Volume XIV, Issue I, Fall 2020

Editors’ Introduction

Welcome to the Fall 2020 issue of The Agonist on Nietzsche and sports. According to a letter to his mother and sister, which Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) sent from Schulpforta in March 1863, there was a ‘ball’, on which occasion the older schoolboys played quite well, but his class didn’t. Nietzsche is referring to a school festival here, and the play his class performed was Schiller’s Wallensteins Lager. Despite his veneration of the intoxicating and overly dramatic God Dionysus, Nietzsche was quite the opposite type, as a school boy; ‘Fritz’, as his mother and sister called him, was the typical introvert bookworm, who liked to read and play the piano, but couldn’t stand noise and rough play, let alone sports. And whilst modern sports were upcoming in the second half of the nineteenth century in Europe, Nietzsche indeed only mentions the word ‘sport’ once, in a reference to erotic chase. ‘Sportsmen’ are referred to only once in his works, again in 1887, i.e., in On the Genealogy of Morals III 17, in a metaphorical sense.

So, Nietzsche’s own lived experiences with sports seem to be confined to horseback-riding, which he learned together with his best friend Erwin Rohde in early 1868, and hiking, which he did daily and with fervent ardor after his early retirement in 1879 from university life. Legend has it that Nietzsche was a rather talented horse rider and to his own surprise he was chosen for the horse artillery in fall of that same year, in spite of his severe myopia. His riding career ended prematurely in March 1868, though, when, during a too-quickly performed jump, he fell with his breast on the knob at the front of the saddle and ripped several muscles and ligaments and bruised some ribs.

The ‘and’ in the title ‘Nietzsche and Sports’ of this issue therefore strikes us as odd: we cannot learn anything from the historical development of sports by looking at Nietzsche’s life; Nietzsche doesn’t seem to have had any substantial interest in sports, nor did he ever reflect on sports as activity of personal, social or cultural value. He never developed a ‘philosophy of sports’ e.g., a phenomenological account of movement or an ethics of fair play and a sport[wo]manship. So why this issue on the topic of Nietzsche and sports?

The justification for this issue resides in the application of Nietzsche’s thoughts on play and agon to contemporary sports culture. Nietzsche’s philosophy is marked by two elements that are key for sport studies: his aesthetics and ontology revolve around the concepts of ‘play’ and ‘competition’ or ‘agon.’ What is more, his ethics rests on the stylization of the self and his anthropology and philosophy of culture are built on the idea of the moral and spiritual transformation of persons from ‘camel’ figure into ‘lion’ and finally ‘child’ figure. One of the hallmarks of this transformation is the ‘naturalization’ and ‘aestheticization’ of personal belief systems and perception of self and world, turning the hierarchy between body and mind upside down. In so doing, he is the first philosopher of modern philosophy to attach more value to the body than to the mind in epistemological matters.

After reading the contributions in this volume, it is clear, to me, that Nietzsche has much to offer to the philosophy of sports. The philosophy of sports would do well to turn their attention more to Nietzsche’s philosophy, especially if this discipline wants to expand its scope beyond the obvious (ethics of doping, fair play) and develop into the rich, exciting and promising discipline it can be by, for example, focusing more on its ontological and aesthetic qualities to affirm life, its agonism as part of it, and its creativity as life-giving power.

I hope you enjoy reading the articles in this issue as much as I did!

Martine Prange, Amsterdam, August 2020.

Content: Volume XIV, Issue I, Fall 2020

Essays on Nietzsche and Sport	Author
Introduction	Martine Prange	Read PDF
Beyond Face and Heel: Nietzsche’s Agonism and the Pro-Wrestling Spectacle	Ben Abelson	Read PDF
The Waves Rise Around Your Mountain	Daniel Brennan	Read PDF
Sport: Instrument of Nihilism or Praxis of Lightness?	Luc Viet Anh Ha	Read PDF
Nietzsche’s Collective “Will to Power” and the Coaching Style of Phil Jackson	Bradley Kaye	Read PDF
Nietzsche, Zarathustra, and the Three Metamorphosis of the Spirit: Possible Contributions to the Concept of Game	Odilon José Roble, Marcus Vinícius Simões de Campos and Fidel Machado de Castro Silva	Read PDF
Shooting with Arrows: Archery Symbolism in Nietzsche’s Agonism	Yunus Tuncel	Read PDF
Miscellaneous	Author
Myth and the Problem of Initiation in The Birth of Tragedy	Callum Blake	Read PDF
“Bad Boy Nietzsche!?”: The Literature of Alienation in the Late Writings: Ivan Soll on the Chapter Titles of Ecce Homo	Thomas Steinbuch	Read PDF
Book Reviews	Author
Nietzsche in the Nineteenth Century: Social Questions and Philosophical Interventions by Robert C. Holub	Daniel Blue	Read PDF
The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Philosophy: Nietzsche and the Modern Drama by David Kornhaber	Dirk R. Johnson	Read PDF
Individuality and Beyond: Nietzsche Reads Emerson by Benedetta Zavatta	Laura Langone	Read PDF
Additional Content
Contributor’s Bios		Read PDF
Call for Papers for Spring 2021 Issue		Link
Submission Guidelines		Link

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