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Sport, Aesthetic Experience,and Art as the Ideal EmbodiedMetaphorTim L. ElcombePublished online: 10 Oct 2012.

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SPORT, AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE, AND

ART AS THE IDEAL EMBODIED

METAPHOR

Tim L. Elcombe

Despite a prevalence of articles exploring links between sport and art in the 1970s

and 1980s, philosophers in the new millennium pay relatively little explicit attention

to issues related to aesthetics generally. After providing a synopsis of earlier debates

over the questions ’is sport art?’ and ’are aesthetics implicit to sport?’, a pragmati-

cally informed conception of aesthetic experience will be developed. Aesthetic experi-

ence, it will be argued, vitally informs sport ethics, game logic, and participant

meaning. Finally, I will argue that embodying pragmatic conceptions of art as its

ideal metaphor re-opens space to best realize the deep potential of sport as a mean-

ingful human practice.

KEYWORDS aesthetics; art; sport; pragmatism

In the 1970s and 1980s fruitful debates arose within and beyond the

sport philosophy literature over sport’s relation to art and aesthetics. Philoso-

phers including Best, Boxill, Cordner, Kupfer, Roberts, and Wertz engaged in

spirited exchanges questioning the legitimacy of a sport/art connection, as well

as the place of aesthetics within the athletic realm. Sport philosophers in the

new millennium, however, pay relatively little explicit attention to aesthetics

and exploring links between sport and art in spite of the centrality of the

debate a few decades earlier. Philosophy of sport articles dedicated to aesthet-

ics as its subject matter appear in the contemporary literature sporadically at

best, generating minimal discussion and wielding limited influence on emerg-

ing debates. Sport philosophy anthologies, in the past regularly dedicating

sections to aesthetics and sporting links to art (c.f. Morgan and Meier 1988,

1995) now tend to focus predominantly on meta-ethics and applied ethical

issues within sport. This void raises questions as to whether inquiry into

aesthetics and art remains of interest to sport philosophers and of value for

the sport-world at large.

Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, Vol. 39, No. 2, October 2012

ISSN 0094-8705 print/ISSN 1543-2939 online/12/020201-17

� 2012 IAPS

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00948705.2012.725901

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The current Journal of the Philosophy of Sport (JPS) special issue, however,

signals a renewed and growing curiosity in exploring the significance of

aesthetics to our understanding of sport. More quietly, recent articles by Edgar

and Welsch published in edited works also return the question ‘is sport art?’ to

the literature. The present paper broadly intends, along with the other articles

included in this special issue of JPS, to continue the re-awakening of sustained

interest in aesthetics within the sport philosophy field. More specifically, this

paper endeavours to place aesthetics (and ultimately ‘art’) at the heart of philo-

sophical inquiry and the forefront of twenty-first century sport’s evolution.

To begin this significant reconstruction a synopsis of earlier philosophical

quarrels over sport’s ontological status as ‘art’ offers an opportunity to frame

the issue and analyze the debate’s functional consequences. Next, parallel dis-

agreements over the place of aesthetics in athletics will be analyzed, followed

by the advancement of an expanded, pragmatically informed conception of

aesthetic experience which vitally informs sport ethics, game logic, and partici-

pant meaning. Finally, and most significantly, a claim will be forwarded that

while ontological debates about sport/art connections ultimately stalled after

the 1980s, embodying pragmatic conceptions of art as its ideal metaphor

re-opens space to best realize the deep potential of sport to serve as a mean-

ingful human practice.

Is Sport Art?

In the 1970s and 1980s questions as to whether sport fulfilled criteria

embodied by traditionally accepted forms of art, including sculpture, dance,

painting, poetry, and music arose as a significant question in sport philosophy.

Several sport philosophers weighed in on a heated exchange: Is Sport Art?

One of the earliest philosophers to question whether sport ought to be

defined and demarcated as art was Best (1995). While not the first to examine

the issue,1 Best’s work in the 1970s inevitably thrust the topic into prominence

within the sport philosophy literature. Best began his inquiry by conceptualizing

art as a narrow concept presupposing the conscious production of a complete

and expressive artefact. This denotation absolutely precluded all sporting activi-

ties from consideration as a form of art. No sport, he argued, inherently allowed

for expressive possibilities regarding conceptions such as life issues, and moral,

social or political problems. Best chastised previous authors for using terms such

as dramatic, tragic, beautiful, and graceful to equate sport with art. This, he

argued, made for an ‘illicit slide’ (488) and concluded that although art could use

sport as a subject, art could not be the subject of sport.

Critics of Best’s ‘sport is not art’ stance emerged, including Jan Boxill,

Spencer Wertz and Terry Roberts. Boxill (1988) challenged Best’s conclusions,

arguing that technical skill’s efficient requirements did not necessarily over-

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shadow artistic ingredients of style, grade, and form; that the desire to win a

well-played athletic contest generates aesthetically pleasing games; that artists

and athletes alike embrace multiple aims and aim at beauty as a means to

achieve these other aims; and that sport can and does express life situations in

various forms, as do the traditionally accepted modes of art.

Wertz (1988) contested Best’s ‘restrictive’, ‘extremely unreasonable’, and

‘unsympathetic’ contextual demands (524). Wertz read Best as suggesting

context alone determined the genre of an action – where an activity (such as

sport) takes place determines the description of the activity. Wertz also ques-

tioned Best’s idea of context, suggesting it was too rigid and ignorant of the

dynamic nature of culture. In contrast, Wertz asserted that ‘intention…is as likely

a candidate for determining the meaning of an action as the context is’ (524).

Roberts’ (1995) critique accused Best of equivocally applying different

modes of description to art and sport. Best, Roberts concluded, described art

in ‘exclusively particular terms’ while he described sport ‘in exclusively general

terms’ (497). Once the equivocation is corrected, Roberts reasoned, differences

are dissolved and no reason remains to claim sport cannot be art.

After all of the counterclaims and questioning, Best (1988) stood firm on

his original conclusion – sport is not art. Best took issue with Boxill’s categori-

zation of his work, her misrepresentation of his view of sport’s cultural

significance, and Wertz’s distortion of his emphasis on contextual occurrence

to caricaturize his true asserted position. Best further warned against the

self-defeating nature of an inclusive definition of art:

If [art] applies to everything, it can meaningfully be applied to nothing, in which case

since there would be no sense in the term ‘art,’ there would be no sense or point in

claiming that sport is art. (1988, 538)

Although not satisfied with Best’s argumentation overall, Christopher

Cordner concurred with Best’s conclusion that sports are not arts. Cordner

(1995a) argued equating grace with functionality, despite their close connec-

tion, results in inappropriate conflations between sport and art. In a second

article Cordner (1995b) acknowledged that sports and arts share characteristics,

however ‘the institution of art enables the deliberate and systematic exploiting

of a capacity for imaginative engagement that the institution of sport caters to

but not in the same deliberate and systematic way’ (435).

Defending sport’s social value stood at the heart of the debate in the

1970s and 1980s. Best (1998) made this explicit, suggesting Boxill, Wertz, and

others attempted to regard sport as a form of art to raise its cultural status.

Art in modernity, after all, finds affiliation with intellectuals, high culture, and

the best of society; sport, in contrast, ascribed a superfluous place in society.

Reserved for children, the less cultured, or merely as an escape from the ‘real

SPORT, AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE, AND ART 203

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world’, sport’s role in culture is at the forefront in popularity, but doomed to

second-class status in terms of significance. Even if judged by the criteria of

art, Best contended, sport qualifies only as poor art; therefore attempts to

elevate sport by calling it art would fail to raise its status. Joseph Kupfer (1988)

agreed, labelling engagement in strenuous arguments to identify sport as a

form of art unnecessary or even counterproductive. Cordner (1998b) echoed

Kupfer’s position, concluding that sport’s ‘partly different allegiances from art’

rendered it ‘none the worse’ (435).

After nearly a decade of ongoing exchanges, arguments focusing on

sport and its connection with art stalled. Since all involved in the debate

agreed sport (as art or non-art) served as a valuable human practice, the stakes

at the conclusion of the debate over ‘is sport art’ were in essence relatively

low – a seemingly unnecessary definitional demarcation of sport relative to art

held in the balance. Philosophers involved in the exchange tended to gravitate

to one side or the other on sufficiency/necessity grounds: should conceptions

of art be inclusive to make room for sport or essentially narrow to protect art

from infestation? Thus to revive the now-muted ‘is sport art’ debate on onto-

logical grounds appears to hold little worth for the future of sport inquiry.

Are Aesthetics Implicit (or Incidental) to Sport?

A second more durable (although still sporadic) discussion considering

sport’s aesthetic elements emerged from the ‘is sport art?’ exchanges. Best’s

main rejoinder to ‘sport is art’ defenders, for instance, focused on his critics’ (par-

ticularly Boxill and Wertz) repeated disregard for key distinctions highlighted

between aesthetic and artistic dimensions. The aesthetic, Best (1995) argued,

foundationally stands as an evaluative concept; art, an intentional creation of an

unequivocally representative art-object. According to Best (1988), the failure to

acknowledge this distinction resulted in confused and inaccurate conclusions

and, ultimately, misguided conflations between sport and art. Best did concede

that ‘aesthetic sports’ such as gymnastics, diving, and figure skating placed an

aesthetic sensibility at the core of their athletic activities, while also admitting

even ‘purposive sports’ including baseball, track and field, football, swimming,

possessed an incidental aesthetic dimension. Yet he resisted temptations to

equate sport with art, proclaiming sport need not seek out ontological art status

for significance, while pushing for sport to maintain its autonomy and seek judg-

ment relative to its own (including aesthetic) standards.

Best’s position drew new lines in the sand separating those who felt aes-

thetics played a more central role in sport from others arguing aesthetic

dimensions of athletic activities were merely superficial and incidental. Kupfer

(1988), despite agreeing sport need not seek artistic accreditation, took issue

with Best’s neglect to acknowledge the deeply essential aesthetic components

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of all sports. Kupfer believed Best inaccurately placed scoring and winning as

the purpose of competitive sports. Alternatively, Kupfer viewed scoring as an

internal purpose of sport and thus defined by the activity – whereas the

activity is not defined by the internal purpose of scoring. From an aesthetic

point of view how the internal purpose (scoring/winning) is achieved, not that

the purpose is made, becomes crucial. Accidental or ‘shabby’ play resulting in

scoring or victories, Kupfer (1995) claimed, ‘can by no stretch of the imagina-

tion be thought as achieving the “purpose” of competitive sport’ (395). Inquiry

into attributes and characteristics of sport including ‘the social interaction and

opposition, development of tension, uncertainty of outcome, and attainment

of a final resolution’ can result in ‘a great moment long remembered in the col-

lective consciousness of sports fans’ (Morgan and Meier 1995, 447). Kupfer thus

suggested dramatic possibilities and qualities inherently a part of sports make

them qualified for serious aesthetic inquiry and attention.

In a more contemporary JPS article, Wright (2003) finds common ground

with Kupfer, asserting that an aesthetic dimension deeply influences our interest

in and attraction to sport – something regularly acknowledged by impartial

viewers (such as sport philosophers) but not necessarily recognized by engaged

performers or captivated spectators. Thus the aesthetic dimension of sport

tends to remain implicit, Wright argues, due to the limits of language to express

its presence. Where Wright differs from Kupfer is in defining the necessary and

sufficient conditions for aesthetic judgments. Wright posits that technical excel-

lence in sport serves as a necessary condition for aesthetic experience, operat-

ing as potential ‘keys to unlock the door to an aesthetic outlook’ (85); however

satisfying some technical criteria, Wright contends contra Kupfer, is not a suffi-

cient feature as emotionally charged aesthetic responses must also be present.

‘By explicitly recognizing the aesthetic as a response and not simply a technical

judgment, we have some way of explaining the huge kind of emotional

response we have to great moments in sport’, Wright proposes (87). Equating

aesthetic (feeling/emotion) with non-aesthetic (literal/technical) meanings,

Wright concludes, leads to ambiguity and misunderstandings (88).2

Although not in full agreement, Kupfer and Wright together hold firm

that aesthetics serve a central role in all sports – not merely an incidental one.

Wright, more so than Kupfer, recognizes aesthetics as an experientially

grounded notion. However Wright’s conception of aesthetics still stops short of

fully recognizing aesthetic experiences’ pivotal role in sport, referring to the

connection between technical skills and aesthetics as ‘only a contingent one’,

and identifying aesthetic quality as merely a ‘byproduct of achieving ends that

demand skilful means’ serving to ‘explain the intrinsic satisfaction sport can

give us’. Wright similarly undersells the deeply aesthetic nature of athletic

games, writing, ‘sporting activities did not evolve, nor were they designed to

bring about, aesthetic qualities. By definition, their main aim is to produce

SPORT, AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE, AND ART 205

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movement that is ‘highly skilful’ because of the degree of difficulty a particular

sport demands due to the artificial obstacles that have to be overcome’ (90).

Taking a pragmatic view, however, aesthetics’ influence on sport goes

much deeper than as a contingent byproduct serving to create intrinsic satis-

faction through athletic engagement. In fact, taking a cue from John Dewey I

will argue that a wider conception of aesthetic experience functions as the

pivot around which the good life, and by extension ‘good sport’, turn. Recog-

nizing the central role aesthetic experiences play in sport is therefore key to

elevating and realizing its role as a meaningful and valuable human practice.

Aesthetic Experience at the Core of Sport

In a somewhat radical (and admittedly controversial) manner, pragmatists

influenced by Dewey ground the concept of ‘aesthetic’ in lived human experi-

ence. Rather than exist simply as a branch of philosophy concerned with

assessing the ‘beautiful’ and ‘ugly’ (LW 1:82),3 aesthetics from this widened per-

spective refers to the quality of experience humans (as ‘live creatures’) derive

through transactions with the worlds they ‘inhabit’. Thus unlike most theories,

pragmatic accounts seek to ground aesthetics, and more accurately aesthetic

experience, in the everyday world.

This notion of embodied aesthetics emerges from the pragmatic belief

that all experience is at -once dynamic, durable, and aesthetic: durable in the

sense that our existence is shaped and bounded by our histories, cultural habits,

and physical bodies; dynamic since despite the relatively stable nature of

human ‘being’, the worlds we inhabit are constantly shifting, never the same

twice, always open to new possibilities. Human experience is always aesthetic

since it ‘is pervaded with a sensed texture of order, possibility, meaning, and

anticipation’ (Alexander 1993, 205–6). The lived body thus serves as the conduit

through which humans actively engage in meaning making; it is irreducibly the

medium we use to wholly transact with the world and gain an aesthetic, value-

laden awareness of our existence. As a result, the ‘flesh of meaning’ for our lives

emerges within and is transformed by our kinesthetic experience.

One should not, however, conclude that experience is aesthetically all-or-

nothing: either meaningful or utterly meaningless. Instead, all experience quali-

tatively includes shades of meanings. This way of conceptualizing aesthetics as

the experiential quality of transactions between human and world by degree

challenges the more traditional view of aesthetics as a relatively binary (is/is not)

assessment of beauty. Kretchmar (2001) supports this claim: ‘We cannot avoid

the issue of meaning…. All intentional movement, all activity that takes place

when we are awake, everything we do when we are conscious at some thresh-

old level, is accompanied by vague or clear perceptions, understandings, hopes,

goals, fears, experiences of boredom, excitement, various motivations – that is,

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with one sort of meaning or another’ (319). Thus even the most mundane of our

activities, such as a dull spin on a stationary bike facing a lifeless wall, is

aesthetic to some degree.

The highest form of aesthetic experience for Dewey-inspired pragmatists

is referred to as ‘an experience’ – a more complete and inclusive human

concept that successfully transforms a situation into a temporally meaningful

event. Such deeply aesthetic experiences differ from ‘ordinary’ experiences by

the distinctly memorable, rewarding whole, zestful character exhibited – as

‘experience in its integrity’ (LW 10:278). An experience is not human experience

occurring within a unique, special, or ‘otherworldly’ realm. ‘Everyday’ affairs,

including dining at a fine restaurant, watching a baseball game on a sunny

afternoon, the trauma of a souring friendship, coming down with an illness,

and playing chess, can potentially become an experience. Our descriptions of

the unity of experience in these situations manifest verbally as ‘that meal, that

game, that rupture of friendship’ (LW 10:44). In sport, we can all remember that

shot, that play, that struggle.

Such that moments become an experience by standing in contrast to

most of our experiences in which the horizon of meaning remains tacit. Deeply

aesthetic situations instead reveal a dimension of human meaning so directly

that they become focal points by which other experiences are interpreted.

Language, as Wright (2003) similarly points out, often fails to provide a clear

description of these experiences in their entirety – leading to at best exasper-

ated ‘You had to be there!’ declarations.

Deeply aesthetic experience needs both form (the durable trait of experi-

ence) and impulse (the dynamic trait of experience) – two reciprocal qualities

that also serve as the necessary ingredients for growth. Thus, for pragmatists,

our richest experience is also understandable as experience that ‘grows at the

edges’; and in turn meaning grows, because it is at once funded and novel,

dynamic and stable, continuous and contingent. This embodied notion of aes-

thetics, and ultimately of meaning and value, grasps the complexity of human

experience in its fullest sense. Thus Alexander (1993) contends that the drive

to live a life of rich meaning and value stands as the root of our existence or

the telos of humanity – the ‘Human Eros’. Dewey makes a similar claim: ‘Noth-

ing but the best, the richest and fullest experience possible, is good enough

for man’ (LW 1:307). Consequently to live life in its fullest sense demands that

we seek the most fulfilling, meaningful, and valued experiences: the meaning

of life is a life of experiencing deep meaning.

If a warrantable claim – that the ‘good’ life is about deeply meaningful,

embodied existence – no inquiry into social systems, ethics, politics, logic,

science, or art, to name but a few, can be complete without recognizing aes-

thetic experience as central. Representing this view, Peirce (1998) argues that

logic – ‘the doctrine of what we ought to think’ – must be an application of

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ethics – ‘the doctrine of what we are prepared to do’. However, to ‘get any

clue to the secret of Ethics’, Peirce concludes we must first make up ‘our for-

mula of what it is that we are prepared to admire’. What we are ‘prepared to

admire’ for Peirce, requires a study in aesthetics (142).

The implications for placing aesthetics at the centre of philosophical

discourse are profound. If persuasive, virtually all of our discussions about sport

must include, on some level, a conversation about aesthetic experience. Ethical

discourse, rather than separate from or prior to, now finds aesthetics at its

root; logic moves from an analytic deductive to a vital, experiential process

based on our ideals and values. This raises the stakes for aesthetic inquiry well

beyond the now-tired definitional-demarcation debates and places aesthetics

at the heart of philosophical inquiry into sport’s pressing issues.

Sport in fact exists because to create worlds of meaning, humans

construct and reconstruct webs of highly flexible practices into cultures. Humans

from birth enter into pre-existing symbol systems, such as sport, that constantly

grow and reconfigure as we transact with the environment in new and novel

ways. In turn, these always changing interpretive matrixes help humans ‘marshal

materials in a meaningful way’ and embody new habits that ‘provide meaningful

ways of interacting with those surroundings’ (Boisvert 1998, 124). This constant

interplay emphasizes the triadic features of existence as dynamic, durable, and

aesthetic. Within these irreducibly social practices we actively and imaginatively

enter into one another’s lives. The sport-world, as a fully human practice in

which we collectively live our sport experiences, secures the conditions within

which our ‘Human Eros’ can develop, and thus potentially serves to fulfil what

Alexander (1993) describes as the primary aim of civilization (207).

Therefore to suggest (as Wright does) that sports were not created for

the potential realization of aesthetic experience devalues its fully human point

and purpose as a social practice. Consider the construction and evolution of a

game such as basketball. James Naismith’s original conception, taking the

‘best’ from other games to fuse into one (and subsequent game changes),

creates possibilities for embodied meaning: tension cultivated temporally by

the ticking clock; rules and objectives to at once limit and open space for

bodies and ball to travel within horizontal and vertical planes; utilization of

technology and implementation of physical boundaries to accentuate both

human possibilities and limitations (Elcombe 2007). When the game becomes

too easy or too hard, or when what we value (including emerging values)

circumvented, rule changes come along to recalibrate the game’s aesthetic

possibilities. Three point lines and three second lanes opened space around

the basket, shot clocks sped the game’s pace, dribbling created new, experien-

tially interesting ways for players to move within the boundaries.

All sports, including basketball, absolutely exist for aesthetic reasons.

Game logic is fully informed by aesthetics, pursuing the extension of our

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‘warranted assertions’ as they relate to embodied ideals. Naismith, as an exam-

ple, created basketball without understanding analytic criterion based on con-

cepts such as pre-lusory goals, lusory means and constitutive rules. Similarly,

sports’ moral codes emerge from our meaning matrixes and cultural values

and seek to identify actions that make what we do ‘better’ in relation to our

experientially grounded sporting ideals. What we come to value through expe-

rience shapes what we see as ‘good’ or ‘right’ – such as the acceptance of or

resistance to certain kinds of violence in sports such as hockey and football.

If sports failed to evoke deeply aesthetic experiences they would cease

to exist and likely never come about in the first place. We create, return to,

adjust, watch, discuss, mythologize physical games because they appeal to us

in a fully meaningful, embodied sense; because a game that revolves around

putting a leather ball into a metal hoop ten feet off the ground is, when con-

sidered on aesthetic rather than mechanical or coldly informational grounds,

potentially a deeply meaningful practice created by humans for humans.

Unfortunately opportunities to expand, widen, and deepen meaning in

sport are often violated in today’s sport culture. Rather than reconstruct sport-

ing practices in ways that make rich meaning more readily available, the

current conditions of athletics often contribute to what Shusterman (1997)

refers to as the ‘anaestheticization’ of human experience. To challenge this

shallowness of experience, for sport to become far more meaningful and

deeply fulfilling, a return to the connection between sport and art, albeit from

a metaphorical rather than ontological perspective, is needed.

Art, Embodied Metaphor, and Sport

Edgar (2006) and Welsch (2005) recently revisited sport/art links in the

edited works Sporting Reflections and The Aesthetics of Everyday Life, respec-

tively. Edgar, by way of Collingwood, argues that’s sport’s potential to bring

communities together and articulate their self-understood existence leaves the

possibility open that sport might be considered art – or at least a near cousin.

Welsch too concludes sport can be viewed as art as our understanding of art

itself transforms in contemporary culture. Both Edgar and Welsch, for the most

part, return directly to consider sport and art’s connection from an ontological

perspective. And while their analyses are both insightful and compelling,

definitional-demarcation discussions about sport and art moving forward ought

to find replacement with an examination of art as the ideal metaphor for sport

to embody.

Rorty (1979) views metaphor as a central aspect of human existence: ‘it is

pictures rather than propositions, metaphors rather than statements, which

determine most of our philosophical convictions’, he argues (12). Polanyi and

Prosch (1975) similarly trumpet the centrality of metaphors to human meaning,

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arguing that metaphorical expression synthesizes the complexity of our exis-

tence and ‘like a symbol, carries us away, embodies us in itself, and moves us

deeply as we surrender ourselves to it’ (79). And while some may resist the

centrality Rorty and Polanyi ascribe them, metaphors clearly serve as influential

frames that help guide our lives and shape our meaning matrixes when consid-

ered experientially (rather than simply linguistically). Through the active, chal-

lenging process of integrating ‘incompatibles’ (such as a piece of cloth hanging

from a pole and a nation’s identity), metaphors more fully open humans to

possibilities for an experience – and therefore to the satisfaction of the Human

Eros.

An embodied metaphor’s power to shape our meaning matrixes is clearly

evident in sport. Sport has long been dominated by the war metaphor, instru-

mentally framing the ways we experience sport and reflect upon its meanings.

The emergence of international sport in the early twentieth century in particu-

lar cemented the links between athletic contests and war. George Santayana,

for instance, described sport as a ‘liberal form of war stripped from its compul-

sions and malignity’ (cited in Cordner 1995b, 432); meanwhile William James

agreed sports could serve as much needed ‘moral equivalents of war’.

Certainly sports potentially embody the ‘best’ of the idea of war includ-

ing community building, the inculcation of martial values including courage,

sacrifice, discipline, passion, and perseverance, and a rescue from the ‘flat

degeneration’ increasingly infecting the modern world (James 1977, 663).

James’ call for a ‘moral equivalent’ sought to replicate in more humane prac-

tices such ‘benefits’ minus the atrocities of actual warfare. However the

employment of war as sport’s dominant metaphor, despite James’ emphasis

on adopting only the ‘positives’, fails to eradicate many of the negative

features of armed conflict in the athletic arena. Sport as ‘war’, for instance, fos-

ters hatred for and desire to annihilate opponents, cultivates a singular focus

on efficiency and zero-sum outcomes, and justifies the acceptance of amoral,

emotionless, ‘by any means necessary’ actions. In many ways, employing the

war metaphor leaves sport increasingly prone to harmful attitudes and unlikely

to create the conditions for meaningful human growth.

We see an appetite to consider new metaphors in sport, to embody fresh

frames that better address vexing issues such as traumatic injury, overt racism,

and intentional rule violations dotting sport headlines. Problems plaguing

sport, however, will only continue to worsen under the guise of sport cultivat-

ing war’s ‘virtues’. If delivering his famous 1906 Stanford address in the

twenty-first century, it would behoove James to call for a complete rejection of

war as a metaphor for social practices to embrace – rather than seek out its

moral equivalents. Alternatively art, pragmatically conceived, serves as the ideal

metaphor for sport to embody moving forward.

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From a pragmatic perspective, art is defined by its effect on experience

(what it does) rather than its ontological properties (what it is). Almost any

human transaction with the world can potentially be artful, or in other words,

can deepen or widen experience. When concerted ‘doing’ fuses with the ‘under-

going’ of deeply aesthetic experience, art’s work ‘happens’. In other words,

when humans engage in directed, purposeful activities, such as chipping a

block of stone to create a three-dimensional image or a footballer such as Messi

breaking through the last line of defence in possession of the ball, and when

experience is heightened aesthetically through ‘participation’ in the action (as

maker or perceiver), it is potentially artful. Grounding aesthetic experience in

the everyday world thus opens space for us to cook, play sports, conduct scien-

tific inquiry, or create traditional works of art, artfully. Rather than limit our

understanding of art to certain kinds of artefacts, the essence and value of art

are in how the product (sounds, images, movements) works with or in experi-

ence (LW 10:9). Art, Dewey contends, is the ‘simplest and most direct way to lay

hold of what is fundamental in all the forms of experience’ (LW 16:396).

Art, when conceived as an active deepening experience through

intelligent, directed transactions with the world, first elicits an emotional

response – we feel great art rather than know it in its immediacy. It captures

our attention, moves experience from the tacit to a focal point of or pivot for

our attention. Upon reflection, we explore further such that moments, weaving

meanings into the structured system of shared beliefs we inhabit and construct

to make sense of the world. Art at its best illuminates and challenges our hab-

its, communicates our shared meanings, invigorates our practices, deepens the

aesthetic quality of our experiences. Consequently through an active transac-

tion with artworks we grow, we change, we are never the same. Mostly these

adjustments are subtle, but occasionally ‘great art’ transforms us significantly.

Traditional forms of art historically do the best job of triggering that

moments leading to growth through inquiry. Poets create combinations of

words and sentences in unique, non-literal ways, painters make use of colours

and shapes within some defined physical space to force us to engage the

work, musicians mix sound sequences that tap into our emotions; in different

ways, each forces us to reach to form connections between the maker’s linguis-

tic utterances or pictorial expression or sound production and some facet of

the world we exist within. The result is the heightened potential for an experi-

ence – a fully integrated, complete, illuminating or transformative experience.

However ideas about traditional art too often disconnect it from every-

day life and offer little to deepen and widen human experience. Shusterman

(1997) argues movement away from conceptions of art revolving around aes-

thetic experience to analytic definitions (represented by art theorists such as

Danto) erroneously divides meaning and pleasure, cognition and feeling, and

enjoyment and understanding. Instead, he contends, all of these should be

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embodied in art. The cold, mechanical demarcation of art, Shusterman (1997)

suggests, renders humanity lifeless (37). Art under such conditions adopts a

‘museum attitude’ (LW 10:14) – existing in a special antiseptic world accessible

(both physically and intellectually) only to the special few, while aesthetics

serves merely as the ‘beauty parlor of civilization’ (LW 10:346).

In contrast, from a pragmatic perspective living meaningful lives with

and through each other can happen best within communities that became

democratic through artistic experimentation. Social systems, education, ethics

all emerge from this concept of democracy – a concept rooted in the aesthetic.

‘In writing a book on art [Art as Experience]’, Alexander (1987) notes, ‘Dewey is

presenting a radical theory of human life and conduct; the artistic use of expe-

rience marks a principle for ethics and social theory which cannot be ignored’

(272). As Beck (2001) further observes: ‘Social transformation is not a prerequi-

site for art, yet art, it seems, is one of the prerequisites for transformation’ (34).

This is why Dewey calls the invention of art (as a ‘conscious idea’ rather than

creation of certain kinds of products) ‘the greatest intellectual achievement in

the history of humanity’ (LW 10:31).

Employing this understanding of art as a metaphorical ideal rather than

an ontological model vitally underscores sport’s potential democratic purpose

and possible contributions to more deeply meaningful, fully human experience.

What is most important for the possibilities of sport is not whether it deserves

a seat at art’s family table (even as a close cousin as Edgar suggests) in its

current form, but if it can be inspired by a pragmatic understanding of art as a

metaphor to do art’s work.

Roberts (1995) similarly argues that sport ought to adopt the metaphor

of art to re-make itself into something new. And while I find many of Roberts’

conclusions offered compelling and worthy of further consideration, his view

of art as an idiosyncratic enterprise, description of art and artists’ exclusive

emphasis on creativity, and presentation of metaphor as a linguistic process,

render his conclusions incomplete. Engagement with art as maker or perceiver,

for instance, is not a solitary endeavour whereby one simply ‘remakes’ or ‘gives

birth’ to oneself. Instead, art (and sport) is an irreducibly social process that

grows out of our collective habits.

Furthermore, art is not solely about creativity. Roberts in this respect

focuses too exclusively on the dynamic aspect of experience at the expense of

its important durable features. Art not only transforms, but also illuminates the

conditions within which we find ourselves. Artists are not only creative, but

also perceptive, expressive, and skilled. They also anticipate audiences transact-

ing with their work rather than contemplate existing in isolation from other

members of their community (Fesmire 2003, 116–9).

Also contra Roberts, worlds need not be constantly remade wholly anew

– sometimes growth happens through clarification and confirmation.

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Disregarding the meaningfulness of sometimes hard-won habits and the dura-

ble nature of many of our social practices (including sports), Roberts neglects

the idea growth occurs at the edges of shared experiences rather than in com-

plete rupture from existing conditions. Finally, the focus on language discon-

nects Roberts’ partially pragmatic notion of art and metaphor from fully

embodied human experience. Metaphors inhabit our entire being – not simply

our language games.

Converting sport’s dominant metaphor from war to a fully pragmatic

conception of art not only (although importantly) changes the language of

sport, it also transforms our relationships to ‘others’ through sport, highlights

the textured, felt meaningfulness (aesthetic core) of sport, de-masculinizes its

structural archetype, and demands full engagement rather than disconnected

automation. In short, embodiment of the art metaphor changes how we

collectively live sport and in turn enhances sport’s contribution to the always-

ongoing development of genuinely democratic communities – ones that seek

growth both laterally and longitudinally for it members. In fact, due to sport’s

span of passionate appeal – from the local to global – as well as its irreducibly

embodied, kinesthetic nature, sport is well positioned to perform art’s cultural

task better than traditional forms of art. Cronin (1999), for example, highlights

the limits of ‘fine arts’ such as the poetry or plays of W.B. Yeats in relation to

the potential influence of soccer on the daily lives of ordinary, working-class

Irish citizens: ‘While such a key and prolific figure as Yeats would have massive

effect on the intellectual and chattering classes of Dublin, did he, or the stag-

ing of one of his plays at the Abbey, really help an Irish man or woman in the

far reaches of county Kerry know what it was to be Irish?’ (17).

Thus a move to a pragmatic conception of art as the ideal metaphor for

sport to embody not only challenges the anaesthetization of athletic practices,

but also its dulling effect on human experience overall. Perhaps one of the

contemporary world’s most appreciated global social practices – and one that

readily moves in some respects beyond the barriers of language and cultural

tribalism – sport stands as an instrumental tool capable of both influencing

and stunting human evolution. If sport could serve as its most aesthetically

appreciated social practice, as an artfully nurtured wellspring of deep meaning,

the profit for all of humanity would be boundless. No longer perceived as a

means of escape, as a way to leave the problems of the world behind, sport

would serve as the practice we go to live most fully, to realize shared mean-

ings and grow at the edges of our collective experience.

Conclusion

Progress was certainly made in our understanding of athletics from the

‘sport as art’ exchanges in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as recent additions to

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the literature by Edgar and Welsch. Sports’ place in culture emerges as a

central topic for philosophical discussion: whether sport is or is not art, the

debate demanded close attention to the values, qualities, and cultural signifi-

cance of athletic activities.

Furthermore, philosophers began talking about sport in relatively novel

ways, with aesthetic qualities of sport performance and spectatorship emerging

as captivating and rich areas for inquiry. However the import of the ontological

‘is sport art?’ debate became mostly inconsequential – evidenced by the limited

influence discussions about art (and aesthetics) exerted on emerging, pressing

issues confronted by sport philosophers, as well as the absence of sustained

attention exhibited by the dearth of articles published in the field’s literature.

The relative scarcity of consideration paid to aesthetics and its lack of

influence on sport philosophy discussions comes at a cost. Sport, like all

humanly constructed social practices, is at its core aesthetic – we are drawn to

it because of its ability to deepen the meaningfulness of our experience, to

engage us fully and illuminate our embodied possibilities and limitations. It

serves as a form of imaginative social communication through the use of inten-

tional and bounded bodily movements exploring the human limits and possi-

bilities within space and time. If we were to lose the centrality of aesthetic

experience, what future would remain? Sport ultimately cannot be sustained in

its fullest sense by reasons of utility, tradition, duty, or atomistic sensation on

their own. Consequently all future inquiry regarding sport ought to take

aesthetic experience into account if sport is to realize its potential as a fully

human, deeply meaningful practice.

Furthermore, embodying a pragmatic notion of art as the ideal metaphor

for sport functionally re-orientates (and possibly re-invigorates) the ‘is sport

art?’ discussion. Sport is, after all, at its best as a meaningful human practice

when viewed widely and deeply – and art as sport’s ideal embodied metaphor

widens the lens and deepens the significance. In fact, sport can potentially do

‘arts’ work’ better than traditional notions of Art in the twenty-first century –

but only when art replaces the dominant metaphor of war.

Typically inquiry into the relevance of aesthetics to sport, as well as the

connections between sport and art conclude with half-hearted declarations.

Informed by pragmatic notions of aesthetic experience, art, and metaphor, I

instead want to make the strongest claim possible about sport: if the Human

Eros is to seek out meaningful (deeply aesthetic) experiences through shared

cultural practices, and this process creates the best conditions for democratic

communities to flourish, then sport can contribute to this as much as, or

perhaps even more than any other social practice. So rather than stake claim

ontologically as ‘Art’ (and likely as ‘low art’), embodiment of the art metaphor

by sport makes a compelling case that it stands potentially as one of human-

ity’s most important cultural developments.

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Notes

1. Other works examining the link between sport, art, and aesthetics include E.

F. Kaelin, ‘The Well-Played Game: Notes Toward an Aesthetics of Sport, Quest

10 (May 1968), 16–28; Louis A. Reid, Sport, the Aesthetic and Art’, British Jour-

nal of Physical Education 7 (July 1976), 245–58; and Norman Kent, ‘Art in

Sports’, American Artist 32 (March 1968), 45–47, 55.

2. Wright cites Matravers example of an aesthetic and non-aesthetic way to

conceptualize the vastness of a cathedral. The non-aesthetic interpreter

provides technical facts about the cathedral, while the aesthetic interpreter

expresses feelings of insignificance and amazement.

3. Reference to John Dewey works use the common citation format identifying

works as Later Works (LW) followed by volume and page reference (i.e. LW

10:44). See reference list for complete source information.

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Tim Elcombe, Wilfrid Laurier University, Department of Kinesiology and

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3C5, Canada. E-mail: telcombe@wlu.ca

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