosophers have only interpreted the

world - but the point however is to prevent it from being changed by all means andat all costs.

Among the scholars who have been concerned with Coubertin's work there

are those (Prokop) who hold that Coubertin did not have direct contact with

Comte, but that it was Frédéric Le Play who introduced him to the world of 

  positive philosophy. Either through Le Play or by reading Comte, Coubertin

adopted the basic methodological and doctrinaire starting points of Comte's

 philosophy and with his Olympic idea and practice tried to realize Comte's idea of 

"positive society". It can be said that international sport represents an attempt to

revive and institutionalize positive philosophy and to turn it into a global spiritual

(political) movement. Urlike Prokop rightly sees in international sport an"institution analogous to positive philosophy". (2) The Olympic philosophy and

sport appear as a unity of thought and practice in the construction of positive

society.

The basis of Coubertin's Olympic doctrine are the ideas which make the

corner stones of Comte's "social physics": the ''idea of order'' ("social statics") and

the ''idea of progress'' ("social dynamics").

Idea of Order

The starting point of Comte's theory is a social state characterized by a

"profound anarchy" (anarchie profonde), (3) springing from the revolutionary

turmoils in the end of the 18th

  and in the beginning of the 19th

century, and an

attempt to insure a stable development of capitalism. What is needed after all is a

reconciliation (synthesis) of order and progress. Order exists in society when its

fundamental principles are stable and when almost all members of society are of 

equal opinion. According to Comte, such a state existed in the period of feudalism

in places ruled by Christianity. Following Catholic counter-revolutionary thinkers,

Bonald and De Maistre, Comte deals with Protestantism as a "negative ideology"

(De Maistre) which creates nothing but an intellectual anarchy. With the

development of social science, as the spiritual framework, people will again think 

in the same way and thus insure social stability. It follows that a positive education

is the necessary basis for the establishment of a positive order. Comte holds that

the French Revolution was indispensable, since the old order was founded on the

obsolete theological knowledge which, with the development of science, lost its

credibility. The French Revolution did not offer a possibility of reorganizing

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society, as it was "negative" and "metaphysical" in its demands. Hence a need to

create a new (positive) religion and new clergy which, like the Catholic Church in

the Middle Ages, will unite society. (4) A positive one-mindedness, which is

contrary to political pluralism, is the basis of Comte's political conception.

Starting from the changes introduced by the French Revolution, Comte

tries to deal with its radicalism by curbing its original power and to use it toconsolidate and develop a new order. He wants to "reconcile" the revolutionary

spirit, which eliminated from the historical scene the obsolete "metaphysical"

stage in the development of history, to the new "progressive" spirit of the

"victorious bourgeoisie" (Enthoven) and thus ensure a stable development of 

capitalism and the establishment of the positive as the final stage in the

development of civilization. Although Coubertin claims that the rapid industrial

development, which deprived life of purpose, is the starting point for his

endeavour to offer an Olympic philosophy as a new integrative spiritual force of 

society, the real reason is his endeavour to militarize the French bourgeoisie and

urge it to embark on new colonial exploits, as well as a fear of the ever stronger working movement and the new revolutionary (communist) thought. Frightened

  by the Parisian Commune and the ever louder slogans of the French (and

European) proletariat, Coubertin does not even think of a "reconciliation" to the

revolutionary spirit that opens the possibility of overcoming the class society, but,

 by his reforms, seeks to destroy the germ of a novum created in modern society. In

that context, his Olympic idea is at odds with the emancipatory impulses of 

Comte's positivism. For Coubertin, the bourgeois is not only the advocate of 

capitalism, but also a privilege of the rich "elite" acquired in the periods of slavery

and feudalism. Hence his political allies are the aristocracy and the Catholic

Church - the sworn enemies of the French Revolution and the emancipatoryheritage of the 19th

century; that is why the ancient world, in which demos did not

yet appear on the political scene, is the ideal world that should be sought for; that

is why Coubertin sought to reduce the relations between workers and capitalists to

the relation between feudal lords and serfs; that is why he concluded that with the

French Revolution "only the form changed, while the essence remained the same",

and claimed that the feudal order was "more democratic".

The fight between contradictions is excluded from both Comte's and

Coubertin's social order. They are dominated by a "spontaneous harmony"

(Gurvich) and not by the "integration of parts together with the existence of social

contradictions". (5) As a consistent social prophylactic, Coubertin has a holistic

attitude to society: society becomes an organic whole that functions in harmony.

Unlike Saint-Simon, Fourier and Marx, who in the conflict between social groups

(classes) see the moving force of social progress, Coubertin, like Comte and

Spencer, holds that political conflicts threaten the health of the social organism

and slow down its (inevitable) advance, and therefore seeks to bring all (positive)

social phenomena into an organic unity and remove those (negative) that threaten

it. Coubertin rejected the struggle of the oppressed for freedom, equality and

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 brotherhood - without which the history of mankind cannot be imagined. Conflict

is allowed only within the context of Social Darwinist evolutionism: the fight for 

domination and natural selection become the basis of the "perfectioning" and

"progress" of mankind. This is what gives the internal dynamics to "social statics".

The starting-point of Coubertins conception is the "fact" that the "ruling classes"

(aristocracy and bourgeoisie) established an indisputable domination over theworkers and thereby ended the history of class struggles. It is no accident that

"reconciliation" is one of the key notions that Coubertin adopted from Comte,

creating from it a universal principle of his social theory. In his positive

 philosophy Comte seeks to reconcile science and religion, and reconcile the ideals

of the French Revolution to the counter-revolutionary doctrine of his time.

Coubertin finds in "reconciliation" a magic formula that should "reconcile" the

new and the old, Catholicism and modern Olympic paganism, workers and

capitalists, women and  pater familias, "lower races" and their colonial masters -

for the sake of social peace and the expansion of capitalism.

Comte departs from Aristotle's' thesis that man is   zoon politikon. UnlikeRousseau's "social contract", according to which society is the result of people's

mutual agreement, for Comte, the "sociability of social order rests on people's

spontaneous instinct" - "sociability results spontaneously from human nature". (6) 

Coubertin rejects Aristotle's conception of man as   zoon politikon, Rousseau's

contrat social  and Comte's theory. Man is a greedy animal, and society is the

result of natural evolution and thus represents the highest form of the organization

of the animal world, while the principle "might is right" is the chief integrative

force of society. The social structure corresponds to the structure of the animal

world: on the one hand, there are beasts ("master race"), on the other - ruminants

(working "masses"). The "relations" between "master race" and working "masses"correspond to the relations between vultures and ruminants, which are conditioned

 by the way in which beasts ensure their survival: the "natural right" of beasts to

devour herbivorous animals becomes the "natural right" of the strong to plunder 

and to kill the workers and members of the "lower races". Coubertin creates the

impression of a genetic predestination of the white race, embodied in the West-

European bourgeoisie, to rule the world and speaks of a "master race", and not of a

"master class", which in the course of evolution (fight for survival) acquired

certain qualities that make it "superior" to other races. It is interesting that even

Comte, in his later work  "The System of Positive Policy" , refers to a "natural

order": "The material interests themselves, which the moral power should mix

with the political power, are guided by two universal principles that spring from an

accurate estimate of the natural order. On the one hand, men should feed women;

on the other hand, the active class should feed the contemplative class." (7) 

According to Comte, the "industrial revolution" represents the "main

necessary basis of the great movement of elementary development that thus far 

characterized modern society". (8) He acknowledges the "direct influence of the

industrial revolution on the changing of social phenomena and on the formulation

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of a new philosophical mode of thought", (9) and "recognizes the significance of 

the division of labour for cooperation between people". (10) "Although Comte",

claims Ante Fiamengo, "did not devote much attention to the element of the

division of labour in his work, nor did he analyze the social division of labour, the

association of the notions of cooperation, social solidarity and sociability, which

he distinguishes from the family as a union based on the elements of compassionand sympathy, and his recognition of the significance of the division of labour in

comprising the whole of the human kind in a single social organism, represents, to

 be sure, a bold participation of the ideas that were to some extent common to the

theorists of his epoch, and especially to Marx and Engels." (11) Coubertin relies

on the industrial development, but seeks to instrumentalize it and thus prevent a

direct influence of the industrial revolution on social affairs, which means the

realization of the emancipatory possibilities created by industrialization. He

completely devalued labour, not only as a means for creating social goods and

insuring existence, and as a means for gaining control over natural laws and for 

developing man's productivistic power, but also as a factor conditioning socialstructuring. Unlike Comte, who saw the significance of the division of labour for 

"comprising the whole of the human kind in a single social organism" and who

associates with the social division of labour the notions such as "cooperation,

social solidarity and sociability", (12) Coubertin reduces society to a biological

whole in which the tyrannical power of the rich "elite" is an indisputable

integrative force.

Comte's project of creating a positive one-mindedness by way of an

absolutized and systematized positive scientific knowledge was a failure. For the

new thought was not only meant to spiritually integrate the members of the ruling

class but, in order to achieve "social peace", it ought to have been "acceptable" for the working ''masses" that are the main "disturbing factor" in society. Coubertin's

Olympism in its original sense also seeks to become the integrative spiritual force

of the bourgeoisie. However, it can acquire its true value only when it becomes

one of the chief forms of integrating the oppressed into the spiritual orbit of 

capitalism. By turning sport, as the embodiment of the basic principles of 

capitalism in their pure form, into the fundamental and "cheapest spiritual food for 

the masses", Coubertin created a possibility of realizing the basic intention of 

Comte's positivism in establishing a positive one-mindedness that by its nature

resembles the medieval Christianity (Catholicism). At the same time, instead of an

absolutized and systematized positive knowledge, the activation of the ''masses''

according to the principle bellum omnium contra omnes and the elimination of 

reason become the basic ways of dealing with a critical attitude to the present

world. Instead of Comte's attempt to create a positive one-mindedness by way of 

an absolutized positive knowledge, Coubertin gives priority to the creation of a

 positive character: sport, as a mindless agonal physical activism which embodies

the dominant Social Darwinist and progressistic spirit, represents the basis of the

creation of a positive character from which the corresponding positive conscious

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"spontaneously" develops. Comte created positive philosophy; Coubertin found a

way to revive it.

Idea of Progress

The industrial revolution in the 18th

 and its development in the 19th

century

created a wave of optimism that was one of the foundations of the spiritual climate

which enabled the emergence of Olympism. The myth of the "limitless

  possibilities of the development of science and technique" tacitly supports the

Olympic progress expressed in the famous maxim citius, altius, fortius - which is

the bearer of Comte's "social dynamics". The rapid industrial development and

scientific discoveries erase the borders in time and space and become a power that

in the hands of the bourgeoisie, as the "bearer of progress", becomes the means for 

dominating the world. The expansion of capitalism imposes a need for establishinga global ideology which will enable its free development. The destruction of the

traditional pillars of spiritual integration (above all, religion) and its inefficiency in

the (spiritual) submission of the working "masses" create a need to build a new

integrative thought that will "bring order" in people's heads (in contrast to the

chaos that prevails in society) and will be efficient in dealing with the libertarian

mind. Coubertin was one of those who sought to turn that climate into a

 philosophical program and create from it a universal project of human life.

Coubertin unreservedly accepts Comte's law of progress according to

which society inevitably develops in a positive direction. Progress is a necessary

law of evolution administered by way of abstract humanity. Starting from ascientific evolutionism, Coubertin identified the transformation of the animal

species with progress and based upon it his theory of progress. According to

Windelband, "the evolutionism of natural sciences, including the theory of 

selection, can indeed interpret transformation, but not progress: it cannot establish

that the result of progress is a 'higher', i.e. more valuable form." (13) Coubertin

deprived the idea of progress of its purpose and meaning, which means that he

transferred it from a cultural time, which is the true "space of history" (Marx), into

a physical, "purely mechanical time" (Bloch), which is beyond history. (14)

Coubertin's idea of progress rests upon the thought, which arose in the Modern

Age, which regards nature as the object of a limitless exploitation and science and

technique as a means for controlling the natural forces, and thus makes man the

"master and owner of nature" (maître et possesseur de la nature - Descartes). It

deals with the conception that regards nature as man's living, aesthetical and

historical space. In that context, for Coubertin, the world is not a living and

spiritual whole, but provides resources and energy and thus is the living space of 

European capitalism. The principle of utility is the indisputable basis of the

relation to the world. In Coubertin's Olympic doctrine there are no normative

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limitations to the established "progress", and thus the door is wide open not only to

the capitalist exploitation of nature, but also to its destruction: the absolutized

 principle of utility becomes the principle of destruction. It appears in sport in the

form of the principle of "greater effort", expressed in the progressistic principle

citius, altius, fortius, which is a peculiar butcher's knife for man's self-mutilation:

Coubertin has the same relation to the human body as to nature. Simultaneouslywith the destruction of nature, man's cultural self-conscious is being destroyed.

With the destruction of nature and the creation of a surrogate life all the symbols

of life that characterized the traditional folk culture become alienated from man.

The tacit starting-point of Coubertin's conception of progress is the

development of man's productivistic powers that in the form of science and

technique alienate themselves from him and become the instrument of the ruling

"elite" for dominating the world. The alienation of industry and science from man

opened space for establishing a naturalistic conception of progress based on the

laws of evolution - which are regarded as a fateful power. Capitalism is not the

result of a historical development of society, which means the work of man, butthe highest form in which the laws of evolution appear independently of man and

dictate progress. What is "new" in capitalism is the fact that man is completely

immerged in the process of evolution, which means that all the things (reason,

norms, democratic institutions, human qualities) that mediate between natural laws

and man have been eliminated - and thus society entered a new "positive" phase in

its development that represents the highest possible level in the development of the

living world and the end of the development of humanity. Through the spirit of 

capitalism, which acquires its purest expression in sport, there is established, in the

form of the bourgeoisie, a complete domination of the natural flow of events over 

man: positive society represents a realized naturalism.The Olympic progress manifests the fatal course of the law of "natural

selection" that constantly makes choices, removing the "weak" and leaving the

"strong": the fight for survival and domination is the main driving force of 

 progress. War is the highest and the most drastic form of natural selection and thus

an indispensable lever in ensuring progress. It brings about the "perfectioning" of 

man, nations and races, and thus the "perfectioning" of mankind. By virtue of war 

the white race acquired the genetic properties that make it "superior" to other 

("lower") races. As Coubertin reduces man to animal, his anthropological

conception only confirms his theory of progress. Coubertin bases progress on the

dialectic of nature only to deal with the dialectic of history and enable the

establishment of a global domination of the white rich "elite". What questions the

naturalistic character of Coubertin's doctrine is the absolutization of progress

  based on the development of a dehumanized science and technique. Unlike the

animal, which is moved and restrained by its instincts, Coubertin's man is moved

and restrained by the bellicose and progressistic spirit of capitalism. In man,

natural evolution acquired a new quality (expressed in the principle of "greater 

effort") which at the same time represents its "overcoming". Coubertin

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denaturalized even evolution itself and created from it an abstract force that

appears as a "natural" foundation of capitalist progress.

According to the "optimistic" character of his progressistic conception,

Coubertin opposes those theorists who reduce the nation to a biological organism.

In the final part of his speech which, in the beginning of his Olympic path, was

held in London, Coubertin sends to his compatriots the following message: "Iwould like to give you the true picture of our beloved country although I am far 

from it. Among its children there are too many of those who love with a hopeless

love, who have lost faith in its future. They predict its decline because it has

 behind it a very long past. They compare nations with individuals and believe that

they are doomed to decline and destruction just as inevitably as man is doomed to

grow old and die. This theory finds its justification in their instability; but, it is

merely a theory and Le Play, a great admirer of facts and a great enemy of 

theories, triumphantly refuted it. He showed that the history of all peoples, old and

young, consists in successive changes that are not fatal at all. That is why we, who

are the bearers of this encouraging thought, can with a strong faith and not with ahopeless courage, utter the words which, to be sure, lie deep in yours as well as in

my heart: Long live France!" (15) 

For Coubertin, the bearers of progress are not man's productivistic

(creative) powers, but the greediness of the bourgeois. Just as "meekness" is a

form in which the divine spirit appears in the oppressed, so is greediness a form in

which the spirit of the fight for survival appears in the ruling "elite". It is a new

quality in the development of the living world that is the result of a fight between

races and the exclusive quality of the "master race": greediness becomes the

anthropological basis of progress. Coubertin follows the dominant spirit of the

Modern Age: the possessing and accumulation of material wealth is the purpose of life and the basis on the "perfectioning" of mankind. "Get rich!" - are the words

that Coubertin addressed to the French bourgeoisie to encourage it to head towards

the (golden) Olympic heights. He appears here as a consistent dialectician: the

acquired wealth increases the lust for wealth and it continues to do so for ever -

 progress never stops. A rich man who does not strive to get richer is not only a

traitor of its own class, but is irresponsible as regards progress since he breaks the

chain of acquiring wealth that represents the connective tissue of progress. At the

same time, from Coubertin's Olympic doctrine it clearly follows that the insatiable

hunger of the parasitic classes for material wealth is but a form in which their need

for a limitless power is expressed. There are not many ideologues of capitalism

who, like Coubertin, in such a clear and consistent way unmasked the looting logic

that guides the bourgeoisie and pointed to a direct link between greediness of the

ruling class and the workers' deprivation of rights. It is one more reason for 

keeping Coubertin's "problematical" writings far away from the public eye.

For Marx, the fight of the oppressed for freedom represents the driving

force of social progress. From it follows his "categorical imperative": "To destroy

all relations in which man appears as a humiliated, oppressed, abandoned,

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despised being..." While fighting fanatically for the survival of the order based on

the exploitation of workers, "colored peoples" and women, Coubertin sees in the

fight for freedom the worst form of social pathology. Freedom and progress are

not only inconsistent, but are also opposed. Everything from mankind's heritage

that can make the oppressed working "masses" conscious of the fact that they are

the bearers of social progress and can contribute to the development of their libertarian dignity, has been eliminated. For Coubertin, the driving force of 

 progress is not the divine will or the fight between classes, but the "will to power"

of the rich "elite". The spirit of capitalism is a form in which natural laws are

manifested, while the bourgeoisie represents the extended hand of their fateful

 power on which social existence and progress rest, and at the same time the fist

with which progress eliminates the obstacles on its road. The tyranny of the strong

over the weak is the chief form in which progress is manifested: to oppose tyranny

means to get in the way of the fatal course of progress. Hence to be on the side of 

 progress means to be always on the side of those who ride with their unsheathed

swords, and always against those who fight for freedom.Coubertin's conception of progress deals with the modern idea of progress,

which involves not only quantitative shifts, but also qualitative leaps in the

development of society. Coubertin does not differ much from the old Roman

 progressus that consists in a progression without a novum. Only (endless)

quantitative shifts are possible, a progression in the given spatial and time

dimensions - a progression without progress - which is the basis of the "Olympic

counting" of time. In Coubertin, what is ''new'' is that progression is reduced to the

elimination of every possibility of stepping out of the existing world. The basic

  purpose of Coubertin's "control in heads" is to break the link between man's

 productivistic practice and the development of his conscious of himself as a freeman and the creator of his own history. That is the essence of his progressistic

conception, expressed in the famous Olympic maxim citius, altius, fortius, which

can be called the theory of positive progress. Olympism represents the means for 

creating the cult of capitalist progress: quantitative comparison becomes a

superhuman force to which man is fatally submitted. Horkheimer and Adorno

write about that the following: "Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence. It

makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to abstract quantities. To the

Enlightenment, that which does not reduce to numbers, and ultimately to the one,

 becomes illusion; modern positivism writes it off as literature. Unity is the slogan

from Parmenides to Russell. The destruction of gods and qualities alike is insisted

upon." (16) In sport, there does not exist a dialectical confrontation between good

and bad, freedom and slavery, old and new... Quantitative shifts without

qualitative leaps become an expression and a measure of progress creating the

illusion that capitalism is capable of "moving forward" for ever - at the cost of 

destroying mankind and nature. Instead of being the result of man's liberation and

a condition of a true freedom, progress becomes a capitalistic way of Sisyphus'

curse, which in the Olympic Games acquires a spectacular form.

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Coubertin rarely misses an opportunity to point out in his writings and

speeches the superiority of the ancient over the present world: "the immortal spirit

of antiquity" becomes the symbol of a world that appears as an unrealizable ideal

of modern society. Unlike Coubertin, Comte realizes that in antiquity there did not

exist any idea of progress and that it is the product of the New Age (Turgot,

Condorcet). (17) Speaking about the ancient thinkers, Comte comes to theconclusion that clearly indicates the true nature of Coubertin's Olympic doctrine:

"None of them, not even among those most eminent and clever, were able to resist

the inclination, which was at that time widespread as well as spontaneous, to

regard the contemporary social state as radically inferior to the state of the past

times". (18) A mythologized past is the warrant of eternity of the ruling order: "the

immortal spirit of antiquity" becomes a means for dealing with the idea of future.

According to Comte, "social progress does not change man's nature but,

realizing that which is most noble in man (and it is the predominance of altruism

over egoism and of intelligence over emotionality), history realizes and perfects a

system that most fully develops and realizes man's nature." (19) In that sense, theevolution of human society is, according to Comte, measured by the development

of those human qualities that essentially distinguish human society from the

animal world: intelligence and sociability. (20) Coubertin does not insists on the

development of human qualities, but on a racial perfectioning that should enable

the white race, embodied in the bourgeoisie, to become the "master race": sport is

not a means for developing "intelligence and sociability", but for overcoming

man's "lazy animal nature'' and creating a super-animal in the form of the

  bourgeois. Progress has a relative character and consists in the development of 

such personal and physical features of the ruling "elite" that enable it to

consolidate its dominant position. Coubertin gives the most important role in therealization of progress to "great people", who are connected with progress with a

mystical bond and who appear as the incarnation of its active power. "A handful of 

good men" (Coubertin), in the form of the ruling rich "elite", become the

indisputable bearers of progress, and the working "masses", colonized peoples and

women, the means of its realization. Coubertin supports the theory of "great

 people", but according to him they are not the bearers of progress; they do away

with the ideas and forces that stop and slow down the (inevitable) progress and are

released from every responsibility, apart from that to progress. Man can either 

accelerate or slow down the established progress, but he cannot stop it, let alone

create a new world. The highest form of a "free" activity is the "perfectioning" of 

the present world and oneself as its inseparable part, while the basic purpose of the

Olympic pedagogy is to defend progress against any threats and convince the

oppressed to accept the unjust ruling order as something inevitable. Coubertin, like

Comte, did not resolve the conflict between determinism and freedom: if progress

is necessary and proceeds according to the fixed laws of evolution, then man's free

action is impossible. People are not the bearers of progress and thus the creators of 

history, but are its tools: determinism and fatalism are the basis and framework of 

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human practice. The basic aim of the absolutization of natural laws, as the leading

force of progress, is to deal with man's libertarian and creative self-conscious and

to completely and hopelessly integrate him into the present world. Natural laws

have the same role as the gods in the past: to immortalize the established order of 

oppression by depriving the oppressed of the right to freedom, equality and

 brotherhood. That is why Coubertin deals with man as a reasonable and creative being: instead of striving to create the world in his human image, man can only

adapt to the present world; instead of a totalization of society on the part of the

creators of social welfare, a totalization of society on the part of the parasitic

classes has been established.

As we have seen, for Coubertin man is a "lazy animal", while sport,

which is "not in the nature of man", should develop in him a combatant spirit and

the "will to power". It is through sport that man overcomes his animal nature (by

suppressing his natural and libertarian-creative being) and becomes a peculiar 

super-animal. It is a new and highest level in the evolution of the living beings,

embodied in the form of "new people" who form the "master race". It is obviousthat the moment of will (hence such significance attached to the character) plays

the vital role in the realization of this evolutionary shift, while Coubertin, being

the incarnation of the active powers of "great people", has the central role.

Coubertin appeals to the "might is right" and natural selection as the principal

natural laws, but they appear in the form of a struggle for domination. As for the

will to domination (power), it is not a product of the natural course of evolution,

  but is the result of the struggle between races for survival which acquires its

highest expression in the Hellenic racist, slave-owning and patriarchal order and,

in the Modern Age, in the form of Thomas Arnold's pedagogy and the modern

Olympic Games - which represent the "revival of the immortal spirit of antiquity".In spite of the importance he attaches to sport, Coubertin does not heroize

sportsmen, nor does he glorify their victories and results (records). They appear 

  primarily as the representatives of their race (nation) and thus as a symbolic

incarnation of the developing force of capitalism. Sportsmen are not the real actors

of the Olympic Games, but serve to realize the Olympic spectacle. The real winner 

at the Olympic Games is the "progressive" spirit of capitalism, which, like the

ancient gods, by way of the muscular bodies of sportsmen, their fight and records,

confirms its supremacy and human worthlessness - and the true result is the

revival of the life force of capitalism and people's faith in its indestructibility.

Coubertin abolishes history and reduces it to life, which he further reduces

to a natural course of events. Man does not create his history, and life is a

sequence of natural laws that apply in the animal world, which is but one of the

forms in which the laws of evolution of the living world are realized. Through the

family, race and gender, man acquires the characteristics of biological entities,

which become the foundation of social structuring: instead of being the human

community, mankind is reduced to the animal world; instead of a dialectical

development of history, an evolutionary development of the living world is

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established. Hence it is not the cultural heritage of civilization, which man created

in his struggle for survival and freedom, which is the basis of human "self-

determination" and social integration, but it is the biological heritage of the race

acquired in the struggle for domination. Keeping to the evolutionary positivism,

Coubertin accepts both determinism and succession; however, he does not regard

 positive society as a necessary consequence of the previous state, but as a peculiar reincarnation of ancient society. Unlike Comte, who has in mind the "theological"

and "metaphysical" stages in the development of mankind, Coubertin sees the

entire past at the same time level, so he can "take" from it everything he needs at a

given political moment. There is nothing of importance that can be an obstacle to

the bourgeois voluntarism, and everything created in history can be used in the

fight for survival of the existing order. Reducing history to the same time level

serves to prove that in history there have not been, and there cannot be, any

qualitative changes, which means that the strivings to step out of the existing

world are pointless. Past and future are contained in presence, just as thought and

work, theory and practice are united. The main driving force and the bearer of theinevitable and eternal progress is the "spirit of capitalism" embodied in the "sacred

rhythm" of the Olympic Games - which by no means must be interrupted.

Coubertin does not have the divine (Olympic) firmament which could give

"eternity" to the established capitalist order: the "sacred rhythm" of the Olympic

Games is the means for ensuring the continuation of the existing world without

any relevant changes. Coubertin does not advocate the doctrine of a cyclic

development of history, but of an endless openness of "future". The "sacred

rhythm" of the Olympic Games is a form of deification of the "progressive" spirit

of capitalism, the proof of its "greatness" and "permanency". At the same time, the

"sacred" four-year rhythm of the Olympic Games gives the dynamics to therevival of faith in the basic values of capitalism according to the ancient model,

which was supposed to meet the challenges of the dominant religious spirit. Hence

the four-year rhythm of the modern Olympiads represents an abstract course of 

time that does not follow the dynamics of capitalist progress conditioned by the

dynamics of the capital reproduction - to which the dynamics of life is

subordinated, and which is evident in the establishment and development of new

global sports (and other entertaining) manifestations that fill the space between the

Olympic Games and acquire a status which, according to Coubertin, was

exclusively reserved for the Olympic Games. The dynamics of capitalist progress

has dethroned the Olympic Games, as the chief and only way of renovating the

young freshness of capitalism,  in the attempt to create an ever more luminous

spiritual firmament that will blind man and on which the Olympic Games will be

 but one star in the increasingly numerous cluster. At the same time, particularly

with the development of the "consumer society", the dynamics of capitalist

  progress brought about a trivialization of the "Olympic mystery", which is,

according to Coubertin, the most important element of the Olympic cult that

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enables the establishment of a mystical bond between man and the spirit that

governs the world.

Coubertin's conception of progress has an instrumental character and is

  based on the development of science and technique - whose bearers are the

working "masses" deprived of their rights - which become the exclusive means of 

the ruling parasitic class for the realization of their interests: man becomes theslave of his own productivistic (creative) practice. The Olympic progress is

founded on positivistic scientific reason, which departs from maxim   savoir pour 

  prevoir, prevoir pour agir , and that means that the planning of future, as the

indisputable privilege of the ruling "elite", is the alpha and omega of Coubertin's

theory of progress. The instrumental character of Coubertin's conception derives

from the strivings for a rational planning of future, which involves the prediction

of obstacles that can jeopardize the established "progress" and the means of their 

efficient elimination. The International Olympic Committee is a peculiar service

of the bourgeoisie for "planning the future". In this context, we can understand the

symbolic significance of Coubertin's entrusting his entire written legacy to the Nazis and his wish that the Nazi Germany be the guardian of his Olympic idea: the

keys to "future" are handed over into the hands of the Nazis.

The "negative" starting-point of Coubertin's doctrine represents the truth

that man is capable of creating a world in his human image. This gives both

theoretical and practical significance to Coubertin's conception and constitutes its

dramatics: the greater the objective possibility of stepping out of the capitalist

world, the more aggressive Coubertin's conception is. The essential part of the

  planning and carrying out of progress is the creation of the illusion that it is a

spontaneous ("natural") process to which man is fatally submitted. Coubertin

abolished the subjective (libertarian) practice of the workers in order to absolutizeand deify the subjective (oppressive) practice of the ruling class. Coubertin's

"subjective practice" comes down to the elimination of every possibility of 

developing in man a "negative" conscious that would enable him to confront the

ruling order. At the same time, he "forgets" that his doctrine is also a product of a

long struggle of the coming bourgeois class against feudalism and that it is an

integral part of its Social Darwinist and progressistic evolutionism. Coubertin

himself stresses the importance of people like Thomas Arnold for "transforming

the British Empire" and, emphasizing the importance of the "elite" for the

development of society, insists on the authoritarian establishment of IOC.

However, if progress is inevitable, it means that he completely excludes the

  possibility of man's independent judgment and relation to the existing world.

Consistently following Coubertin's Olympic doctrine, man cannot jeopardize, let

alone stop, the fatal course of progress, and thus the strivings to "save him from

  jeopardizing it", by way of the Olympic doctrine and practice, are useless. Here

Coubertin faces the same problem as the Church, especially in the Modern Age: if 

God's will is "omnipotent" and "omnipresent", then the struggle of the Church to

 preserve faith in God is meaningless. Coubertin's conception is tacitly based on the

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dualism of the spirit of capitalism, which is the incarnation of progress dictated by

the laws of evolution, and man's "lazy animal nature''. His "utilitarian pedagogy" is

the means for inseminating man's animal nature with the spirit of capitalism and

creating a "new man" who will ensure continuous progress. That is why Coubertin

attaches such significance both to the "immortal spirit of antiquity", which is, in

fact, the spirit of capitalism under an ancient veil that should give it the aureole of "eternity", and to the pedagogical reform that should be carried out through sport

and Olympism. It should enable the bourgeois to develop and become aware of his

"true" (animal) nature and thus become a "conscious" bearer of progress. It is a

fanatization of the bourgeoisie through the development of a ''Messianic''

conscious that releases the bourgeois of any moral responsibility for his action,

only to make him take full responsibility for progress (the ruling order). Hence, to

 be the "bearer of progress" means to be free from "scrupulous rules" (Coubertin)

that apply to "ordinary people". Nothing must stop the course of progress, namely,

the self-willingness of the ruling "elite". The authoritarian structure of IOC is,

among other things, based on the following: the members of IOC are notresponsible to anyone - they are, according to Coubertin, the "trustees" of the

Olympic idea, (21) and thus the highest guardians of the "progressive" spirit that

governs the world and on which the survival and "perfectioning" of mankind is

 based.

Coubertin, similarly to Comte, distinguishes between the ideas of 

"development" and "perfectioning". However, in Coubertin, "development" is

reduced to a fatal course of evolution, while "perfectioning" is a form of the

subjective practice of the "elite" (white race), a peculiar polishing of the world and

the elimination of any obstacles to the fatal course of progress. The positive state

  becomes an unrealizable ideal: we are constantly approaching it, but we shallnever reach a perfect positive state. For Coubertin, this does not involve the

strivings to attain a certain ideal of value, but a complete integration of man into

the established order, while a combatant and progressistic activism becomes an

indisputable integrative and ruling force which constitutes life and on which the

world is based. Instead of advocating a change in social relations, and a

development of productive forces and man's creative powers, Coubertin advocates

the creation of a new "master race", in the form of the parasitic classes, which will

efficiently deal with the emancipatory heritage of mankind and libertarian

movements. Coubertin here approaches Spencer: "perfectioning" is based on the

dying out of the improper and on the survival of the proper functions of the social

organism. (22) Since man is the tool of progress and not its creator,

"perfectioning", as his "subjective practice", is possible only as the acceleration of 

 progress, and this becomes the main "feature" that distinguishes man from animal.

In his original Olympic doctrine, Coubertin regards sport as an area in which "the

 best representatives" of the white race, representing their nations, fight for primacy

- which leads to the development of their conquering (oppressive) character and

thus to the "perfectioning" of the white race. At the same time, the "perfectioning

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of the world" involves the destruction of a critical conscious and the workers'

  pacifying. Sport becomes the chief political instrument of the ruling class for 

depolitizing the "masses" and creating from the workers the objects of the

dominant (self)willingness and "sheer" working force: the public (political) sphere

is the privilege of the ruling "elite". The struggle for the "perfectioning" of society

is, according to Coubertin, reduced to a pedagogical reform that should enable thecreation of a uniform character of people and a uniform world view: instead of 

changing the world, "perfectioning" comes down to the creation of "positive man"

(mankind). The ultimate end of "perfectioning" is a complete destruction of a

critical-changing conscious and of the idea of future, that is to say, the realization

of the ideas of "order" and "progress" through the establishment of a complete and

final domination of capitalism over man (mankind). The stadium, as the space

where a complete domination of the (belligerent) positivistic one-mindedness is

established, is the most authentic symbol of the world to which Coubertin strives:

it represents a capitalistic temple where reason and libertarian dignity are

destroyed and man is inseminated with the Social Darwinist and progressisticspirit of capitalism.

The ideal of "perfection" that man should strive for was already created in

ancient Greece. Instead of the idea of future and the struggle for a more humane

world, Coubertin wants to lull man in a romanticized idyll of the ancient world.

The "perfect world" is not the matter of man's free choice and the result of his

creative practice; it is rather a datum appearing in the form of an idealized picture

of the Hellenic world in which everything that modern man should and can strive

for was attained. The Hellenic world becomes the embodiment of the ideal of a

harmonic world in which people "died happily". Tacitly, since it is contrary to the

logic of his evolutionism, according to which progress is inevitable, Coubertinsuggests that Christianity moved man backward and that the basic goal of 

Olympism is to return him to his original roots and make the world similar to the

one in ancient times - when mankind "was able to smile". It is the time when

demos did not yet appear on the political arena of  polis, and before the self-

willedness of the ruling aristocracy was forced to face the universal principle of 

humanism, which applies to every free man (Hellene) and which will reach its

highest expression in the moral philosophy of Socrates, while in the Modern Age

was expressed in Kant's "categorical imperative". Coubertin sees in the ruling

 bourgeois "elite" the "master race" capable of returning humanity to the road taken

in the antiquity, and that will be achieved through a final combat with the

emancipatory heritage of mankind and the idea of future. The restoration of the

"sacred" counting of time should serve the purpose of restoring humanity to the

"right road". Future does not appear as a detour from the present world and the

creation of a novum, but as a continuous development of the present world and its

"perfectioning". Bearing in mind that, according to Coubertin, the whole past of 

mankind stands at the same time (unhistorical) level, only what is "good"

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("positive") should be taken and all that is "bad" ("negative") should be rejected -

and thus a "positive world" will be established.

Unlike the precursors of the Modern Age who sought to be visionaries

(More, Campanella, Hobbes, Bacon, Owen, Fourier«), Coubertin seeks to destroy

the vision of future and the visionary mind. He deals with a "fantasy" associated

with the idea of future that involves the overcoming of the capitalist world, tryingat the same time to turn the Olympic Games into a fantastic manifestation of the

  principles on which the existing world is based. More precisely, the Olympic

Games, as the highest cult of the positive world, represent the climax and the end

of fanaticizing. Coubertin also "overcomes" Leibniz's theodicy: the established

world is not "the best of all possible worlds", it is the only possible world. In the

  preface to the second volume of Comte's "Cours de philosophie positive"  Jean-

Paul Enthoven says that Comte's work foresees "the end of utopia" (la fin de l' 

utopie). (23) Coubertin has before himself a far more difficult task: Olympism

does not only confront the idea of utopia, but also the possibility of its realization.

Sport is a means for preventing the objective possibilities of freedom from becoming the real possibilities of man's liberation. The "reconciliation" of people

deprived of their rights to the established order represents conditio sine qua non of 

a "new beginning" in the development of society advocated by Coubertin, except

for the fact that Coubertin does not strive to create a new civilization, but a "new"

  barbarism. Coubertin's conception "unites", in the form of the bourgeoisie,

absolutized voluntarism and absolutized progressism. He abolishes the dialectic of 

history and the dialectic of nature in order to impose such "laws of evolution" that

give the ruling order the legitimacy of being the only possible and eternal order.

The world in which an indisputable and eternal domination of the white (West-

European) bourgeois "elite" over the workers, "colored peoples" and women isestablished - that is the highest goal of the Olympic progress and the climax of a

  positive social state. It represents the end of evolution based on the Social

Darwinist principles: instead of a conflict - "reconciliation" and "perfectioning"

 become the basis of social life. The principle of competition is abolished by the

 principle of domination.

By abolishing a critical distance to the positivity of the "factual", Coubertin

created from Olympism  Anpassungsideologie of capitalism and thus made them

inseparably connected: the destiny of capitalism becomes the destiny of 

Olympism. By perching a distorted ancient tradition and Social Darwinist laws on

the progressistic principle citius, altius, fortius, Coubertin paved the way for the

absolutization of the capitalist principle of performance whose development

  brought about not only a dehumanization, but also a denaturalization

(robotization) of man. In that context appear the principle of "greater effort" (as

the basis of "overcoming" the animal in man) and the principle mens fervida in

corpore lacertoso, which are founded on the criteria of estimation based on

quantitative comparison. The record is not only the "measure" of man's alienation

from his human being, but is also the "measure" of man's destruction as a living

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  being. Unlike the Olympism in the end of the 19th century, which had an

antilibertarian character, today's Olympic progressism has an ecocidal character 

that comes from the destructive nature of capitalism - which culminated in the so

called "consumer society". In Coubertin's Olympic doctrine there do not exist any

reasonably established obstacles to the ruthless Social Darwinism and destructive

 progressism. Not only does it open the possibilities of mankind's destruction, but itseeks to be in the forefront of the struggle against the emancipatory heritage of 

mankind and against reason which is capable of establishing a critical detachment

to the processes of destruction and of designing a new way of social development.

A "reconciliation" of man to the established world, the chief demand of 

Coubertin's "utilitarian pedagogy", does not only involve a renouncement of the

hope of a better world and a fatalistic abandonment to a dehumanized and

denaturalized progress, but also a cooperation in the destruction of the world. "The

end of utopia", in the form of capitalism, does not appear only as the end of 

history, but also as the end of life.

Olympism and Science

Coubertin's methodological starting point is based on Le Play's principle:

"We are concerned with social facts, with exact observations and not with a priori 

theories". (24) Speaking of Le Play, his intellectual idol, Coubertin emphasizes

that his chief merit was his being a "great friend of facts" and a "great enemy of 

theories". (25) This principle acquires its real meaning in the context of Le Play's

view, stated after the July Revolution in 1830: "I dedicated my life to thereestablishment of social peace in my country." (26) Not a theory, but the interests

of the ruling class and a corresponding political practice - that is the basis of Le

Play's, as well as Comte's, positivistic apriorism. In that context, (positive) science

 becomes a political tool for a study of social reality and an efficient and prompt

action to preserve the established order.  That is the true meaning of the maxim 

 savoir pour prevoir, prevoir pour agir , which is meant to guide the scientists, who

are reduced to "social engineers", in their studies of society. It should be said that

Coubertin does not follow Le Play's "sociographie microscopique" , which,

according to Emile Durkheim, represents a "mindless compilation of undigested

facts, unconducive to generalization to broader social structure". (27) Coubertin is

guided by Le Play's fanatic determination to devote his whole life to defending the

established order. Marcuse says on that: "The independence of matters of fact was

to be preserved, and reasoning was to be directed to an acceptance of the given. In

this way positive philosophy aimed to counteract the critical process involved in

the philosophical "negating" of the given, and to restore to facts the dignity of the

 positive." (28) And he continues: "The positivistic opposition to the principle that

the matters of fact of experience have to be justified before the court of reason,

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however, prevented the interpretation of these "data" in terms of a comprehensive

critique of the given itself . Such a criticism no longer had a place in science. In the

end, positive philosophy facilitated the surrender of thought to everything that

existed and manifested the power to persist in experience." (29)

The problem is that the world of the "factual" contains culture, critical

conscious, political movements that strive for a new world, as well as theemancipatory heritage offering a possibility of stepping out of the existing world.

In other words, the world of the "factual" is filled with the things that represent the

negation of the present order - the negative. Coubertin ceases to "respect the facts"

the moment he is faced with the facts that question the established order and he

 becomes their radical critic - precisely from the point of view of the aristocratic

and bourgeois evaluative horizon. He does not advocate the established world,

which contains the possibilities of its transformation, but the ruling order. Hence

Coubertin and his Olympic fellow soldiers primarily attack the emancipatory

heritage of the Enlightenment, the guiding principles of the French Revolution, as

well as the democratic rights and institutions established in the second half of the19

thcentury. Those are not the "facts" from which we should depart, but the facts

which, departing from the interests of the ruling class should be dealt with. "The

unity" of positive reason with the existing world is but an illusion. In the creation

of his Olympic doctrine Coubertin himself does not depart from the existing world

as a positive, but as a negative basis upon which he develops his theory - starting

from an idealized Hellenic world. "The immortal spirit of antiquity" appears as a

"herald of the past centuries" that should bring light in the gloom of everyday life,

which is reined by a "futile effort" and which has forgotten the meaning of 

happiness. Underlying the positivistic relation to the world is not a conflict with

the critical thought as such, but only with the critical thought that questions theexisting order. Olympism is guided by a rigid evaluative scheme that is critical of 

everything that leads to a change (overcoming) of the existing world and which is

a landmark for determining its concrete action and a criterion for the assessment of 

its efficiency. Coubertin's positivism presupposes the existence of a spiritual

(elitist) centre of power that determines and directs Olympism to the

accomplishment of the strategic interests of capitalism, which means a normative

horizon that cannot be questioned. The basic role of the International Olympic

Committee, which is a self-appointed, authoritarian and anti-democratic

institution, and as such the meeting point of the most devoted and militant

representatives of the ruling class, is to maintain and broaden that horizon. "We

are self-recruiting and our mandates are not limited" - points out Coubertin and

  proclaims the members of IOC the holy guardians of the original source of 

Olympism. (30) The authoritarian structure of IOC is a symbolic expression of the

untouchability and unchangebility of the basic principles on which capitalism is

 based. Coubertin's "originality'' lies in his endeavour to "eliminate" the "excess of 

the factual'', which contains the germ of transformation, by controlling people's

mind, and not by transforming social relations. Hence the credo of his "utilitarian

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  pedagogy", which he recommended to the Nazis with great enthusiasm, is the

"control in heads". In order to achieve that, Coubertin, unlike the Nazis, does not

  burn books, but seeks to destroy, by way of sport, everything that offers a

 possibility of man's critical confrontation with the existing world. In this context,

we can understand in the right way the assertion that sport is the modern "opium

for the people" with which a mental control over people is established. Advocatingsport as a means for establishing a direct domination of order over man, through

the establishment of "control in heads", ensures, for Coubertin, respect for the

masters of the world and gives such importance to sport. Metaphorically speaking,

sport is a police baton in man's head with which the ruling order deals with his

critical and changing thought. Coubertin's universal methodological concept is: to

cripple the emanicipatory possibilities of progress and use them to deal with

 people's libertarian struggle. The "practical" Coubertin seeks to utilize everything

at his disposal in order to prevent the "advance of masses" and preserve the

domination of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie.

Coubertin's Olympic doctrine radically deals with the emancipatoryheritage of modern science. If we compare Coubertin's doctrine with the

 philosophy of Francis Bacon, a predecessor of modern science and positivism, we

shall see that they both are in favour of "facts" and reject the spiritual authority as

a criterion for determining the correctness of thought and action. In that sense,

Bacon, unlike Coubertin, negatively views both the appeals to the antiquity and

the appeals to future. According to him:  "...truth is to be sought for not in the

felicity of any age, which is an unstable thing, but in the light of nature and

experience, which is eternal". (31) The aim of science is not to create the spiritual

  but the material wealth, i.e. not spirituality, but technique, since control over 

nature becomes the chief indicator of human powers and the basis of "mankind's  perfectioning". Instead of a pursuit of truth and wisdom, prevails the pursuit of 

knowledge that will increase productivistic (technical) powers of man which are

used to control nature. In Bacon, we already find the idea of a world civilization as

well as the idea of using science (reduced to a skill by which man could gain most)

so that man can "use its right over nature". Bacon strives to a "Great Instauration",

while technique is reduced to a modernized magic by which all that is "in the

nature of things" is used to develop human powers. Bacon's "new science" should

not only broaden man's knowledge of nature, but should offer him a possibility of 

controlling it and thus create a better life. Mihailo Markovi says on that: "The

way in which human life can be enriched by new inventions and powers consists

in broadening human knowledge of this world. People should cease to fight

 between themselves and should unite their efforts against their common enemy -

the disobedient nature. They should join hands in searching for the knowledge of 

causes and secret movements of things." And he continues: "The road to

knowledge is primarily to liberate the spirit of all the prejudices and fixed

  preconceptions (Bacon calls them Idols), followed by a humble observation of 

nature, always with a deep respect for everything it can teach us." We can come to

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love nature only if we listen to it first". (...) Nature should be discovered through

inductive observation. Man should become its 'servant and interpreter', but only to

eventually conquer it for its own ends." (32) The true value of human knowledge

consists in its usability: usability becomes the chief attribute of science. In his

"Novum Organum" Bacon argues for the knowledge of the causes of phenomena

and occurrences in order for man to adequately act so as to increase his power -and this principle was to become one of the corner stones of Comte's positive

 philosophy. In Coubertin, Bacon's scientific principle "to know in order to predict,

to predict in order to act" becomes the supreme political principle: the cognitive-

  productivistic power of man becomes the oppressive power of the ruling class

concentrated in the hands of the capitalistic monopolies. In his doctrine, science

and technique, as the ways of controlling natural laws, become the means of the

  bourgeoisie for dealing with the emancipatory heritage of mankind and human

  powers, and for subordinating society to the structures and laws that rule the

animal world. Unlike the animals, a bourgeois is not subordinated to natural laws,

 but uses them to establish such an order in society that corresponds to the relationsestablished in the animal world. Instead of striving, like Hobbes, for a "domination

of modern natural science over the natural law", (33) Coubertin seeks to establish,

through natural science, a domination of the natural law in society, which,

however, does not acquire the status of "reason" in relation to the "common law",

as is the case in Bacon, but is an embodiment of the abosolutized (self)willedness

of the "master race".

Bacon insists on people using science to control nature and create a better 

life; Coubertin insists that science and technique become the exclusive means of 

the ruling class for holding man in submission and creating a new order of 

  privileges. In Bacon, science appears as a way of developing human powersrelative to the dominant authority whose power is founded on a dogma; in

Coubertin, the development of science and technique becomes the development of 

a progressistic and expansionist power of the order and a means for dominating

the world. In order to understand the true nature of Bacon's thought, we should

take into consideration the time in which it appeared - in which man's active-

changing powers that offer him the possibility of creating the world at his own

measure developed. This is also the basis of Coubertin's conception, but Coubertin

seeks to use man's active powers to stop social progress. Coubertin entirely

follows the expansionist spirit of monopolistic capitalism: it is a monopolization

of science and technique in the hands of the new "master race" and a globalization

of its power. To control the laws of nature becomes the means for man's complete

submission to the interests of the bourgeoisie and for stopping history. From being

the subject, man becomes the tool and the object of a dehumanized science.

Olympism becomes a peculiar utilitarian science, while sport becomes a specific

technique for controlling people. Much more important than the scientific

methodology is Coubertin's endeavour to make the principle  savoir pour prevoir,

  prevoir pour   agir  an exclusive means in the hands of the ruling class which,

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ultimately, serves to predict the future by way of its creation. The activation of the

  bourgeoisie in the struggle for creating a positive society and the social

marginalization of the working "masses", "lower races" and women represent one

of the most important tasks of the Olympic doctrine and practice.

Bacon seeks to create a new world (in that context he writes "New

 Atlantis" ) with a corresponding "new philosophy", while Coubertin seeks to createa new philosophy that should preserve the existing world. Bacon defines the "new

  philosophy" as the "Active Science'' (34) whose  "true and lawful goal is none

other than this: that human life be endowed with new discoveries and powers".

(35) Unlike Bacon, Coubertin seeks to create a new dogma as the tacit foundation

of his positive relation to the world - which is the embodiment of the expansionist

and totalitarian spirit of monopolistic capitalism. In that sense, he seeks to use

science and technique as a means for mystifying the world and transforming the

human powers into an antihuman force. In Bacon, reason appears as the symbol of 

the arousal of man's productivistic forces that are capable of overcoming the

existing and creating a new world. Coubertin deals with reason bearing in mindthe "fact" that an appeal to reason was, as a rule, also an appeal to release man

from the bonds of the existing world and to create a world according to the

 principles of humanity.

In Coubertin, there is a conflict between progress based on the

development of science and the endeavour to set up a social order at all costs - by

eliminating the emancipatory possibilities of science. For the development of 

science involves the development of human powers that search for new realms. It

is precisely science that should question the existing "facts" in order to come to

new questions and answers, which means that there is no progress without

questioning the existing and seeking to create (discover) a novum. In addition, theresults of scientific reason are boundless and represent the heritage of mankind.

The conflict between the strivings to reduce science to a political instrument for 

stopping the social development and its emancipatory potentials appears as a

conflict between an operationalized (dehumanized) and a critical reason. It is a

dynamic process that Coubertin seeks to stop by destroying, through sport and

 physical drill, man's creative potentials and libertarian dignity. At the same time,

the development of industry and science involves the development of 

interdependence, affinity, solidarity - on a global scale. The eli- mination of the

emancipatory possibilities opened by the collectivistic character of the industrial

 production and science is one of the chief tasks of Olympism.

Coubertin's doctrine is based on the development of productivistic powers

of modern man, as well as on the development of his conscious as the creator of 

history - resulting in his dealing with the Christian dogma and the world to which

that dogma gives a divine legitimacy. However, Coubertin does not deal with the

divine authority in order to liberate man, but in order to submit him to the "state of 

nature" and thus enclose him in a new cage which he will never be able to leave.

That is why Coubertin devalues the productivistic activism of the working

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"masses", which involves the creation of the material and spiritual wealth, and

turns its results into the basis of the development of the conquering and oppressive

activism of the ruling parasitic class. The "victory" of the worker over nature

  becomes the victory of the bourgeoisie over the working "masses". Underlying

this conception is an order based on the distinction between the creation and

acquisition of wealth, the acquisition of wealth (through conquering andoppression) becoming the basic way of gaining social power and of dealing with

its creators. Coubertin seeks to turn Olympism into a mechanism which will

  prevent the development of man's productivistic powers as well as the

development of men self-conscious as the creator of social wealth, the bearer of 

 progress and the creator of his own history. It is no accident that Coubertin never 

mentions the "sports achievements" at the Olympic Games, nor does he name its

actors, which is characteristic of the antiquity. The true winner at the modern

Olympic Games is the "progressive" spirit of capitalism which is incarnated in the

combative character and muscular bodies of sportsmen.

The contradiction in Coubertin's conception consists in that it reduces manto a "lazy animal" while at the same time instrumentalizes science and technique

in the hands of the ruling class, which represent man's victory over the natural

forces and their subjection to unnatural ends. Coubertin, in fact, makes the

existential logic which dominates the animal world independent and seeks to

insure its continuation in society, while man's domination over natural forces

appears only as a means for realizing natural selection. More precisely, the

development of science and technique represents man's domination over natural

forces which, in the hands of the ruling "elite", become a way of submitting man

to the laws that dominate the animal world and a way of devaluing progress.

Instead of a relation between man and nature based on man's domination over natural forces through the development of man's productivistic forces that should

liberate him from his submission to nature, the relations of class domination,

embodied in the "animal order", come to the forefront. The liberating forces and

man's practice become an anti-libertarian power - man becomes the victim of the

development of his own productivistic (creative) powers. Instead of religion,

which was the exclusive means of the nobility for submitting the serfs, science

  becomes the exclusive means of the bourgeois class for submitting the working

  people: a positive conscious becomes the image of a dehumanized science in

 people's heads. In antiquity, man was "Gods¶ toy" (Plato); in modern society, he

  becomes the toy of capital in the form of "natural laws" which apply "social

engineering" - and which are but one of the tools of the ruling "elite" for holding

the working "masses" in submission. "Social physics" becomes a natural science

applied to society, which means that society (man) becomes the object of natural

science. Olympism is one of the forms in which man's alienated creative power 

turns into the means of his submission. It is a "pure" ideological product based on

the results of (capitalistically instrumentalized) science and a dehumanized reason.

Coubertin is not interested in the development of man's creative powers (since it is

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a tacit "fact" on which the survival and the development of capitalism is based),

 but in their control and direction towards fulfilling the interests of the ruling class.

That is why Coubertin insists on a "utilitarian pedagogy" which should create a

"positive" character and a "positive" conscious, i.e., a "positive" man.

Guided by the principle of efficiency (in insuring the stability of the

established order), Coubertin strives to use all he can to plan the "future" and carryit out. "The prediction of future" - based on the maxim   savoir pour prevoir,

  prevoir pour agir - becomes its "creation" through the destruction of the

emancipatory heritage of mankind which opens a possibility of stepping out of the

capitalist world. It represents an active relation of the ruling class to future and an

endeavour to increase the certainty of survival of the ruling order. As the working

movement that opens the possibility of abolishing (overcoming) the established

order of injustice becomes more developed, the strivings of the ruling "elite" to

use science for preserving the order become more and more aggressive. If 

Coubertin's Social Darwinist conception were true, everything he strove to realize

with his Olympic doctrine and practice would be pointless. Coubertin's endeavour to control people's mind by (ab)using the results of science and technique tells us

how much he really believed in the conception he so fanatically advocated.

Coubertin's Olympic doctrine also deals with the emancipatory heritage of 

sophism. Above all, it deals with its endeavour to establish the "principle of 

subject" as a "source of philosophical consideration". (36) Furthermore, it

renounces its "critical and investigating spirit". The sophistic emphases on the

"authority of facts" does not have a positivistic and objectivistic character, but

refers to an "ethico-political problematic" and "has lost none of its relevance".

Thirdly, the sophists not only "measure all things with rational standards", but they

teach of the "duplicity of all things and confutability of each assertion", so they,"arise and develop an antithetic spirit". At the same time, sophistry "strives for 

clarity, distinction and consistency in thought". Consequently, it helped, through

Euripides' tragic art, to liberate Hellenic society from "mythical romanticism" and

to subordinate the mythical world to a "religio-moral and ethico-political

 problematic of sophistry". In addition, "the sophists strove not only to educate the

young people from the master class but also to influence broad masses of people,

the whole community, and demanded that what was good for social community

also be realized" - and it is, as we have seen, in opposition to Coubertin's elitist

conception. (37) Here we should say that, in Coubertin, the dominant conscious is

not primitive but an instrumentalized scientific conscious with which the

emancipatory results and possibilities of modern (scientific and philosophical)

reason are to be eliminated. For Coubertin, the logic of "circumstances", which

means "the state of nature", is the basis of people's behavior, the normative

conscious being replaced by a fanatical faith in the existing world resulting in an

idolatrous relation to it.

According to Coubertin, politics is a technique for dominating the "masses"

without any humanistic content and is primarily guided by the interests of the

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ruling class. It has nothing to do with the ancient art (techne) of ruling that

involves virtue (arete), which means a normative (religious) framework providing

the criterion for assessing the right conduct. In Coubertin, there is no right action,

more precisely: only such action is right which is guided by the principle of 

efficiency. Politics, as a dehumanized technique of ruling, becomes the form in

which positive science, which conditions the nature of sport as a tool of politics, isrealized: it symbolizes the triumph of a dehumanized science - transformed into a

technique for manipulation and destruction - over people.

Olympism and Reason

Coubertin follows one of the basic intentions of modern (positive) science:

to deal with  religion and thus with metaphysics, philosophy, i.e. with ethics and

critical reason. The point is to "curb" reason by means of empiricism andquantification and reduce it to an instrumentalized ratio free from "evaluative

  prejudices" and pursuit of truth. Milan Kangrga says on that: "This lack of 

distinction between reason and intellect - where intellect, as the organ of 

theoretico-scientific cognition based on the method according to mathematico-

geometric construction in purely and exclusively quantitative terms, becomes not

only superior to reason but absolutely dominant - turns out to be ominously

epochal for the whole historical (theoretico-practical) development of the Modern

Age. Intellect, in its purely instrumental-pragmatical-calculatory form and sense,

  becomes the exclusive tool of a scientifico-technical domination not only over 

nature but also over society and man, and thus the tool of the politico-ideologicaldomination over the world and the method of its controlling. As a pure means of 

something else (and not of man), by its extensivity, i.e. direction only to the outer,

that line of rationality necessarily loses ground, since it moves in the vacuum of 

the human and meaningful, and thus ends in pure irrationalism, as the ferment of 

anti-humanism." (38) 

Coubertin does not only strive to eliminate from people's conscious, by

way of Olympism (sport), the emancipatory impulses of the European culture and

create a positive one-mindedness, but seeks to destroy (critical) reason itself and

man's playing nature that directs him to other people and to create a uniform

character. That is why Coubertin insists on upbringing without education. The

  basis of social integration becomes not the adoption of certain knowledge and

views, based on natural sciences, but a "spontaneous" mindless combatant

  physical activism, dominated by the knowledge of the world through its direct

experience. In that sense, Coubertin emphasizes that the highest quality of the

Hellenes was the fact that they were "little given to contemplation, even less

  bookish". Instead of an absolutized knowledge, a positive life becomes the

foundation and origin of positive one-mindedness. Olympism is not only the

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 production of the ruling ideology in the form of a positive conscious, but above all

of the relations between people according to the principle homo homini lupus and

of the relation of man to himself (the principle of "greater effort" with the

corresponding principle citius, altius, fortius). In the form of the production of 

competitions and records ("the development of human powers") it is the

  production of a positive character and a positive conscious in "pure" sense.Coubertin seeks to establish a positive life reduced to an agonal physical activism

that is beyond the questions of truth and lie, of appearance and essence, of good

and evil, of freedom and slavery, of justice and injustice ... Sport becomes the

symbolic model of a mindless agonal life activism, which corresponds to the

tendency of man to live without thinking of the purpose of life, of his social

 position, of future, and thus is the prototype of a positive life. Olympism is not

only a political theory of sport, but above all the philosophy of a positive life.

Modern Olympism deals with man as a self-conscious being and abolishes

man's conscious relation to the world. Since utilitarism is the indisputable starting

  point and man is fatally subjected to the laws of evolution, self-conscious, likemoral conscious, becomes a burden that prevents man from focusing on the

acceleration of progress. Olympism rejects any strivings for questioning, dialogue,

truth... Coubertin is not the creator of a "new mindfulness" but of a new

mindlessness, more precisely, a dehumanized and instrumentalized ratio becomes

the means of the ruling "elite" for creating a mindless world. Olympism follows

the original intention of positive philosophy that seeks to politically

instrumentalize reason. The turning of philosophy by way of science into a

 positivistic discipline presupposes the turning of science into a technical means of 

a dehumanized and repressive politics. To abolish philosophy by way of science is

 possible only when science is deprived of its creative and progressive nature andacquires a manipulative (technical-executive) character as the instrument of the

ruling class for planning the "future" and carrying out "progress". Coubertin

  placed philosophy between the hammer of positivistic science and the anvil of 

"positive religion" (modern paganism). Science becomes the means for purifying

 philosophy from everything that offers the possibility of a critical relation to the

existing world from the point of view of the emancipatory possibilities created in

civil society, and from the point of view of the idea of future that involves the

creation of a new world. At the same time, Coubertin "overcomes" philosophy

with "positive religion" by depriving it of reason and criticism, namely, by

depriving it of its essence and thus of the reason of its existence. "Positive

religion" represents the end of philosophy. Speaking of Comte's dealing with the

"theologico-metaphysical philosophy", Marcuse points out the essential element of 

Coubertin's conception:  "The positivist repudiation of metaphysics was thus

coupled with a repudiation of man¶s claim to alter and reorganize his social

institutions in accordance with his rational will. This is the element Comte's

  positivism shares with the original philosophies of counter-revolution sponsored

  by Bonald and De Maistre. (...) The 'revolutionary spirit' was to be checked by

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spreading another teaching, that society possesses an immutable natural order to

which men will must submit." (39) Coubertin abolishes metaphysics, but creates

from sport a metaphysical curtain with which he seeks to hide the true nature of 

capitalism. Horkheimer and Adorno say about that: "That the hygienic shop-floor 

and everything that goes with it, the people's car or the sportsdrome, leads to an

insensitive liquidation of metaphysics, would be irrelevant; but that in the socialwhole they themselves become metaphysics, an ideological curtain behind which

the real evil is concentrated, is not irrelevant." (40)

Coubertin is not an agnostic: the truth is in the existing world of "the

factual" (and not beyond or above it), and its original and "holy" essence is in

ancient Greece. It is neither searched for not created, but is given with the existing

order. By absolutizing the world of "the factual" Coubertin absolutized the truth.

Man does not get to know the truth, he directly experience it every day through a

mindless and antireasonable combatant activism: "the knowledge" of the truth (the

world) has a direct empirical character. Experience is not the basis of a mindful

reasoning, from which follows a (reasonable) relation of man to the existing worldin his endeavour to create the world according to his (human) measure, but an

instrument in the fight for domination (survival). Underlying the knowledge of the

world (the truth) is not a need for a change and the creation of a new (just) world,

  but a need for its preservation. At the same time, upbringing before education

involves an evaluative apriorism that becomes the basis of a cognitive apriorism.

Only the impressions that help us to survive and proceed are accepted.

Experiencing the truth (the world) involves the crippling of personality and thus

denies man the possibility of comprehending and experiencing the fullness of the

world and creating his whole personality and a critical-changing relation to it. A

reduced and instrumentalized sensibility becomes the basis of the Olympicepistemology. Coubertin's Olympic doctrine is   par excellence anti-intellectual. It

rejects the principle nihil est in intelectu quod non fuerit in sensu . There is not a

direct link between senses and intellect, but between senses and character:

sensuality is reduced to the reception of those impressions that do not hinder the

creation of a positive character - and that is the basis and limitation of the relation

to reality and the creation of a normative conscious. Coubertin is the precursor of 

the modern spectacle: the most important thing is to dazzle man and penetrate into

his subconscious and thus win him over from the depths of his being - by

excluding reason.

The principle   savoir pour prevoir, prevoir pour agir represents the

supreme cognitive principle of Coubertin's positive gnoseology which does not

rely on the authority of science, but on the authority of the ruling power that uses

science as a means for strengthening the class order. Coubertin rejects from

science the "evaluative judgments" and seeks to turn it into an exclusive political

tool of the ruling class for dealing with the emancipatory possibilities of civil

society. A scientifically based "objectivism" becomes the mask for a political

(class) voluntarism expressed in the maxim auctoritas, non veritas facit  legem. In

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that context, sociology is reduced to "physique sociale" (Comte) and the latter is

reduced to politics as a dehumanized technique of ruling. Coubertin eliminates

from science the strivings for the truth and for a novum, and reduces it to the

  political practice of the ruling "elite". "The truth" becomes the product of an

instrumentalized positive reason and is deprived of the libertarian, moral and

aesthetic dimensions. Ultimately, Coubertin seeks to put under control of theruling will every segment of life and to abolish all the spheres that can limit it: the

absolutistic and totalitarian voluntarism is the essence of his Olympic doctrine and

 practice.

Olympism and Mysticism

Unlike Bacon, Coubertin does not use the inductive method but departs

from a given political goal, and in that context selects the facts, giving them aninterpretation and coming to such conclusions that should enable its realization. At

the same time, Coubertin does not use the methods that offer the possibility of an

empirical verification and rational proof, but puts forward his thought in the form

of peculiar sermons with which he tries to reach people's subconscious and win

them over from "the depths of their souls". He does not address the public as a

scientist, but as a "Messiah" who should carry out a "holy mission": to forever deal

with the libertarian dignity and the libertarian struggle of the oppressed. Coubertin

does not strive to create reasonable people who are capable of making their own

 judgments, but sects of loyal followers who obediently execute what they are told.

That is why, with his "utilitarian pedagogy", he above all seeks to create thecharacter of a loyal and usable subject to whom he would attach the corresponding

  positive conscious. Not the development of a scientific, but the creation of a

fanatical religious conscious - that is the basic purpose of Coubertin's dogmatic.

Hence irrationalism and mysticism become the main characteristics of Coubertin's

Olympic rhetoric and practice. The Olympic doctrine seeks not only to repress

reason, but to open the road to its destruction: fanatism and idiocy are the ultimate

results of the Olympic irrationalism.

Coubertin uses the Olympic spectacle to blind man by reducing his

capability of reasoning, and thus draw him into the spiritual orbit of the existing

world. "The Church or the fair" - cries out Coubertin in his opposition to the

  professionalization of sportsmen that threatens to devalue religio athletae, the

main symbol of the Olympic religiousness, and trivialize the Olympic mystery.

Coubertin rejects the logic of   panem et circences and opts for the principle of 

 bread and pagan festivities, having as a model the "great world exhibitions" and

 pompous monarchist manifestations that were meant to arouse admiration of the

oppressed for the ruling order. The spectacular Olympic ceremony becomes a

mythological picture of a "happy world" committed to the spirit that governs the

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world. Instead of a naive cheerfulness, Coubertin's Olympic Games are dominated

  by a fanatical commitment to the ruling spirit; instead of the "love of God",

dominates the "love" of the existing order. In spite of trying in his later writings to

  be close to the Nazis, Coubertin does not strive to build the "collective

unconscious" (Jung) in the dark labyrinths of the subconscious by means of the

ancient myths. Guided by the principle   savoir pour prevoir, prevoir pour agir Coubertin carefully tries to keep things under control and instrumentalize them for 

his political goals. The subconscious is, in any case, the main Coubertin's ally in

the creation of positive man, and sport and physical drill are the basic ways of 

achieving it. That is why Coubertin, in his "utilitarian pedagogy", insists on an

upbringing without education. He seeks to remove ambiguity in man resulting in

the "confrontation of two intentions". (41) Uncontradictoriness of man's character 

is based on a sublimated activism where the suppressed can be fully realized.

Coubertin's positive man is fully united with himself for he is completely

submitted, through the conquering (oppressive) activism, to the spirit of 

"progress".Coubertin is not a mystic. Modern Olympic mysticism has an instrumental

character and is thus the means of the ruling oligarchy for controlling the

"masses". It is grounded in positive reason which adopted all the results of modern

thought (modern rationalism) that can serve to create a positive man and positive

society. Mysticism is not an expression of the mystery of life to which the ancient

man was totally submitted, but becomes a means of the mystification of the spirit

of capitalism. It is not an integral part of the Olympic mystery, as it was in

antiquity, but is a technical means for "producing" the Olympic spectacle:

Olympism becomes one of the distorted mirrors of capitalism that gives it a

mysterious image. The main role of the members of IOC, as the highest Olympic priests, is to give the spirit of capitalism, by way of the Olympic Games and the

Olympic mythomania, the character of the "deepest mystery", which means an

indisputable and untouchable force to which man's being and destiny are totally

submitted. Not mystical religious ceremonies, but great economic world

exhibitions, as a spectacular demonstration of the progressistic and expansionist

 power of capitalism, are the models for Coubertin's Olympic Games. They do not

symbolize the closeness and finality of the ancient cosmos, but the "endless

openness" of the capitalist universe. Coubertin was explicitly against the

  professionalization of sport and the commercialization of the Olympic Games,

  because he realized that it inevitably led to the banalization of the Olympic

mystery and the destruction of its religious spirit.

Like Huizinga and other theorists of bourgeois society, Coubertin tries to

  preserve capitalism by instrumentalizing irrationalism and thus preventing the

creation of a rational alternative to capitalism as an irrational (antilibertarian and

antiexistential) order. Olympism becomes the highest and the most efficient form

of the instrumentalization of irrationalism, and a mindless and operationalized

reason becomes its chief tool. The main role of the International Olympic

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Committee is to "mediate" between capitalism and man, and by way of the

Olympic mysticism and mythology destroy a reasonable relation of man to the

world and his critical-visionary conscious. A lack of ability to distinguish between

myth and reality, as well as between historical facts and the picture of the "past",

represents one of the main features of Coubertin's positive man that makes him

close to the ancient man. A mystification and mythologization of the present worldand a destruction of reason are two sides of the Olympic positivism.

In his strivings to control man, Coubertin cannot rely on his fear of natural

  powers. In the Modern Age science represents the "victory" of man over the

natural forces - the basic source of the ancient mystery and deification of nature

(life). Coubertin seeks to deprive man of that heritage realizing that liberation

from nature becomes the objective possibility of liberation from the alienated

centers of social powers, and seeks to turn the "victory" of man over the natural

forces into the victory of the bourgeoisie over the workers. Coubertin deals with

the demystificatory power of science in order to (ab)use it for the production of the

modern Olympic mystery. Science becomes the means for producing the modernOlympic mystery, in the form of the Olympic spectacle, which should deify the

ruling principles of capitalism and arouse veneration. Instead of the ancient unity

of life and mystery, there is a political manipulation of the ruling "elite" that tries,

  by way of science, to cover with a "mysterious" Olympic veil the primitive

(worldly) power of capital and enter people's subconscious. Olympism becomes

the means of mystifying the world in which man's creative powers were

superseded by mystical "superhuman powers". To prevent man from changing the

social relations and his (submitted) position in society by developing the

  productive forces and his creative powers, that is to say, from gaining self-

conscious as the creator of social goods and the capability to take over the controlof social processes from the parasitic classes in his own hands - this is Coubertin's

aim. That is why he so ardently seeks to cut the emancipatory historical roots: the

destruction of man's self-conscious as the universal creative being of freedom

represents the main task of Coubertin's "utilitarian pedagogy".

The ancient (as well as the medieval) cosmos and its mysterion are alien to

capitalism. The "mystery" of capitalism does not spring from a life dominated by

the natural forces that acquire a divine and thus a fateful character, but from a life

ruled by irrational and evasive laws of the market (the Stock Exchange as the

meeting point of mysterious forces or the modern Pythia's cave) and the

corresponding institutionalized public sphere, which became the laws of the

capitalist cosmos and thus the fateful power between man and life. The task of the

modern Olympic paganism is to illuminate that power with a divine light and thus

hide its class character and worldly vulnerability (transience). The Olympic

Games are not the crown of the mystery of living with which man is faced every

day, but a peculiar hypnotic séance appearing in the form of a "spectacle" that

should blind man and prevent him from becoming aware of his own powers.

Bearing in mind the Olympic ceremony and the importance Coubertin attaches to

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it, it becomes obvious that mysticism, and not reason, represents the umbilical

cord that connects Coubertin's man (citizen) with the existing world.

In Coubertin, evolution, embodied in capitalist progress, is the bearer of the

Olympic mystery. In it, a mystified force appearing in the form of the "war of all

against all" and the law of natural selection are created and developed. With the

development of his conquering-oppressive power man is immerged in evolution,which is symbolically expressed in the explosive muscular strength which

embodies the developing forces of evolution (progress). Similarly to antiquity, the

real things occur in the sphere which preceded man, which created him and to

which he is hopelessly subjected. Since man is by his nature a "lazy animal",

Coubertin had to envisage an additional power that offers the possibility of man's

"overcoming" his inherited "lazy animal nature", but which does not offer him the

 possibility of a critical-changing attitude to the existing world. He appeals to the

"immortal spirit of antiquity" that becomes the scepter in which is concentrated the

activist (conquering-oppressive) power of evolution, which with its light should

inseminate the "lazy animal nature" of man (the bourgeois) and thus beget a positive man.

At the closing ceremony of the Berlin Olympic Games Coubertin states in

his final words that "understandings" at the Olympic Games are "stronger than

death itself" (42) and thus indicates one of the basic moments in the creation of the

Olympic mystery: the Olympic Games symbolize the revival of the vital force of 

capitalism and the continuity of the life force, with which the capability of an

eternal self-reproduction of the existing world is affirmed, making the Games the

"festivity of spring" and "youth". The "sacred rhythm" of the Olimpiads becomes a

symbolic expression of an unbreakable chain of births and deaths to which man is

fatally submitted. A readiness to die represents an expression of man's totalsubmission to the ruling order based on natural selection - which as a fatal power 

appears in the form of the Olympic cult and becomes a means of man's spiritual

insemination. The Olympic Games symbolize man's final "reconciliation" (Comte)

to the present world.

The development of capitalism brought about a complete trivialization of 

the Olympic mystery: "mythology has entered into the profane" (Horkheimer 

/Adorno). (43) What Coubertin was faced with from the very beginning of the

Olympic Games has come about: instead of the "Church", the Olympic Games

have become a "circus"; instead of becoming a symbolic incarnation of the

"progressive" spirit of capitalism, sportsmen have become the "circus gladiators".

From the very beginning Coubertin undertook a fruitless work: he tried to rescue

the Olympic Games as the highest religious ceremony dedicated to the

glorification of capitalism - from capitalism itself. Coubertin's Olympic idea ended

on the altar of the God of money. Still, the most important thing was preserved:

the Olympic Games were and still are a guillotine - a modernized form of the

Procrustean method of execution - for the libertarian spirit.

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x x x

Footnotes

(1) Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution,345-347.p.

(2) Urlike Prokop, Soziologie der Olympischen Spiele,83.p.Cursive U.P.

(3) Auguste Comte,Physique sociale,15.p.Hermann,Paris,1975.

(4) Ante Fiamengo, Saint-Simon i Auguste Comte,107.p.Naprijed,Zagreb,1987.

(5) Compare : Ante Fiamengo,Ibid,143.p.Foot-note. 

(6) Ibid. 146.p.

(7) In : Ante Fiamengo,Ibid.344.p. 

(8) In : Ante Fiamengo,Ibid.167.p.Cursive in org.

(9) Ante Fiamengo,Ibid.167.p.(10) Ibid.137.p.

(11) Ibid. 149. p.

(12) Ibid. 149. p.

(13) W. Windelband, H.Heimsoeth, Povijest filozofije, Knjiga druga, 243,p.

Curs.W.W.

(14) Compare : Danko Grli, Estetika III tom, 261. p. Naprijed, Zagreb, 1974.

(15) P. d. Coubertin, "U ne Conférence a Londres", In : John MacAloon, This

Great Symbol, 93. p.

(16) Theodor Adorno/ Max Horkheimer,Dialectic of Enlightenment,7,8.p.Verso,

London/ New York, 1989.(17) Ante Fiamengo,Ibid.156.p.

(18) In : Ante Fiamengo,Ibid.156.p.

(19) Compare:Ante Fiamengo,Ibid.158.p.

(20) Ibid.159.p.

(21) Compare:P.d.Coubertin,The Olympic Idea,18,19.p.

(22) Compare: W.Windelband,H.Heimsoeth,Povijest filozofije,Knjiga

druga,244.p.

(23) Jean-Paul Enthoven, Préface:Auguste Comte,Physique sociale,3.p.Cursive

J.P.E

(24) In : J.MacAloon,This Great Symbol,85.p.

(25) P. d. Coubertin,Un Programme,6.p.

(26) In : J.MacAloone,Ibid,84.p.

(27) In : J. MacAloon, Ibid.Foot-note.305.p. 

(28) Herbert Marcuse,Reason and Revolution,326.p.

(29) Ibid. 327. p. Cursive H.M.

(30) P. d. Coubertin,The Olympic Idea,19.p.

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(31) Francis Bacon,Novum Organum,In:John M. Robertson,The Philosophical

Works of Francis Bacon,269.p.Freeport,New York,Reprint,1970.

(32) Mihailo Markovi,Filozofski osnovi nauke,34.p.SANU,Beograd,1981.

(33) Compare:Arthur Kaufmann.Preface:Thomas.Hobbes,Naturrecht und

allgemeines Staatsrecht in den Anfangsgrunden,VI.

(34) Francis Bacon,Novum Organum,248.p.(35) Ibid.280.p.

(36) Milo Ðuri,Istorija helenske knjievnosti,504.p.

(37) Compare:Milo uri,Istorija helenske knjievnosti,505.p.

(38) Milan Kangrga,Praksa,vrijeme,svijet,40.p.Cursive M.K.Nolit,Beogad,1984. 

(39) Herbert Marcuse,Reason and Revolution,344.p.

(40) Theodor Adorno/Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment,

Introduction,xv.

(41) Compare : Sigmund Frojd, Uvod u psihoanalizu, 85.p.Kosmos, Beograd,

1964.

(42) P.d.Coubertin, "Speech by Baron de Coubertin at the Close of the BerlinOlympic Games" , In: P.d.Coubertin, The Olympic Idea, 136.p. 

(43) Theodor Adorno/Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 28.p.

x x x