KategorijaPhilosophy of Olympism

Coubertin regards democracy as a political means of the bourgeoisie which should be applied as long as it is useful. Writing in the times of the great economic crisis in 1929 on the basic conceptions of IOC, Coubertin concludes: “It was first necessary to establish the basic rules of the International Olympic Committee and to have them recognized by all nations. This was not an easy task, since its Constitution was in obvious opposition to the ideas of the day. For it repudiates the principle of delegation so dear to our parliamentary democracies – the principle which, having rendered great services, seems to be less efficient every day.”(1) The “efficiency” of democracy is not assessed according to its possibility of realizing the basic human and civil rights, but according to its efficiency in keeping the workers in submission and ensuring a stabile development of capitalism. At the same time, Coubertin openly states that IOC was founded as an authoritarian organization and is thus a prototype of the political structure of society he was arguing for ever since he set out towards the Olympic heights. It can be said that IOC is a symbolic organic link connecting Coubertin’s original Olympic idea with fascism.

Coubertin doesn’t trust democracy because it is such a political form of the rule of capital over man which is not capable of ensuring a stabile development of capitalism and with its “political liberties” offers a possibility of a political organization of the workers, which at the times of crisis can jeopardize the ruling order. Concerned about the fate of capitalism after the Russian and Munich Revolutions, Coubertin sharply criticizes the bourgeoisie which, unlike the aristocracy, neglected the “care” about the workers and thus turned them against the ruling order. Coubertin: “The capitalist bourgeoisie is taking a risk of paying a high price for the selfish calculation that made it establish democracy. It has never wanted to help the working class acquire other skills except the ones that can make its service more productive by increasing its productive capabilities. It even denied it access to those neutral knowledge’s which, as it was nicely expressed by priest Wagner, offer ‘access to a sublime life’. It created spiritual wealth and keeps it under close watch so as to preserve its monopoly.” (2) In fact, Coubertin wants to say that the working “masses” were given the civil rights only to help the bourgeoisie to overthrow the aristocracy and seize power, and that it did not build an adequate mechanism of spiritual control over the workers which at the times of crisis would efficiently pacify (depolitize) them and thus “neutralize” the possibility of enjoying the (formal) rights they won.

Instead of a social order based on the “rule of law”, Coubertin advocates the establishment of a new order of privileges analogous to the feudal order. He does not argue for ancien régime since that order, like the Christianity, proved to be incapable of keeping the “masses” in submission. Coubertin opts for the bourgeoisie and entrusts it with a “historical” task to restore, by way of sport as the modern (positivist) religion, the indisputable dominant status of the nobility before the French Revolution, to give the working “masses” and the woman the status they had before the Revolution and to for ever deal with the emancipatory heritage of civil society and national cultures. He seeks to create a peculiar bourgeois aristocracy which claims power not on the basis of its “blue blood”, but relying on its power to gain it and its resolve to maintain it for good. Not a divine authority, but the authority of sheer force, which appears in the guise of a “natural right” – that is the power order should be based on. It is no accident that from the “heroic age” of ancient Greece, when demos had not yet appeared on the political scene, Coubertin creates an idealized picture of the world which serves as a civilizatory excuse for the Social Darwinist order he advocates. In the civil and human rights Coubertin sees a concession which the ruling “elite” had to give in order to preserve power – only one lost battle in the war between the “rich” and the “poor” (working “masses”) that has been going on since the beginning of time – an evil which should be dealt with once and for all. From such a political conception comes also Coubertin’s “utilitarian pedagogy”: to militarize the bourgeoisie and to create from it, through sport and physical drill, a “master race” is it’s most important task. The more sport and Olympism we have, the less democracy there is! – This could be the “practical” postulate of Coubertin’s Olympic philosophy. “The seeds of authoritarianism” in Coubertin’s conception, were planted with Comte’s idea of progress, which is the guiding principle of Coubertin’s Olympic philosophy. Marcuse: “Comte’s belief in the necessary laws of progress did not exclude practical efforts in the direction of such social reform as would remove any obstacles in the path of these laws. The positivist program of social reform foreshadows liberalism’s turn into authoritarianism. In contrast to Hegel, whose philosophy showed a similar tendency, Comte slurred over the fact that the turn is made necessary because of the antagonistic structure of civil society. Classes in conflict, he held, are but vestiges of an obsolete regime, soon to be removed by positivism, without any threat to the ‘fundamental institution of property’.”(3)

At the time when capitalism appeared the oncoming bourgeois class fought for a “civil state” not in order to abolish the class privileges and for the sake of human emancipation, but to acquire power. At the time of strengthening of capitalist dynasties and the creation of colonial empires, Coubertin tries to bring things to a conclusion: the ruling bourgeois “elite” is to create such a political system that will insure indisputability and eternity of its power. In the new circumstances, the advocation of the original conceptions of liberalism becomes for “progress” a harmful moralism – it does not meet the interests of the class for which it was created, which means that it is at odds with the political spirit of liberalism on whose wings develops Coubertin’s conception. Coubertin clearly refers to that when he speaks of the workers (as well as of the “lower races” and the woman) as of people deprived of their elementary human and civil rights. The principles the new bourgeois class used in the 17^th and 18^th centuries to come to power and achieve its political and economic interests, now appear dangerous, for they offer a possibility to the proletariat, the child of industrialization, to come to power by using the instruments of the “civil state”. Political realism is the basis of Coubertin’s utilitarism and here Coubertin does not differ much from his predecessors. Indeed, his ideas are different from theirs, but politically he shares the same standpoint: he too defends the interests of the bourgeoisie by adapting to new historical circumstances. Hence it is no accident that libertarian impulses of liberalism appear not in Coubertin, but in Marx and his followers: Marx is the advocate of the emancipatory (universally human) spirit of liberalism, as opposed to Coubertin who argues for its political (class) spirit.

Coubertin’s Olympic doctrine deals with the emancipatory ideas of the French Revolution which are the basis of man’s inalienated “human rights” (droits de l’homme) and of the “rights of the citizen” (droits de citoyen) and thus are the foundation of modern legislation. Speaking of the French Revolution, Coubertin concludes that “only the form changed while the essence remained the same”, (4) from which follows an endeavour to abolish all those (customary, religious, moral and legal) norms and institutions that serve for the protection and execution of those rights. For Coubertin, the relations in feudal society are also “democratic”, although not so democratic as in civil society. To what extent Coubertin, fighting for an absolutization of the (self) willedness of the ruling “elite”, ignores the acquired level of civil and human rights, can be seen from his shameful bearing in the “Dreyfus affair”: instead of asking from those who were campaigning against Dreyfus to prove their allegations, Coubertin asks the accused to prove his innocence! Coubertin, with an aristocratic contempt, mocks the guiding principles of the Revolution, proclaiming them a sheer nonsense. He denies man the right to freedom: man is not born free, but as a master of a slave, depending on his race, gender and class. Coubertin, then, denies man the right to equality: “It is useless to fight against the oldest and basic social law – the law of inequality”, (5) claims Coubertin. Interestingly, Coubertin reduces the claim to equality to the claim to uniformity, “overlooking” the fact that equality logically presupposes individual differences. The privileges acquired by birth are the foundation of Coubertin’s theory on human rights. Racial, class and gender differences are the basis of human (social) inequality. As far as the principle of brotherhood is concerned, Coubertin denies that human beings are brothers: “Brotherhood is not for people – it is for angels”, (6) claims Coubertin reducing the bourgeois to a “civilized” beast, the worker to a “beast of burden” and the woman to a sow with a halo. The abolishment of the rights of the oppressed to a happy life is another Coubertin’s contribution to the “perfectioning of the world”. Here Coubertin shares the view of De Maistre: the misery of the oppressed is inevitable and is thus the source of a “happy life” of the master “elite”. Coubertin also deals with other basic human rights. The man’s right to life is subordinated, as we have seen, to the right of the order to survival: war is the highest test of “a male’s maturity”, while readiness to kill and capability of killing another human being represent the cardinal human virtues. What Coubertin took over from the revolutionary spiritual heritage of the bourgeois class from the 19^th century is nationalism, which was to become the main tool for fanaticizing both the bourgeois youth (colonialism) and the proletariat (destruction of the class conscious). Olympism becomes the means for directing the dissatisfaction of the oppressed against other nations and for concealing the class exploitation – in the guise of a “fight for the national interest”.

Speaking of Comte’s “positive theory of authority” Marcuse concludes: “Comte outlines a ‘positive theory of authority’, envisaging a society with all its activity based on the consent of individual wills. The liberalist tinge of this picture is shaded over, however. The instinct to submit triumphs, as the founder of positivist sociology renders a paean to obedience and leadership. ‘How sweet it is to obey when we can enjoy the happiness … of being conveniently discharged, by sage and worthy leaders, from the pressing responsibility of a general direction of our conduct’. Happiness in the shelter of a strong arm – the attitude, so characteristic today in Fascist societies, makes juncture with the positivist ideal of certainty. Submission to an all-powerful authority provides the highest degree of security. Perfect certainty of theory and practice, Comte claims, is one of the basic attainments of positivist method.” (7) Unlike Comte’s man, Coubertin’s man has not reached the level of development where he would have his “own will” which, trying to insure a more certain existence, he can “voluntarily” transfer to a higher authority. Included from his early childhood in the hierarchy of relations based on the principle “might is right” and natural selection, man can do no more but oppress the weaker and court the stronger – in order to survive. Human “will” moves between the tyrannical power and the instrumentalized “mercy” of the ruling “elite”, the key levers with which social order and peace can be insured. In addition, according to Coubertin, the oppressed cannot count on happiness, only on misery. Coubertin, a “humanist”, offers a “sports republic” where sufferings of the oppressed will be alleviated, not because they are to be helped, but to decrease “the hatred” that the poor have for the rich and thus prevent their struggle for a better world. In that context, Coubertin, unlike many other bourgeois theorists, does not regard sport as a means for protecting the main values of capitalism, (8) but as a reward to the oppressed for their obedient acceptance of the order in which they are deprived of their basic human and civil rights.

Comte seeks to form a special body which will take care of the strategic interests of capitalism and will be the indisputable source of the ruling political will. He insists on the authority of a systematized and indisputable “knowledge”, based on an absolutized authority of facts – which becomes a peculiar (positivist) “Holy Scripture”. Marcuse writes on that: “Social questions, because of their complicated nature, must be handled ‘by a small group of intellectual elite’. (…) All the sciences will be poured into the same crucible and fused into a well-ordered scheme. All concepts will be put to the test of ‘one and the same fundamental method’ until, in the end, they issue forth ordered in ‘a rational sequence of uniform laws’. Positivism thus will ‘systematize the whole of our conceptions ‘.” (9) Following Comte, Coubertin establishes IOC as the supreme spiritual body with an authoritarian character as the main source of the ruling political will – which looks after the strategic interests of the ruling parasitic classes. The members of IOC become the “holy guardians” of capitalism who are “self-elected” (among the most eminent representatives of the “elite”) and are not responsible to anyone. Diem cites Coubertin’s words about IOC, which are intended to justify the fascist rule in Germany. “We are not elected; we are self-recruited, contrary to the public opinion which is getting more and more used to putting all organizations into the yoke of the electing principle. Independence and stability is what allows us to perform great acts.” (10) Modern Olympism is the reaction of the bourgeoisie to the ideas and movements that seek to overcome the established (capitalist) order and a way of dealing with the idea of future. It is of its nature a totalitarian spiritual movement and is thus the tool of the ruling “elite” for preventing the ideas “competitive” to capitalism from being developed. “Free competition” is possible only on the basis of and within an indisputable domination of capitalist ideology. Only the views that contribute to the “perfectioning” of the established order are acceptable, but not the ideas that can become the political platform of people deprived of their rights in the struggle for just society. Political pluralism and positive society are incompatible. In Olympism, “freedom of choice” and the end of history coincided.

If we compare Coubertin’s conception with the doctrine of John Stewart Mill, we shall see that, unlike Coubertin, Mill does not depart from man’s animal nature, nor does he abolish the civil state; his philosophy propounds a radical elitism that becomes a form of legitimizing political authoritarianism – which is characteristic of Coubertin. Mill: “No government by a democracy or a numerous aristocracy, either in its political acts or in the opinions, qualities, and tone of mind which it fosters, ever did or could rise above mediocrity except in so far as the sovereign Many have let themselves be guided (which in their best times they always have done) by the counsels and influence of a more highly gifted and instructed one or few. The initiation of all wise or noble things comes and must come from individuals; generally at first from some one individual. (….) It does seem, however, that when the opinions of masses of merely average men are everywhere become or becoming the dominant power, the counterpoise and corrective to that tendency would be the more and more pronounced individuality of those who stand on the higher eminences of thought.” (11) Trying to prevent the citizens from becoming relevant factors in the establishment of the political will of society – one of the basic demands of liberalism – Mill deprives the citizen of reason (which is present in Bacon, Hobbes, Lock, Rousseau, Bentham), which is the basis of “social contract” and “civil society”, and establishes a monopoly over “intellect” as the source of the ruling political will, in the hands of the ruling class. The citizens are no longer a constitutive factor of the ruling political will, let alone the bearers of progress, but are reduced to a “mass” of idiots as opposed to “talented” individuals who are expected to establish a “balance” between stupidity (incapability of making “real” political decisions) and cleverness (capability of making such decisions). “Talent” and “knowledge” lose their evaluative, and acquire an objective dimension, which becomes a mask hiding the prevailing interest: making clever (political) decisions becomes the privilege of the ruling “elite”. Mill tries to deal with the democratic formation of the citizens’ political will, which means with the struggle between different political interests and thus with the development of “public dialogue” and “democratic publicity”: depriving “common people” of intelligence becomes a form of making the working people unsuitable for defining the political will of society. Instead of Comte’s social engineers, Mill offers peculiar social sages who determine the direction in which society is to develop. Expressed in the modern way, it is the creation of a “council for strategic issues”, which through the prism of existential and long-term interests of the ruling class will estimate the correctness of political decisions of the current authority – and this is the role that Coubertin gave to IOC. Since they are the indisputable bearers of “wisdom”, any critique especially that by the “lower classes”, is meaningless: the authority of God is replaced with the authority of “knowledge”. The realization of such a concept involves the establishment of the authoritarian power capable of compelling the “common people” (“lower classes”) to obediently accept the rule of one (dominant) will. Practically, it is a fight against the pluralism of ideas and political pluralism. “Social order”, which should enable a stable development of capitalism and insure indisputable rule of capitalist monopolies, becomes the supreme political principle.

It is no accident that in Coubertin, just as in Mill, a call to equality in society comes down to a call to people’s uniformity. The starting point for determining the “difference” between people are not their individual faculties and talents, but their social position and class, reason being the exclusive quality of the ruling classes. However, the very demand for reason, as well as for the observance of norms that are obligatory on all, is opposed to Coubertin’s positive voluntarism. Coubertin seeks to replace the democratic order, in which the “number” is the determining factor, with an order in which a self-recruiting “elite”, from the richest social stratum, has indisputable power. His ideal political structure of society is the one in which the “elite” can gain absolute power over the working “masses”. Unlike Mill, who, like Plato, expects the “most intelligent” people to direct the development of society, Coubertin thinks that the “bearers of progress” are those most loyal to capitalism and most determined to defend it: Olympism is not founded on the rule of reason, but on the rule of force. In addition, it is not the individual free will and reason that are the starting points for establishing volonté général as the foundation of social (civil) community, but it is the “interest of the race (nation)” behind which are hidden the class interests of the bourgeoisie. “The universal” becomes the means for absolutizing and totalizing the dominant will of capitalist monopolies. Modern Olympism excellently demonstrates the endeavour to present the partial interest of the bourgeoisie as the “universal interest” of mankind. The symbols used in mythologizing the Olympic Games (“peace”, “international cooperation”, “progress” and the like) are a “smoke-screen” hiding the true nature of the Games – which is totally opposed to the proclaimed “Olympic ideals”. The very fact that the leading people of IOC (Pierre de Coubertin, Henri de Baillet-Latour, Sigfrid Edstrøm, Avery Brundage, Juan Antonio Samaranch…), during the one hundred years of its existence, have been the members, propagators and open sympathizers of the fascist parties and movements clearly shows the true nature of modern Olympism. The insistence on the maxim that “sport has nothing to do with politics”, on the part of the Olympic officials and the ruling oligarchies, is only a hopeless attempt to conceal the truth that Olympism (sport) is the exclusive means of the ruling class for spiritual enslavement and pacification of the oppressed.

Coubertin proclaimed utilitarism the cardinal principle of his Olympic doctrine. There are no civilizatory obstacles to the ruling self-willedness: everything is allowed and justified if it is of benefit to the ruling class. Underlying Coubertin’s conception is the characteristic logic of monopolistic capitalism contained in the principle: “Destroy the competition!” It is an endeavour to turn the increasing economic power of the capitalist monopolies into a totalitarian and global political power of the bourgeoisie, capable of dealing once and for all with the emancipatory heritage of modern society and libertarian struggle of the oppressed. The concentration of the ever greater economic power in the ever fewer number of hands, on the one hand, and the increasing number of those deprived of their rights approaching the possibility of dethroning the ruling oligarchy, on the other hand – this is the starting point of Coubertin’s doctrine. At the same time, Olympism involves a unity of the struggle for survival and the struggle for preserving the ruling order. This is what completely integrates man into the existing world and appears in sport in a “pure” form: it is not the institutions and norms, but the ruling capitalist relations that become an indisputable totalizing power.

Coubertin’s conception of art is akin to the ancient conception from the “classical period” in which art affirmed its place in the “sacral world of cult, which is its source. In its nature, it is agalma, a decoration”. (76) While in antiquity the cult expressed submission to gods who symbolized the eternity of the cosmic world as opposed to the temporary human world, in Coubertin, Olympism is the “cult of the existing world”. This view determines the nature of the Olympic aesthetics: art is not a form in which man confronts this world wishing to escape from it or to overcome it, but is a means for its deification. The chief task of the Olympic cult is to remove everything that mediates between man and world and can enable the establishment of a critical detachment to it: it is beyond good and evil. Coubertin has the same (utilitarian) attitude to art as to pedagogy and philosophy: art does not represent the continuity of a cultural tradition and does not have a creative character, but is reduced to a means for building spectacular Olympic sceneries designed to fascinate people and enable the ruling values to “fill” the souls of spectators and integrate them into the ruling order. Artists are reduced to decoraters and illusionists.

Modern Olympism is not a “restoring” of the ancient cultural heritage, nor is it an embodiment of national cultures, but is a universal political instrument of capitalism for destroying the emancipatory heritage of Hellenic civilization as well as the heritage of national cultures. In antiquity, aesthetics was the basis of man’s spiritual relation to the world, while in Coubertin it is only a means for giving a cultural legitimacy to the primitive belligerent spirit that governs the world. The Hellenic aesthetical norms sprang from their conception of the cosmos: the way of ensuring existence and aesthetical challenges form an organic unity. In Coubertin’s philosophy everything is in the hands of the “elite” which is not thwarted by its fear of gods nor is it guided by its will, but is restrained by “progress” and guided by greediness. Instead in the Hellenic cultural heritage, Coubertin finds his “aesthetical” inspiration in the world industrial exhibitions, the pomps of the monarchy and military parades. The Olympic aesthetics results from the “progressive” nature of capitalism and the endeavours of European colonial states to conquer the world. Coubertin discards the ancient tradition in which aesthetics (proportion and harmony) was a spiritual expression of man’s cosmic essence, and which was expressed in the principles gnothi seauton and metron ariston. In Coubertin, there are no values which transcend the existing world. It is one of the most important flaws in modern Olympism as opposed to the ancient Olympic Games, which had before them an unattainable divine model. In Pindar, “a beautiful work of art” is the main purpose of life which brings you “honour” and a place in eternity. (77) Pindar’s poetry has a cult character and is a peculiar prayer written in the honour of the olympians. Pindar praises the immortal, and it is neither man nor his world, but the divine order as the embodiment of the aristocratic values. In the life-and-death struggle at the Olympic playgrounds man showed his complete submission to the cosmic order and maintaned the interest of the Olympic oligarhy in the survival of the world. “The gods are friends of the Games” – says Pindar. Coubertin’s “Ode to Sport” is the prototype of the modern ”Olympic art”. (78) It poetically expresses an idolatrous relation to Olympism as the “cult of the present world” and serves as a prayer addressed to the modern gods who rule the world. The artistic inspiration, which is reduced to a deification of the existing world,  is no longer the “divine inspiration” but the Olympic inspiration. For Coubertin, just like for Pindar, the Olympic playgrounds are illuminated with the purest of lights, but this light emanates not from the Olympic gods but from the original spirit of capitalism. Coubertin sees in it a reflection of the “immortal spirit of antiquity” – as opposed to the “gloominess” of everyday life – and this spirit, by way of the “holy rhythm” of the Games, is to insure eternal life to the existing world. Coubertin finds in antiquity the cheerful and careless youth of the present world, and not an obsolate past of mankind: the idealization of the past serves to idealize the present time.

In antiquity the relation of the body to the cosmos is mediated by the religious sphere; in modern Olympism the relation of the body to the world is mediated by Social Darwinism and the capitalist way of industrial production (quantity, technique, instrumentalism…). It is a mimetic and normative starting point of Coubertin’s aesthetics in spite of his “negative” relation to the modern age which “moans in its futile efforts”. While in antiquity and in the Middle Ages a bodily movement springs from the aesthetical and ethical code which expresses the statical character of the order, in Coubertin, movement is the incarnation of the expansionist spirit of capitalism. Coubertin does not mould sportsmen according to the ancient geometrically constructed cosmos and its monumentalism which symbolizes its constancy and man’s hopeless integration into it, but departs from the expansionist power of capitalism which destroys all obstacles on its way in order to establish a global domination. Unlike the ancient monuments which express a static unchangeability of the “classical” Hellenic world, sportsmen express a dynamic (progressistic) unchangeability of the capitalist world. At the same time, the bodily movement in sport is beyond good and evil since it springs directly from life which itself is beyond moral reasoning. Similarly to antiquity, Coubertin sees in physical exercises a means for creating the conscious of “racial superiority” and thus a means for a spiritual integration of the ruling “elite”. Coubertin “moulds” the body according to a racist model. However, in antiquity the strivings for physical “perfection” are not only the strivings for attaining an ideal racial model, but are a form of spiritual (religious) strivings for the cosmic (divine) perfection. The ancient paideia does not insist on the creation of a muscular body, but on a harmoneous development of the whole organism and on physical health. At the same time, since a Hellene sought to build a beautiful body pulsating with an open erotic impulse, to achieve suppleness and flexibility of the limbs was one of the most important aims od the Hellenic “chiselling” of the body. Harmony is the basis of rhythm and eurhythmics not only in antiquity, but also in the Middle Ages, in the philanthropic movement, in Per-Hendrik Ling and in Philippe Tissié, which involves the domination of aesthetical criteria and not ”the will to power”, let alone the will to a greater performance and record. “To be better” is required by one’s race, gender and class status and is proved by a behaviour which does not disturb the harmony of the established world. That is why graceful movements and measure (ordre et mesure) indicate a “good taste” and the “gentleman’s manners”. This can also be found in the philantropic movement of physical culture which insists on the maxim “Frisch, Fromm, Frei!”. The body and movement are controlled by a normative model to which man is to conform. Coubertin’s aesthetical model is not based on the principles of kalokagathia and metron ariston, but on the principles bellum omnium contra omnes and citius, altius, fortius, which are expressed in Coubertin’s maxim mens fervida in corpore lacertoso. The distinctive features of the body of Coubertin’s “new man” are not harmonious and elegant movements, as is the case in the ideaalized model of the Hellen on ancient vases, but an explosive muscular strength and steel firmness which correspond to the expansionist spirit of the imperialist capitalism. At the same time, Coubertin, similarly to ancient sculptors, who deprived their sculptures of eyesight lest their spiritual expression disturb a harmonious unity between body and cosmos (Gombrich), deprives his sportsman of spirituality in order to bring him into harmony with a spiritless world. The  eyesight does not express humanity, but is a harmonious part of a bodily expression which emanates (similarly to Thorak’s “Faustkämpfer”) a merciless oppressive power of order and a resolve to conquer the world at all costs. The sportsman is the moving statue of capitalism.

In antiquity, man was united with nature and thus with his natural being, while at the modern Olympic Games everything has an instrumental dimension and serves to achieve the most important aim: to deal with the emancipatory heritage of mankind and completely control man. In Hellenic cosmogony space appears as a given and static geometrically constructed firmament which acquires its vitality and quality expression in the images of the antropomorphic Olympic gods. In Christianity, God is the quality by which the quantitative dimension of the cosmos is overcome. In Coubertin, the relation to space is mediated by a conquering, looting and progressistic logic. There are no symbols expressing  quality, which would offer a possibility of the human “appropriation” of space, on which insists Sartre who, in his major work “L’ Etre et le Néant”, mistakenly ascribes to sport the characteristics of (emancipatory) physical culture, and who does not understand that man’s original strivings to attain being by way of a free physical activism turns through sport into a road to nothingness. (79) The sports movement does not find mimetic impulses in nature, but in industrial processes and the progressistic spirit of capitalism. In “disciplining the body” the dominant mechanics is that of the physical, while the body bomes a cage of technical rationality, a peculiar machine. The sports model of the bodily movement embodies a dehumanized and denaturalized principle of performance and is not only outside culture but is also outside life. Sport symbolizes the victory of capitalistically mutated Thanatos over Eros. Coubertin’s positive man is walking dead man.

Speaking of the old Greek art, Jäger says that “the word and tone and, if they act with the word or tone or with both of them, rhythm and harmony are for the Greeks simply the forces that form the soul, since what is crucial in paideia is the active element, which in the formation of the soul becomes even more important than in the agon of physical abilities.” (80) In Plato, musical education comes before physical education for “a physically fit body cannot in virtue of its excellence make the soul good and excellent while, on the other hand, an excellent spirit can help the body to become perfect.” (81) In Coubertin, music is an element of the Olympic séance intended to inseminate man with the ruling spirit: “art” becomes a means for destroying the artistic. Coubertin does not hesitate to turn the artistic masterpieces into a decor for Nazi barbarism. At the close of the Nazi Olympic Games Coubertin uses Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” to glorify Nazi Germany and Hitler. (82) To what extent was Coubertin prepared to go in the manipulation of the artistic masterpieces is seen from the “cultural programme” at the opening ceremony of the Nazi Olympic Games, which, at Coubertin’s request, contained even Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony” together with the most popular Nazi march of the time, “Horst Wesell Lied”, whose main refrain is as follows: “Wenn dass Judenblut vom Messer spritzt, dann geht’s nochmal so gut”. (“When Jewish blood splashes under the knife, then everything goes much better”). (83) The true nature of the Nazi monstrosity is not reflected only in killings, but in the way the killings were committed. The killers set out to cut the throats of their innocent victims accompanied by the sounds of the greatest musical compositions inspired by love of man and dedicated to the highest human values. At the gates of the death camps stood the following inscription: “Arbeit macht frei!” (“Labour sets free!”) Coubertin applies the same method when he glorifies France’s colonial “exploits” and Nazi barbarism. He seeks to draw into a death whirl all that appears as a symbol of humanity as opposed to a clear picture of evil. In Coubertin’s Olympic doctrine, all human achievements by which man acquires his libertarian dignity become a means for destroying the human.

As far as the relation between Coubertin’s doctrine and modern esthetics is concerned, of the “three great ideas of modern aesthetics: 1) subjectivization of the world, 2) a demand for the autonomy of art and 3) a demand for removing the borders between art and life”, to which Mirko Zurovac refers, (84) Coubertin, like Nietzsche, adopts the first and the third. “Subjectivization of the world” is reduced in Coubertin to a direct experience of the world and the abolishment of a critical-changing relation to it. Coubertin reached a potentially fruitful idea of the “art of living” which opens a possibility of overcoming the world in which man’s creative powers are alienated from him. Speaking of ancient Greece, Coubertin says: “The life of the gymnasium was an admirable compromise between the two sets of forces which struggle within man, and which it is so difficult to reconcile once their balance has been upset. Muscles and ideas coexisted there in brotherhood, and it seems that this harmony was so perfect as even to unite youth and old age. Your ancestors, as a general rule, knew neither the extravagances of the adolescent nor the peevishness of old men: the art of living was at its apogee, and the art of dying followed from it quite naturally; people knew how to live without regrets for the sake of changeless city and an undisputed  religion – something which – alas! – we know no longer.”(85) Coubertin does not abolish art as a sphere in which man’s alienated creative power is institutionalized, as it is in Marx, but suppresses man’s creative nature and deals with it. “The art of living” does not symbolize life as a creative act expressing man’s whole being and creating complex interhuman relations, but a complete integration of (crippled) man into a life which is a ”fact’ and in which there is no hope of a better world. Coubertin seeks to abolish (not to overcome) the dualism between life and art by turning the existing artistic works into a decor which is to give an “artistic” legitimacy to “muscular primitivism” (Tissié) symbolizing the expansive spirit of capitalism. The imaginative Coubertin goes so far as to demand that boxing be accompanied with the sounds of Beethoven’s compositions. (86)

The spectacular form of the Olympic performance best indicates the nature of Coubertin’s aesthetics. It is dominated by monumentalism and grandomania which have the same role as in antiquity and Christianity: to dazzle the oppressed and arouse their admiration for the ruling order and a feeling of human worthlessness. Coubertin’s aesthetics is much closer to the original period in the development of Hellenic civilization, the so called “cosmological” (Windelband) period, when man was completely submitted to the established order, but Coubertin, following the spirit of the Modern Age, seeks to replace the static monumentalism of the archaic period with a dynamic monumentalism. We have seen that Coubertin finds his inspiration for the Olympic spectacle in militaristic ceremonies, monarchist pomps and industrial exhibitions, whose common characteristic is that of being a spectacular demonstration of the dominant power. Judging by Coubertin’s writings, the Nazi Olympic Games served as the best model for the Olympic spectacle. In the Nazi Olympic spectacle Coubertin found “beauty”, “courage” and “hope”… (87) As far as Coubertin’s insisting on organizing various “literary” manifestations is concerned, they were intended to give the Olympic primitivism a “cultural” legitimacy. At the Olympic Games there is no place for Marcuse’s “silence”, in which the “concentration” of the human occurs; nor is there a place for Ionesco’s moment of “amazement” in which “occurrence of man” take place; nor for Caillois’ “ecstasy” dominated by “obsession”… They echo with the “passionate cry” of the winner, which represents a conquering (oppressive) call of the “master race” and can be heard in Coubertin’s cries addressed to the French bourgeoisie at the start of his Olympic “campaign”, with which he sought to incite it into new colonial exploits: ”Rebronzer la France!” and ”Enrichissez vous!”.

Coubertin’s Olympic aesthetics has a utilitarian character. It turns the “law of beauty” into an instrument of politics: “beauty” is that what is useful for preserving the established order. Not even art, as something that beautifies the present world, is possible as a separate sphere with the laws of its own: the nature of art is determined by its role as a means for building the cult of the present world. In spite of the Olympic Games being the highest religious ceremony dedicated to the deification of the ruling relations and values, Coubertin does not argue for art which tends to mask, but for an art which seeks to the “perfectioning of reality” (Gadamer), departing from the model of positive society in which mankind’s emancipatory heritage is abolished. The Olympic aesthetics becomes an “artistic” shaping of the basic principles of the present world, embodied in sport in a “pure” form, and it is dominated by symbolism springing from life itself and glorifying the present order. Coubertin discarded from art everything that opens a possibility of establishing a critical detachment to this world and of stepping out of it: the nature of art is determined by the nature of the ruling order. This is the starting point for selecting the aesthetical canons which will be used for creating the Olympic spectacle, with its emphasis on a liturgical form designed to create the impression that everything proceeds under the supervision of mystical superhuman powers. Coubertin “exceeds” the demands of traditional aesthetics, which is based on Kant’s dualism between being (Sein) and ought (Sollen), by proclaiming the existing world the ideal world which should be sought for. The task of art is not to bridge the gap between the ideal and life, but to contribute to building an idolatrous relation to the present life. In Coubertin, there is no contradiction between the form of life and that of art: it appears as the highest spiritual form of man’s “reconciliation” to the present world. Hence harmony, as “the sister of order” (Coubertin), becomes the most important aesthetical category. Since according to Coubertin man is completely immerged into the present world, art is not possible as the creation of an illusory world, as is the case in Huizinga, but as a spectacular reflection of reality, with an emphasis on the “details” which enable the glorification of the dominant relations and values. Coubertin’s utilitarian art becomes a prism magnifying and showing in bright colours the events that should arouse people’s admiration for the present order and for ever integrate them into the present world. It is not a means for man’s education and cultivation, or for the development of his creative powers, but for the creation of a positive man in whom all that can enable him to break the bonds with the existing world and soar towards new worlds has been repressed and crippled. Hence dealing with imagination is one of the most important tasks of Coubertin’s “utilitarian pedagogy”. The “artistic” act becomes the confirmation of man’s hopeless adherence to the existing world which contains everything man should and can strive for. Schiller’s postulate that “education by way of art becomes education for art”, turns in Coubertin into a postulate that education by way of art is education for the present life. Sport is the killer while Olympism is the gravedigger of the aesthetical.

If we bear in mind Coubertin’s insisting on the will, which refers to subjectivity, it could be concluded that his Olympic doctrine does not have much in common with Gadamer’s phenomenological conception. However, if we remember that, for Coubertin, man is not the subject of history but a means with which fatal “progress” removes the obstacles on its road, then we can conclude that Coubertin’s conception is close to Gadamer’s aspiration to consider play as the “guiding line of ontological explication” starting from the methodological postulate: “Not to examine what we do, nor what we are to do, but what happens to us beyond our will and action”. In that context, Gadamer tries to “separate the notion of play from a subjective meaning, which it has in Kant and Schiller and which dominates the whole recent aesthetics and anthropology”, (66) for play “does not enter the conscious of the one who plays and is thus more than a kind of subjective behaviour”. (67) “Therefore, our question on the essence of play cannot be answered if we expect to get it from the subjective reflexion of the player. Instead of that, we ask about the mode of being of play as such. (…) For play has its own essence, independent of the conscious of those who play.” (68) From that Gadamer draws the following conclusion: “The subject of play are not the players, it is through players that play occurs.” (69) Gadamer deprives man of his playing (human) subjectivity only to proclaim play the subject of play. It is not man who plays, but play plays by way of man as its plaything. Since everything is at the level of the given and the phenomenal play is possible without players, and man’s appearing in play does not give it any specific character, since man is something through which play is carried out (play-plays-play) and thus is ranked along with waves, ballots and mosquitoes.

In Huizinga, play is an escape from reality to illusion, while in Gadamer play is the fullest and most authentic form of the occurrence of life. Unlike Huizinga, in whom play is a spider’s web spun from the dominant values of the aristocratic order, in Gadamer, play is the reflexion of the being (Dasein), which acts in people directly since “play has its own essence, independent of the conscious of those who play”. (70) In Huizinga the essence of play are the given rules which have the divine legitimacy, while in Gadamer the essence of play are the ruling relations which acquire their playing expression in the form of “to and fro motion”, while the rules of play are the reflexion of the being and are thus a datum which cannot be questioned. “Spontaneity” reflects the relation of the being to man, and not the relation of man to play: “spontaneity” in play appears as a mindless behaviour which blindly follows the spirit of play expressed in the form of the given rules. Man does not play spontaneously, but play spontaneously springs from life, which means that life spontaneously plays with man. Play is not based on the imitation of “significant gestures”, which presupposes the existence of the aesthetical pattern embodied in the aristocracy and the capability of imitation – as is the case in Nietzsche – but on a “spontaneous” behaviour which is a direct phenomenal expression of the being. Huizinga’s aesthetics is a culturological critique of the existing world; Gadamer’s aesthetics has neither a critical nor a culturological, but a phenomenological character: play is not a mode of man’s specific existence, but the existence of the being – which is independent of man. By playing, man does not affirm his humanity, but his hopeless submission to the existing world from which the rules of play – which according to Huizinga must not, while according to Gadamer cannot be questioned – originate. For Gadamer, play is not a phenomenon sui generis, but is “life in its highest seriousness” (Šarčević), which means that play is a form in which life lives itself, that is to say, the playing form of the occurrence of life. Man is not only submitted to the normative mould of play, as is the case with Huizinga’s homo ludens, but to the phenomenon of play springing from the very structure of the world which is beyond man’s critical-changing practice. Man is stuck between the being and play which is its normative reflexion and is thus an indestructible spiritual firmament: the conscious of play becomes a form of selfreflexion of the being. Gadamer seeks to preserve the “ontological dignity of play” at the expense of its socio-historical dignity, which means to abolish play as a concrete historical phenomenon and to reduce it to an abstract superhistorical phenomenon. Instead of the notion of true play, which opens the possibility of demystifying the existing plays, Gadamer introduces the notion of a “complete play” which “is not connected with seriousness which comes from play, but only with seriousness in playing. The one who does not take play seriously, spoils it. The mode of being of play does not allow the player to treat play as a kind of object.” (71) Gadamer reduces play to a datum which is independent of man and he rejects subjectivity, while at the same time proclaims “seriousness in playing”, which means man’s subjective relation to play, the criterion for differentiating a “complete” from an incomplete play. Consistently following his conception, man cannot treat play carelessly since it is not he who plays, but play plays with him. Also, since play is a form in which life itself occurs, man cannot question the existing plays, let alone step out of them: they appear as a fatal phenomenological firmament of the existing world to which man is hopelessly submitted.

For Coubertin, sport has the same meaning as play has for Gadamer: it is a mode of man’s being a slave of the existing world. In sport, life, which is based on Social Darwinist and progressistic principle, plays with man. Sport does not belong to the sphere of aesthetics, but to the sphere of “pure” existence: it symbolizes a qualitative leap in the evolution of the living world which came with capitalism and its principle of “progress”. Accordingly, sport has its own essence which is independent of man and his subjective experience of sport, but springs from the essence of the ruling order. Hence man is not included in sport by way of normative conscious, but by living a life reduced to a struggle for survival and domination. Sport does not offer an illusory “escape to freedom”; it is a foreplay of a cruel life play. However, in Coubertin, just like in Gadamer, what is essential for the survival of sport (play) is man’s subjective relation to it, which means his obedient acceptance of the ruling order and fanatical submission to the principles of natural selection and “greater effort”. Hence Coubertin attaches such importance to the principle of “control in heads” with which he seeks to abolish the normative firmament that prevents the realization of the “will to power” of the rich “elite” and thus the capitalist expansion based on the principle “right is might” and natural selection. He is not “burdened” with the questions on freedom, equality, justice… Coubertin’s “utilitarian pedagogy” deals with man’s subjective libertarian-creative practice, while “progress” is separated from man and its results become a means of the “trustees of the Olympic idea” for creating a positive man and positive society.

Gadamer discards Marx’s methodological principle according to which “the anatomy of man is a key to understanding the anatomy of the monkey”, but also Coubertin’s evolutionism, and departs from the lowest forms in man’s evolution (”savage”) in order to explain play as a phenomenon. (72) All between nature and man that offers a possibility of making play a cultural phenomenon through which man’s specific libertarian-creative nature is affirmed, is abolished. Instead in the play of an emancipated man, Gadamer looks for conclusive evidence in the play of Huizinga’s “savage” in order to support his assertions and makes the same mistake as Huizinga. In a “savage”, play has a ritual character and a strict form which by no means must be disturbed lest the fury of the spirits be aroused. Every play has a specific meaning and specific rules and equipment, as well as appropriate masks and body drawings which are a preparation for play, and it also includes casting roles among the members of a tribe, particularly between the sexes and different age groups. Therefore, the symbolic forms of bodily expression have special importance, and even Nietzsche attached primary importance to such forms of expression in his attempt to abolish a normative mediation in the education of the aristocratic youth and turn the aristocracy into an exclusive organic community. At the same time, play involves a playing skill by way of which man’s playing being is manifested and play is performed. As far as the play of animals is concerned, Gadamer, like Huizinga, establishes a relation between children and animals according to formalized behaviours and disregards the crucial thing: by playing, a child becomes a man (individual); a young animal, on the other hand, becomes an animal (a member of its species). It is interesting that, unlike Huizinga who places the plays of animals and man at the same level, ascribing priority and originality to the play of animals, Gadamer places at the same level natural phenomena and the behaviour of animals and man. Instead of the highest form of play being the starting point for attaining the notion of play, it is attained from the analises of the “play” of natural phenomena and machines. From there follows that play is not only “older” then culture, as it is in Huizinga, but that it is older then the living world. Following the evolutionary and progressistic conception, Coubertin does not depart from inorganic or most primitive forms of life, but from the highest level in evolution embodied in capitalist “progress” and its “new man” as opposed to Gadamer’s “savage”. Hence Gadamer’s phenomenology of play, based on an anti-evolutionary “to and fro motion”, is for Coubertin basically unacceptable. In Coubertin, man, with his “lazy animal nature”, has a need to fight for domination and survival, but nor for “progress”. In that sense, sport, as the embodiment of the spirit of “progress”, has an essentially different nature from animal plays, as well as from those human plays which do not have a “progres- sive” character. By way of sport, as the “cult of intensive physical exercises” which is “not in human nature”, a new quality in the evolution of the living beings is achieved, which corresponds to the expansive and “progressive” nature of monopolistic capitalism. The absolutized principle of performance, on which “progress” is based, is a new “quality” in the development of the animal world and civilization. Sport corresponds to the ontological structure of the capitalist world, which is based on the instrumentalization of natural forces: man is not the subject of play nor is the plaything of the being, but is the tool of “progress”.

Gadamer locates play in the structure of the being by way of the “to and fro motion”. Gadamer: “The motion which is play does not have an aim where it ends, but is renewed in constant repetition. This to and fro motion is, obviously, so central to determening the essence of play that it is irrelevant who or what performs it. The motion of play is at the same time without a substrate. It is a play which is played or proceeds – there is no a solid subject who plays. Play is the process of motion as such.” (73) Gadamer gives to “the to and fro motion” a metaphysical character and proclaims it the first cause on which the ontological structure of the being is based. It is a projection of a fateful power which, like a “pendulum of horror”, constantly hinders every attempt at questioning the existing world even in thoughts and taking a new path. Unlike labour and other purposeful activities which have the beginning and end, “the to and fro motion” is purposeless and timeless. Play manifests the unchangeable structure of the world in a “pure” form by which man completely fuses into the (given) being. The purpose of a “purposeless” play is to completely integrate man into the existing world. At the level of a non-historical (abstract) “the to and fro motion” disappears quality, which means the human. This suits Coubertin: sport is not a form of the world’s duplication and a way of escape from it; a mode of creating an illusory world, as is the case in Schiller and Huizinga, but is a field in which the ruling relations appear in a “pure” form and thus is the cult of capitalism. Gadamer’s play rejects both the dialectic of nature and the dialectic of history. “The to and fro motion” does not proceed through opposites; it has a mechanical character and deals with the historical motion. It reflects the logic of the capitalist motion, and not of motion as such: it is a way in which life throws man from one corner to another according to the principle to gain – to lose. Gadamer’s “to and fro motion” comes down to an eternal repetition of the same, which means that it is an apparent movement which does not offer a possibility of stepping out of the existing world – whose play is but a reflexion. Ultimately, all forms of “the to and fro motion” are the forms of the being’s motion within itself. Instead of a timeless “to and fro motion”, the dominant motion in sport is the motion “forward”, which is conditioned by the “progressive” spirit of capitalism involving quantitative shifts without qualitative changes. It is a progression without progress, which means that in sport we deal with an illusory (non-historical) motion.

Speaking of the relation between play and conscious Gadamer concludes: “Here, basically, the primacy of play is recognized relative to the conscious of the one who plays, and indeed on the experiences of playing which should be described by a psychologist and anthropologist, a new and illuminated light is shed, if we depart from the mediatory sense of play. Play, obviously, represents an order in which the motion of play to and fro starts by itself. Play also means that motion is not only without purpose and intention but also without effort. It proceeds by itself. The easiness of play, which of course, should not mean a real lack of effort, but should only phenomenologically think a lack of exertion, is subjectively experienced as a relief.”(74) Gadamer sees in play a behaviour which is nothing but a “pure” form in which a life alienated from man occurs. In this context Gadamer departs from the artistic play which can be “objectivized” by being deprived of the subject: play does not involve the aesthetic sense and discovering the aesthetic in phenomena. Gadamer does not treat play as an aesthetic phenomenon, but as an abstract form without a “substrate”, in which the quality of human play as a concrete historical phenomenon is lost, which becomes the foundation of an ontological determination of play. Speaking of the play of animals, Gadamer refers to Huizinga, but overlooks the fact that Huizinga has in mind their playing together, which means that a playing community is the basic presupposition of play. This is what gives sense to the rules of play: they should regulate the relations between the participants in play. Since according to Gadamer play is possible without people, a playing community is not indispensable for play. That Gadamer is well aware of the limitations of his conception is seen from the fact that he gives the examples of the “play” of waves, machines and mosquitoes, but does not mention the play of the human spirit, the play of imagination, love play, namely, a specific human play which exceeds the framework of an impersonal “to and fro motion”.

What is the link between man and play without the subjective, or, how can play play with man? In Nietzsche, the cosmic powers affect man through his Dionysian nature which is developed by art. Coubertin “solved” that problem by means of “circumstances”: from his early childhood man should be in such life circumstances in which he has to fight for domination and survival. “A voluntary” option for sport becomes a “voluntary” option for life. For Coubertin, sport is not possible as a subjective behaviour since man is not a subject but a “lazy animal” and thus is the material from which, by way of sport as the incarnation of the “progressive” spirit of capitalism, a tool for realizing the strategic interests of the ruling order should be made. Technically, Coubertin is here close to the Christian doctrine: the Olympic Games should inseminate man with the spirit of capitalism and create a positive man. Sport  becomes a way of creating the character and conscious of a “civilized” beast and a field in which the basic principles of capitalist society appear in a “pure” form. What, according to Gadamer, are the “charms” of play? Gadamer: “Indeed, play itself presents a risk for the player. You can play only with serious possibilities. (…) The charms of play lie in this very risk. Thus we can enjoy a freedom of choice which is nevertheless limited and at the same time irrevocably restricted.” (75) In his discussions on play Gadamer actually elaborates a logic of life. “The to and fro motion” becomes the pulsation of the life pulse of capitalism, while play becomes its manifest form. What makes play attractive and dramatic is that it is a play with “destiny”, which means with the ruling spirit of life to which man is subordinated. The risk on which Gadamer insists is the expression of the logic to gain – to lose, which is the reflection of the logic to be – not to be. Gadamer gives a psychological prophile of the (petty)bourgeois who is “fascinated” by play, which corresponds to the world ruled by irrational laws of the market, where the creation of values is separated from their acquisition: play becomes the paradigm of a life which plays with man. It is precisely because of this that man is attracted by play: by playing man seeks to cope with life following the rules dictated by life itself – which is always the winner. What attracts man is a need to “enjoy a freedom of choice” – “which is nevertheless  limited and at the same time irrevocably restricted”. Here it is clear that, according to Gadamer, play is a peculiar play of life which has a compensational character: in play man plays with life by tempting it. Certainly, everything occurs within the strict limitations of play which do not allow any questioning of the rules that are only a normative expression of the ruling relations. Man is “free” to join play and leave it at will – and this is impossible when it comes to everyday life. A “free” fusion into life is the highest form of sumbission to the ruling relations. Coubertin’s play has a ritual character and it belongs to “the to and fro motion” only by its form. “The uncertainty” of play does not indicate man’s freedom, but the bars of a cage in which he is hopelessly closed. It is a lure which repeatedly creates the illusion of the possibilities of overcoming the fateful powers that control man and that are always winning – as long as man plays by their rules. Just as ancient Olimpia was a holy playground where gods played with people, so is a sports stadium the holy playground where the ruling spirit of the present world plays with people.

Gadamer’s conception is particularly problematic when it comes to the terms which are but an ideological mask for the phenomena whose nature is essentially different from the one denoted by those terms. The theory of sport and Olympism abounds in such terms: boxing is called a “noble skill”; the Olympic competitions are regularly accompanied by the terms such as: “peaceful cooperation”, “internationalism”, “love between the young people of the world” etc. Gadamer’s phenomenological conception reduces the ancient Olympic Games to the modern “Olympic Games” in spite of the fact that they are an essentially different (historical) phenomenon. Also, if language reflects the unambiguous ontological structure of the being, then there cannot exist contrary language expressions concerning play, which only suggest different (subjective) forms of the conception of play and a different relation to play. If it is not possible to establish how adequately certain expressions denote a phenomenon, then the question of truthfulness of the being which is “spontaneously” reflected in language expressions, cannot be asked. At the same time, the capitalist ideology gives a distorted picture of capitalism: the selfreflexion of the being occurs in a “curved mirror” in which the monstrous face of a witch acquires the form of a virgin.

Unlike the bourgeois theorists who insist on the dualism of the world, where play appears as an “oasis of happiness” (Fink) as oppossed to the world of “worry” and “unhappiness”, Coubertin insists on the world’s unity, where sport is an idealized form of the basic principles of the present world which are beyond man’s critical-changing practice. “The sports republic” is not an escape from the present world and a quest of “oblivion” (Caillois), but is the most important way of teaching man how to obediently accept the ruling relations and become integrated into the existing world. In it the authentic ruling spirit of the present world plays with man in a direct form. Emphasising the ancient world as an unequaled model to the modern world, Coubertin says that in it “the present world was – happiness”. “Positive society” is a hopelessly happy society; “positive man” is a hopelessly happy man. As far as the working “masses” deprived of their rights are concerned, they should not strive for a “happy life”, but should reconcile to the world of injustice and find “happiness” in masochisticly courting their masters.

In the bourgeois theory play can be only such behaviour which reflects the structure of the existing world and does not question that same world. Caillois’ view that “play is an end in itself” (54) has the same meaning as the famous maxim “sport has nothing to do with politics”. Play is derived from history, it becomes a phenomenon sui generis and acquires purpose independently of society and human existence in it. Hence Caillois is not interested in how play appears nor in the formation of its rules, in what they express and what possibilities they offer to man: “There is no reason why they should be as they are and not otherwise”, says Caillois. (55) By reducing play to the given which cannot be questioned by any means, Caillois made from play a superhistorical notion to which all historical forms of play which are the expression of the concrete totality of the epoch in which they appear are subordinated. Thus he abolished them as concrete historical phenomena, but at the same time he abolished the possibility of establishing a difference between the appearance of play and true play. Caillois, like Huizinga, tries to obtain through play the legitimacy of the cultural and ensure eternity to everything he declares to be play: play is determined by the behaviour proclaimed a play. In addition, in Caillois’ classification of plays all human behaviour denoted as “play” has some of the elements constituting the notion of play. Thus war becomes “play” in spite of the fact that, except for a conflict and rules, it contradicts all essential features of play. Caillois “purposless” play is not only a “pure” expression of the ruling relations and values, but is a means for creating an illusionary firmament which should prevent man from forming the idea of a just world and from fighting to realize it: it becomes a combat with utopia. In spite of proclaiming sport a phenomenon sui generis, for Coubertin sport is possible only within the context of his “utilitarian pedagogy”, the purpose of which is to create a positive man and positive society. Hence Coubertin cannot accept the view according to which play is an autonomous phenomenon which has no other purpose apart from itself.

For Caillois, play is not a way of developing interhuman relations and creating from society a community of emancipated and creative individuals, but is a means for strenghtening the institutional repression over man, which is intended to defend society (the ruling order) from the “evil” human nature. Caillois: “If the principles of play really correspond to strong instincts (competition, pursuet of happiness, disguise, dizziness), then we can easily understand that they can be satisfied only in ideal and limited conditions, those which are proposed by the rules of play. If they were left to themselves, unrestrained and destructive like all instincts, those elementary impulses would only have fatal effects. Plays discipline instincts and impose on them institutional existence. When they can offer them an explicite and limited satisfaction, they educate them, inseminate them and immunize their soul from their contagiousness. At the same time, they make them capable of contributing to a noble enrichment and stability of cultural styles.” (56) And he continues: “Outside the arena, after the final gong, begins a true distortion of agon, which is most widespread of all. It appears in every resistence which is not restrained any more by the strict spirit of play. So, free competition is but one of the laws of nature. It finds in society its original brutality the moment it finds a free pass through the web of moral, social and legal obstacles, which, as in play, represent restrictions and conventions. It is precisely because of that that a furious, ruthless ambition, whatever its domain, which does not respect the rules of play, and it means fair-play, should be brought to view as the crucial deviation, which thus in certain cases leads to the starting situation. Nothing can better show the civilizatory role of play then the obstacles it usually puts before natural greed. It has been accepted that a good player is the one who can accept with indifference and at least apparent calmness the bad outcome of even the most persistent endevours or a loss of incredibly big stakes. The judge’s decision, even an unjust one, is in principle accepted. A distortion of agon begins at the moment when both the judge and the verdict are no longer recognized.” (57) In order to justify the repressive institutions of capitalist society, Caillois reduced man to a beast on whom he planted “greedeness” and proclaimed “free competition”, which is “one of the laws of nature”, the basis of social structuring. The ruling laws of capitalism become the laws of nature, while a psychological prophile of the members of the parasitic classes becomes the “nature” of the animal. Caillois “overlooks” the fact the the animal world exists uncomparably longer that man in spite of the animal “greedeness” and in spite of the law of “free competition” – even without repressive institutions. In addition, animals also “play”, but they are not restrained by the given norms, but by their instinctive nature, which prevents them from hurting one another, to which Huizinga also refers. At the same time, animals do not have “destructive impulses”, but seek to satisfy their primary needs in a way which does not question the unique life cycle. However, if man is by his nature an “aggressive being”, why does he seek “pleasure” in play dominated by a repressive normative firmament which deals with man’s original (aggressive) nature? If we consistantly follow Caillois’ anthropological conception and his view that play is a way of keeping man’s animal nature under institutional control, opting for play cannot have a “voluntary”, particularly not “spontaneous”, but a repressive character. However, even according to Caillois’ theory man is not dissatisfied because he cannot realize his destructive instincts and greedeness, but because of the imposed obligations, from which follows a constant uncertainty, fear, a need to “forget” his everyday life and “escape” from it. A pursuit of play becomes man’s psychological reaction to everyday life dominated by “anxiety”. Hence Caillois does not offer man play as a space where he can give vent to his “aggressive” nature, but creates an illusion about play as a space where man can realize his suppressed humanity and thus experience “happiness”. Speaking of play, Caillois concludes: “It exists only there where players want to play and where they play it, even if it is a highly tiring and exhausting play, with the aim to amuse themselves and escape from their worries, that is to say to get away from everyday life.” (58) Play is not a means for removing the cause of dissatisfaction, but is a spiritual drug which is supposed to stop the pain created in man by everyday life – the pain which deprives him of the possibility of realizing his human being. It is a false escape since in the “world of play” the ruling relations and the principles of the established world of “unhappiness” appear in an idealized form. An “unfree” man is offered “freedom” in the form of a new cage which is proclaimed the place of “happiness”. In Fink’s words, play “is similar to an ‘oasis’ of happiness in the desert of our pursuit of happiness and our tantalizing quest. Play takes us away. By playing, we are for a while released from our hectic life – transferred to another star where life looks easier, livelier, happier.” (59) It is a deception: illusion of a happy world serves as a lure and a means for destroying a critical-changing conscious and faith in a better world.

Ommo Grupe goes even further: sport does not appear only as a “space of happiness” (Stück Glück), but “in altered social conditions” it becomes a “relatively independent phenomenon” the purpose of which “is in itself” and which does not need any “foundation or justification from outside”. This tendency in the development of sport, as well as the “playing motive” (Spielmotiv), correspond less to a healthy foundation of sport, and more to a pursuet of “amusement, joy, pleasure, enjoying the present moment, companioship…”, in what appears as “a counterbalance to everyday life”. Grupe gives a “special role” to sport in the future: it should enable a “development of spontaneity” and mediate in the knowledge of “what is not necessary” (Nicht-Notwendigen) as a “field opposed to work and profession”. Sport should become an “offer of a free space”, an indication of “certain human possibilities”, an apparent form of what can be denoted, “of course not precisely”, as a “space of happiness”, where happiness cannot be conceived only individually but, ultimately, “only as socially conditioned”. (60) The development of sport convincingly refuted Grupe’s theory: sport is completely integrated into the capitalist mechanism of production. Anyway, even Grupe himself, questions sport and claims that he is not convinced that “traditional sports disciplines”, pervaded with “technicized forms of movement”, can offer the realization of the human needs for a free movement. (61)

Coubertin holds the view that man is not “greedy” by nature, as claims Caillois, but that he is a “lazy animal” and thus the main role of sport, as the incarnation of the principles on which capitalism in its “pure” form is based, is to make man “overcome” his animal nature and become a super-beast. Greediness pressupposes the possession of material goods, which are not intended to satisfy the impulses, but to provide the dominant position on the social ladder of power – which is based on the possession of material wealth. In sport, interhuman relations are based on greediness, envy, hatred, fear, and this is conditioned by the nature of sport as a “civilized” form (fair-play) of natural selection. According to Coubertin, sport does not result from war, but is one of the (“peaceful”) forms of the struggle for survival resulting from the nature of capitalism as an order ruled by the principle bellum omnium contra omnes. Essentially, sport is a “playing of” the capitalist way of life and thus is a voluntary “playing” with the forces which determine the human destiny. It is a preparation for life and as such “liberation” of the fear of a life reduced to a ruthless struggle for survival. To live means to be an anonimous soldier in a war which for man is lost in advance. Coubertin shares Caillois’ view that killing is a legal and legitimate element of sport (play). That is why boxing is an indispensable means for educating the bourgeois youth. It is interesting that the bourgeois theorists – according to whom the gladiator’s fights, tournaments, duels, suicidal rituals of samurai and war are play – do not regard the class struggle, the struggle for women’s emancipation, the struggle against the colonial yoke, let alone a revolution, as play. Also, in spite of emphasizing fight, it does not occur to them to include in the notion of play the struggle between old and new, which involves the expansion of the horizons of freedom and without which there is no true play.

A consideration of sport in relation to work is completely alien to Coubertin. For him, sport is not a kind of distraction, nor is it a preparation for work, as is the case in Marcuse and Adorno (“Preparation for work” is, according to Adorno, “one of the hidden tasks of sport”.), (62) but is a means for developing a belligerent and progressistic spirit of capitalism. Hence the principle of “greater effort”, which if formulated in the maxim citius, altius, fortius, is the cardinal principle of sport. Consequently, for Coubertin, sport is not the “duplication of the world of labour”, as is the case in Habermas and Plessner, (63) but is the “duplication” of the capitalist world based on the principle bellum omnium contra omnes. That is why in sport things occur which do not occur in labour: infliction of serious physical injuries and premeditated killing; man’s becoming not only the labour force, but a labour tool and an object of labour etc. Sport reproduces not only the capitalist way of production, but also the capitalist way of life, which is not based on industrial labour, but on the capitalist way of industrial production: a record is the market value of a sports result. At the same time, sport is a form of man’s deerotization. It is not oriented to the achievement of a higher result (record), but to the repression and degeneration of man’s playing nature. The developments in sport only confirm Kofler’s identification of the tendency of “the ever stricter quantification” with the “deerotization of human individuality”. (64) Sport is a capitalistically degenerated play and thus is an authentic expression of the capitalistically degenerated world.

Huizinga’s critique of sport is one of the most comprehensive approaches of the bourgeois philosophy of play to sport. Huizinga:  “Ever since the last quarter of the 19^th century play, in the guise of sport, have been taken more and more seriously. The rules have become increasingly strict and elaborate. Records are established at a higher, or faster, or longer level than was ever conceivable before. (….) Now, with the increasing systematization and regimentation of sport, something of the pure play-quality is inevitably lost. We see this very clearly in the official distinction between amateurs and professionals (or “gentlemen and players” as used pointedly to be said). It means that the play-group marks out those for whom playing is no longer play, ranking them inferior to the true players in standing but superior in capacity. The spirit of the professional is no longer the true play-spirit; it is lacking in spontaneity and carelessness. This affects the amateur too, who begins to suffer from an inferiority complex. Between them they push sport further and further away from the play-sphere proper until it becomes a thing sui generis: neither play nor earnest. In modern social life sport occupies a place alongside and apart from the cultural process. The great competitions in archaic cultures had always formed part of the sacred festivals and were indispensable as health and happiness-bringing activities. The ritual tie has now been completely severed; sport has become profane, “unholy” in every way and has no organic connection whatever with the structure of society, least of all when prescribed by the government. The ability of modern social techniques to stage mass demonstrations with the maximum of outward show in the field of athletics does not alter the fact that neither the Olympiads nor the organized sports of American Universities nor the loudly trumpeted international contests have, in the smallest degree, raised sport to the level of a culture-creating activity. However important it may be for the players or spectators, it remains sterile. The old play-factor has undergone almost complete atrophy. This view will probably run counter to the popular feeling of to-day, according to which sport is the apotheosis of the play-element in our civilization. Nevertheless popular feeling is wrong. By way of emphasizing the fatal shift towards over-seriousness we would point out that it has also infected the non-athletic games where calculation is everything, such as chess and some card-games.”(27)

The main Huizinga’s objection to modern sport is that “sport has become profane”. “The great competitions in archaic cultures had always formed part of the sacred festivals”, says Huizinga. “They were indispensable as health and happiness-bringing activities. The ritual tie has now been completely severed”. Huizinga insists on competition as a form in which the divine spirit appears in man. A “sacred” competition, which means ritual expression of obedience to the deities, is conditio sine qua non of sport as play. Huizinga has a critical detachment to the games which have become “overserious” and, due to commercialization, have lost their “holy” character, which means that they have fused into everyday life and thus do not enable man a spiritual escape from the existing life and a “cultural” upbringing. When Huizinga speaks of sport as a “serious” activity, he wants to say that sport has turned into work, which means that it has become part of everyday gloominess. However, Huizinga’s critique of sport does not refer to the nature of sport and its rules, but to the position that participants have in it and their relation to the game. The present games, as the incarnation of the divine spirit, are the ideal of life which should be sought for and therefore cannot be questioned. Hence play is not dominated by a strict form which has a liturgical character. It is interesting that Huizinga dispels the illusion that sport is a festivity dedicated to the highest cultural values, and at the same time, like the bourgeois theorists of sport, creates the illusion about chivalrous fights. More precisely, Huizinga deals with an illusory world which does not correspond to his (cultural) model, in order to offer his world of illusions as the only “real” cultural challenge. Huizinga had good reasons to attack sport so sharply. We should bear in mind that, according to Huizinga, man’s need for illusion, which could enable his spiritual escape from a hopelessly non-cultural world, is the only value created in capitalist society. By accepting sport as a refuge the need for (Huizinga’s) world of illusions disappears and, consequently, the need for culture. Trying to stick to his ideological concept, Huizinga does not give sport the character of a deception but of a mistaken belief. Anyway, it is definitely something false: the form of play becomes a way of giving to a non-playing content the legitimacy of the playing. Here Huizinga is not at odds only with sport as the appearance of play, but with his own conception on which homo ludens is based and according to which the form of play is the only criterion for determining its truthfulness. However, Huizinga pointed out the crucial thing: sport lies beyond the field of culture. It is precisely the basic point of Coubertin’s doctrine: to deprive man of his cultural heritage and eliminate all that restrains the development of the bourgeois’ “will to power”. It is logical that culture was the first to bear the brunt: without cultural self-conscious there is no human dignity and freedom. For Huizinga play is a way of being in culture and creating culture; for Coubertin, sport is a way of being in life and dealing with culture – and thus is the ideal of positive life. At the same time, Huizinga tries to indicate the true nature of modern Olympic spectacle overlooking the fact that it is not “social technique” as a phenomenon sui generis which has a decisive influence on sport, but the capitalist order which uses technique as a means for “raising” – “the outward effect of mass demonstrations” to “perfection”.

In the beginning of “Homo ludens” Huizinga questions his basic intention, namely, to examine play as a “culture phenomenon”: “Play is older than culture, for culture, however inadequately defined, always presupposes human society, and animals have not waited for man to teach them their playing. We can safely assert, even, that human civilization has added no essential feature to the general idea of play. Animals play just like men. We have only to watch young dogs to see that all the essentials of human play are present in their merry gambols.” (28) Huizinga reduces play to the given which is independent of people. Hence the playing of animals is the prototype of the playing world: the established norms should have in society the same power that natural laws have in the animal world – to be unconditional and eternal. Huizinga: “All play has its rules. They determine what ‘holds’ in the temporary world circumscribed by play. The rules of a game are absolutely binding and allow no doubt.” (29) Huizinga creates from play a separate world, the space of play being in a mystical way circumscribed by play: play determines its own rules within a temporary world, which is, again, separated by play. Huizinga uses such tautological constructions to create an illusion of social unconditionality, and thus the eternity of the existing plays. Play, as a repressive normative mould which is the incarnation of the ruling relations, becomes the source of the playing and play. In this way man is not only closed by play within the existing world, but is deprived of his authentic humanity. In the alleged world of “freedom” and “illusion” the basic values of the existing world from which Huizinga offers people an escape are realized in a disguised form. Play is not a way of liberating man and developing his human powers, but is the bars of a cage that should keep the “banal” man under control and thus maintain the ruling (class) order. By cultivating man it raises him from his everyday gloominess: play becomes a peculiar religious ritual by which man overcomes his “banal” nature and becomes one with the divine. The stability of its rules confirms the perseverance of the “divine” in man without which he is left to his “banality” and doomed to fall into barbarism. Huizinga identifies the form of play with its rules, and not with the forms of aesthetic expression. The basic purpose of play is not the development of spirituality, but the expression of loyalty to the ruling order: a man who is not ready to accept the existing world cannot be a participant in play. As far as aesthetics is concerned, it is an instrument for creating an illusory world which is an idealized incarnation of the ruling values of the existing world. Huizinga’s homo ludens can “dream” only about that which does not question the ruling order and the image of the “banal” man – to which Huizinga reduced the human being.

By his critique of sport Huizinga creates criteria which can establish the difference between culture and non-culture, which means between the human and non-human. He insists on the rules which involve mutual understanding and agreement of wills that should prevent the tyranny of the strong and, at the same time, stop the fight for changing the existing world. Play becomes a spider’s web which should conserve the existing world and give it the legitimacy of being cultural. Hence the unconditional “observance of rules”, which are independent of people, is conditio sine qua non of play. Coubertin is against the norms that unconditionally apply to all. He rejects the “hairsplitting rules” that stop the “new man” in his endeavours to conquer the world. Unlike Nietzsche, whose “will to power” springs from the overflowing life force of man, which is the expression of a free action of his affective nature, the dominant spirit in Coubertin is that of a greedy bourgeois who relies on the expansionist and productivistic power of capitalist monopolies that is not restricted by any norms. In that context, there is no compatibility of wills: the rules are imposed by the one who is stronger and who is not guided by universal principles which have a transcendental character, but follows the logic of life dictated by the fatal course of “progress” – which is based on a merciless struggle for survival. The purpose of sport is not the development of the normative conscious, but the elimination of the normative firmament of civil society and the integration of people, by way of a mindless (bodily) agonal activism, into the spiritual orbit of capitalism. In Coubertin, there is no duality between being (Sein) and ought (Sollen): the existing world is the realization of everything man can and should strive for. The analysis of the relation between Huizinga’s and Coubertin’s conceptions of sport indicates that Coubertin, in spite of absolutizing the “factual”, created a normative model of sport (the Olympic Games) which offers a possibility of criticizing the Olympic reality. However, Coubertin, a “realist”, constantly adapted his conception to the sports (social) reality in an attempt to preserve the original purpose of Olympism as the cult of the existing world. By the end of his life, in spite of his long fanatical fight for preserving the “pureness” of sport from the fatal influence of money, this made him show readiness to accept professionals, those, according to him, “circus gladiators”, and raise them to the level which was reserved for sports amateurs.

Huizinga, like Coubertin, deals with modern man and reduces him to God’s servant. Consequently, Huizinga does not refer to people as a (“banal”) man, but as a superior being and in this he is close to the “divine baron” Pierre de Coubertin. He departs from Plato’s words that “Though human affairs are not worthy of great seriousness it is yet necessary to be serious; happiness is another thing” (…) “God alone is worthy of supreme seriousness, but man is made God‘s  plaything, and that is the best part of him.” (…) “Life must be lived as play, playing certain games, making sacrifices, singing and dancing, and then a man will be able to propitiate the gods, and defend himself against his enemies, and win in the contest” (…) “Thus “men will live according to Nature since in most respects they are puppets, yet having a small part in truth”…. (30) Stating that Plato said those words under the impression of “turning his eyes on God”, Huizinga concludes: “The human mind can only disengage itself from the magic circle of play by turning towards the ultimate. Logical thinking does not go far enough. Surveying all the treasures of the mind and all the splendors of its achievements we shall still find, at the bottom of every serious judgment, something problematical left. In our heart of hearts we know that none of our pronouncements is absolutely conclusive. At that point, where our judgment begins to waver, the feeling that the world is serious after all wavers with it. Instead of the old saw: ‘All is vanity’, the more positive conclusion forces itself upon us that ‘all is play’. A cheap metaphor, no doubt, mere impotence of the mind; yet it is the wisdom Plato arrived at when he called man the plaything of the gods.” (31) Huizinga moves within the Christian conception of the world. The ability of the living beings to play is not a product of evolution nor is it a historical product and thus a cultural phenomenon, but is the gift of “nature” (God) and is thus the given. Like Plato’s man, Huizinga’s homo ludens is not a man-player, but is a man-plaything of “superhuman” powers. At the same time, he, like Coubertin’s “new man”, is deprived of doubt, critical reasoning, the creative; he is not released from responsibility and sin, like Nietzsche’s “overman” and Coubertin’s “new man”, but responds to the Christian model of man, with the addition of having the right to kill: war and knight tournaments are the highest form of play. However, if man is “God’s plaything”, and this is the “best part in him”, then play cannot lie “beyond good and evil”, nor can it be “beyond truth and falsehood”, and “have no moral function” – so that “the valuations of vice and virtue do not apply here.” (32) Play “in itself”, as the gift of God, is indeed the highest good, and Huizinga himself departs from that trying to give play the legitimacy of something indisputable and eternal. Play becomes the insemination of the living beings with the divine spirit, and as far as man is concerned, the revelation of the divine. Huizinga’s homo ludens is a puppet deprived of human contents and is thus a shadow of the divine light, while his play is the play of human shadows. Huizinga introduces “the spirit” only to deal with man’s creative being and his genuine spirituality. He places “the human” and “the noble” beyond the reach of man who seeks to change the existing world. Huizinga deals with the emancipatory heritage of civil society and deprives man of the possibility of and the right to create the world at his own measure as a free personality. Play is not a way of expressing the authentic man’s playing abilities, but is a way of controlling the “evil” human nature and of establishing a spiritual patronage over man. Huizinga’s theory is par excellence antilibertarian and conservative and could be (conditionally) called the Christian theory of play.

Huizinga glorifies the “play” of animals which always proceeds in the same way. Practically, man is below the level of animals, which completely behave in accordance with the internal playing demands which are incorporated in them on the part of God, since their “banal” nature can become independent of play and thus question the existing world. Huizinga claims that even “animals compete”, but according to him there is no direct connection between an animal and man, that is to say, man did not inherit his playing nature from animals: both animals and man received their ability to play from God. The behavior of animals which Huizinga calls “play” is their direct existential activity by which they acquire skill and develop the body in a way that should insure their survival. Their play is always the same and is determined by the nature of their kind. By playing, a child develops his individuality and becomes a man, unlike the young of animals who through play develop the peculiar features of the species they belong to. In addition, animals do not choose their play with their free will; it is a necessary consequence of the development of the qualities contained in their genetics. Huizinga also “forgets” to tell us that animals “play” together regardless of their gender (while “love play” that precedes mating has special significance), and that people from their childhood, precisely on the basis of the existing games, which Huizinga proclaims the indisputable criterion for determining the notion of play, divide in playing communities according to their gender (as well as according to their races and classes). Coubertin brings things to the end: the woman is deprived of the right to engage publicly in sport and take part in the Olympic Games, and physical exercises should serve to help her develop her maternal dispositions and become a national (racial) incubator.

Huizinga takes from the animal world everything he can use to prove the playing nature of homo ludens. He departs from the behavior of some animals which resembles the behavior of people and thus draws a general conclusion on the competitive (“playing”) nature of animals. Thus, according to him, even crows, similarly to man, “compete”. Not only is man outside the process of evolution, but the evolution of animal species is discarded as well. Using the same method, Huizinga could have easily realized that a great majority of animals do not “compete” and could have drawn the conclusion that competition is not in the nature of animals. How can God be mother to some animals and step-mother to others?  If we have in mind the essence of Huizinga’s conception, such questions are meaningless since Huizinga, an aesthetician, does not use the causal-explicative method and does not try to offer arguments, but tries to invent a “nice story” using the details from the animal and human worlds with which he can incite an aesthetic reaction and thus win man over. However, what Huizinga considers the play of animals was obtained on the basis of a certain ideological model of play. Huizinga’s relation to the play of animals is the result of his relation to man – which is reduced to a combat with man’s creative-libertarian being. Play is not the highest form of man’s self-realization and of society as the community of emancipated individuals, but is an expression of spirit which “nature” (God) “bestowed” on the living beings. Buytendijk also opens a possibility for a critique of Huizinga when he claims that “sport bases its value and estimation precisely on the strivings to one special ideal behavior” which involves norms as “obligatory rules”. “Pure play does not have this normative demand and belongs to a completely different life sphere. Animals play; only in people exists sport, which without norms, which means without the ‘spirit’ – is not possible.” (33) Coubertin departs from the assertion that man is by his nature an animal, but he does not depart, like Huizinga, from the playing characteristics of animals and he reduces the animal to a bloodthirsty beast. For Coubertin, the animal world is not a symbol of tolerance and pacifism; it is the realization of the principle “might is right” as well as the principle of natural selection and thus is the model for human community. Unlike those bourgeois anthropologists who regard sport as a means for pacifying man’s “aggressive (animal) nature”, Coubertin regards sport as a means for developing his combatant will, since man is by his nature a “lazy beast”. Sport is based on the principle of “greater effort” and is not “in the nature of man”, (34) but is in the nature of the capitalist order: a sportsman is a capitalistically mutated beast.

Trying to deal with the idea of future and man’s struggle to create the world in his human image, both Coubertin and Huizinga refer to the past. Unlike Coubertin, who in an idealized antiquity finds the highest point in the development of humankind, Huizinga finds in a romanticized picture of the Middle Ages an unattainable model. It is an endeavour to create a parallel world in people’s heads, in which everything man should and can strive for has already been realized. It becomes the ideal of a “perfect world”, similarly to the Christian “paradise”, which appears as a way of closing man in the established world by means of a repressive normative pattern, which is an idealized projection of the ruling social relations. Huizinga clearly sees that the world’s imperfection is the basic presupposition of its openness to the future and human aspirations. If the existing world is to be preserved, the sets on the scene creating illusions should be preserved first: Coubertin’s principle of “control in heads” is the basis of Huizinga’s philosophy. Illusion should destroy the hope of a better world and prevent a critical-changing confrontation with the existing world of misery. Instead of striving for a just world, man should strive for a “more beautiful” world. Play, which according to Huizinga is essentially “irrational”, should achieve a certain psychological effect which, ultimately, is intended to show the ruling values of the existing world in a holy (divine) form, under the aureole of “rhythm and harmony”, “the noblest qualities we are capable of perceiving in things”. (35) Coubertin’s words: “harmony is the sister of order” indicate the true meaning of this conception. Just like Coubertin, Huizinga tries to create an appearance of the cultural by aestheticizing play (harmony, proportion, rhythm). It is an instrumentalized aesthetics, but Coubertin argues for a dynamic balance and against the normative which represents a restraint to the “will to power” of the ruling class. Unlike Huizinga-s conception, where there is a hint of the ancient principle of kalokagathia, which means that the ethical and the aesthetical are given in unity, in Coubertin, the aesthetical, as the idealized picture of order, becomes a way of providing a “cultural” legitimacy to the Social Darwinist and progressistic nature of capitalism. “Beauty” becomes a combat with freedom and novum.

Huizinga, like Nietzsche and Coubertin, discards the categories of “evil” and “good”, “unjust” and “just”, “freedom” and “tyranny”… The relation to the world is mediated by the aesthetical criteria of “ugly” and “beautiful”. The main task of art is not to deify the existing world, as is the case in Coubertin, but to create an illusory world (“a dream”) which will be incorporated into man’s head in order to preserve “the human” and enable it to endure everyday life. In his picture of the Middle Ages Huizinga does not show a man who suffers, but uses the misery of the oppressed to depict a life similar to the Christian world, in which man, with the obedience of a slave, accepts his humiliating social position. Trying to destroy human dignity, Huizinga, with pathological lustfulness, depicts the scenes of execution and of poor people in mud under the gallows. He condemns the modern man’s becoming independent of the divine authority, which means his alienation from his playing nature, and wants to restore the sphere which is above man, which is independent of him and to which he is hopelessly submitted. Man should “return” to the illusory world of the Middle Ages, which is the incarnation of the fullness of the playing, and thus reach again his divine being. A romanticized picture of the Middle Ages becomes a mirror in which man is to meet his lost humanity, and in that sense it serves to fill in the cultural emptiness left after a hectic rush after money and a merciless struggle for power. According to Huizinga, the modern world is doomed to “gloominess”, while man, renouncing the divine patronage, has become a “banal” being. The only truly valuable thing created in modern society is a need for an illusory world which appears in the form of a “dream” about the Middle Ages. Unlike Huizinga’s picture of the Middle Ages, Coubertin’s picture of the ancient world does not present misery and suffering. It is a picture of a (hopelessly) “happy world”, which appears as an indisputable and unattainable challenge to the Modern Age. Instead of the yelling of slaves, from his mythological world come the clattering of arms and cries of the victors. At the same time, Coubertin seeks to destroy man’s need for dreaming. His positive bourgeois, guided by his insatiable lust and fear of the working “masses”, is constantly awake. Instead of offering a “dream” about the Middle Ages, which is reached through an aesthetic inspiration, Coubertin offers a ruthless fight on the sports field, which is the reincarnation of the “immortal spirit of antiquity” and is thus a light in the gloominess of everyday life dominated by a “futile effort” (Coubertin).

Huizinga’s doctrine does not contain the idea of progress, which represents the corner stone of Coubertin’s Olympic doctrine: he strives for a static and unchangeable world. In Huizinga, there is no “perfectioning” of man, which is based on Social Darwinism and the principle of performance, nor are there any other challenges which cross the borders of the aristocratic world. Huizinga: “He has won esteem, obtained honor; and this honor and esteem at once accrue to the benefit of the group to which the victor belongs. Here we have another very important characteristic of play: success won readily passes from the individual to the group. But the following feature is still more important: the competitive ‘instinct’ is not in the first place a desire for power or a will to dominate. The primary thing is the desire to excel others, to be the first and to be honored for that.” (36) Play becomes a fight for prestige between the aristocrats, and not a fight for domination (survival) and “progress”, as is the case in Coubertin. Huizinga is a representative of the aristocracy who acquired the monopoly over power “from God” and the static medieval order. A fight for victory is not the matter of survival, but of vanity, elitist status, as well as a form of the constant confirmation of a complete submission to the existing order. However, at knight tournaments and in war victory is achieved by beating the opponent, which means by his elimination from further fight, which involves killing. Huizinga speaks of “bloody ferocity” at the knight tournaments and glorifies war as the highest test of a man’s maturity. In that way Huizinga, under a different ideological veil, reached Coubertin’s position: the stronger survive, the weaker are destroyed. Huizinga should be credited with opposing the “criminal power” which, in the form of “total war” hung over Europe at the time of the Nazi fury. Unfortunately, even the monstrous Nazi atrocities did not make Huizinga cast away his loyal shield which he proudly carried all his life: instead of supporting those who fought against fascism, Huizinga addressed the Nazis asking them to respect certain norms in their genocidal conquests. His endeavours to give a “cultural” (playing) legitimacy to the criminal practice of the fascists came down to disclaiming cultural legitimacy of the libertarian struggle of the oppressed. According to Huizinga’s theory, the American, French and Russian Revolutions do not belong to the cultural heritage of mankind, but to “barbarism”, unlike wars and colonial conquests which drove to death hundreds of millions of people – with “respecting certain rules”. At the same time, Huizinga “forgets” that competition between people involves a certain level of civilizatory development, and that in the course of history competition has acquired new contents. The so called “primitive peoples” do not know of competition between individuals.  In ancient Greece competition was reduced to a ruthless struggle for victory. It is only in the Modern Age that the ideas of personal achievement, of comparing results and of record appear.

For Huizinga, just like for Coubertin, war between peoples is a necessary and welcome destiny of mankind. However, for Coubertin, war is the highest form of natural selection and thus is the basis of the “perfectioning” of mankind, while for Huizinga it is the highest form of play. In that sense, man’s readiness to kill is the most important human feature, while the skill of killing is the superb playing skill. If we add that, according to Huizinga, “pleasure” is the highest challenge for play, it is obvious that Huizinga proclaimed the pathological character prophile of the aristocracy the character prophile of his homo ludens. Huizinga’s hypocrisy is also seen in his speaking of a “chronical misery in war”, (37) while at the same time he sees in war the highest form of the fight of noblemen for “honor”. The true picture of war are not “magnificent military parades”, but hanged peasants, burned villages, raped girls, famine, plague, corpses of children rotting in mud… Huizinga’s “beauty” relies upon human misery and poverty. It is a cynical mocking at the working people who are left at the mercy of the aristocracy as the incarnation of a “fateful” power. “Law has invented horrible punishments” – claims Huizinga coldly, (38) forgetting to add that the punishments were inflicted by the aristocracy which he proclaimed the incarnation of “virtue”. Huizinga does not hide that horrible scenes of execution arouse in him the highest aesthetic exaltation. Bestial massacring of the poor – public taking out of the intestines, the cutting of limbs, burning, crucifixion on a wheel, cutting up of bodies by horse drawn carts and the like – all this acquires in Huizinga the character of rituals which serve to offer human sacrifices to the highest of deities and thus express complete submission to the ruling order. The same applies to wars and knight tournaments: to kill the “opponent” in a fight, respecting the established rules, is the highest form of play, and thus a cultural act. Huizinga departs from the same principle when he speaks of the suicidal fanaticism of samurai (harakiri). Glorifying “feudal heroism” in medieval Japan, Huizinga concludes that “The Japanese samurai held the view that what was serious for the common man was but a game for the valiant.” (39)  – overlooking the fact that the sword of a samurai symbolizes the ruling order to which man is hopelessly submitted. Play becomes the highest form of man’s devaluation.

Huizinga’s homo ludens is the picture of a “noble knight” who represents an idealized incarnation of the aristocracy and aristocratic values. Speaking of the medieval “sport”, Huizinga concludes: “The warlike sports of the Middle Ages differ from Greek and modern athletics by being far less simple and natural. Pride, honor, love and art give additional stimulus to the competition itself. Overloaded with pomp and decoration full of heroic fancy, they serve to express romantic needs too strong for mere literature to satisfy. The realities of court life or a military career offered too little opportunity for the fine make-belief of heroism and love, which filled the soul. So they had to be acted. The staging of the tournament, therefore, had to be that of romance; that is to say, the imaginary world of Arthur, where the fancy of a fairy-tale was enhanced by the sentimentality of courtly love.” (40) For Huizinga, the duel is a ritual form of expressing man’s complete submission to the established order. The same can be found in Coubertin: in a sports fair-play man’s right to life is subordinated to the right of order to survival. Nothing human can restrain the will to power of the bourgeois who seeks to conquer the world and abolish the emancipatory heritage of mankind. Life itself becomes a stake which proves the loyalty to the established order, while fight to life or death becomes the most authentic form of natural selection. Both theorists place ambition and love of power to the forefront and reject love of man and freedom. However, what “honour” is proved by killing a man? What is the nature of the erotic impulse achieved through “bloody fierceness”? What is beautiful in a cruel fight to life and death, in cutting throats and butchering, in taking out the intestines, in mutilated bodies drowned in mud? And all that only “to win the favor of court ladies”? Huizinga proclaimed the pathology of medieval society the source of the highest human ideals. As far as the woman is concerned, Huizinga reduced her to a part of the scene as a vaginal idiot who from time to time breathes “romantic sighs”. In Huizinga’s medieval picture she serves to enhance the “emotional impulse” and “erotic charm” of chivalrous fights, as well as the “colorfulness” of the tournaments. Certainly, it refers to noble ladies. Plebeian women, in their rags, belong to a place of misery, pain, despair – in the mud under the gallows. Most importantly, in Huizinga’s world of illusions man obediently endures his everyday misery. In his picture of the Middle Ages there are no angry eyes, or clenched fists symbolizing resistance to the “horrible world” (Huizinga) in which the tyranny of the aristocracy is established.

Huizinga is not a historian, but an aesthetician. He depicts the Middle Ages in idyllic colors and is not interested in how much his picture corresponds to reality, but how convincingly it represents the illusory world he offers to man as a way of escaping from the existing world. He seeks to avoid a “naive historical realism” in order to create the picture of the Middle Ages which will enable the (petty) bourgeois a “cultural” nourishment as opposed to the hopelessly non-cultural capitalist world. According to Huizinga, “At all times the vision of a sublime life has haunted the souls of men, and the gloomier the present is, the more strongly this aspiration will make itself felt. Three different paths, at all times, have seemed to lead to the ideal life. Firstly, that of forsaking the world.” (…) “The second path conducts to amelioration of the world itself, by consciously improving political, social, and moral institutions and conditions.” (41)  “For there is a third path to a world more beautiful, trodden in all ages and civilizations, the easiest and also the most fallacious of all, that of the dream. A promise to escape from the gloomy actual is held out to all; we have only to color life with fancy, to enter upon the quest of oblivion, sought in the delusion of ideal harmony. After the religious and the social solution we have the poetical. A simple tune suffices for the enrapturing fugue to develop itself; an outlook on the heroism, the virtue, or the happiness of an ideal past is all that is wanted. (…) But was it only a question of literature, this third path to the sublime life, this flight from harsh reality into illusion? Surely it has been more. History pays too little attention to the influence of these dreams of a sublime life on civilization itself and on the forms of social life. The content of the ideal is a desire to return to the perfection of an imaginary past.” (42) Huizinga is here again close to Christianity: the more miserable life is, the more intensive the need for an illusory world; the greatest the everyday gloominess, the more attractive the colorfulness of illusion… Huizinga himself clearly refers to that when he claims that “every age strives for a more beautiful world. The deeper the desperation and pain because of a confused present day, the stronger the craving”. (43) People should be blinded by a dazzling light, but Huizinga, instead of sports performances, offers a false picture of the Middle Ages, in which man looks insignificant in comparison to a mystical fateful power that emanates from that picture. Coubertin does not try to arouse in people a craving for a more beautiful world, but seeks to deify the existing world and turn it into the illusion of a “happy world”. The Olympic Games are analogous to Huizinga’s “dream”, which appears as an idealized picture of the Middle Ages. The Olympic spectacle becomes an “artificially beautified picture of pseudo reality”, which for the modern man has the same significance as, according to Fromm, “the shining glassy pearls” had for savages, who were prepared to give their country and their freedom for them. (44) Instead of a sports spectacle of the circus type, which is intended to marginalize the crucial and enforce the marginal as fateful, in Coubertin, the Olympic spectacle becomes the highest cultural ceremony at which man’s being is mystically inseminated with the spirit of capitalism. The same goes with Huizinga: in his “dream” the dominant values of the existing world appear in an idealized form, but he, departing from Plato, identifies play with a cult – through which play acquires “holiness”. In that context, Huizinga poses the question if the cult, as the “highest and holiest reality”, can also be play? That it is possible is confirmed by children’s games, as well as any other games which are “played with the utmost seriousness”. It includes the play of a sportsman for he plays with “the utmost seriousness and courage that spring from enthusiasm”. (45) Criticizing modern sport, Huizinga expresses hope that one day sport will restore the character of the medieval tournaments. Just like in Coubertin, “future” appears as the incarnation of the past. Speaking of Plato’s view of play and holiness, Huizinga says: “The Platonic identification of play and holiness does not defile the latter by calling it play; rather it exalts the concept of play to the highest regions of the spirit. We said at the beginning that play was anterior to culture; in a certain sense it is also superior to it or at least detached from it. In play we may move below the level of the serious, as the child does; but we can also move above it – in the realm of the beautiful and the sacred.” (46) By way of play Huizinga raises man’s spirit from the existing world; by way of sport, Coubertin nails it to the existing world. Olympism does not lead man to divinity, but seeks to deify the present world: it is the “cult of the present world” which should give an aureole of the eternal to the ruling order and cause a religious relation of people to it. Hence for Coubertin the Olympic Games are the “Church”, while a sports stadium is the temple of capitalism.

Huizinga’s play involves an indisputable observance of the roles to which man is predestined on the basis of the class he belongs to. Play becomes the confirmation of his unchangeable social status and a way of “free” playing of the given role. Huizinga laments the fate of the “gentleman from earlier times, who, obviously, with his formal outfit demonstrated his status and his dignity.” (47) Above all, by his outfit a nobleman expressed his dominant social position, particularly the “superiority of his blueblood”, and it acquired its true “aesthetic” dimension only in opposition to the misery of the working “masses”. The way of dressing is not the expression of the aristocracy’s free will and spiritual wealth, but a demonstration of the wealth and power of the ruling class and thus its obligatory uniform. Huizinga is enthusiastic about the aristocracy’s foppishness (the aesthetics of rich people’s primitivism), seeing in it a dazzling power, which is of primary importance for the creation of his world of illusions intended to impress the oppressed. In addition, clothes are the most conspicuous form of “virtue” whose bearer, by the divine will, is the aristocracy. It is, thus, a holy robe by which the divine power should arouse admiration in ordinary mortals: the dazzling power of noble robes becomes a means for deifying the aristocratic order. Huizinga insists on the “art of life”, and not on a free artistic creation. That is why he attaches such importance to “fashion”: clothes are not the confirmation of human independence, but a class leveling shroud man is predestined to. It is quite logical that Huizinga gives priority to the “art of life” as opposed to art itself, for it, above all, involves “nicely stylized forms of life, which should raise the cruel reality to the sphere of noble harmony”. “The high art of life” (“fashion”) becomes the form in which a decorative aesthetics triumphs over art as a creative act. Speaking of the Middle Ages Huizinga says: “All these nicely stylized forms of life, which should raise the cruel reality to the sphere of noble harmony, were parts of a high art of life, and did not find a direct expression in art proper.” (48) Huizinga goes as far as to proclaim the apparent forms of the established relations “pure art”. By way of the “artistic” form Huizinga actually seeks to prevent at all cost the original human creativeness from crossing the normative firmament of his aesthetics and thus destroy the world of illusions and question the existing order. Man is not the creator of his own world, but is part of the sets on the scene of the present world.

Like Coubertin, Huizinga does not advocate a society “ruled by law”, but one ruled by privileges. Huizinga’s view of the structure of society is akin to the view of the structure of medieval society of the court historiographer of Philippe le Bon and Charles le Temeraire, Georges Chastellain: “God, he says, created the common people to till the earth and to procure by trade the commodities necessary for life; he created the clergy for the works of religion; the nobles that they should cultivate virtue and maintain justice, so that the deeds and the morals of these fine personages might be a pattern to others.” (49) In spite of critical overtones in his presentation of Chastellain’s work, Huizinga has not gone much further from this court historiographer. For him, also, the nobility, “based on virtue”, is predestined to be the bearer of a cultural mission and is thus the spiritual “elite” of mankind. Huizinga: “The nobility, which once only had to be brave and defend its honor, satisfying the ideal of virtue, now, if it still feels called, has to stick to its task, either by introducing higher ethical contents into the ideal of chivalry, which in practice always turns out bad, or by being satisfied, through luxury, glamour and court customs, with the outward splendor of the high class and unsullied honor, and it however now has kept only the character of play, which from the very beginning was its distinctive feature, but used to have a cultural function.” (50) Huizinga reduced culture to the aristocratic “culture of life”, and it means to the imitation of strict forms of court life, dressing, indulging in luxury… Aesthetic education is reduced to the imitation of the given pattern of behavior which is performed rhythmically and harmoniously: play acquires a ritual dimension. Culture does not appear as the development of man’s spiritual wealth and his universal creative powers, but as a constant rebuilding of sets on the scene of the world which is given by the divine (self) willedness. There is not a word on the development of art, philosophy, on the creation of new playing forms: culture becomes a manifestation of the aristocracy’s elitist status. By identifying the “higher culture”, which becomes the highest cultural level and thus a criterion for determining the (non)cultural, with the aristocratic medieval culture, Huizinga devalued the extraordinary richness of ethnic cultures (which have become the basis of modern art), as well as the ancient and Renaissance cultural heritage. In his determination of culture Huizinga does not rely on mankind’s emancipatory heritage, but on the aristocratic culture based on a belligerant and oppressive practice of the aristocracy which reached its highest “cultural” level in “chivalrous traditions”. Hence, according to Huizinga, the struggle between people for acquiring “honour”, including the tournaments and war, is the highest form of play. While Huizinga strives for cultural elitism, Coubertin seeks to destroy culture and turn society into a “civilized” menagerie.

Huizinga finds in “rationalism and utilitarism” the cause of the miserable spiritual state of the western world: “The overestimation of domineering factors in society and in the human spirit was in a way a natural product of rationalism and utilitarism, which destroyed mystery and absolved man of guilt and sin. However, at the same time, they forgot to free him of stupidity and shortsightedness, and thus he seemed to be predestined to and capable of destroying the world only according to its own banality.” (51) Using the already tested method of bourgeois theorists, Huizinga proclaims the abstract “man” guilty of the catastrophic spiritual state created by capitalism, and reduces him to a “banal” being in order to destroy his self-respect. At the same time, Huizinga proclaims “technical development” an independent and cardinal power which becomes the subject of social development: “With remarkable technical developments from the steam engine to electricity, man more and more cherished the illusion that this development also meant cultural development.” (52) The banality of the capitalist world, in which everything is submitted to quantification and profit, becomes for Huizinga “man’s own banality”. Huizinga’s analysis of capitalist society shows that he had before himself such research methods which offered him a possibility of discovering the causes of spiritual misery. However, his theory was not intended to remove the causes of spiritual misery, but to protect the ruling order. Huizinga reduces man to a “banal” being in order to destroy his dignity as a libertarian and creative being and for ever pin him down to the existing world. What he finds unacceptable is man’s becoming independent of superhuman powers and acquiring the capability to create the world in his own image. Both Huizinga and Coubertin deal with man’s creative-libertarian nature and the idea of future.

Trying to deprive man of the capability to create a reasonable alternative to the world based on capitalist irrationalism, Huizinga claims: ”We, after all, are not as reasonable as the 18^th century, in its naive optimism, was prone to believe.” (53) Thus, being no more capable of finding the causes of his misery and creating new roads of development, man was left to the mercy of the fatal effects of the irrational processes of the capitalist reproduction. Unlike the bourgeois theory which, by way of the “objectivistic” scientific mind, seeks to give the character of “being rational” to the irrational nature of the capitalist order, Huizinga, using the results of the modern mind, seeks to instrumentalize irrationalism in order to fanaticize man and enable him a spiritual escape from the existing world. The aestheticized model of play becomes a rationally projected space of the “irrational”. Huizinga’s irrationalism is not anti-rational, but anti-emancipatory. Like Coubertin, Huizinga does not refer to reason, but tries, by way of certain impressions, to penetrate the subconscious and control the human being from “within”. Hence such a plastic picture of the Middle Ages, his insisting on details and human destinies… Every part of the human being, which is not capable of finding a suitable expression in the existing world, should find itself in an illusionary world. Huizinga portrays the Middle Ages as a time in which pulsates all that is human: laughter and crying, birth and death, love and hatred, ornate luxury and gloomy misery… The richness of contrasts is opposed to the impersonality of the industrial age; a number of open emotional expressions are opposed to a “serious” world where there is no place for laughter and crying and in which everything is subordinated to labour and gain; the world of imagination is opposed to a world governed by a strict and spiritless ratio. The heading of his first chapter of “The Waning of the Middle Ages”: “The intensity of life” is quite indicative and it becomes a metaphor with which Huizinga mocks the capitalist world. However, Huizinga forgets that his ideals are founded on mankind’s cultural heritage and present one of the streams of thought in its recent development. And this is the result of the thinking activity of the “banal” man whom Huizinga addresses with contempt. Here we find Russell’s paradox of the liar: how can we believe the man Huizinga when he denies the right and ability of the (“banal”) man to make his own decisions? Obviously, Huizinga is not bothered by that problem. He sees himself as a link connecting man to the divine and thus as a modern “Messiah”.

Huizinga’s culturological critique of capitalist society could be fruitful if it were intended to eradicate the source of non-culture. Then his thesis – that technical development does not at the same time mean cultural development, would gain its true value. Unfortunately, Huizinga proclaimed capitalist society a hopelessly non-cultural world in order to deal with the aspirations to create a new world which would be a cultural community of free people. To make things even worse, capitalism becomes the foundation for creating a world of illusions, which becomes man’s highest cultural challenge. To prevent the struggle for a better world, Huizinga offers to the oppressed the illusion of a “beautiful” world in which, by an aesthetic hocus-pocus, the world of misery is deified. In that context, culture has the role to create “beautiful sights for the spirit” and to bring man, by way of play, to the divine. Just as Huizinga tries to defend the existing world by means of play, which is reduced to a “dream” of an ideal world (the Middle Ages), so Coubertin tries to defend it by means of sport, which, in the form of the Olympic Games, becomes the reincarnation of the “immortal spirit of antiquity”. Instead of a spiritual escape from the world, Coubertin argues for man’s complete integration into the existing world by way of a mindless agonal physical activism. To live the present life becomes the highest and most efficient way of its defense.

The true nature of Huizinga’s theory can be seen only if we bear in mind the destructive nature of capitalism. For here we deal not only with the “horror” from the Middle Ages, from which we should escape by creating “beautiful sights for the spirit”, but also with the horror of capitalism, which threatens to destroy mankind and from which there is no escape. Huizinga’s play, from which he tries to make a colorful cover which will cover the world, becomes a death shroud.

If we compare Schiller’s conception of play with Coubertin’s conception of sport, we shall see that it is one of the “negative” starting points of Coubertin’s Olympic doctrine. According to Schiller, “man can be in contradiction with himself in two ways; either as a savage, if his feelings control his principles, or as a barbarian – if his principles destroy his feelings.” (1) Coubertin’s positive man is below the level both of Schiller’s savage and of his barbarian. He has neither feelings nor reason: there are only swollen muscles and a combatant character. Coubertin’s deals with Schillers “playing instinct” which seeks to “annihilate time in time, to connect existence with absolute being, change with identity”. (2) “The playing instinct” becomes an impulse for freedom based on the unity of the sensual and the intellectual. To be free within oneself, to temper extremities, to achieve internal peace – this is the basis for interhuman relations and a good life. Coubertin abolished both Schiller’s “sensual instinct”, which “departs from man’s physical existence or from his sensual nature”, as well as “the instinct for form”, which “departs from man’s absolute being or from his reasonable nature and seeks to set him free…” (3) In that context, Schiller’s picture of ancient Greece is in opposition to the picture of antiquity offered by Coubertin. Schiller: “We see the Greeks unifying in the fine human nature the youth of fantasy with the masculinity of reason; they are full of form and at the same time full of plenitude, they philosophize and at the same time educate, they are both tender and energetic.” (4) “Fantasy”, “reason”, and “tenderness” are what Coubertin tries to deal with at all costs. He uses sport in order to turn people into enemies; Schiller uses play to turn people into brothers. Schiller’s conception is opposed to Coubertin’s “will to power”: instead of Schiller’s “aesthetic instinct for play”, (5) Coubertin’s dominant instinct is that for conquering and acquiring. He, like the Nazis, deals with “peaceloving aestheticians” (Hitler) who want to develop their sensual and spiritual nature, and tries to create colonial phalanges imbued with fanatical racism. The pacifistic and philanthropic intention of Schiller’s philosophy is what creates an unbridgeable gap between his and Coubertin’s doctrines.

Unlike the theorists in whom play (the normative) dominates over man’s playing nature, Schiller gives priority to the playing being, but he does not differentiate between the false play, libertarian play and free (true) play. In Schiller, there does not exist a normative project of play nor a concrete play; what he insists on is the definition of man’s playing being and an imaginary space where it can be “realized”. Schiller’s conception is not a form expressing faith in man as a libertarian and creative being, capable of creating a new world in his human image, but a romantic cry for an unrealized humanity. In the “aesthetic state” it is possible to realize what is impossible to realize in everyday life: man can reach his whole humanity. It is an illusionary world which, on the basis of emotional enthusiasm, is built in people’s heads and is experienced with the whole “playing” being. Schiller’s “aesthetic state” is a parallel world floating on the clouds of imagination without any hope of descending on the ground. It is a space where the creative spirit goes to a voluntary exile. Hence Schiller speaks of “aesthetic appearance” – “which neither wants to stand for reality, nor does it need it to represent it”. (6) And he continues: “A pursuit of an independent appearance requires more ability for abstraction, more freedom of the heart, more energy of the will than man needs to confine him to reality, and the latter he must overcome if he is to reach the former.” (7) Unlike Schiller, who by way of play seeks to overcome the spiritual horizons of the existing world, Coubertin deals with imagination in order to pin man down to the existing world and deal with the idea of future. Schiller strives to the sphere of pure spirit realized in the “aesthetic state”; Coubertin strives to take spirit away from man and establish positive society. For Schiller, the “ability for abstraction” is the bridge leading man to the “aesthetic state”; for Coubertin, a ruthless combatant spirit is the bridge leading man to his “sports republic”. Schiller seeks “more energy” in order to overcome reality by way of “independent appearance” embodied in his “aesthetic state”; Coubertin insists on the development of the will with which not only the “aesthetic state” should be abolished but also man’s very need for an illusory world. Schiller seeks to create “flying” people who will soar towards new worlds; Coubertin seeks to cut man’s wings and for ever enclose him within the existing world. In Schiller, the human is realized in man by developing the fullness of his being – outside society; in Coubertin, all essential things happen outside man – through the abolishment of society as a human community. At the same time, for Schiller, unlike Coubertin, what connects the “flying” people is not the material wealth, but the spiritual wealth, and it turns them into a flock. Instead of giving priority to art, Coubertin gives priority to positive science: the principle savoir pour prevoir, prevoir pour agir replaces a romantic ”day-dreaming” about the future. Man is at the same level with Huizinga’s “banal” man: instead of trying to create a reasonable alternative to the existing (anti-human) world, man returns to the patronage of superhuman powers, which in Coubertin appear in the form of “progress”.

Schiller’s “aesthetic state” becomes an illusionary world and thus deals with man’s critical-changing spirit, but, unlike Huizinga’s illusionary world which is reduced to an idealization of the Middle Ages, it is open for visions of the future. Schiller: “On the wings of imagination leaves man the narrow boundaries of the present, which involves only the animalistic, in order to strive forward, towards an infinite future…” (8) Man’s spiritual cultivation is independent of his real life and social position. Instead of striving to liberate man from tyranny, Schiller seeks to release imagination from the bonds of everyday life. Man does not reach freedom by fighting to break his chains, but with his romantic enthusiasm in which he does not feel the burden of the chains, whereas “beauty” is an abstract and instrumentalized concept creating the appearance of man’s libertarian practice. “Day-dreaming” replaces the political struggle for a new world. Schiller’s conception expresses a specific spiritual state in which romantic enthusiasm suppresses all that can jeopardize a free flight of imagination to the “aesthetic state” – where all that is impossible in the existing life becomes possible. At the same time, relations between people, as well as the flight of spirit to the “future”, are not mediated by a progressistic logic and in that context by science and technique, nor by a trade spirit: man’s faith in future is unconditional and unlimited. In spite of a romantic intonation (“more freedom of the heart”), Schiller offers a rationally based normative project intended to form the ideals of the human that become man’s highest challenge and are a possible starting point for a critical attitude to the existing world.

For Schiller, aesthetic inspiration is the essence of movement, and nature appears as aesthetic inspiration, and not as an object of exploitation. In him, the dominant principle is that of taking pleasure in a free movement in nature, which is totally opposed to Coubertin’s principle of “greater effort”, which cripples the body and destroys man’s playing nature. Instead of an instrumentalized and technicized movement directed against man and nature, the dominant movement is that towards man and nature. What he tries to achieve is the unity between nature, the body and the spirit: a liberated spirit moves the body and cultivates man’s nature by way of symbols that inspire him and strengthen his faith in life. The skill of movement becomes the liberation, and not the restraint of the body and the spirit, which means an aesthetic challenge. Perfection is not reduced to a mere development of the body and of a combatant character, as is the case in Coubertin, but to the development of the spirit. Skill is not only a “technical” presupposition for articulating the spiritual, but is a way of self-realization, self-affirmation and self-cognition and is thus a bridge to nature and to man. Bodily movement becomes a romantic flight of man’s spirit, which is inspired by faith in man and which offers a possibility of overcoming the horizons of the existing world. It does not thwart, but fires imagination which gives to everything surrounding man a fantastic and symbolic character. Play is not an escape from reality, but is the expression of the aspiration to freedom and has a visionary character. Bodily movement is not an animal or technical act, but is the expression of spiritual movement: skating becomes a “fine art” (Fait) realized in nature which becomes a scene for a performance created by a “dreamy spirit”. Movement does not “conquer” space and time; it is a way of opening a new infinite and timeless spiritual space in man, which reflects a romantic optimism. Instead of having an effect with a quantitative dimension, in which man becomes alienated from his human powers, the main effect of skating becomes aesthetic inspiration: intensity of experience (“exaltation”, “amazement”) becomes the measure of its “endurance”. Movement has an expressive and symbolic function. The sun ray is not only light, but is a symbol of enlightenment; ice skates are not only a technical device, but are “the wings on the legs” (Klopstock) which carry man to future; there is no dualism between the body and the spirit; there is no manipulation with the body in order to achieve certain political ends; there are no physical exercises as a means for creating the character of a loyal and usable citizen; there is no fight between people for victory, nor is there Coubertin’s principle of “greater effort” which was to become the basis for developing a sado-masochistic character of a positive bourgeois. Instead of Coubertin’s Social Darwinist agon, there is a liberated spirit confronting the existing world and the unity of (abstract) humanity in spontaneous movement in nature, creating a synthesis between man’s aesthetical and ethical being. In Schiller everything lies in unity: beauty, truth, freedom… In that context Schiller clearly differentiates between onesided and whole developments of the body: “Gymnastic exercises create the athletes, but beauty is created only by a free and coordinate exercising of all parts of the body.” (9) This contains the basic principle of Schiller’s physical culture which is a mirror reflecting the true, dehumanized and denaturalized nature of Coubertin’s “utilitarian pedagogy”.

Unlike those bourgeois theorists who seek to present the existing games, which are but the incarnation of the ruling relations and values in a “pure” form, as the “oasis of happiness” (Fink) contrary to the existing world of unhappiness, in his romantic enthusiasm Schiller seeks to create a convincing illusory world, where it is possible to realize the fullness of human playing being. In Schiller there is no space outside man in which he is to find his lost humanity; everything occurs in the heart and imagination of the “flying people”. Hence he does not insist on a strict observance of the existing rules of a game, but absolutizes the subjective. Schiller’s romantic enthusiasm is a reflection of the French Revolution in the heart of free citizenship, while his “aesthetic state” is an attempt to build an illusionary castle of freedom on its ruins. In Schiller’s “aesthetic state every one, even the one who serves, is a free citizen, whose rights are equal to those of the most noble man, while the reason, which forces the oppressed masses to serve its ends, must ask them for permission. So, here, in the realm of the aesthetic appearance, the ideal of equality is fulfilled, the same ideal that an enthusiast would so much like to realize in reality…” (10) Schiller is close to Coubertin’s “sports republic” in which the oppressed are given the same formal rights as their oppressors, on the condition that they renounce the fight for changing their slavery social status: freedom in the “aesthetic state” involves the obedient acceptance of tyranny in society. “The aesthetic state” becomes an exclusive community of “flying people” and not of free and equal people. However, the very right of a “free citizen” to appear in the “aesthetic state” is formal, since it can be done only by those who have a developed aesthetic sense. Schiller does not hide that: “But, is there a state of aesthetic appearance, and where can it be found? According to the needs, it exists in every fine soul; in fact, we could find it, as a pure church and pure republic, only in a few carefully chosen circles in which the behavior is not determined by an empty conformation to strange customs but by one’s own beautiful nature, in which man, with his bold simplicity and calm innocence, passes through most intricate relations and has no need either to impinge on other people’s freedom in order to keep his own, or to renounce his dignity in order to show gracefulness.” (11) In spite of insisting on an “aesthetic state”, Schiller finds in the existing world mimetic impulses which crucially determine the formation of the aesthetic being. Schiller refers to that speaking of the “form”, which is but a reflection of the existing world, spontaneously controlling man: “Just as the form slowly approaches him in his flat, his furniture, his outfit, so it slowly begins to control him, and transform not only the external, but also the internal man. A simple jump turns into a play, an ugly gesture into a lovable harmonious speech of movements…” (12) In Schiller, form enters man by way of the already existing cultural sphere, while man does not have an active critical-creative relation to it, but a passive-receptive one. Practically, to live the life of the chosen is the basic presupposition for entering the “aesthetic state”. Unlike Schiller, Coubertin seeks to open the door of his “sports republic” for the oppressed, especially at the critical moments for capitalism, in order to “teach” them to respect the order ruled by the stronger and thus integrate them into the existing world. Coubertin’s “sports republic” is not an illusory world which is reached by imagination, but a real world which is “reached” by living a life based on the principles bellum omnium contra omnes and citius, altius, fortius. Instead of Schiller’s postulate that “man is man only when he plays”, (13) in Coubertin man is man only when he oppresses the weak and conquers the world.

Schiller is not concerned with an (critical) analysis of the nature of concrete plays, since romantic enthusiasm is a force that enables man to experience the most illuminated freedom in the darkest of slaveries – and this freedom consists in the right to participate in the creation of the world of illusions. The freedom given back to man through the “aesthetic mood” is, according to Schiller, “the greatest of all gifts” – “the gift of human nature”. (14) “Namely, the moment the two conflicting basic impulses start acting in him, both of them lose the coercive moment, and from the confrontation of two necessities results freedom.” (15) Freedom “starts only when man and his two basic instincts are fully developed; it, therefore, must be lacking until he is complete and until he acquires one of the two impulses, and it must be capable of being established by means of all those things that give man back his fullness.” (16) Speaking of his “aesthetic state” Schiller concludes: “To give freedom to the one who is free is the basic law of this realm”. (17) According to Benno von Wiese, Schiller’s true love “is not so much a moral freedom of the human kind, but much more an aesthetic freedom of a man who plays, since it is only by way of it that man can fully be man, not only as a kind, but also as an individual”. (18) Through his romantic enthusiasm and aesthetic inspiration, man can be “free” within himself in spite of being a slave in society: slavery turns through play into “aesthetic freedom”. Schiller’s instincts are united and realized at the expense of man as a social being. He does not realize that human freedom in society is the basic precondition of a free play. Through the aesthetic appearance man does not acquire freedom, but creates a false feeling of freedom. “The flight of imagination” is not “the expression of freedom”, but a day-dreaming of a slave. Freedom in art presupposes reconciliation to tyranny in society. Gadamer: “A reconciliation between the ideal and life by way of art is but a partial reconciliation. The beautiful and art give to reality only a superficial and false glow. The freedom of the soul, to which they ascend us, is the freedom only in an aesthetic state, and not in reality.” (19) At the same time, in Schiller’s “aesthetic state” man’s hope and faith in a just world are exhausted. In his “fine souls” there is a space for “beauty”, but not for the suffering of the oppressed. For Coubertin, to claim freedom is absurd. He despises the guiding principles of the French Revolution, and the rights of man and citizen based on it, and proclaims “might is right” the indisputable basis of social structuring. Instead of Schiller’s principle “freedom is reached through beauty”, (20) Coubertin argues for the principle according to which a ruthless struggle for survival creates a “master race”, on the one hand, and slaves, on the other. Instead of arguing for the “freedom” of the individual, Coubertin argues for the “perfectioning” of mankind under the patronage of the white “master race”. He does not seek to “reconcile the ideal and life through art”, but to reconcile man to the existing world of injustice by destroying his faith in a just world.

For Schiller, man is man only when he realizes the fullness of his human (playing) being. Like Nietzsche, he seeks to restore the “synthetic” man of antiquity, and beauty represents an integrative ideal in which the unity of human being is realized. However, Schiller regards man as an abstract being who experiences beauty independently of social reality, which means of his concrete social being. According to Schiller, “man is man in the full sense of that word” only when he succeeds in completely separating himself, by way of romantic enthusiasm and imagination, from the gloomy reality and realizes the pureness of his being in the “aesthetic state”. More precisely, it is only in the “aesthetic state” that man can establish a harmony between the instinctive and the reasonable, free from the burden of social existence. Play is not only an escape from society, but is an escape of man from himself as a social being. Schiller insists on the realization of instincts, but he empties man and reduces him to an abstract being in which reality and form are confronted and united – from which springs “the beautiful”. Schiller: “From the mutual interaction of two opposing instincts and from the connection of two opposing principles we have seen how the beautiful appears, whose ideal, indeed, we shall look for in the most perfect connection and balance of reality and form. (21)

Schiller’s “return to nature” is totally opposed to Coubertin’s “naturalistic” conception. Speaking of animals and plants, Schiller concludes: “They are what we are; they are what we should again become. We, like they, used to be nature, and our culture, by way of reason and freedom, should return us to nature. They are, therefore, at the same time the image of our lost childhood, which for ever remains something most dear to us; hence it fills us with certain sadness. At the same time, they are the images of our highest perfection in the ideal; therefore they bring us to a sublime emotion. (22) Schiller insists on establishing the unity between the natural and the intellectual in man; Coubertin insists on a complete integration of man into the existing world by removing man’s natural being and his reason. In the “sports republic” man does not acquire the fullness of his human being, but is completely “emptied” of his humanity so that he can fit into the existing world. For Coubertin, nature is not a peaceful and harmonious whole, but is a space of a merciless struggle for survival. Coubertin’s return to nature is not mediated by “reason and freedom”, but by “might is right” and “progress”, which bring about man’s degeneration as a natural being. While in Schiller man becomes, from being the “slave of nature”, “its lawgiver the moment he starts thinking about it”, in Coubertin, this happens through sport and physical drill based on the absolutized principle of “greater effort” – with which the laws of nature turn into a power which controls nature, and it means also man’s body and his “lazy animal” nature. According to Schiller, “man in his physical condition endures only the power of nature; he sets himself free from this power in the aesthetic state, and controls it in the moral one.” (23) Coubertin does not seek to liberate the “forces of nature” by way of aesthetics, let alone to “control it” by way of morality, but tries to turn it into an indisputable totalizing power. He does not even think of putting before the bourgeoisie Schiller’s “reasonable request” to “turn its natural state into a moral one”, and thus demonstrate its “maturity”. (24) What is “sacred in man”, is not Schiller’s “moral law”, (25) but “the law of the strong”. Instead of “starting to show his independence of nature as a phenomenon” and “freely ascend his dignity to nature as a force and his nobility towards his gods”, (26) Coubertin’s positive man seeks to deal with all that offers man a possibility of establishing relation to nature as an independent (free) being. At the same time, since positive man is the incarnation of “progress” as a fatal power, in which the laws of evolution reached their highest level, there is no duality and conflict in him, and consequently no need for “reconciliation”.

Bearing in mind that Coubertin called the international sports tournament of “civilized nations” the “Olympic Games”, it could be expected that play will be the chief concern of Coubertin’s Olympic doctrine; however, Coubertin’s Olympism does not consider sport as play. The theory that play is the essence of sport excludes sport from Coubertin’s “utilitarian pedagogy”, since according to it sport is a universal political means of the ruling parasitic classes for achieving their strategic interests, and places it within a far wider sociological and philosophical context, which represents a complex and dangerous challenge for a pragmatic positivist such as Coubertin.

The definition of sport as the highest religious ceremony dedicated to the creation of the cult of the present world, where the Olympic Games acquire the status of the “Church”, is one of the main reasons for Coubertin’s depriving the Olympic Games (sport) of a playing nature. Instead of a playing spontaneity, the sacral seriousness becomes the distinctive feature of the strict form which the Olympic Games, the highest ceremony dedicated to the belligerent spirit that rules the world – which is the reincarnation of the “immortal spirit of antiquity” – must keep. A militaristic ceremony crowned by the oath which symbolizes a complete submission of the participants to the ruling order, is the most appropriate form for cult acts. Uniforms, flags and marching make Eros, spontaneity, imagination and creativeness disappear – all that creates man’s playing nature. Furthermore, play involves the rules equal for all, which is for Coubertin the highest blasphemy, since according to him “might is right ” is the basic life principle. In his “sports republic” Coubertin does not insist on the norms obligatory on all, but on the order characterized by the indisputable domination of the strong over the weak. Unlike the bourgeois philosophy of play, which considers play (including sport) within the formation of normative and institutional framework which should protect society from the destructive force of man’s “aggressive” animal nature, Coubertin considers sport in terms of removing all the norms and institutions which place barriers to the bourgeois greediness and to the expansion of European colonial states. For Coubertin, sport is the most important means for militarizing and fanaticizing the bourgeois youth and is thus the preparation for a conquering war. Third, the idea of a sports community as a playing community is alien to Coubertin. Wishing to break the bonds between people, Coubertin reduces his positive people to Leibniz’s monads: “competitive” confrontation of the members of the “master race”, as “brothers-in-arms”, and their oppression of the working “masses”, women and colonized peoples, are the points of “interhuman” contact. For Coubertin, sport is the most authentic form of playing a life based on the principle bellum omnium contra omnes: the stronger go on, the weaker are eliminated. At the same time, a victory achieved through a higher result, on which “progress” is based, is the foundation and limit of a sports play. As far as “sports technique” is concerned, it becomes a way of degenerating and destroying man’s playing nature and the possibility of its realization. In sport, a patterned playing technique is mastered, “supplied” from the world of technique and involving the instrumentalization of the body through a technicized productivistic activism, whose purpose is defined by the nature of sports play as war with bodies. At the same time, by reducing the body to the tool for acquiring inhuman ends and to the object of manipulation, a (self) destructive character is formed. A merciless relation of man to his own body becomes the foundation of a merciless relation to the “opponent”, who is seen not as a man, but as an enemy who is to be subdued and destroyed. The typical examples are the so called “martial sports”, which, according to Coubertin, are the main means for educating the children and which are based on the “right” to inflict bodily injuries and kill the “opponent”. That is why Coubertin gives primacy to muscular strength, speed, resolve, courage – which are supposed to build a ruthless character of the bourgeois who, with fire and sword, will conquer the world – as opposed to the development of man’s playing being and playing skill directed to the development of interhuman relations. Coubertin’s theory brings out what the bourgeois theory attempts to hide: sport does not derive “spontaneously” from “man’s aggressive (animal) nature”, but is a forced model of behavior and is thus a means for creating people at the measure of the ruling order. “Sports play” becomes a capitalist way of degenerating man as a playing being.

In spite of giving primary importance to the principle of “greater effort”, Coubertin does not argue for the “philosophy of performance” (Leistungsphilosophie) which would result from the endeavours to establish an indisputable domination of the progressistic principle citius, altius, fortius, but insists on the Social Darwinist principle as the main spiritual power and the basis of social order. Nevertheless, Coubertin’s maxim “it is important to fight well” cannot avoid a comparison of performance by quantitative criteria, since it is the basis for determining a “victory” over “opponents” as well as a “victory” over oneself. Quantitative comparison becomes an “objective” criterion for determining the place on the social ladder of power, which appears in the form of Arnold’s elitist “theory of pyramid”: one hundred people are to engage in physical culture if fifty people are to engage in sport; fifty people are to engage in sport if twenty people are to specialize; twenty people are to specialize if five people are to achieve “astonishing bravery” (prouesse étonnante). (75) The pyramid of success indicates a hierarchical structure of Coubertin’s “natural selection” and mechanistic logic of “competing” which corresponds to “competition” on the free market and to “industrial society”. Most importantly, quantitative comparison becomes a form expressing the dominance of “progress” over man and affirming its indisputability and eternity. Again, Coubertin mystifies phenomena: quantitative comparison is not a product of history, but is a “fact” which by no means can be questioned and is thus an instrument for teaching the subjects how to accept social inequality as something inevitable. At the same time, a record is not important as a human achievement, but as a means for proving the “progressive” nature of the ruling order and thus the growing power of the “master race”. Since there are no medical or moral barriers to the progressistic principles of “greater effort” and citius, altius, fortius, it is clear that man’s “perfectioning”, based on them, leads to his (self) destruction. Coubertin’s “utilitarian pedagogy” does not contain the idea of “optimal effort”, which is one of the basic principles of modern sports training, nor does it distinguish between tiredness and exhaustion, which means between normal physical exertion and excessive effort that destroys the organism and leads to death. Coubertin’s principle of “greater effort”, as the basis of “overcoming” man’s animal nature, involves man’s deerotization, destruction of spontaneity, creativity and imagination, in short, the suppression of man’s playing nature and the creation of “positive man”. Hence the dynamics of “greater effort”: the increasing torturing of the body increases the suppression of primary (sexual) needs resulting in an increased combative energy which, in turn, increases the suppression of Eros. The circle is closed.

Coubertin insists on “perfectioning”, but his sports pedagogy rejects the principle of the universal development of man’s physical faculties and insists on onesidedness and uniformity. Instead of suppleness and flexibility, the highest challenge for his “utilitarian pedagogy” becomes the production of an “iron body” corresponded by a ruthless “iron character”. Instead of the Christian “prison of the soul”, the body becomes an iron fist with which “progress” removes the obstacles on its way. The destruction of naturalness and humanity and the transformation of man into “pure material” which will be used for making a new “master race” capable of conquering the world is one of the most important aims of Coubertin’s pedagogy. Sport and physical drill become the ways of producing physically and mentally degenerated people, who are prepared to destroy themselves in order to achieve the given end and who find ”pleasure” in it. Hence sportsmen represent a bodily and character model after which young people are to be educated and thus are a mythological incarnation of the highest values of the present world.

In spite of criticizing the present world ruled by “futile efforts”, Coubertin is not opposed to science and technique, the pillars of capitalism, but wants to turn them into an exclusive means of the bourgeoisie for gaining control over man and nature. His principle of “greater effort”, with which man’s “lazy animal nature” is to be overcome, is founded on the expansionist power of capitalism based on the development of science and technique: the mechanization of the body becomes the highest form in which the process of evolution of the living beings appears. Unlike the ancient techne where there is no distinction between nature and man and which involves an artistic shapening, sports technique is a capitalist form of controlling nature and dealing with man’s natural being and creative nature. The mastering of a sports technique comes down to the suppression and crippling of man’s original playing, spiritual, reasonable and physical faculties, and his subjection to a dehumanized and denaturalized “progress” that becomes a superior power whose fatal course can be slowed down, but cannot be stopped: sport symbolizes the victory of “technical civilization” over man. Since the nature of capitalism directly affects the nature of sport and since sport brings the process of capitalist reproduction to its conclusion, man in sport is not only a labour force, as claim Habermas and Rigauer, (76) but is a labour tool and raw material for making, by way of capitalistically degenerated science and technique, “recorders”.

In antiquity people fought for victory, but not against nature. It is the same with the Renaissance, the aristocratic culture and with the Enlightenment and philanthropic doctrine. It was only in capitalist society, in which everything is subject to the logic of profit and the progressistic principle of performance, that people started to fight against nature, which was to become evident even in sport. The ever faster movement through space, based on the development of technique, becomes the capitalist way of “controlling nature”, which above all means controlling the body – man’s direct nature. At the same time, the speed of movement is not relevant as the expression of the development of human powers, but as a symbolic indication of the developing force of the ruling order. Records, measured in seconds, tens of seconds and hundreds of seconds have for man an abstract value. Also, a record, as the market value of a sports result, is not only the measure of man’s self-alienation, but also the measure of man’s alienation from nature and of the destruction of his own natural being. In Coubertin’s Olympic doctrine space and time are given quantities, independent of man. Coubertin’s relation to the sports space is the expression of the view that capitalist world is the highest form of evolution and that it is possible to improve it, but not to change it. Hence the sports stadium becomes the most authentic space of capitalism. It symbolizes man’s complete and final closing in the spiritual horizon of capitalist world and is thus a modern pagan temple in which, in the form of “sports competitions” and “physical exercises”, man’s libertarian dignity and his faith in a just world are offered as sacrifice to the ruling spirit of destruction.

Movement through space is the basis of man’s essentiality and libertarian self-conscious: at the beginning there was movement. The difference between human movement and mechanical and animal movement is in its relation to the existing world and movement towards new worlds, which means in its libertarian and visionary dimension. By reducing man to the tool of “progress”, Coubertin brings his movement to a level below that of an animal and gives it a mechanical dimension. He abolished man’s independent movement, with which he relates to the world and shows his distinctive character, imposing on him, by way of sport and bodily drill, a model of movement that corresponds to the nature of the capitalist order. Coubertin’s eurhythmics is close to that from antiquity: man is supposed to become one with the existing world and its organic part. To a dehumanized and denaturalized world, based on capitalist destruction, corresponds a dehumanized and denaturalized body and a destructive movement. The dynamics of bodily movement in sport is conditioned by the “pace of living” dictated by the dynamics of capitalist reproduction and represents a com- bat with the natural rhythm of movement. “The perfect rhythm of movement”, the highest functional and aesthetic challenge, which was in the past found in the animal world, is now found in the world of robots. It has turned out that Coubertin’s “new man”, like Hitler’s “overman” (over-beast), was only a transition to the creation of a “Rambo” (killer-idiot), that is to say, a “terminator” (a manlike robot-destructor), who is the incarnation of the ecocidal spirit of today’s capitalism. Sport becomes a way of taking man out of the living world and transferring him into the world of machines. Coubertin’s “progress” is not a movement forward. It is reduced to an endless and ever more intensive circular movement, which can be seen on the sports field, and it should stop history and prevent man from stepping out of the existing world – leading to his destruction. Sport becomes the capitalist merry-go-round of death that revolves faster and faster…

Coubertin rejected the emancipatory heritage of the traditional forms of culture and thus the bodily movement oriented to the development of human relations and man’s unity with nature. “The development of human powers” by way of sport has become a systematic destruction of man’s creative powers; “the fight for freedom” by way of sport has become a sidetrack leading to a further development of destructive processes; “the activation of the masses” by way of sport is reduced to establishing control over people in “their free (leisure) time” and to the creation of mass-idiocy; “the playing technique” has become a means for crippling man and creating hordes of modern Frankensteins… The dominant tendency in the “development” of sport suggests the dominant tendency in the “development” of the contemporary world: instead of creating the possibility of “leaping from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom” (Engels), capitalism destroys the germ of a novum created in modern society and makes man increasingly dependent on the increasingly threatened environment. Sport does not only deal with culture, it deals with life.

Coubertin rejected one of the most important tendencies of the traditional forms of physical culture: that of building a sound body and on that basis a sound mind. According to Coubertin, the principle mens sana in corpore sano is “simply a hygienic instruction, which is based, like all other similar instructions, on the adoration of measure, restraint, the golden mean…”, but, “sport is a passionate activity”. (67) Coubertin opposes the view that the basic purpose of sport is people’s physical and mental health: that area is reserved for physical culture and it involves the “weak”. He rejects the principle of health because he is not interested in man, but in the development of the ruling order and thus in the creation of positive man who is the embodiment of the expansionist power of capitalism. Hence, instead of the maxim mens sana in corpore sano, Coubertin favors the maxim mens fervida in corpore lacertoso and proclaims it the highest principle of his “utilitarian pedagogy” – which is intended for the “master race”. It does not occur to him to refer to Hippocrates, “Father of Medicine”, who, lake Galen in ancient Rome, was strongly against boxing, considering it not only unworthy of man but also fatal to his mental health. The example of boxing shows that Coubertin subordinated the right to health to the right of the ruling order to survival. Coubertin’s conception is characterized by a political instrumentalization of the body: sport (physical exercises) serves as the means of the ruling “elite” for producing the character and conscious of an ideal citizen (positive man). The body in a “combatant effort” (Coubertin) is the incarnation of the ruling spirit of capitalism and the symbol of its stability. Hence Coubertin rejects the suppleness of limbs, the softness and elegance of movement and proclaims the “iron body”, accompanied by the “iron character”, the highest aim of sport and physical drill. At the same time, by discarding the principle metron ariston, Coubertin, who constantly refers to the “immortal spirit of antiquity”, shows how much he cares for the ancient cultural heritage. Anyway, Coubertin’s maxim mens fervida in corpore lacertoso is the final renouncement of the view according to which physical and mental health is the basic aim of physical drill and sport. The maxim mens fervida in corpore lacertoso does not have a narcissist character. The purpose of “chiseling the body” is not to acquire “better looks”, as is the case in modern body-building, but to build an “iron body” with a corresponding “iron will”. The muscular body of a sportsman in a combatant effort has a symbolic character: it embodies the expansionist and merciless nature of the ruling order and is its propaganda.

Coubertin deals with the maxim mens sana in corpore sano, but in his new maxim mens fervida in corpore lacertoso he preserved its antiemancipatory essence. It is a form in which the members of the ruling order strive to mobilize certain social strata in achieving their ends, and involves the equation of character and conscious after the model of a loyal and for the given ends usable subject. For the ideologues of liberalism, the maxim “a sound mind in a sound body” was a call to the bourgeois nouveau riche to passionately devote them to acquiring an ever bigger profit. It was a war cry with which the ever greedier bourgeois set out to exploit both “his” workers and colonized peoples. “Courage”, “resolve”, “uncompromising attitude”, “readiness to take a risk” – these are the basic features of this basically conquering (oppressive) spirit with genocidal overtones. As far as the “sound mind” of a sportsman is concerned, it involves a fanatical will capable of driving the organism to self-destruction. It is a dehumanized and denaturalized conscious which corresponds to the destructive nature of capitalism in the form of “technical civilization”: to imitate the “perfect work” of machines becomes the highest “pedagogical” challenge. It is obvious that a “healthy body” is not defined according to medical but according to evaluative (ideological) criteria. The “sound body” and the “sound mind” of the Nazis was, for the victims of their terror, the tool for destruction and a barbarous mind. Although the bourgeois theory repeatedly propounds the thesis “a sound mind in a sound body”, a “sound mind” does not derive from a “sound body” but, on the contrary, the aggressive and merciless mind of a petty-bourgeois is what determines physical “soundness”. The basic purpose of sport is not to create a “sound body”, but to produce a positive character and conscious, which means to preserve the established order of domination: “to establish control in the heads” is the basic principle of Coubertin’s Olympic philosophy. At the same time, sport does not only involve the production of a certain conscious but, above all, the production of certain relations between people as the incarnation of Social Darwinism and progressism.

The maxim mens fervida in corpore lacertoso excludes education and intellectual development, which clearly follows from Coubertin’s view that “the character is not created by the spirit, but by the body”. This view acquired its full meaning in Nazi pedagogy, whose essence is formulated in Hitler’s postulate that “a physically healthy man with a good, strong character, full of boldness and strong will, is more valuable for the folk community then an intellectual whimp”. (68) Anti-intellectualism is one of the corner stones of Coubertin’s “utilitarian pedagogy”. Dealing with the spiritual heritage of the old Greek civilization in order to use it as a means for verifying his conception, Coubertin claims that the old Greeks “were little given to contemplation, even less bookish”. At the same time, the “healthy” spirit of a bourgeois is beyond good and evil and thus is “the fact” which cannot be questioned. In that way the basic postulates of the old Greek paideia are discarded, as well as Plato’s conception of education according to which “the soul cannot become good and virtuous by virtue of a trained body, while, on the contrary, a virtuous spirit can help the body to become better”. (69) However, man’s character and conscious, which means his relation to other people and to himself, are not conditioned by the body but by the nature of a concrete physical activism. For Coubertin, “muscles become teachers” only in so far as their development is based on a fight between people and on a physical drill with which man’s playful nature is suppressed and degenerated. It is no accident that, for Coubertin, man’s character and body are not to be developed through work, art, folklore, mountaineering and other activities involving physical effort and cooperation between people as reasonable and creative beings, but through (French) boxing as the embodiment of a mindless and murderous agonal physical activism.

Bearing in mind that Coubertin abolishes the divine firmament and reduces Olympism to the “cult of the present world”, he could be expected, like Nietzsche, to have a higher esteem for the body. However, sharing the Jesuit fanatism, Coubertin defends the medieval custom of torturing one town’s body and proclaims it one of the most important principles of his “utilitarian pedagogy”. In the article on physical education in the 20^th century, published in November 1902, Coubertin concludes that medieval torturing of the body has a more “humane” and “nobler” cause then certain literary works would have it. It results from the “need of the soul to torture the body in order to make it more submissive”. As a model for the pedagogy of the 20^th century Coubertin offers the example of “saint” Colomban who “at midnight comes down to a frozen lake” and “flogs himself with a nettle”, not because he wants to “insure place in Heaven”, but “to preserve within himself that wonderful energy from which his work sprang and gave him an encouraging performance.” (70) Coubertin is close to the Christian teaching: the body is not an integral part of a person, but is the source of evil which should be dealt with. By way of physical drill sexual energy turns into aggression against oneself (the principle of “bigger effort” and building of a masochistic character) and by way of sport into aggression against other people (the building of a combative-sadistic character). However, the Olympic physical drill is essentially different from Christian asceticism. To suffer physical torture (“disciplining the body”) is not a form of repenting the “sinful thoughts”, nor is a way of weakening the body as the “prison of the soul”, but is the basic way of creating an “iron body” and “iron character” and obtaining a “surplus” of energy necessary to torture the working “masses” and conquer the world. Instead of a “victory” of the spirit over the body, which expresses the superiority of the divine to this world, the ruling order (“progress”) gains a victory over the spirit and the body. Even when it comes to man’s relation to his own body, Coubertin applies his universal principle of ruling by violence which removes everything that can jeopardize the stability of the ruling order and “progress”. Oppression is the cardinal and universal principle of the life of a “true” bourgeois which he earnestly applies to his own body, and thus develops a sado-masochistic character: violence over one’s own body and destruction of humaneness within oneself are the basic presuppositions for torturing the others. Instead of cultivating man’s natural being by way of cultural activism, on which the ancient paideia was based, Coubertin’s “utilitarian pedagogy” deals with culture and man’s natural being in an attempt to create a trained beast. That is why Coubertin rejects physical activism based on national cultures, above all the folk dances in which a bodily movement expresses a spiritual movement and which are dominated by a man’s movement to another man (homo homini homo), instead of a man’s movement against another man (homo homini lupus), which is dominant in sport and which is directly founded on the “combatant character” and deals with man’s creative and libertarian being. In that context, readiness to die becomes the highest form of submission to the ruling order: instead of being the “plaything” of the Olympic gods, man becomes the plaything of capitalism.

Coubertin insists on developing in sportsmen a religious spirit, which existed in the ancient athletes. However, it is not based on a respect for values that transcend the existing world, but on a fanatical submission to the ruling order which ruthlessly deals with the critical reason as well as with spirituality. Coubertin’s religio athletae involves a complete “dedication” of sportsmen, as representatives of their nations and races, to the belligerent and progressistic spirit of capitalism, appearing in sport in a “pure” form. That is why Coubertin proclaims money the “worst enemy” of Olympism and sport in general, calling professional sportsmen “circus gladiators”. A sportsman must accept his symbolic role in this modern pagan spectacle, while humankind is to show its total submission to the ruling spirit, which has an absolutistic character and cannot be negotiated. At the end of his life, fearing that with the inevitable development of professionalism his rigid amateurism could be overcome and his “fame” could wane, Coubertin made a radical turn and gave to professionals the same status which, during his Olympic career, was exclusively reserved for amateurs. (71) If we have in mind the nature of his Olympic doctrine, it is clear that the attempts of modern “Olympic officials” to justify professionalism and commercialization of sport by referring to Coubertin’s original Olympic idea is totally unacceptable.

Coubertin’s principle “to know oneself, to control oneself, to overcome oneself” follows the basic intention of Descartes’ mechanistic conception of the relation between the body and the soul expressed in his “Letter to Arnauld”, according to which “the relation in which soul stands to body” is the same as “the relation in which gravity stands to body”. (72) While in Descartes man, as a “thinking thing” (res cogitans) can exist without the body, (73) in Coubertin man can exist without the mind. The essence of Coubertin’s maxim mens fervida in corpore lacertoso is such a development of muscles which will repress man’s playful nature, create a combatant character, destroy the cultural conscious and create “pure material” (Hitler) to which a certain (conquering-oppressive) conscious will be attached. Descartes reduces the body to a “machine” but, being created by God, it is “incomparably better made” and has “more excellent movements” then any other man-made machine. (74) Coubertin deprived the body of all those properties that do not belong to the model of the positive world based on “progress”. Instead of the body as a specific machine whose “excellence” reflects the superiority of the divine spirit, Coubertin argues for the model of the body that embodies the progressistic and expansionist nature of capitalism. Coubertin destroyed both the ancient and the medieval spiritual firmament. The dominant model of the body does not correspond to a certain cultural pattern any longer, but is a direct incarnation of the ruling order: positive society corresponds to the positive body. Consequently, the bodily movement is not an authentic expression of man’s natural or divine being, but is a manifestation of the conquering (oppressive) character which is a direct product of the life “circumstances” dominated by the principle “might is right” and quantitative comparison. It is obvious that it is not the muscular body that creates the (submissive) character, as is claimed by Coubertin who tries to hide the manipulation of man, but a merciless physical drill. The body is not man’s integral part and the basic possibility of experiencing his human fullness, but is the tool for attaining inhuman ends. Instead of uniting the physical (natural) and the spiritual, which was the basis of ancient kalokagathia and the basic possibility of the physical movement as a cultural movement, Coubertin “united” the suppression and crippling of man’s natural needs with the destruction of the spiritual. The principle mens fervida in corpore lacertoso is not only a means for man’s dehumanization, but also of his denaturalization.

The modern Olympic doctrine deals with the cultural heritage of the philanthropic movement which, inspired by the enlightening pedagogical ideals developed in Germany on the eve and after the French Revolution. The first step in its development was taken by Johann Bernhardt Basedow, who in 1774 in Dessau founded a public school in which, along with the ordinary scientific subjects, he introduced physical education. He inspired Johann Christoph Friedrich Guts Muths to write a book “Gymnastics for Young People” (”Gymnastik für die Jugend”, 1793), which was the first comprehensive theoretical conception of physical education in Germany and was to become the basis of the philanthropic pedagogical thought and practice. Guts Muths departs from the view that for hundreds of years the starting point in education has been the maxim “a sound mind in a sound body” and bases on it his gymnastics: the basic aims of his “system of exercises” are physical stamina, strength, health and beauty. (21) In addition to these challenges, Guts Muths regards physical education as a means for raising young people’s spiritual and moral level and developing their patriotic spirit, which was supposed to overcome the feudal disintegration and contribute to the national integration of the Germans. (22)

Drawing on Rousseau, Guts Muths comes to the conclusion that civilization brought about a degeneration of man’s original physical and spiritual being: the more man approaches the state of nature, the more physically superior he is to civilized man. Hence in “primitive man” he sees the ideal of “physical perfectioning” modern man should strive for. Keeping to the Social Darwinist evolutionism, Coubertin “concluded” that as man goes further and further away from his “lazy” animal nature he becomes more perfect, while in the struggle for survival and domination the white race managed to preserve the “pureness” of its racial blood and become the “master race”, which is the highest and final stage in the development of human race. Guts Muths’ gymnastics tends to bring man closer to nature and consequently to his human being; Coubertin’s pedagogy seeks to move man away from nature and thus from the human. In Coubertin, there do not exist any natural obstacles that appear in man’s everyday activity, but there is a fight between people for survival and domination mediated by quantitative criteria, which means by the endeavours of the parasitic “elite” to insure the exploitation of the working ”masses”. In that struggle man is not alienated only from his human, but also from his natural being. Coubertin’s “civilized” menagerie is not a copy of the animal world, but serves to provide a naturalistic legitimacy to society governed by the spirit of monopolistic capitalism.

Guts Muths tends to turn gymnastics into the means for building the national character of the Germans and for their spiritual and political integration. Just as in Rousseau nature is an ally in the fight against ancien régime, so in Guts Muths nature is an ally in the fight against the feudal disintegration and in the creation of the national state of the Germans. He sees in national emancipation the basic condition of civil and human emancipation of his compatriots. Instead of Coubertin’s “immortal spirit of antiquity”, which is reincarnated in the modern Olympic Games, in Guts Muths, the “sound mind” of the citizen, acquired by physical drill, becomes a reincarnation of the libertarian spirit of the “old Germans”. It is no longer Rousseau’s “savage”, but a romanticized picture of ancestors, and it is not only a libertarian and healthy but, above all, a national challenge. In that context, Guts Muths insists on their personal qualities such as, in addition to “health” and “strength”, “loyalty” and “courage”. A return to nature does not mean a return to man’s animal nature, but a return to the original national essentiality, while a return to the natural movement becomes a return to the original national strength. Gymnastics becomes the means for restoring the Germans to natural life, which means to the living conditions of their ancestors, and for their physical and spiritual (character) strengthening according to the principle mens sana in corpore sano. Nature appears as an organic link with ancestors by means of which the continuity of national existence and unity of national being are achieved. The overcoming of natural obstacles should enable man to become fit and to restore his original national being. The original natural movement is the basis of the creation of the original national body and spirit (character) and is thus the integrative active power as opposed to the spiritual disintegration of the German national being. Naturality is equated with vitality, independence, incorruption… Instead of developing in the fight for life or death, as is the case in Coubertin, a “sound mind” develops through the overcoming of natural obstacles in the way that develops natural qualities and skill. (23) Instead of martial sports – hiking, running, jumping, throwing and other similar physical exercises become the most important segments of his gymnastic education. They are not dominated by the conquering and plundering spirit of the bourgeois, but by the spirit of the original natural independence of an emancipated citizen who wants to get rid of the bonds of feudal civilization, create a civil society and achieve national integration. Like Rousseau, Guts Muths associates the acquisition of health with the observance of natural laws (not with natural selection and the principle “might is right”) and man’s natural being. The life force is based on a harmonious development of the human faculties that enable man an independent life: physical drills should develop the body in the way that enables him to acquire the skill with which he can insure survival. For Coubertin, health is for the “weak”; what his bourgeois should acquire is a conquering (oppressive) character and a corresponding body.

Guts Muths poses the following question: “Can a cultivated man approach the physical perfection of primitive man without becoming a savage?” (24) – and concludes that “the ideal cannot and must not be the primitive German savageness”, but that “the German physical stamina and strength, courage and masculinity are connected with the culture of the heart and the spirit”. (25) Referring to Rousseau, Guts Muths concludes that even the highest spiritual development without the development of the body represents only half of man, (26) and drawing on Democritus, says that an unsound body has an unsound mind. (27) Physical weakness results in nervousness, frailty and illness: “The weaker the body, the more it commands…” – Guts Muths cites Rousseau. (28) In Guts Muths, the dominant relation is that between body and spirit and not that between body and character; however, for him, the spirit includes man’s personal qualities, such as courage. He puts an emphasis on “health with the male strength and agility, with stamina, courage and unwavering spirit all combined in the male character”. (29) Gymnastic exercises are “the most important part in the education of young people; physical strength, agility, a well built body, courage, presence of mind in danger and love of homeland built on it is their aim”. (30) According to Guts Muths, “the only real and primary aim of gymnastics is a harmony between spirit (Geist) and body (Leib). (31) Departing from the ancient model, Guts Muths sees in a “well built body” an expression of “spiritual beauty”, (32) which is alien to Coubertin’s doctrine. Guts Muths here again sticks to the pattern mens sana in corpore sano: in a beautiful body – beautiful spirit. Coubertin discarded the maxim mens sana in corpore sano and proclaimed the maxim mens fervida in corpore lacertoso the guiding principle of his pedagogical doctrine: the more muscular the body is – the more combatant the spirit. For Guts Muths gymnastics is also the means for dealing with boredom. (33) Drawing on Rousseau’s ”Emile”, Guts Muths sees in physical exercises, as the form of cultivating the powers that control him, a means for cultivating intelligence (34): the body is “a machine on which we weave the merry threads of thought…” (35)

The nature of Guts Muths’ conception is also seen from his critical commentaries on ancient gymnastics, above all from Euripides’ fragment in which he says: “Among thousands of evils in Greece the race of athletes is the worst.” (36) Guts Muths also cites an ancient saying, so relevant today: “Man does gymnastics in order to live, but he does not live in order to do gymnastics”. (37) At the same time, he reminds us that Galen was explicitly against athletic gymnastics and that he divided gymnastics in “military”, “harmful” and “real medical athletics”, (38) and that Plato differentiated between “dancing gymnastics” (Tanzgymnastik) and “martial gymnastics” (Kampfgymnastik). (39) However, Guts Muths, like Coubertin, sees in gymnastics not only a means for strengthening the body, but above all the means for creating “future defenders of the country”. He contrasts male strength with female “weakness” (40) and rejects music as an educational means for he sees in it something “feminine”. At the same time, Guts Muths reduces the body to a “machine” and thus deals with man’s playing nature. His “gymnastic skill” (Turnkunst), like Coubertin’s physical drill, becomes a peculiar military drill: the militarization of the spirit is achieved by the militarization of the body. Turners are symbolical representatives of nation, and the result (victory) they achieve is not the expression of their personal achievement but of national strength. While Coubertin, with his “utilitarian pedagogy”, seeks to create from the bourgeois European youth a “master race” that will conquer the world, Guts Muths seeks to create a “young citizen of the world” (Junge Weltbürger) who will be “so physically educated that he can stay moral”. (41) When martial forms of physical education are concerned, Guts Muths recommends wrestling considering it a means for building the combatant national character of the “defenders of the country”, not the conquering (oppressive) one favored by Coubertin, but defending and libertarian. In his study from 1817 “Tourner’s Book for the Sons of the Homeland” (“Turnbuch für die Sohne des Vaterlandes”) Guts Muths discusses in detail the skill of wrestling (42) and explains that its main purpose is to “train the defenders of the homeland”. Guts Muths’ social theory sheds special light on his concept of physical culture and indicates an unbridgeable gap between his and Coubertin’s doctrines. While Coubertin supports an order based on the criminal exploitation of children, Guts Muths argues for social justice and objects to children from the “working people’s class” at the age of 10 earning their own bread, leaving school and being subjected to “slavery labour”. (43)

The elitist spirit of Coubertin’s Olympism conditions his implacably hostile attitude to Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi’s doctrine. Unlike Pestalozzi, who argues for “people’s education (Volkserziehung) and the development of the corresponding “fundamental principles” (Grundsätze), (44) Coubertin insists on a class approach: his “utilitarian pedagogy” tends to create a “master race”, on the one hand, and “masses” of the oppressed, on the other. Pestalozzi insists on “the reestablishment of the national spirit of gymnastics”. (45) For Pestalozzi, man is not an animal, but a free playing being. He refers to the wealth of the original human playful nature and demands that a child from an early age be provided with a “free versatile playing ground” for his physical activity and his need for movement, (46) holding that the body of a child is the “temple of the holy spirit”, and not the “prison of the soul”. (47) Instead of a physical drill reduced to a (pre)military training, Pestalozzi insists on “natural gymnastics” (Naturgymnastik), which is only the basis for the development of “artistic gymnastics” (Kunstgymnastik). (48) He wants to develop a harmoniously built man, and insists on his physical, intellectual, aesthetical, moral and professional education. (49) In that context, instead of boxing – which is for Coubertin the most important means of education, Pestalozzi emphasizes a “permanent disposition to movement” in children and their need to “play with their bodies”. (50) Similarly to Rousseau, Pestalozzi opposes the parasitic mentality of the ruling class and seeks to educate the child for a life in which he will be able to do anything that could make him an independent personality. Independence resulting from existential activism and characterized by man’s ability to earn his livelihood through work, represents the highest challenge for physical culture. Hence in Pestalozzi the “popular spirit of gymnastics” is not affirmed only at folk festivities, but also in school and work in the field. (51) Pestalozzi insists on an “inseparable whole” that man acquired from nature, the heart, the spirit and the body being only the manifestations of that whole. It follows that the development of one part is closely connected with the development of all other parts of the body: “an organic unity” is the basis of independence and freedom. (52) Coubertin develops his pedagogy for the parasitic classes and therefore needs to develop a combatant character and a muscular body at the expense of working abilities and of the development of intellect, spirit, emotions, Eros… Instead of a harmoniously developed (human) organism, Coubertin’s man is characterized by the hypertrophy of one and atrophy of the other “part”, which corresponds to the social (class) position and (conquering-oppressive) “duties” of the bourgeoisie. In Coubertin, man is instrumentalized for the purpose of capitalist expansion – these are the underlying principles of Coubertin’s “utilitarian pedagogy”. Preventing the bourgeois youth from developing their productivistic-creative abilities, Coubertin creates crippled parasites who can survive only by exploiting the working “masses”. Like Nietzsche’s “overman”, Coubertin’s bourgeois is the slave of his incapability to ensure his own livelihood. Hence a “revolt of the masses” does not mean only a loss of the bourgeois’ privileged social position, but also a loss of his livelihood.

Like Rousseau, Guts Muths and Pestalozzi, Gerhard Ulrich Anton Vieth also holds that physical exercises do not affect only the body, but also the spirit. (53) Vieth insists on a simultaneous building of the body and the spirit and advocates the maxim mens sana in corpore sano. (54) He favors physical health acquired through movement and physical exercises and discusses the effects of physical drills on organism and on the development of limbs and muscles, as well as the functioning of joints. According to him, physical drills should develop a proper bearing and prompt the “masculinity” of movements, but also a well-built body modeled after the looks of a soldier. (55) Hence, instead of insisting on suppleness and a creative body, Vieth insists on physical stamina and favors the maxim mens sana in corpore sano. In Vieth, also, the physical has priority over the spiritual, although it is not superior to the spiritual. He departs from the fact that physical exercises do not decrease the need for spiritual and intellectual activities but increases it and refers to Rousseau: by strengthening a child’s body we strengthen his reason. (56) By rejecting the maxim mens sana in corpore sano, and introducing the maxim mens fervida in corpore lacertoso, Coubertin abolishes the relation between the body and the spirit which contains the possibility of establishing a relation between the body and the mind. He reduces the body to muscles and establishes a relation between muscle development and combatant character, resulting in an explosive muscular strength which symbolically expresses the expansionist power of monopolistic capitalism. In addition, instead in the Olympic Games like Coubertin, Vieth finds in ancient gymnasia the model for a system of physical exercises suitable to the Modern Age. (57) Unlike Coubertin, Vieth differentiates between “chivalrous exercises” (dancing, riding, fencing…), which are the privilege of the aristocracy, and “gymnastic exercises” (wrestling, running, jumping, throwing, balancing, swimming…), which are the right of the citizens, and thus differentiates the aristocratic from the bourgeois physical culture. Unlike Coubertin’s “mondialistic” Olympic spirit which deals with peoples’ cultural tradition, Vieth seeks to turn gymnastic performances into a “folk festivity” (Volksfest), with music and appropriate decorations creating a solemn atmosphere. In that context, Vieth, like Guts Muths, proposes the organization of performances similar to the ancient Olympic Games and the Roman games in amphitheatres, but “smaller in size”. (58)

The official “father” (“Der Turnvater”) of the gymnastic movement (Turnbewegung) in Germany, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, was one of the pedagogs who tried to create the Germans’ national character by way of physical drill. With regard to the exceptionally nationalistic and militaristic spirit in Jahn’s works, it could be said that Coubertin’s “utilitarian pedagogy” is closely akin to Jahn’s “turner” pedagogy. However, there is a crucial difference: Jahn’s doctrine does not have a conquering-oppressive, but a national-liberating character. Drawing on Guts Muths’ book “Turner’s Book for the Sons of the Homeland”, Jahn writes his work “The German Folk Turnership” (”Deutschen Volksturnens”) and in 1811 in Hasenheide near Berlin builds the first drill field (Turnplatz) where the young practiced running, throwing, jumping and climbing. Those were “folk exercises” (volkstümliche Übungen), a peculiar pre-military training for a “national war” against the French domination and for the unification of Germany into one country. (59) “The spirit of the basic rules” of turners is contained in the principle: “Fresh, free, cheerful and pious.” (“Frisch, frey, fröhlich, und fromm“). It is, according to Jahn, the symbol of the “kingdom of turners”. (60) Instead of “freshness”, Coubertin argues for a “muscular body”; instead of “freedom”, for a limitless exploitation of the oppressed; instead of “cheerfulness”, for a fanatical focusing on the given colonial ends; instead of “piousness”, for an oppressive “will to power” based on insatiable greediness. Jahn’s thesis from 1815, that “the spirit of the turners’ being is folk life, and it is possible only in the open, in the air and light”, (61) clearly suggests that Jahn developed a libertarian national-populist movement, which is totally opposed to Coubertin’s plutocratic elitism and colonial fanatism.

Coubertin, the aristocrat, guided by capitalist “progress” and insatiable lust of the bourgeois “elite”, discarded the basic principles of the aristocratic physical culture. Speaking of the forms of physical culture in the Modern Age that preceded sport, Hopf cites Eichberg’s analysis of aristocratic training, which involved “a special bearing of the body, refined movement and decency” as opposed to “uncourtly customs and peasant clumsiness” and “anyone who excessively practiced only one physical activity was viewed askance”. “Positive values, measure and form, are contrasted with negative values, non-measure, and non-form”. “Order and measure had to be retained, considered but not exceeded”. (62) According to MacAloon, “Whether or not Coubertin had rejected ordre et mesure in his aristocratic patrimony, he had certainly retained the value of prouesse, and he saw no prouesse in gymnastics, only in sport.”(63) If we consider the change in the canon of exercises, we can see that philanthropists “first took over the traditional canons of aristocratic exercises, which involved dancing, riding, jumping and fencing, and tried to fit them in their “new systems of gymnastic exercises”. In addition, they introduced new exercises following the Greek model and folk training”. Hopf goes on to say that “the aristocratic and philanthropic physical drill – however traditional it may be – radically differs from what we call sport. It is based on a “geometric-formal notion of beauty, oriented to dancing”. Hopf refers to Eichberg’s conclusion that Fait tried to turn skating, which was then becoming popular, “into a truly fine art” (Fait) adds that “here, the bourgeois moment made it felt – the discovery of natural beauty”. It is quite clear from Klopstock’s ode to skating. “The experience of skating” is tightly connected with “a deep sense of the beauty of winter landscapes, in the morning as well as in moonlight”. Philanthropists inspired the notion of beauty with a new spirit. They contrast the “static ideal of perfection” with a “dynamic” one, which is expressed in the “use of the word perfectioning”. (64) As far as measuring of results in today’s sport is concerned, “in philanthropists, it is introduced gradually”. There are only “individual measures of efficiency, which in the beginning, following the aristocratic tradition, were considered an oddity”. Philanthropists are “even closer to measurement in the old sense of the word – as a measure that should be retained”. According to Eichberg, philanthropists mark “only the beginning of the transformation of physical exercises into sport”. The road to sport in Germany was “relatively long and finished only with the victory of sport over exercising (Turnbewegung), namely, in the beginning of this century”. As far as competition is concerned, philanthropists used contests “as a means of upbringing – and that was something new”, but “another one hundred years were needed for the idea of competition to completely prevail over exercising and thus become sport”. Hopf cites the view of Krockow that philanthropists represent the “historical beginning” of the transformation of physical culture into sport in Germany. According to Eichberg, it is the “process of a growing quantification of efficiency, connected with the idea of a limitless increase in efficiency. (65) It should be added that Klopstock refers to ice skates as “feet wings”, thus poetically suggesting a way of overcoming the existing world and a road to future. (66)

Coubertin’s Olympic doctrine rejects the emancipatory heritage of Rousseau’s philosophy which is one of the most important origins of modern physical culture. Unlike Rousseau, who departs from man as a free and reasonable human being who – guided by his original human nature and “without corruption in his heart” – is capable of creating a world in which people will be free, Coubertin seeks to abolish civil society and establish a “civilized” menagerie where the parasitic classes exercise tyranny over the working people. In Rousseau’s natural order people are born free; in Coubertin’s social order people are born as masters or slaves, depending on their class, race and gender. While Rousseau regards nature as a space that cultivates man, Coubertin sees society as a space where man’s “animal” nature is most brought to light. Rousseau’s “savage” is the embodiment of human virtues; Coubertin’s “new man” is a super-beast deprived of all human properties. In Rousseau’s “natural order”, in which “all people are equal”, “people’s calling” is “above all to be human”; (10) In Coubertin’s Olympic doctrine “people’s calling” is to destroy everything that makes man human. Unlike Coubertin’s man, who can be either the master or the slave, Rousseau’s Emile “does not exhibit a creeping and slavery obedience of a slave, nor does he speak in the commanding voice of a master” for “he is well aware that he is always his own master”. (11) Hence Rousseau wants to exclude from children’s vocabulary the expressions “to obey and to command”, (12) which represent conditio sine qua non of Coubertin’s pedagogical practice. To be “one’s own master” by living on one’s own labour and to be in unity with one’s natural being – this is the highest principle of Rousseau’s pedagogy and the basic condition of freedom. It is on this basis that Rousseau attains “his” man who is neither a master nor a slave, but is an independent individual. At the same time, in the light of Rousseau’s philosophy the origin and true nature of Coubertin’s “elitist” conception is revealed. While Coubertin departs from collectivity, which appears in the form of race (nation) and class, in order to create a “master race” which by fire and sward will conquer the world, Rousseau departs from the individual who appears in the form of an emancipated citizen, who, on the basis of his own labour and “social contract” (contrat social), seeks to create civil society. This is for Coubertin the least acceptable part of Rousseau’s theory: not the rights of man and citizen, but the principle of “might is right” and the preservation of the order of privileges of the strong – this is the indisputable basis of social integration. Furthermore, Coubertin’s “new man” is not his own master because he is an extended hand of the process of evolution which reached its climax in capitalist “progress” that uses man as a means for removing all the obstacles on its way.

Rousseau is close to the spirit of the newly-born citizens who want to start a new life based on a productivistic activism of individuals, and not on conquering and plundering. Instead of arguing for a fight reduced to the tyranny of the strong over the weak, Rousseau argues for a fight by way of working activity with which the obstacles arising before man in his endeavour to ensure survival are removed. Rousseau’s Emile is capable of performing any kind of work since his organs are “precisely and well trained; all the mechanics of skills is already familiar to him”. (13) Rousseau wants us to “keep our bodies in activity and our limbs in their suppleness and to form our hands constantly for labour and for the uses which are beneficial to man.” (14) While Rousseau tries to teach man how to be an independent personality capable of ensuring his existence with his own hands, Coubertin tries to cripple man and create from him a parasite capable of surviving only by exploiting other people. Rousseau teaches Emile to make a tool with which he will ensure his existence and thus become a free man; Coubertin arms the bourgeois from his childhood with a combatant (killing) technique with which he will subject the others and thus ensure his own survival: sport should prepare the bourgeois youth for plundering and killing the workers and the “lower races”. Since Coubertin reduced the human community to a menagerie, it is logical that for him the martial (“bloody”) sports are the most important means in the upbringing of young people. In Rousseau, a working movement produces a working body which is characterized by flexibility and adaptability; in Coubertin, a combatant movement produces the body of a warrior characterized by physical strength and explosive force. Instead of developing the body which will be capable of developing universal creative powers of man as an individual, Coubertin seeks to militarize the body of the bourgeois which then becomes the tool of the monopolistic capital for conquering the world and is thus a symbolic incarnation of its expansionist power. That is why military parades and industrial exhibitions represent the highest challenges for Coubertin’s aesthetics.

In Rousseau, as well as in Coubertin, upbringing does not involve a normative apriorism, but spontaneously follows from a life activism dominated by a fight against “obstacles” (Starobinski): the experience of the world is realized through a productivistic activism which becomes the basic way of knowing the world and of the relation to it. Rousseau’s “savage” is not a fanatic, like Coubertin’s positive man, but a reasonable being guided by his enlightening mind that involves self-initiative, curiosity, exactness, perceptiveness, practicality, spontaneity…. Similarly to Rousseau, Coubertin does not argue for a pedagogy which is adopted through “learning”, but insists on the circumstances, which means on the environment which directly and “spontaneously” influences the formation of a child’s personality though his life activism. While in Rousseau the perfectioning of the human nature based on respect for a child’s individual dispositions is achieved through a “return to nature”, Coubertin seeks to turn human society into an animal realm and the bourgeois into a “civilized” beast. In Coubertin, physical exercises and sport do not serve to cultivate man, but to develop in him an aggressive and insatiable egoism and arm him for a merciless struggle for survival. While Rousseau emphasizes the perfectioning of physical properties and individual dispositions, and on that basis of man’s personality, Coubertin emphasizes the “disciplining” of man, which means the suppression of his individual dispositions, repression of the body and man’s submission to the model of a loyal and usable subject. In Rousseau, all essential elements of Coubertin’s “utilitarian pedagogy” are present – courage, endurance, self-initiative – but the way of their realization does not turn people into enemies and does not turn man against nature (body), as is the case in Coubertin, but turns people into friends and teaches man to respect nature and his natural being. Rousseau is a firm opponent of competition and gives priority to the love of man over ambition: “Let all vanity stay far away, all competition, all ambition and all the feeling that leads us to compare with others. For such comparisons always produce in us a hatred of those who deny us priority…” (15) In this context, man cannot “compete” with nature, nor can he “control” it, from which follows Rousseau’s relation to the body. The basis of “happiness” is not a combat with one’s natural being (body); it is a spontaneous and free development of the body, the spirit, the senses, of reason and skills…Nature, life and freedom are given in unity.

For Rousseau, “a return to nature” involves the rejection of the aristocratic and Christian heritage that hinders man: natural movement becomes a synonym for free movement. “A return to nature” is not an escape, but a preparation for living in society: nature becomes man’s ally in his fight against ancien régime. It is an endeavour to liberate man from his patterned behavior which kills his vitality, and that means to make him independent from an early age and develop his personality through his own life activism and the experience he thus acquires. A liberation from spiritual patronage and acquiring the character of an independent and free personality – this is the basic aim of Rousseau’s “return to nature”. Rousseau was aware that liberating the body from the repressive rules of behavior, as well as from a limited space, is one of the basic presuppositions of liberating and developing the human spirit and of creating a free personality. By way of a free movement man unites himself with nature and becomes cultivated as a cultural and natural being, since for him nature is not only his immediate existential space, as it is for the animal, but is a space in which he realizes his working skill and spiritual powers. Most importantly, “a return to nature” means a reestablishment of man’s unity with his natural being which was interrupted by the development of civilization: nature is man’s natural habitat. In Coubertin, nature is a space of an unrestrained struggle for a place under the sun and thus is the basis of social structuring. Similarly to Rousseau, he does not rely on institutions, but his “state of nature” corresponds to a menagerie, while Rousseau’s “return to nature” involves ancorrupted humanism (a humane “savage”) based on man’s existential unity with nature. Rousseau seeks to release man from the bonds of feudal civilization and develop his noble qualities; Coubertin seeks to “release” his “new man” from the emancipatory heritage of humanity and create a “civilized” barbarism. Instead of a free bodily movement, which spontaneously follows the mimetic impulses that man encounters in nature, Coubertin insist on a repressive model of movement, the nature of which is conditioned by the Social Darwinist and progressistic spirit of the ruling order. Coubertin relates to nature via the alienated technical sphere as the controlled natural forces which in the hands of the bourgeoisie become not only a means for submitting man but also for exploiting nature. Rousseau’s conception is based on farm production and manual labour, which means that there do not exist technical and scientific spheres which mediate between man and nature. The skill that man acquires does not become the power with which he tends to control and exploit nature, but with which he tends to attain a complete unity with it. Emile does not seek to become the “master and owner” of nature, but to live in nature using his natural properties. Skill becomes the most important form of a life activism which involves a unity between natural environment and man’s natural being. The dominant unity is that between man and skill which enables the cultivation of his natural being… Man and nature are not mediated by civilization: nature itself produces mimetic impulses which man spontaneously perceives by his senses and which condition his (natural) behavior. It is not an a priori knowledge and in that context a learned skill that represent a direct challenge, but it is the natural circumstances, and by meeting that challenge man gains experience and develops his human powers in the form of a skill which enables him to act freely. Human movement is a natural movement with which man unites with and develops his natural being.

As far as knowing the world and attaining the idea of space is concerned, Rousseau concludes: “It is only through movement that we learn that outside us there exist other things, and it is only through our own movement that we attain the idea of space.” (16) A joy of life is realized through a free bodily movement. The idea of man’s “own movement” is alien to Coubertin, since his life is submitted to the fatal course of evolution of the living world which reached its highest form in capitalist “progress”. In Coubertin, the dominant movement is not man’s movement in nature, but man’s movement against man, as well as the movement that represents a combat with one’s own natural being – which is the realization of a military physical drill “perfectioned” by the principle of “greater effort” and reduced to man’s (self) crippling and his submission to the model of “positive man”. While in Rousseau space is limitless and time is infinite, in sport, space is limited, and time is “compacted” into hours, minutes, seconds… and is the pulsation of the life pulse of capitalism. In Rousseau’s doctrine, the dominant logic is not progressistic: man’s relation to nature is conditioned by his existential needs, and not by the process of capitalist reproduction. Emil does not pursue a higher result: speed in itself, which does not enhance the certainty of survival, has no importance for him. Unlike Rousseau, Coubertin does not pursue a return to nature, but seeks to create special sports spaces which should become the cult venues celebrating the dominant spirit of the existing world which is embodied in sport. Sports fields are the capitalist forms of a degeneration and destruction of nature, while the “sportsman” is the capitalist form of degeneration and destruction of man.

In spite of insisting on the laws of evolution, Coubertin does not see man in unity with nature, but departs from the contrasts between spirit and matter, soul and body, man and nature. The body becomes an “opponent” whose defense mechanism is to be blocked and he is to be compelled to self-destruction. Rousseau insists on the interdependence of the body and the spirit – the spirit cultivating the body and the body cultivating the spirit: “It is different with a savage: unbound to a place, without a proper job, not submitting to anyone, not obeying any other laws except his own will, he is forced to carefully consider every act in his life. He will not make a move or a step without considering the consequences. Therefore, the more his body does exercises, the more his spirit becomes enlightened; his strength and reason develop parallel and transform mutually.” (17) And he continues: “Being constantly in motion, he is forced to observe many things and get to know many consequences; from his early age he gains great experience, he is educated by nature and not by people ;…(…) thus he parallel exercises his body and his spirit. As he always acts according to his intellect and not according to the intellect of others, he constantly combines his bodily and spiritual exertion. The stronger and mightier he becomes, the more intelligent and reasonable he is. It is the right way to achieve one day that what is considered disparate, and what almost all great men combine, namely, the bodily and spiritual power, the reason of a sage and the strength of an athlete.”(18) Coubertin deprived man both of the soul and of the intellect. While in Rousseau the established relation is: a harmoniously built body – an inquisitive spirit and an independent mind, in Coubertin the relation is: a muscular body – a merciless combatant character. Coubertin prepares the body and the spirit for conquering and not for “using natural tools”. As far as the spirit is concerned, it is not the spirit of man as a free person, but the spirit of the ruling order, which enters man by way of the life “circumstances” that force him to fight for survival. Rousseau seeks to educate man as an independent personality; Coubertin departs from a racial, class and patriarchal model to which he tries to subject man. Coubertin does not seek to create reasonable people who will make judgments independently, but colonial fanatics. Rousseau’s Emile is guided by natural circumstances in the development of his body and intellect; Coubertin’s bourgeois is guided by the circumstances in society, reduced to a menagerie, in the development of a merciless combatant character and a corresponding (positive) conscious. The body is not an integral part of man’s personality, but is the tool of the “spirit” for achieving anti-human ends. If Rousseau’s view that “big and strong limbs bring neither courage nor geniality” (19) is compared with Coubertin’s pedagogical postulate mens fervida in corpore lacertoso, it is clear that Coubertin and Rousseau hold essentially different evaluative standpoints. It is also confirmed by Rousseau’s defining Emile as a “complete man”, a working and thinking being “full of love”, “whose reason is perfected by feelings (20) – who is totally opposed to Coubertin’s “new man”. Unlike the ancient physical culture dominated by a harmonious development of a child’s universal bodily and mental faculties, in sport, a dualism between body and spirit is institutionalized: the body becomes the means for achieving a higher result, while a fanaticized “spirit” is the whip of the order forcing the body to achieve the given end at the price of self-destruction. The “secret” of the ancient physical culture, which makes it superior to Coubertin’s physical culture and sport, is the relation of man to his own body, which is mediated by the idea of cosmos in which all parts are in unity with the whole and man is an integral part of nature: man’s unity with the cosmos is the basis of his unity with his body. Rousseau’s philosophy follows a holistic approach discarding aesthetic apriorism and giving it a natural dimension: Emile’s body develops in accordance with his natural properties and corresponds to the natural environment. The basis of Coubertin’s relation to the body (nature) is a complete submission of man to the expansionist power of monopolistic capitalism and the resulting “progress”, and it is upon this that he basis his “cult of intensive muscular exercises”, the principle of “greater effort”, as well as the absolutized principle of performance expressed in the maxim citius, altius, fortius: in sport, the relation of man to his body is a symbolic expression of the relation of capitalism to nature. Coubertin’s “utilitarian pedagogy” fully developed the conception which in the combat between “spirit” and “body” sees the basis of man’s education. Instead of a cultivation of man’s instinctive nature, as is the case in the Hellenic and Rousseau’s pedagogy, a child’s bodily and mental development is subordinated in sport to the creation of a “sportsman”, which is reduced to his systematic crippling and to the achievement of a higher result (record).

Coubertin’s Olympic doctrine relies on three pillars which acquire the role of the Christian “holy trinity” and embody the indisputability and eternity of the established order becoming the bearers of positive (Olympic) transcendence. These are the laws of evolution (“progress”), which correspond to God as a fateful power; the “immortal spirit of antiquity”, which acquires the role of the Christian “holy spirit” (belligerent spirit); and the Olympic “humanism” (the cult of the existing world), which in the Olympic doctrine has the role that Christ has in Christianity. By way of the “immortal spirit of antiquity”, embodied in the “renovated” Olympic Games, the existing world is mystically inseminated with the laws of evolution, which reached their highest form in ancient Greece and gave birth to Olympic humanism.

Just as for Christianity God is an indisputable power that determines man’s destiny, so for Coubertin “progress” is an indisputable superhuman power which controls human life and determines “future”. Ultimately, both God and “progress” offer man a possibility of “eternal life”. What distinguishes them is that in Christianity man acquires the possibility of “eternal life” as an individual in “other world”, while in Coubertin mankind obtains this possibility as an abstract collectivity in the eternal this worldly life which is reduced to quantitative shifts without any qualitative changes. While the life of a Christian is reduced to atoning for his “sins” and a preparation for “doomsday”, the life of Coubertin’s positive man, released from sin and responsibility, is reduced to a constant struggle for increasing his wealth and preserving the established order.

The creation of the world by God is the basis of Christian mystery. In Coubertin, the process of creation is not a purposeful and willful act; it is a mindless and spontaneous activism that follows the logic of evolution which appears in the form of “progress”. Coubertin abolishes the creation of man on the part of the absolute (as well as the creation of the world on the part of man) and affirms the “development of mankind” reduced to a sequence of the laws of evolution, independent of human will, which is manifested in the struggle between races for survival. Modern Olympic mystery should enable the invisible omnipresent power of capitalism, deriving from certain social processes and relations, to become incorporated into man’s being and arouse religious enthusiasm. Coubertin also does not make any difference between the faithful and the fanatics. In his Olympic philosophy there is no place for doubt, questioning, confrontation, for a search for purpose and answers… Coubertin attaches primary importance to the psychological aspect and in that context to a spectacular performance which involves man in the Olympic mystery. The Olympic ceremony is a mechanism intended to eliminate reason, open the road to the subconscious and reach “man’s innermost part”. Olympism, like Christianity, insists on the cult acts, a peculiar Olympic liturgy, which is by its nature analogous to a hypnotically séance that eliminates reason and achieves a complete integration of man into the existing world. The strictly observed form of the ceremony has a ritual character and creates a peculiar illusion: a ritual repetition creates the impression that the ceremony is not carried out according to people’s will, but that they are merely the executors acting on the will of an invisible power that holds everything in its hands. In that context appears the “sacred” four-year rhythm of the Games, which must not be interrupted and which becomes a form of expressing the eternal domination of the fateful power over man (Olympie éternelle!). The point is to constantly renew, by way of the Olympic Games, the faith in the original principles of the present world. Modern Olympic mystery has nothing to do with God and natural forces, but is connected with the dominant spirit of capitalism which, through the Olympic spectacle, should be shown in a mystic light. In that context, in the creation of the Olympic ceremony Coubertin is not guided by the Christian liturgy, but seeks to create a performance which gives a mythological and cult dimension to the this worldly dominant power, similarly to monarchist pomp’s, military parades and great world exhibitions – in which he found a model for the spectacularization of the Games. Hence grandiosity, monumentality, a military spirit and showy decorations become the most important segments of the Olympic (decorative) aesthetics.

What should give a special dimension to the Olympic cult ceremony is that it evokes the “immortal spirit of antiquity”, which means that the Olympic Games are designed as a peculiar spiritual séance. According to Coubertin, sport is not a product of the Modern Age, it is the form of resurrection of the spirit of antiquity, which becomes an inexhaustible source of light and warmth, and that means of life. In his “Ode to Sport” Coubertin “sings” with admiration: “O Sport, delight of the Gods, distillation of life! In the grey dingle of modern existence, restless with barren toil, you suddenly appeared like the shining messenger of vanished ages, those ages when humanity could smile. And to the mountain tops came dawn’s first glimmer, and sunbeams dappled the frost’s gloomy floor.”(15) That modern Olympic Games are designed to be a peculiar spiritual séance is clearly seen from the official “Olympic Hymn”: “Immortal spirit of antiquity, / Father of the true, beautiful and good, / Descend, appear, shed over us the light / Upon this ground and under this sky / Which has fits witnessed by imperishable fame. / Give life and animation to those noble games! / Throw wreaths of fadeless flowers to the victors / In the race and in the strife! / Create in our breasts, hearts of steel! / In thy light, plains, mountains and seas / Shine in a roseate hue and form a vast temple / To which all nations throng to adore thee, / Oh immortal spirit of antiquity.”(16) The Olympic Games become the ceremony of a mystical union between the “immortal spirit of antiquity” and the Modern Age and are thus the insemination of man with the spirit of antiquity – from which positive man is to be born. It is an authoritarian (tyrannical) spirit analogous to the Olympic gods as the immortal oligarchy which symbolizes the indisputable power of the tribal aristocracy over the slaves. In the Modern Age this power descends again from Olympus onto the earth, only to appear in the form of the bourgeois who becomes the capitalist surrogate of the ancient “hero”. Coubertin abolishes the ability of capitalism to breed in its “bosom” (Marx) the ideas that open the possibility of overcoming the present world and thus deprives it of historical fruitfulness, and uses the “immortal spirit of antiquity” to “inspire new life” into capitalism. The “immortal spirit of antiquity” becomes a symbolic expression of the time in which the evolution of the living world reached its highest level of development, a peculiar “Holy Grail” which will provide eternal youth to the present world: the Olympic Games serve to draw the elixir of life of ancient Hellas in the modern world. Hence such importance of the “sacred rhythm” of the Games: as a “festivity of youth” (Coubertin), they are a regular rejuvenation of capitalism and are thus a symbolic end of history. Unlike antiquity and Christianity, which link immortality to the Heavens, Coubertin descends immortality down to the earth. “The immortal spirit of antiquity” is not the incarnation of the unearthly power of the Olympic gods, but is a mythical form of the capitalist spirit and a way of giving it a “cultural” and “divine” legitimacy. That is why Coubertin does not mind the “fact” that the Hellenic world declined. The spirit of capitalism raises the ancient spirit from the ashes inspiring it with a new life and insuring its eternity.

As the ideology of positive progress Olympism abolishes transcendency and affirms immanence as the basic principle of development of the world. There is nothing that transcends the present world or that appears as the end according to which the direction to which civilization is moving can be determined. In modern Olympism the purpose of life is not determined by God, but everything proceeds according to the purpose given by a natural course of events (by the laws of evolution) and the progressistic spirit deriving from it, which has a quantitative and totalitarian character and for which the “future” is open. “The divine right”, to which Coubertin refers from time to time, has neither an a priori nor a supernatural character and it serves to create the impression that the world cannot be changed. There is an identity between the ideal and the present worlds: Olympism becomes a positive ontology in which the essence is reduced to existence. The contrast between the false and the true, the phenomenological and the essential is “abolished” in the world of the factual. Since Coubertin discarded the normative sphere, there is no possibility of confronting the established progress with the idea of true progress. Coubertin deprived of meaning every evaluative judgment of progress, while the knowledge of the world has merely a utilitarian and empirical character. The only possible question is the one concerning the measure of progress, which is expressed in a quantitative accumulation of material wealth by the ruling “elite” and in increasing the efficiency in the combat with the libertarian working movement and the emancipatory heritage of mankind. The former is expressed in the Olympic maxim citius, altius, fortius, and the latter in the principle “might is right”: all that has been created must become the means in the hands of the ruling class for preserving the ruling order. Similarly to his treatment of democratic institutions, Coubertin here tries to eliminate the emancipatory possibilities of man’s power to do more, to go further, and to act more strongly… All more developed productivistic powers of man become the source of the oppressive power of the ruling class: an increase in progress is followed by a decrease in freedom.

Coubertin’s humanité is the third part of the Olympic “holy trinity“. Just as humanism of the Modern Age appeared as the reaction of the awakened man to the long-lasting strivings of the Church to reduce him to the slave of “God’s will”, so Coubertin’s humanité appeared as the reaction of the imperialist bourgeoisie to the guiding principles of the French Revolution and the emancipatory heritage of civil society – and in that context to the emancipatory ideas of Christianity. Instead of being the “God’s slave”, man becomes the slave of “natural laws” that are the incarnation of the ruling relations: Olympism “overcomes” Christianity by way of Social Darwinism. Coubertin does not try to discover “the divine in man”, but to inspire him with the spirit of the established world: man being only the means for achieving the strategic ends of capitalism – in the guise of “progress”. The creation of the character and conscious of positive man and his instrumentalization for the achievement of inhuman ends – that is the basis of Coubertin’s humanism.

Christianity is critical of the present world which is only a temporary human abode: the “true” and “eternal life” begins in Heavens. For Coubertin, the present world is man’s only possible and eternal abode, and not a station on his way to Heaven. Instead of looking up to God, there is in Coubertin a euphoric immersion in everyday life through a mindless physical activism. In spite of an idealized antiquity, the presence is what radiates in all directions since in it the unity of humanistic ideals and life has been realized: the existing world is a realized humanism. Coubertin’s humanism is based on the myth of ancient society which serves to build the cult of the present world. For him, the ideal of positive society was already realized in ancient Greece, during its “Middle Ages” in which a complete domination of the tribal aristocracy over demos was established. The basic purpose of the ancient myth is not to give guidelines to human action, since ancient society is an unrealizable ideal, but to prove that the ideal of humanity was already realized in the past and that therefore it is useless to look to the future. Concluding that “Hellenism is above all the cult of humanity in its present life and its state of balance”, Coubertin opposes religions that promise man happiness after death. In old Greece, according to him, “it is the present existence which is happiness.”(17) Instead of striving to another (“higher”) world, an endless glorification of the existing world becomes the highest challenge for man. Coubertin’s dealing with the Christian illusory world (in which there are no “rich” and “poor” people, or “higher” and “lower” races) is actually a combat with the very idea of a better world, as well as with man’s strivings to a just world. The purpose of Coubertin’s idealization of antiquity is to prompt man to crave for a world in which, in an idealized form, appear the ruling principles of the existing world of injustice which has no alternative and which is eternal. These are the “facts” that by way of the Olympic doctrine acquire the character of absolute truth. The only thing left to man is to “reconcile” him to the existing state of affairs. Coubertin offers to the oppressed a “sports republic” as a compensation for their obedient suffering of injustice, but it is not a world parallel to the existing world, as was the case with Christian paradise; it is a space where the dominant spirit of the existing world appears in a pure form, it is a peculiar capitalist Olympic Heavens, and thus a training camp where (through a physical and mental drill) man’s qualities that should enable his complete integration into the present world are being developed. Christianity moves man to “another world”, sport pins him down to the present world.

The Olympic Games are a ritual deification of the basic existential principles of the present world that are embodied in sport: modern Olympism is the cult of capitalism. Hence such importance attached to the physical appearance and behavior of sportsmen, to their “moral pureness”, as well as to religio athletae which should correspond to the religious enthusiasm (awe) with which the athlete of antiquity approached the Olympic altar to bow to Zeus. The ancient condition of participation at the Games – that the athlete had not offended the gods – becomes in modern Olympism a demand for the athlete not to violate the principles of amateurism, which means to be guided in his fight with others by a fanatical faith in the correctness and indisputability of the ruling principles of the world, and not by lucrative interests. Hence Coubertin insists on the “Olympic oath” (serment olimpique) as the highest religious act, with the participants “swearing” to fight fairly. Boulongne says on that: “Since each religion involves the knowledge of dogmas and deepening of a mystique, Coubertin bases on the pedagogy of Olympism the initiation into the Olympic philosophy and practice: the oath that the participants take represent in this case one of the rituals connected to that which is sacred.” (18) Their oath is not addressed to God (supernatural power) or people, but to the invisible and dominant spirit of capitalism. The Olympic Games serve to show the “pureness” of that spirit and its indestructible power, while the sportsmen are its incarnation and thus peculiar “idols” of capitalism. Everything they do acquires a symbolic character, similarly to the behavior of soldiers in a parade, who are a personification of the ruling order. To break the strict pattern of behavior means to jeopardize the indisputable authority of the ruling power.

Coubertin’s humanism does not have a foothold only in Hellenic culture, but also in Jesuitism. Karl Kautsky’s analyses of the relation between Jesuitism and humanism offers a possibility of understanding the nature of Coubertin’s humanité: “Jesuitism is humanism that is somewhat intellectually lower, deprived of independent ideas, rigidly organized, humanism compelled to serve to the Church. The difference between Jesuitism and humanism corresponds to the difference between Christianity in the time of the Empire and Neo-Platonism. Jesuitism is the form in which the Catholic Church adopted humanism, in which it was modernized and placed, as opposed to its previous feudal basis, on the foundations that ruled society from the 16^th up to the 18^th century. Jesuitism became the most brutal force of a reformed Catholic Church because it suited most too new economic and political circumstances. Jesuitism used the same weapons as had already been used by humanism: superiority of classical education, influence on rulers, consideration of monetary powers. Just like humanists, Jesuits assisted absolute power, but only the ruler who worked for them. Just like humanists, they did not think that it contradicted their monarchist affiliation if they had to remove the ruler who did not suit them. However, as far as money is concerned, Jesuits went further then humanists. They advocated not only the interests of a new way of production, but put it in their service. Jesuits became the biggest European trading company which had its offices in all parts of the world. They were the first to realize that a missionary could be used just as well as a trading agent; they were the first to organize capitalist industrial enterprises in overseas countries, for example, sugar factories.” (19) In Coubertin, also, the dominant fanaticism is not religious but lucrative and pragmatic. One of the most important principles of his original Olympic idea is as follows: “It is no longer Minerva, the Goddess of peace and wisdom that rules the world, but Mercury, the God of enterprise, movement and trading.”(20)

In spite of insisting on a blind respect for the “factual”, Coubertin tries to give through “humanism” the evaluative legitimacy to Olympism. In that way Coubertin opens the possibility of distinguishing between “true” and “false” Olympism. In spite of reducing Olympism to the “cult of the present world”, during his Olympic career Coubertin was forced to face the reality of the Olympic Games, which only follow the fate of capitalist society, from the point of view of an evaluative model of the Olympic Games which sprang from a certain (positivist) philosophical concept and the strivings to its realization (positive society). A vision of a desired world and in that context an evaluative apriorism are the tacit starting point of Coubertin’s Olympism. In addition, Coubertin’s humanism has the same role given to the Olympic “pacifism”: to cover in a propagandist way the field of fight for a true humanism and to show itself as an incarnation of genuine humanist aspirations of mankind. The terms such as “peace”, “international cooperation” and the like, used to conceal the true nature of Olympic barbarism and to win the favor of people, tell us that Coubertin was aware of people’s real aspirations – and they became a negative starting point of his Olympic doctrine. That is why a combat with the guiding principles of the French Revolution is one of the main objectives of Coubertin’s political practice: without freedom, equality and brotherhood there is no true humanism. Instead of “humanism as a political ideal” (Mihailo Đurić), Coubertin offers “new” barbarism, disguised in humanist phrases, as the highest political ideal. An unrestrained tyranny of the bourgeois “elite” over the “working masses”, “lower races” and the woman is the foundation of Coubertin’s (positive) humanism.

Coubertin cites the words of Albert Thibaudet according to whom “religious life consists in learning writings by heart, but the Greek religion is a religion without books”, (12) and this becomes the “golden rule” of modern Olympic paganism. Not the knowledge of “God’s Word”, not its repetition, reflection and experience, but the fight for victory over others and the fight for “victory over oneself” (the principle of “greater effort” as the basis of “perfectioning”), become the foundation of the Olympic gospel and the main way of performing the religious service. Life itself, reduced to a constant struggle for survival, becomes the source of a (positive) religious spirit and the service to superhuman powers, while Olympism becomes the building of its cult. Similarly to ancient Olympism, modern Olympism seeks to be a comprehensive spiritual power to which man does not serve through contemplation and meditation, but through everyday agonal activism. There are no guidelines offering man a possibility of establishing a (critical-changing) relation to the existing world and posing the question of the purpose of life. Life as a constant struggle between people, nations and races for a place under the sun – that is the essence of Olympic piety. Like Homer’s heroes, modern (petty) bourgeois do not preach sermons in order to call up gods, they preach in their merciless struggle for domination. In that context, the Olympic Games appear as an idealized expression of the main life principles of the established world – as their virgin form. They are a “festivity of youth” (Coubertin), designed to renew faith in the “eternal” Olympic ideals and provide “moral strength” necessary to proceed with new vitality from where it was stopped. That is why Coubertin attaches such importance to the “sacred rhythm” of the Olympic Games, which by no means must be interrupted.

Unlike the Christian “In the beginning was the Word” and Goethe’s “In the beginning was the Deed” (“Im Anfang war die Tat”), in Coubertin there is no beginning in the development of human society, but a continuity of the animal world whose development is based on the laws of evolution – which are “superstructured” by the dominant spirit of capitalism. It is an activism that blindly follows the dominant logic of life expressed in the Social Darwinist principle bellum omnium contra omnes and the progressistic principle citius, altius, fortius. In that sense, Coubertin’s religio athletae does not involve only a complete submission of sportsmen to the dominant spirit of capitalism, but their being completely accustomed to the role which, as a symbolic incarnation of that spirit, they have. From their physical appearance and movements it is clear that with their whole being they should be in unity with the dominant spirit in order to adequately express its renewed strength and indestructibility. Under the guise of a struggle with Christian dogmatism, Coubertin deals with reason as the basis of human behavior and the criterion for its appraisal, and introduces evolutionary apriorism which proclaims the laws prevalent in the animal world the highest and indisputable dogma. What was attacked was a religious conscious that directs man to God and to the “true” life in the other world, but also the thought which from the human point of view questions those processes and tries to place them “under control” of the true human values. In the form of fight against religious dogmatics and theoretical reason, the strivings to establish universal criteria for establishing a critical distance to the existing world and create the ideal of future, are dealt with. A “theoretical” and “contemplative” man is replaced by a “practical” and “utilitarian” man.

Although he rejected religious dogmatics, Coubertin gives the Olympic “commands” profusely, and they become a peculiar Olympic gospel: “the battle at Waterloo was won on the sports fields of Eton “; “arms turn a young man into an adult”; “sport is an intelligent and efficient means in colonization”; “the white race is the purest, the most intelligent and the strongest”; “brotherhood is for angels, and not for man”; “the stronger survive, the weaker are eliminated”; “inequality is the oldest law against which it is useless to fight”; “a woman who is guided by reason rather then emotions is not only abnormal, she is monstrous”; “it is not the spirit that makes a character, it is the body”; “combatant spirit in a muscular body” (mens fervida in corpore lacertoso) and so on.

In Coubertin, there is no good and evil, which means that there is no moral reasoning. Man is released from ancient hybris and Christian sin, only to be released from (personal) responsibility for his deeds; in Coubertin, there is no Socrates’ daimenion or conscience. In addition, by abolishing God as a fateful power, Coubertin deprived man of the possibility of transferring responsibility for his actions on him, and of asking for “pardon for his wrongdoing” on account of his devoted service and repentance, and thus of “atoning for” his (miss)deeds. Modern Olympism deprives man of any possibility of wrongdoing, since it releases him in advance from any (personal) responsibility for his deeds, which only “spontaneously” follow the logic of life determined by the laws of evolution of the living world and appearing in the form of “progress”. Those who question this logic are treated by Coubertin not in the way the Church treats “sinners”, but as “antichrists”. At the same time, by putting on the Olympic robe mankind’s greatest butchers become (Olympic) angels. Coubertin does not threaten the disobedient with hell nor does he offer a reward in the form of Eden: life itself, reduced to a merciless struggle for survival, rewards some (the “strong”) and punishes the others (“the weak”). Injustice which man suffers every day is not evil, but is something inevitable and is founded in the natural order, so it is useless (and thus meaningless) to question its moral (humane) justification. “Mercy” of the rich does not result from pursuing “social justice”, but is a political means for calming down the workers’ dissatisfaction and establishing “social peace” – in the conditions of such relations between class forces when the workers’ submission cannot be insured by sheer force. As far as Coubertin’s principle “to fight well” is concerned, it represents the unity of the fight for life and fight for the ruling order and is not based on a respect for universal rules: “well” does not have an ethical, but a utilitarian character. A fight to preserve racial pureness, to maintain a stable development of the ruling order and for a colonial expansion represents the greatest duty for the members of the ruling class. They are responsible neither to God nor to people, but to “progress”.

One of the main documents suggesting the nature of modern Olympic paganism is Coubertin’s interview, published in the French magazine “L’Auto” on September 4, 1936, on the occasion of the Nazi Olympic Games: “It has been announced that, from the technical point of view, the Berlin Olympic Games were a complete success. I could answer that, for me, it is enough. But it would not provide an explanation. Surely, the sports side must be the dominant element of the Games, but I do not think that the Games should be held without an element of passion which is only capable of giving them the meaning they are supposed to have. I have always sought this passionate vehemence, I have desired it, invoked it with all my powers. For a competitive sport, in itself, is not an ordinary thing that can comply with firm and inflexible rules. Let us understand, the Olympic Games are a fierce, wild fight suitable only to fierce and wild beings. To surround them with the atmosphere of a conformist weakness without passion and excessiveness, would mean to distort them, to deprive them of any exceptionality. Not to speak of the Games at which the participation of women and young people is allowed, generally of the weak. For them there is another form of sport, physical education which will give them health. But for the Games, my Games, I want a long passionate cry, whatever it may be. In Berlin, they fought for an idea which is not up to us to judge, but which was the passionate challenge I keep looking for. The technical part is, on the other hand, organized with all the necessary care, and the Germans cannot be attributed with unfairness. How can you expect me to renounce the celebration of the XI^th  Olympiad in such conditions? For, also, that glorification of the Nazi regime was an emotional shock which enabled their enormous development.” (13) “Passionate vehemence”, “fierce fight” suitable only to “fierce beings”, “excessiveness”, “a long passionate cry” – all this indicates that the purpose of the Olympic religiousness is to give vent to the animal nature of Coubertin’s bourgeois. It is a peculiar “call of the wildness” which in a “civilized” form appears as an overt “will to power” that seeks to deal with the civilizatory norms which try to stop the attempts of the master race to conquer the world. In this text Coubertin revealed his original Olympic intention. The rules that apply to ordinary people do not apply to a bourgeois who hurries to conquer the world: he is released from any responsibility. At the same time, he is deprived of the qualities that characterize the “Homeric” as well as the “heroic man” of antiquity: Eros, emotions, readiness to sacrifice and repent, to protect the weak, childish cheerfulness… Insatiable greediness, the main feature of Coubertin’s “new man”, devoured all that is human in man. To purify mankind from the “deposits” of the human, which means to purify man from humanity, is one of the most important tasks of Coubertin’s “utilitarian pedagogy”.

What modern Olympism bows to is neither the Christian God nor the Olympic gods, but the expansionist power of monopolistic capitalism. It is the source from which Coubertin draws the power for his Olympic mission and on which the success of his “renovation” is based. Coubertin’s visit to Arnold’s grave at Rugby has a symbolic significance: it was a pilgrimage to the original spirit of the colonial power of Victorian England, whose creator, according to Coubertin, was Arnold. Here is how Coubertin describes it: “In the twilight, alone in the great gothic chapel of Rugby, my eyes fixed on the funeral slab on which, without epitaph, the great name of Thomas Arnold was inscribed, I dreamed that I saw before me the cornerstone of the British Empire.”(14) The conquering (oppressive) power of capitalism is the real source of Coubertin’s religious enthusiasm. The crucial point of Coubertin’s Olympic piety is best expressed in his original Olympic call “Rebronzer la France!” which corresponds to the cry for God of a fanatical Christian. The dream of the “master race”, embodied in the European bourgeoisie, conquering the world – this is the “vision” Coubertin cherished till the end of his life, the realization of which, handing down into their hands the “holy” Olympic “lance” (Diem), he was to bequeath to the Nazis.

Modern Olympism is not an attempt to create “new Christianity”, which was advocated by Saint-Simon, (2) but new paganism: Hellenic civilization is the (idealized and distorted) spiritual source and foundation of Olympism. Coubertin wishes to turn Olympism into a religion analogous to ancient paganism, which completely integrates man into its spiritual orbit and eliminates the possibility of his (critical-changing) relation to the existing world. The Olympic Games become the highest religious ceremony dedicated to the creation and glorification of the cult of the present world, which means its basic principles.

Coubertin is not satisfied with Christianity because (with its ideas of man as “a God’s being”, and of a “better world”, “equality”, “brotherhood”…) represents a contrast to the Social Darwinist doctrine and progressistic spirit, the pillars of the capitalist order. More importantly, Christianity was not efficient enough in preventing revolutions, upheavals and uprisings, which shook Europe in the end of 18^th and during 19^th century, especially in suppressing and controlling the ever more numerous, more organized and politically conscious proletariat, which won the right to claim power by legal means. Hence the need for a more efficient religion which will correspond to the “new spirit” and will become a unifying spiritual force of society capable of integrating the workers into the established order and dealing with the emancipatory heritage of civil society, with a critical-changing conscious and with the idea of future. Coubertin abolishes the divine firmament and opts for a natural order which corresponds to the progressistic and expansionist spirit of capitalism. The existing order is not the realization of the divine will nor has a divine character, but is the result of the (mindless, non-spiritual, immoral, non-aesthetical) natural laws that rule the animal world. The “theological” and “metaphysical” worlds are “overcome” by a positive world.

Coubertin, a pagan, does not try to hide that for him Olympism is a religion that “surpasses” not only Christianity, but also all other (“ethnical”) religions (which, as the religions of the “lower races”, are, according to Coubertin, under the level of Christianity) and seeks to achieve what the Catholic Church has not been able to achieve: to deal with traditional religions and national cultures and spiritually colonize the world. According to Coubertin’s doctrine, the Olympic Games are to become the highest religious ritual of the modern world which will supersede traditional religious holidays. In that sense, the “sacred rhythm” of the Olympic Games becomes an indisputable spiritual guide of mankind according to which all other global manifestations are scheduled: the Olympic calendar takes over the role of the Christian calendar while the Olympic Games become the chief form of expressing the continuation and limits of the capitalist time. The Olympic Games are akin to Christian Easter, but they do not represent a renewal of the spiritual power of Christianity and strengthening of the faith in God, but a revival of the life force of capitalism and strengthening of the faith in the present world: the Olympic Games are capitalist Easter.

Coubertin rejects ecumenism, but accepts the Christian (Catholic) universalism (from which follows the Christian “missionary work” of the Jesuit type) and, departing from it, establishes Olympism as the ideology of the capitalist (imperialist) globalism. (3) The bourgeois “cosmopolitism” and “humanism” make the essence of Olympism as a “universal religion”. Unlike Christianity, Olympism does not develop a critical but an idolatrous relation to the present world. Coubertin abolishes the divine firmament only to deify capitalism by way of Olympism. His “Ode to Sport” indicates the true nature of modern Olympism. At the beginning of each line Coubertin refers to sport with pious admiration: “Ode to Sport” becomes a peculiar “Te Deum”. (4) Sport, as the embodiment of the existential principles of capitalism in a ”pure” form, becomes the Supreme Being and as such a fateful power. It is no accident that Coubertin repeatedly claims that Olympism is the “cult of the existing world” and that the creation of a “religious feeling” for the dominant relations, which at the Olympic Games appear in a mythological form, represents the most important aim of his “utilitarian pedagogy”. Going to the stadium replaces going to church; physical exercises and sports contests replace the ascetic life and Christian prayers and become a ritual dedicated to the creation of the cult of the present world.

Guided by Compte’s “positivist popery” (Windelband) and by the idea of a “Western Committee”, which will turn positivist philosophy into a new “world religion”, Coubertin seeks to establish a new Church with the Olympic clergy, new dogmatic, myths and cult. Here is what Coubertin says about that: “For me, sport represents a religion with its Church, dogmas, cult… but especially with a religious feeling”. (5) Speaking of IOC, Coubertin concludes: “We are self-recruiting and our mandates are not limited. (…) We do not trespass upon the privileges of the sports associations; we are not a council for technical policy. We are simply the ‘trustees’ of the Olympic idea.”(6) Coubertin proclaimed Olympism the highest and only true religion of the Modern Age, and himself the arch priest of modern Olympic paganism – “the divine baron”, as his most loyal followers called him. Coubertin wanted the Olympic Games to become the spiritual center of the world – new Vatican. He speaks of the Olympic Games as of a “Church” (to the spirit of his Olympic paganism the term “sanctuary” would be more appropriate) trying to preserve its authority as a traditional and institutionalized form of political integration of the ruling class and a means of spiritual domination over the working “masses”.

Modern Olympic Games are not linked to a particular “holy ground” (like ancient Olympia) where the Games are always held; the location which the “Olympic fathers” from IOC choose for the Olympic Games becomes a “holy place” – by the very fact that the Games are held there. Its “holiness” springs from the “sanctity” of the Olympic Games, which means that there, during the Olympic Games, rules a superhuman and suprahistorical Olympic spirit. The so-called “Olympic peace” means that nothing worldly must disturb the highest religious ceremony at which the “best” representatives of nations and races bow to the ruling spirit, seeking to win its favour through a “fair fight”. A constant change of the place at which the Games are held is not only a form in which modern Olympic paganism expresses its dynamism, but is the expression of the endeavour to “spread” the Olympic religion in all parts of the world. However, the Olympic Games are not designed as a “traveling circus” with Olympic spectacles. For Coubertin, the preparation of the Games in the host country, which lasts four years, is of great importance. He saw in it the way in which the Olympic religion, through an active participation of people in preparing the Games, penetrates not only their conscious, but also their very being. Coubertin was particularly enthusiastic about the Berlin Olympic Games, because the Nazis succeeded in mobilizing in their preparation the widest social layers and thus “won” them over to become the supporters of the Olympic cult. The mobilization of the “masses” to achieve the ends put before them by the ruling “elite” through the elimination of the (critical) reason and through their fanatization, represents one of the corner stones of the Olympism. At the same time, going to the Olympic Games becomes a pilgrimage to the spirit that rules the world, while the Olympians are the “elite” of mankind which on behalf of their nations (races), fighting on the “holy” Olympic battlefield, expresses an unconditional submission to the power that rules the world – seeking to win its mercy.

According to the Christian doctrine, God created man from inorganic nature and inspired life in him in the form of the soul. The purpose of this earthly life is to liberate the soul from its bodily “prison” in order for it to soar to eternity. Hence in Christianity the movement of the body to the grave is dominant as well as the movement of the spirit to God: “Because he who puts in the seed of the flesh will of the flesh get the reward of death; but he who puts in the seed of the Spirit will of the Spirit get the reward of eternal life.”(7) Coubertin abolished the soul and thus broke man’s connection to God, in order to create from the muscular body an unbreakable connection of man to the present world. For Coubertin, similarly to Nietzsche, despising the body means despising this worldly life. Unlike Nietzsche, who, in opposition to the Christian “despisers of the body”, sees in the body the source and the basic condition of man’s “peculiarity”, (8) Coubertin sees in the body what the Christians see in the soul: a means of abolishing its peculiarity and of his complete integration into the existing (deified) world. For Coubertin, man is not a temporary resident on this planet who acquires eternity in God, but is the continuation of the organic nature and the highest form in its development and thus is its integral part, while the laws that rule the animal world are the supreme creative and moving force of the world.

Coubertin’s conception not only radically deals with Plato’s conception of the relation between the body and the spirit, but also with the Catholic maxim cura del corpo si, culto del corpo no, which represents a “soft” version of the original Christian relation to the body as the “prison of the soul”. Trying to build the cult of a muscular body and physical strength, Coubertin rejects the maxim mens sana in corpore sano and creates a new principle: mens fervida in corpore lacertoso – which becomes one of his most important starting points in the creation of a positive man. This different relation to the body indicates a different relation to life: the creation of the cult of a muscular body serves to create the cult of worldly life. Coubertin: “By chiseling his body with exercise as a sculptor chisels a statue the athlete of antiquity was ‘honoring the Gods’. In doing likewise the modern athlete exalts his country, his race, his flag.”(9) In Coubertin, the muscular body in a combatant effort acquires the same importance an eager look of a hermit directed to the skies has for a Christian.

Coubertin determined his relation to Christianity through his relation to Arnold, who paganized Christianity. Arnold tried to use sport in order to create from school a “civilized” menagerie in which “order” is established through a merciless submission of the weaker on the part of the stronger. According to Coubertin, it is the highest form of “moral perfectioning” of the young, which corresponds to the life for which the children (of a bourgeois) are being prepared. Arnold created from sport a means for creating the cult of the “muscular” body and of a character that corresponds to the nature of capitalist society, but he tried to perch upon it Christian moralism; Coubertin rejects Christian “meekness”, as well as everything that represents a restraint for the “master race” in its attempt to conquer the world: from the “muscular Christians” all that is left are muscles and their insatiable greediness which Coubertin declares to be the moving force of “progress”.

The establishment of a rigid dualism between the body and the spirit, the body being submitted to the spirit, represents one of the most important common features of modern Olympism and Christianity. In that context, both ideologies instrumentalize the body and see in it the means for realizing “higher” ends. While in Christianity the body is the tool for realizing “God’s will”, in Coubertin’s doctrine it represents the means for realizing the strategic interests of capitalism. In spite of insisting on man’s “animal nature” and relying on the laws of evolution, Coubertin, with his “utilitarian pedagogy”, deals with man’s natural being and thus breaks his connection with nature. Coubertin deprived man from naturalness and instrumentalized him to such an extent that his relation to the human body becomes similar to the relation which Descartes formulated in his mechanistic philosophy of the physical, although in Coubertin it is mediated by the masochistic spirit of Jesuitism and the destructive spirit of capitalist progressism. Unlike Christian meditative activism that leads to the inhibition and dying out of bodily (natural) functions, sports activism (based on the absolutized principle of “greater effort” which corresponds to the maxim citius, altius, fortius) leads to a maniacal intensification of muscular effort and thus to the repression, degeneration and destruction of man’s natural being, as well as spirituality and intellectuality.

Modern Olympism is similar to Christianity in other respects. Above all, in its anti-libertarian character. The Olympic “reconciliation” to the existing world and the destruction of man’s libertarian dignity basically correspond to the Christian demand, addressed to the oppressed, to unconditionally submit to their masters and obediently suffer injustice. The attitude of Apostle Paul from his letter to Timothy is illustrative of this: “Let all who are servants under the yoke give all honor to their masters…” (10) A similarity between these two doctrines is suggested also by the abolishment of man as an emancipated citizen (and thus of civil society) and his being reduced to a subject of the absolutized ruling power. Furthermore, there is the combat with the critical reason, and the submission of man to the indisputable spiritual authority (the establishment of “control in heads”) which is independent of man. A suppression and destruction of man’s playing nature (Eros, creative spontaneity) represents another common feature of modern Olympic paganism and Christianity. Also, man is not the creator of the world, but is the tool of ”destiny” (of God and natural laws), which means that subjective freedom and the category of possibility are abolished. Another common point of Christianity and Olympism is their insistence on the indisputable character of patriarchal order and degradation of women to incubators. Contempt of work is also characteristic of both doctrines. For Christianity, work is a curse to which people are doomed (“in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life”), and the workers are accordingly cursed. The production of commodities is separated from their appropriation. Parasitism and plundering of the working “masses” become the “divine” and “natural right” of the strong. In their prayers people thank God for their “daily bread”, although they made it by their hands. Coubertin has the same view: “The human race has always asked its rulers for amusement as well as a livelihood.”(11) And that is what claims Coubertin, an aristocrat who inherited his family fortune of 500,000 gold French francs, accumulated over the centuries of plundering the French peasants. The Christian agon is also close to the “sports spirit”. Between “true” Christians there is a competition in suffering, since the one who suffers most has a better chance of passing through the gates of paradise. Hence the greatest “martyrs”, as the “recorders” in suffering, are the highest challenge for worshippers. However, while a Christian, guided by the logic of commerce, is ready to obediently suffer injustice hoping to receive his reward in the form of “eternal blissfulness” – this earthly life becomes a stake that should provide him an incomparably higher profit – Coubertin offers to people a “reward” in the form of life itself in which some (“the master race”) find “happiness” in a sadistic oppression of the “weaker”, while some (the workers, the “lower races” and the woman) find ”happiness” in their masochistic flattering to the ruling power. Olympism is the means for developing a belligerent character in the bourgeois youth and at the same time the means for pacifying the workers and colonized peoples. This “holy duality” has also been present in Christianity ever since it became a tool in the hands of the parasitic classes. Coubertin proclaims the principle of “control in heads” his supreme political principle, which, through the (ab)use of Christianity, has been applied over the centuries by the aristocracy and clergy. Coubertin is “original” in his wish to make the principle efficient again by using new means that correspond to the New Age. Striving to control man’s spirit and thus his whole life, Christianity prescribes prayers and holidays: there exist days when one is supposed to “rejoice” and those when one is supposed to “mourn”; days for eating and days for starving; days for working and days for celebrating… Coubertin also strives to establish a complete spiritual control over people, but he tries to incorporate man’s spirit into his everyday life in order to make his behavior completely conditioned by the dominant relations: not the Christian dogma, but life itself becomes an indisputable regulative principle that determines people’s behaviour and thought.

As far as the relation between Olympism and religion is concerned, Coubertin, unlike many of his followers who try to conceal the true nature of modern Olympism, is crystal clear: “The first essential characteristic of ancient and of modern Olympism alike is that of being a religion.” (1) Departing from Compte’s philosophy, Coubertin seeks to establish a new spiritual system which will correspond to the Social Darwinist and progressistic spirit of capitalism, “incorporate” all social (class) contradictions that prevent the development of capitalism and enable its limitless global expansion. It is the creation of a “dynamic religion” (Brundage) which, apart from being efficient in establishing “social peace” and introducing “control in heads” (Coubertin), is capable of “overcoming” the existing (static) religions (discarding their emancipatory heritage) since it is not limited by a certain way of life and by national cultures, but springs from a “dynamic”, universal and totalitarian spirit of capitalist globalism. Bearing in mind the spiritual sources of the Olympic idea, we can conclude that Olympism is a formulated, and by way of the Olympic movement and the Olympic Games, realized positive religion, which is “analogous to positive philosophy” (Prokop) and which should, in the Modern Age, play the part of traditional religion in the Middle Ages. Olympism becomes a spiritual firmament from which derives all “humanism” and which offers final answers to the crucial questions of human existence. Hence, to speak of Olympism means to glorify it. At the same time, Olympism erases the difference between religious and secular spheres: life itself becomes a service to the Olympic gods. Modern Olympism tends to be an indisputable spiritual power to which man serves not only through contemplation, meditation, prayers and kneeling, but, like in antiquity, through his regular agonistic activism. Life as a constant struggle between people, nations and races for a place under the sun – that is the essence of Olympic piety. In that sense, sport is an idealized form of the “true” life, while the Olympic Games are a symbolic incarnation of the spiritual and active unity of the world. Bearing in mind Coubertin’s endeavour to eliminate critical rationalism and the emancipatory heritage of mankind, it can be said that it is a peculiar totalitarian thought as well as a totalitarian spiritual and political movement. Olympism becomes a “black hole” in which all hints of stepping out of the existing world are to disappear.

According to Coubertin, there was something in Greek “sport” which did not exist either in the Middle Ages or in the Modern Age – and which has a paramount social and scientific importance. It is the following postulate: “Man is not made up of two parts – the body and the soul: he is made up of three (parts) – the body, the mind and the character; the character is not formed by the mind, but primarily by the body.” (66) This is one of the most disastrous instructions of Coubertin’s “utilitarian pedagogy” – on which the bourgeois theory and the practice of the so called “physical culture” of the 20^th century and sport are based – for it singles out physical exercising from the cultural sphere and reduces it to an instrument for developing a fanatical combatant character.  Coubertin deprives the body of its basic natural properties and reduces it to the object of manipulation and exploitation; the soul loses its divine character and becomes the tool with which the dominant order controls man’s body, while the mind becomes another name for the character.

In antiquity there existed two spheres: the realm of the eternal, in which abode the gods, and the realm of the temporary earthly life, in which resided the humans. Human souls, after the death of the body, which is the “grave of the soul” (Rebac), go to the underworld of darkness and horror. To take out the souls in the sun and, in that context, to try, with “honour” acquired by victory at the Olympic Games, to insure eternity in the aureole of divine immortality – that is the highest challenge for the mortals. The fight for victory, as the supreme cosmic (existential) law, is the basic way to attract gods’ attention and win their favor. Similarly to fanatical Christians, who compete in suffering in order to win the best place in Heaven, the Hellenes fight for primacy in order to insure a place in eternity. The whole life becomes a peculiar service to gods, and it is one of the reasons for Coubertin’s claim that the “ancient religion was a religion without books”. Hence such an abundance and intensity of agonal activities. Performing “good (godlily) deeds” in Christianity is the same as performing “heroic deeds” in antiquity – including the victory at the Olympic Games which is one of the ways of insuring “immortality in glory and in the mystical existence of the soul” – eternity. (67) “Honour” becomes the echo of a heroic life which for ever resounds among the Olympic heights, insuring immortality to the mortal man – and thus the resurrection of the soul in eternity. For Coubertin, the earthly life is not the starting point on the road to Olympus; it is the beginning and the end of the road. As we have seen, Coubertin, like antiquity and Christianity, distinguishes between the death of man and his perishing. Death does not mean perishing if man contributed to “progress” – which becomes the way of man’s being connected with the eternal. Instead in gods, man realizes eternity through “progress”. By insisting on the significance of “great people”, Coubertin suggests that even according to him “honour” is the incarnation of (“great”) man’s eternal existence. Basically, modern Olympic paganism does not seek to insure eternity to man, but to the existing world. The Olympic Games are not the place where individuals gain “honour” that insures them access to Olympus, but the place for celebrating the present world. That is why Coubertin does not heroicize sportsmen nor does he glorify their results. They are but the means with which the modern Olympic priests (IOC) perform the highest religious ritual dedicated to the cult of the present world.

The ancient Olympic Games were the fight between polises dedicated to Zeus, the supreme authority among the gods on whose decisions (grace) the fate of a polis depended. It is no accident that the citizens used to destroy the walls around their city so that the winners of the Games could enter it: the winners were a symbolic incarnation of Zeus’s will and thus the envoys carrying to the polis the proof of his grace (the olive wreath). It can be said that Pindar’s assertion that ”the gods are friends of the Games” contains the key to understanding the character of the ancient Olympic Games. In their original sense they were the post-mortal ritual games organized in the honour of the fallen hero, like the ones which, after the death of Patrocles, were organized below the walls of Troy in order to attract gods’ attention and ask them to accept the soul of the deceased. The tempting of the gods remained a constant feature of the Olympic Games: victory was a sign that divine mercy went to the winner, and it was an additional motive to continue the fights. At the same time, the Olympic Games were the road leading man to his divine origin. The basic purpose of Pindar’s Olympic poems is to weave a mythological strand which will connect the winner with the divine past and thus insure him eternity.

Unlike the sophists, who by human nature mean the “unity of the body and the soul, but above all man’s internal disposition, his spiritual nature”, (68) Coubertin departs from a dualism of the body and the soul, claiming that the “soul has a need to torture the body in order to make it more submissive”. In antiquity, gymnastics appeared as the “ennobling of the soul”; (69) In Coubertin, sport, as a merciless fight with the bodies, appears as the basic way of creating a (sado-masochistic) character. In antiquity, “the unity” of physical and spiritual movements appears as the subordination of the mortal body to the immortal divine spirit – and not to the human soul. The divine spirit is the power that inspires the body with life, while “honour”, acquired through a “good deed”, insures man a place on the Olympus. Physical appearance and movement are the expressions of spiritual movement, namely, the incarnation of an endeavour to be united with the cosmos. Geometry, proportionality, harmony – these are the bases of an artistic representation and a mimetic impulse. It is a given evaluative and aesthetical paradigm (which gained its metaphorical expression in the Olympic cosmos) which seeks to preserve the established order. It is in that sense that we can speak of the “unity” of the body and the spirit in Coubertin’s conception. In antiquity, the dominant ideal is that of a harmonious unity of the body with the cosmos expressing man’s complete submission to the established order. The ancient physical culture involved a geometrically shaped body that became a symbolic expression of the divine construction of the cosmos. It is most clearly manifested in art, which is dominated by the “artist’s faith that in the perfect shape lies the prototype of everything that is human, of the divinity itself”. (70) The body on the ancient pottery illustrates Hellenic conception of the cosmos and man’s position in it. Hence it is not dominated by a muscular strength but by proportionality and graciousness. The “chiseling of the body” becomes a ritual expression of man’s submission to gods and the ascending of man’s whole being to them, similarly to Christianity, in which the prayers are a ritual way of the soul’s ascending to God. At the same time, the ancient physical culture is the means for a spiritual and racial integration of the Helens and thus the expression of their “superiority” to “barbarians”. Racial exclusivity is not expressed through physical (muscular) strength, but through a sense of measure (metron ariston): crude strength and a disproportional muscular body are the characteristics of the slave. The medieval aristocratic criteria are similar: a sense of measure and grace (ordre et mesure) is the exclusive feature of the aristocracy – as opposed to immoderation and gracelessness of the serfs. Pointing out that the “western art has never overcome” – “the dualism between the body and the soul”, Schefold adds that “in the Greek body, on the other hand, each nerve, each movement, reflects the movement of the soul in a way that today is seen only in children and animals.”(71) Is that the quality which makes the ancient art an “unequaled model” (Marx) of modern art?

Coubertin is close to Plato’s philosophy, according to which the body is not an integral part of the individual, and the spirit, as a transcendental entity, appears as its ruler. Man is a manifest form of the relation between the two spheres which are independent of him: spiritual and material. It is a mechanistic, and not a dialectical relation. The immortal “soul” has precedence over the mortal body, as it is said in the ”Timaeus”, and the body must be subordinated to it. (72) The soul appears as a symbol of the established world, which in the form of the cosmic order obtains the legitimacy of the eternal – as opposed to its material manifestations which are temporary. In other words, the established superhuman order, independent of the human practice, is eternal, while man is transient. The cosmic (divine) order is the basis of this-worldly order: man is literarily chained to the celestial firmament. In Coubertin, instead of the divine dominates the spirit of capitalism embodied in the muscular body of the sportsman, who is in his combatant strain, but instead of the soul, character appears as the incarnation of the dominant spirit in man. Coubertin sees in the “immortal spirit of antiquity”, which has a superhuman and supertemporal dimension, the conquering (oppressive) spirit of the tribal aristocracy of the Homeric time, which in the Middle Ages was to appear in the form of the “chivalrous spirit”, and in the Modern Age in the form of the “sports spirit”. The modern Olympic Games become the renovation and preservation of the cult of the tribal aristocracy as the “master race”, this time in the form of the bourgeois who strives to conquer the whole world. However, for Coubertin, the “immortal spirit of antiquity” does not have a transcendental character, but is the manifesta- tion of the process of evolution that constantly produces the living surroundings (“circumstances”) on which the “master race” is repeatedly reborn. In that sense, sport, as the embodiment of the dominant social relations in a “pure” form, beco- mes a means for inseminating man by the Social Darwinist and “progressive” spirit of capitalism – from which Coubertin’s “new man” will appear.

While in antiquity exists a spontaneous relation of man to his body, which springs from the body being experienced as part of the cosmos and the source of man’s life energy, in Coubertin dominates an instrumental relation of man to his body, which is conditioned by the nature of the capitalist order. Everything is subordinated to a modelling based on the capitalistically (ab) used science and technique: just as in antiquity physical appearance was supposed to be united with the established cosmos, so in Coubertin physical appearance is supposed to be united with the Social Darwinist and progressistic spirit of capitalism. The body becomes the means for creating a positive character and man’s positive conscious, as well as the means for demonstrating the expansionist power of capitalism. It is the power that Coubertin will try to deify and which conditions man’s relation to his own body. Man, in the form of the bourgeois, became the means for realizing “progress”. Instead of the ancient holistic approach to the body, Coubertin insists on the expansionist muscular strength and at the same time deals with both the Apollonian and Dionysian nature of man. He not only beheaded his positive man, he deprived him of Eros, emotions, imagination, creativeness…

In antiquity, there is an organic and spiritual unity of man and nature. The man of antiquity did not have any control over the natural powers but was dominated by their life-giving and destructive forces that acquired a divine form. Winning the favor of gods through sacrifices was the expression of people’s strivings to prevent the fatal effects of the natural powers and is thus a specific attempt to control them. Not to “control” and exploit nature, but to tame it – that is the culmination of man’s activist relation to nature, reflected in the ancient training of animals. Pegasus, as a cult animal, is the symbol of a tamed natural force that enables man to soar, together with it, towards the divine realms. In the modern Olympic religion, nature loses its holy character: it ceases to be the abode of gods and becomes the object of exploitation. No longer does man fear nature or strives to live in harmony with it; he tries to control it and become its “master and owner”. In Coubertin, nature is reduced to an object of exploitation, but it also appears as a source of “pleasure”, which is a form of the aristocratic resistance to the newly formed cities, reigned by poverty and sordidness, and the idealization of the country life symbolizing a peaceful life that should serve as a spiritual refreshment for new conquering and plundering exploits. Hence Coubertin’s philosophy becomes an admixture of nostalgic aristocratic cravings for an idyllic country life and a ruthless exploitational relation to nature, especially to the colonies. Unlike the modern humanist thought which in man’s control over natural laws (science and technique) sees also the development of man’s creative powers – which opens the possibility of “leaping from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom” (Engels) in which the “spiritual wealth will be the measure of the human wealth” (Marx) – Coubertin sees in controlling nature a possibility of accumulating the material wealth of the “elite”, as well as the basis for developing its domineering and oppressive power. The instrumental and exploitational relation to nature is the basis of Coubertin’s relation to the human body. It is not a harmonious part of nature which, as such, is to be respected, but is reduced to an object of manipulation and the means for realizing the dominant interests. In antiquity the cult of a harmoniously developed body is at the same time the cult of nature (cosmic order), while in Coubertin it is the cult of the muscular body, which is a symbolic expression of the developing power of capitalism that appears in the form of “progress” – and becomes analogous to the divine power. It follows a logic which in the quantity of the acquired things sees the basis of man’s self estimation and the basis of social power. The instrumentalization of natural laws, in the form of science and technique, for the purpose of exploiting nature, becomes the instrumentalization of man and of his body for the purpose of realizing “progress”. The ancient relation to the body is the paradigm of the relation to nature. Even in antiquity “nature transcended in man its pure ‘naturalness'”. (73) Interpreting Plutarch’s view on ancient pedagogy, Jäger concludes: “Physical exercise and the training of animals prove that fysis can become noble”. (74) This nobility induces man to a certain behavior, and it is achieved by establishing control over his instinctive nature. Upbringing is reduced to molding man into the model of the citizen that suits the nature of the ruling order. Coubertin’s conception of man’s “perfectioning” deals with the idea of making human nature noble. He uses the term “noble” in the same sense in which the bourgeois pedagogy calls boxing a “noble skill”. It is the form of “humanizing” and aestheticizing the killing skills as the symbols of the ruling social power.

The ancient techne does not represent the natural laws controlled by man, but a manifest form of the divine will that symbolizes the active power of the cosmos. By way of techne man does not become free of his dependence of nature and does not control it, but only confirms its hopeless submission to the divine forces. In that sense, techne does not have a productivistic and liberating, but a religious and restricting character. Coubertin does not rely on the ancient techne, but on the modern technique, particularly on its tendency to become a means for exploiting nature and submitting man. This becomes the basis of Coubertin’s relation to man’s body, as his direct nature, and to the sports technique. Coubertin does not insist on the development of man’s skills and his creative powers, but on the development of his combatant character and aggressive muscularity, as well as on the cult of “intensive physical exercise”, which systematically cripples the body and creates a sado-masochistic character. In his “utilitarian pedagogy” there is no place for the principle of measure and optimal effort, which involves specific physical features, health and man’s personal integrity. Instead of a creative body and spirit, what is created are an “iron body” and a murderous spirit, the main characteristics of the “master race”, and only the skill that enables the development of the combatant spirit of the bourgeois, as well as the technique of killing involving the use of arms, are acceptable. Coubertin does not have in mind the technique that appears in the form of mechanical devices, which embody the natural forces controlled by man by way of reason, but an instrumentalized body that acquires a murderous power. The murderous character (readiness to kill) and the murderous skill (ability to kill) make up the murderous power that represents the main characteristic of the “will to power” of the bourgeois. They are interrelated: the development of the murderous character involves the development of the murderous skill and vice versa. The murderous power and the murderous character are not mediated by reason; what appears is a dehumanized and instrumentalized knowledge, as well as the mimetic impulses that should fill in the erotical and spiritual emptiness and contribute to a complete identification of the bourgeois with the murderous technique. Coubertin’s idea of horseback boxing represents the culmination of his view of the “unity” of nature, man and (combatant) skill. Nature and the body become the technical means for achieving inhuman effects.

In antiquity man is in unity with his physical skill: there does not exist a special technical sphere that appears as a mediator in man’s relation to nature and to himself, as is the case in the Modern Age. In that context there is no technical rationality or the progressistic principle of performance. Hence in antiquity, aesthetics, which tends to achieve complete harmony with the cosmos, is the highest challenge. Spiritual unity with the cosmos is achieved through physical harmony: the relation to the body is mediated by the picture of a geometrically constructed cosmos. Coubertin’s positive man also fits in the capitalist cosmos via the body and physical appearance – mens fervida in corpore lacertoso – which corresponds to the dynamic and progressistic spirit of capitalism. Coubertin, like the Nazis, does not insist on the body that corresponds to the animal (beast), but on a “steel body” corresponding to a “steel will”. The body is a symbolic expression of “overcoming” man’s “lazy animal nature”, and at the same time the symbol of the indestructible expansionist power of the ruling order.

In modern society, the relation to the body is mediated by the capitalist cosmos (industrial mimesis, the principle of rationality and efficiency), which appears in the form of technical sphere, alienated from and dominant over man, and which is a direct mimetic impulse and an omnipresent logic of living. It is via this sphere that the capital rules man and nature. Just as in antiquity man was the slave of the dominant order through the sphere of the Olympic gods, so in capitalism he became the slave of the order by means of science and technique. In antiquity, natural phenomena are a direct mimetic impulse and the expression of “spontaneity”. Coubertin’s Olympism relies on Descartes’ mechanicistic philosophy of the body and finds a mimetic impulse in the industrial and militaristic movements. Instead of a natural movement and a natural body, dominates the mechanics of movement, while the body becomes the cage of technical rationality. Most importantly, Coubertin’s Olympism becomes the ruling of a dehumanized and denaturalized reason in people’s heads. The highest “aesthetical” challenge becomes an efficient body which corresponds to a highly specialized machine. Reducing the body to a machine, and movements to the mechanics of movement, involves a technicized reason, a suppressed and crippled Eros, as well as man’s crippled emotional and spiritual being.

In antiquity, natural laws (phenomena) are politically instrumentalized through the Olympic gods; in Coubertin, there is established a political instrumentalization of science and technique via Olympism. Instead of deifying nature (natural production and natural forces), what is deified, through the progressistic principle citius, altius, fortius, is technique, which in the hands of the capital becomes a “mystical” means for enslaving man. It is one more contradiction in Coubertin’s Olympism that “relies” on antiquity. “Technical civilization”, conditioned by the destructive nature of monopolistic capitalism, becomes spiritus movens of modern Olympism. That is why Coubertin insists on the principle citius, altius, fortius, which does not exist in ancient Greece, and departs from Comte’s positivism and Le Play’s “respect for facts” – which is opposed to the metaphysical character of the ancient Olympic Games. Coubertin tries to transcend man’s original naturalness, the one he has as a “lazy animal”, by developing in him, through sport and physical drill, a need for a greater effort – meaning a ruthless character. “The need of the soul to torture the body in order to make it more submisssive” becomes an excuse for dealing with Eros and creating a masochistic character. Control of the body and its instrumentalization correspond to the relation to nature. Coubertin’s Olympic doctrine reflects the contours of a new anthropological model that corresponds to the ecocidal spirit of capitalism and traces the path from a “competitive” to a (self)destructive man.

Ancient cosmogony is dominated by a statically geometrical approach to space. The cosmos is divided in spheres each of which has its distinctive features, purpose and a symbolic value. To such a construction of cosmos corresponds the construction of ancient society, which is most clearly seen in Plato. Already in antiquity special places for gymnastics and contests are built (gymnasion, palaestra, stadion, hippodromos) – which acquire the status of cult venues, peculiar temples where, through physical exercises, they strove to come in harmony with the cosmic order and arise erotic enthusiasm in the gods. Since man is “God’s toy”, the athletic fields become the divine fields where the gods should first be fed by the gifts, and then given a chance to amuse themselves by playing with human destinies. The space of the world is bounded by the divine cosmos and represents its symbolical earthly manifestation. The physical movement in antiquity is the expression of the dramatics of living that has a tragic character since man is constantly faced with the gods’ self-willedness: life is the gods’ stage, and people are their “toys”. The course of human life and society corresponds to the “movement” of Zeno’s arrow: it is always in the same point. Icarus’ fate shows where the flight to freedom leads. To experience one’s cosmic being by moving through space, to soar to the gods and face one’s tragic fate – that is the highest scope of the man of antiquity. For Coubertin, the cosmos does not have a geometric nature: man is not in a given and statical space, but in a dynamic space whose nature is conditioned by the progressistic and expansionistic spirit of capitalism. Unlike the closed ancient cosmos, the capitalist cosmos is open and has an expansive character. It is a unique spherical structure, and the spirit of capitalism is the center of the pulsating power that spreads in all directions. Coubertin’s Icarus does not have by his side the wise Daedalus, nor does he strive to soar to the source of light that symbolizes man’s endeavour to overcome the horizons of the existing and reach those of the new worlds. He is reduced to a vulture that constantly looks for its prey guided by murderous determination and insatiable greediness. Nor does Coubertin have any sympathy for romanticism developed in Germany after the French Revolution, as its spiritual reflex. He deals with Klopstock’s “wings” on the legs of man who strives to get free from the bonds of feudal society, and, guided by imagination and the faith in his human powers, flies to new spaces, where he will attain his true humanity.

As far as time is concerned, in antiquity it was not conceived as a movement forward: the race was not relevant as the speed of movement through space and as its “conquering”, and in that sense as the development of the human powers, but as a fight for victory and “honour”. In antiquity, time was not measured to determine changes; it was the confirmation of perpetuity of this world (but not of eternity). The same applies to the modern Olympic Games, but they, in contrast to the existential pessimism of antiquity, are based on a progressistic optimism. For the Greeks, the passage of time means that they are further and further away from their life source, which is the chief (mythological) spiritual refuge. The unchangeable form in which the Olympic Games appear is one of the ways to defend the “old” through a ritual repetition of the original Olympic liturgy. The strict form becomes a symbolic return to the divine source of life and serves to infuse into the Hellenic race the original life (cosmic) force – which is renovated at the Olympic Games. It is similar in Coubertin: the (idealized) “past” is the source of “real” life under a mythological mask and becomes the means for building the cult of the present life. “The immortal spirit of antiquity” becomes a superhuman (suprarhistorical) force that returns man to the original ancient life spring.

It was at the so called “Founding Congress” of the Olympic Games in June 1894, that Coubertin stated the view that expresses his mythological and propagandist attitude to ancient “sport”: “The Greek heritage is so vast, Gentlemen, that all those who in the modern world have conceived physical exercise under one of its multiple aspects have been able legitimately to refer to Greece, which contained them all.” (43) Coubertin here applies his already proved method: he creates the impression that Hellenic physical culture was the source of modern physical culture and sport, in order to reduce the ancient physical culture to “his” physical culture and sport and thus give them the legitimacy of being “cultural” and “eternal”. At the same time, Coubertin does not mention that Hellenic physical culture was socially conditioned, since in that case it is no longer “suprahistorical” (mythological) and becomes a concrete historical phenomenon inseparably connected with the society in which it appeared and within which it can be comprehended in the right way. In that context, Coubertin “overlooks” the fact that way back in antiquity the difference between a stadium (hippodrome) and a gymnasium agon was established, which (only conditionally) corresponds to the present distinction between sport and physical culture, and the idea of a true physical culture was created, which opened space for establishing a critical detachment to the Olympic Games and the Olympic contestants.

The ancient world does not know of the progressistic principle citius, altius, fortius – on which the modern Olympic Games are based. In antiquity, there did not exist the principle of performance, or the criteria for its measurement and comparison. Unlike the ancient “sport”, in modern sport “the result which can be quantified” became the “criterion for the acceptance (Anerkennung) of social systems” (Prokop), which is the consequence of the connection between governing and industrialization, dominated not by the demands for freedom and justice, but by the demands for satisfying privatized needs by means of technically efficient bureaucratic organization.” Sport is a “symbolic manifestation of this legitimacy by way of the mind (Vernunft), whose determination is reduced for the optimal adjustment of the means to the ends.” (44) At the ancient Olympic Games, the basic purpose of “competing” was not to achieve better results (records), but victory. Instead in the form of numbers, the history of the ancient Olympic Games appears as a list of winners – which, in the fifth century B.C, was put together by Hippies of Ellis, and complemented and systematized by Aristotle. Originally, the Olympic Games were dominated by the morality of the tribal aristocracy: the contests lasted until the surrender or death. Everything that led to victory, except hurting the “soft parts of the body” (eyes, genitals), was allowed, including the hitting of the opponent while he was on the ground, as well as special “clutches” for breaking fingers, underarms and shins, wrists and neck. To kill the opponent was a legitimate way of winning. (45)

The idea of personal achievement, without which (modern) sport cannot be imagined, does not exist in ancient society. Victory is not the expression of the human powers and thus a human achievement: it is the expression of the divine will. Miloš Đurić refers to that: “The glory of Dories, the youngest Diagora’s son, who was three times the winner at Olympia, seven times at Eastham and six times at the Nemean games, was so great that during the Peloponnesian war the Athenians released him as a prisoner of war without offending him, since in his victories they saw a divine providence.” (46) The same goes for physical qualities, strength and speed: they are not the qualities of man, but the divine gift. There do not exist any free will, personal initiative, personal achievement and personal responsibility: man is “Gods’ toy”. The purpose of fighting is not to develop the human powers, but to earn “honour” by winning the divine mercy and thus insure victory and “immortality”. In his Olympic poems (epinike) Pindar does not praise the winners as humans, but as gods’ electees and the objects of divine mercy. (47) Coubertin’s and ancient concepts share the view that the purpose of a sports competition is not, ultimately, to develop man’s individual powers, but the tyrannical power of the “master race”.

In ancient society man is not an emancipated individual and thus a constitutive factor of (civil) society, he is the member of a polis and thus zoon politikon (Aristotle). Accordingly, at the Olympic Games, he does not fight as an individual but as a representative of the polis. At the same time, the Olympic Games are a form of racial integration of the Hellenes, which means that “the principle of equality”, on which modern sport is based, is alien to them. In the Greek agon, individual or personal achievements are not as important as the race, which appears under the aristocratic evaluative aureole (aristocratic arete as the foundation of the ancient fair-play). It is the agon that seeks to create the master, namely, to educate the Hellenes as a master race. To strive to be better than one’s compatriots involves being above the “barbarous peoples”. In antiquity agon is the highest form of man’s cultural manifestation and thus the indicator of his divine nature, while in Coubertin Olympism deals with the cultural heritage of mankind and eliminates all civilizatory barriers to man’s (bourgeois) “animal nature”. Coubertin abolishes the modern citizen and rejects the view according to which man is a zoon politikon. The main integrative force of society is not the will of the citizen, based on his inalienable “human rights”, it is the tyrannical power of the ruling class, based on the principle “might is right”; the foundation and ideal of social structuring is not a political, but an animal community. “Sports republic”, which Coubertin offers to those deprived of their humane and civil rights, is not the prototype of a politically organized society which should be sought for, it is the means of the parasitic classes with which the oppressed should be “taught” how to obediently accept the order ruled by the stronger. In Coubertin, we find no universal good: the class interest is above the interest of society. As far as the Olympic Games are concerned, man appears at them not as an emancipated individual, but as the toy of the ruling Social Darwinist and progressistic spirit which, by means of a racial (national), class and gender collectivity, abolishes the individual and from man, in the form of a “sportsman”, creates a fanaticized crusader: the hoisting of the flag symbolizes the victory of the ruling order and the defeat of the human.

The ancient Olympic Games have a cult character and represent the highest religious ritual. Comparing the moral character of the modern with that of the ancient “sportsman”, Coubertin says: “Moral qualification existed in antiquity in connection with religious requirements. We believe that it will impose itself again in our time. With the Olympiads becoming ever more solemn, a movement will grow to pay respect to them (if one may use this expression), by (morally, not.P.d.C.) purifying the participants and by creating a genuine elite worthy of so exceptional an occasion.” (48) The ancient religio athletae involves moral pureness. “The gods’ electee” was only that athlete who had never been convicted and had never offended the gods. On the Olympic playgrounds competitors appear as fanatical worshipers of Zeus and as the members of the same race, class and sex. Their mutual relations are reduced to a ritual expression of their respect for each other as the representatives of the highest values of the established world and the champions of those values. “Friendship” between fighters was mediated through their allotted roles, which they were supposed to play consistently so as not to question the seriousness and superhuman character of the values they represented.  The winner is an idealized incarnation of the divine will: the celebration of the winners becomes the celebration of the gods. The values attributed to the winner do not apply to man, but only to a winner, which means to the one who was elected by the gods. Everything that is connected with him, and above all his family, must be appropriately valued, according to the greatness of the divine decision – which is clearly shown in Pindar’s Olympic poems. The winner is a symbolic represen- tative and incarnation of the aristocratic (ruling) arete, which is not based on the love of freedom and people, but on the love of power and ambition. The victory is not the proof of the human powers, but the form in which man expresses his complete and hopeless submission to the traditional social structures and values. By winning, man produces the ruling relations and thus the bonds with which he chains himself to the existing world. By killing the “opponent”, which is a constituent part of both the ancient and modern Olympic Games, man symbolically kills his human dignity and expresses his complete worthlessness in relation to the ruling order that appears in the form of an all-mighty Olympic oligarchy. It is no accident that the critique of the Olympic Games and the Olympic winners comes at the time of the rise of ancient democracy.

Capitalist society removed the divine (normative) firmament that conditioned the religious (spiritual) nature of the ancient agon, which had a restrictive rather than an expansionist character. “Religious demands” that Coubertin, departing from antiquity, poses to the modern athlete, are actually meant to deal with the ancient religio athletae, which is the expression of the highest religious (philosophical) principle gnothi seauton. Coubertin insists on a strict ritual form of the Olympic Games in order to arouse a “religious feeling” similar to that in antiquity. At the same time, he “forgets” that he cannot do it without the gods, who symbolize the normative firmament as an indisputable starting point for determining the behavior of people and the criterion for distinguishing between good and bad, and without the ancient world, which is totally pervaded with religion, and the ancient man, who is fatally submitted to the divine will. In order to arouse the “feeling of sublimity”, (49) Coubertin needs a value that transcends the existing world and that can take man “out” of it. Coubertin’s religio athletae is reduced to a means for fanaticizing man, for killing his humane dignity and his (critical) conscious and for his complete submission to the ruling order. What connects the ancient and modern Olympic Games is their belligerent spirit: they are a peculiar war tournament at which the contestants do not fight with arms, but with their bodies, and are thus a combat with the pacifistic mind and a preparation for war. Hence ruthless “rivalry”, which involves readiness to kill the “opponent”, represents the main feature of sports “friendship”.

According to Miloš Đurić, the “agonal activity, in addition to the myth and cult, was the chief element of the Hellenic spiritual existence and the central feature in the upbringing of the Hellenic people and all the forms of its spiritual expression”. (50) Ancient Olympism is a comprehensive religious world view and the corresponding way of life, while the Olympic Games are but one of the chief ritual forms of the incarnation of that spirit, namely, a religious rite sacred to the god of war and the supreme Olympic god Zeus. Ancient Olympism thus represents the crown of the ancient agon. The Olympic Games are the culmination of the activist integration of the Hellenic world – spiritual, combatant, erotical… Like other similar manifestations, they are a peculiar form of participation in public affairs, which was obligatory. Unlike the Roman parasitic plebs, the ancient demos is not composed of “masses”. From it follows a crucial distinction between the old Greek Olympic Games and Roman gladiatorial games: the former are a form of activist integration of the Hellenes in their attempt to preserve the order, while the latter are the form of making the “masses” passive. Coubertin’s conception contains both of these principles: sport is a means for developing a combatant character of the bourgeois and a means for pacifying (depolitizing) the workers.

In ancient society there existed two kinds of agon: the aristocratic, and the civil. Speaking of the aristocratic agon, Miloš Đurić says: “The real aim of competing was victory, and it was considered to be the climax of this worldly happiness, because it guaranteed the winner what was basically the aim of every Helen: to be admired in life and celebrated after death. For some time the agonal glory was almost the only glory in the Hellenes, and was regarded as the greatest happiness in the world (…) So, the aim of the contests were not material rewards, but to satisfy one’s ambition, to strive for excellence and virtue, and this is what Homer expressed through the mouth of the Likes hero Hipolah, who advised his son Glaucon during his preparations for Troy: always be the best and excellent among others (Iliad VI 208, XI 784). This line concisely and precisely expresses the educational purpose of the tribal aristocracy.” (51) Olympic agonistics in its original sense belongs to a “heroic view of life”. (52) Seen in a broader social context, Olympic agonistics has a multifold nature and involves: competition between the members of the aristocracy for primacy (“honour”); the fight for preserving the indisputable power of the aristocracy over demos; the fight for the spiritual integration of the Hellenes as the “master race” in relation to the “barbarians” and preservation of the slave-owning order, as well as the fight for domination between polises and the fight for preserving the patriarchal order.

One of the main characteristics of Hellenic society is the social status acquired by birth. The aristocratic agon is not a fight for acquiring but for confirming the social status and thus is the way of glorifying the order that insures the privileges acquired by birth. “Honour” is the privilege of noblemen and thus the ticket for the world of the Olympic gods, and the Olympic contests are a merciless struggle for preserving the aristocratic status after death, with which they will avoid Hades and the fate of ordinary people. The Olympic contestants are not friends, but mortal enemies struggling for a place in eternity. Instead of the polis and the spiritual firmament made up of the Olympic gods being the foundation of human self-determination and the mediator in the establishment of interhuman relations, in modern Olympism the animal world and the principle of natural selection are the foundations of human “self-conscious” and the mediators in establishing “interhuman” relations: Coubertin’s agon has a Social Darwinist character. The bourgeois does not pursue “honour” which should insure him eternity in the other world, but victory with which he will eliminate his rivals in the life “match”. “The stronger survive, the weaker are eliminated.” (Coubertin) – That is the essence of the modern Olympic epistle which corresponds to the ruling spirit of monopolistic capitalism expressed in the principle: “Destroy the competition!” Since for Coubertin natural selection is the bearer of “progress”, which is the fatal power to which man is hopelessly submitted, it is quite understandable why Coubertin speaks of war with such enthusiasm: he sees in it the highest and the most direct form of the law of natural selection. In antiquity, the form of the individual struggle for acquiring a place on Olympus conceals the struggle of the ruling class to preserve its privileges; in modern society, in the disguise of sports competitions there goes on the struggle of the parasitic classes against the emancipatory heritage of mankind and against man as a universal creative being of freedom. In that context, Coubertin deals with the competition that does not involve elimination and domination of man over man, particularly with the competition that involves the development of man’s creative powers and opens a possibility of overcoming the existing and creating a new world.

Seeking to make from ancient society the ideal of a positive world that modern society should strive for, Coubertin depicts antiquity as a conflictless society without dynamics of development, particularly not the one that is conditioned by the clash between social classes and groups, or by the conflict between the new and the old. However, the dominant ancient agon did not have a dialectic character: a conflict does not result in overcoming the existing world and creating a novum. It is not the relation between “old” and “new”, but the elimination of one of them (the former) by means of the other, similarly to the “substitution” of patriarchate for matriarchate. In antiquity, the notion of the “old” does not acquire its meaning relative to the “new”: it is conceived as a source of life which, covered with a mythological veil, acquires the character of a cult. In that sense, “old” is the symbol of stability as opposed to an uncertain future. In Coubertin, we have an absolutized progressistic logic which, on the basis of Social Darwinist laws, becomes a fateful power alienated from man: he chained “progress” by means of quantification and thus destroyed the possibility of a novum. Obsessed by the desire to preserve the class order, Coubertin failed to recognize the existential risk of the rule of the absolutized principle of competition and performance.

Coubertin overlooks the fact that even in antiquity there existed a conflict between aristocratic and civil models of upbringing (education), which occurred in the form of the struggle between a “masculine ideal” of the tribal aristocracy and a “philosophical man”: “Sport or spirit, in this either-or lies the striking force of attack” – says Jäger.(53) Thus Xenophanes “is not capable, like Pindar, to see in every Olympic victory, whether it be wrestling or boxing, running or chariot racing, the revelation of the winner’s divine arete. ‘He wins a place of honour in the sight of all the games, his food at the public cost from the State, and a gift to be an heirloom for him – what if he conquer in the chariot-race – he will not deserve all this for his portion so much as I do. Far better is our art then the strength of men and of horses! These are not but thoughtless judgments, nor is it fitting to set strength before goodly art. Even if these arise a mighty boxer among a people, or one great in the pentathlon or at wrestling, or one excelling in swiftness of foot … the city would be none the better governed for that. It is but a little joy a city gets of it if a man conquers at the games by Pisa’s banks; it is not this that makes fat the store-houses of the city’.” (54) This insisting on “polis and its happiness as the measure of all values” is also present in Tirteus. In his lines “the spirit of the political ethics” rose against the “old ideal of chivalry “. (55) “Later, in the name of polis, justice was glorified as the cardinal virtue, when the legal state replaced the old one. Now in the name of polis Xenophanes proclaims his new form of arete, a spiritual upbringing (…). It transcends all previous ideals. The power of the spirit in the state creates the law and the rules, a good order and well-being. Xenophanes consciously took Tirteus’ elegy as a model and in its form, so suitable for his purpose, inspired a new content of his thought. With this stage the development of the political notion of arete reached its goal: courage, prudence and justice, and finally wisdom – these are the qualities that even for Plato were the sum of the civil arete. In Xenophanes’ elegy the new ‘spiritual virtue’ of this sofia, which was to play such an important role in philosophical virtue, claims its right for the first time. Philosophy revealed its importance for man, i.e. for polis. A step from pure contemplation of truth to a claim to critique and to guiding human life was made.” (56) Euripides also fights against the traditional overestimation of the athletes among the Greeks with the weapons he takes over from Xenophanes, and Plato’s critique of the use of Homeric myths in upbringing follows the same critical line. (57) Coubertin seeks to conceal that way back in antiquity the aristocratic values were dethroned, the same values from which he sought to make an indisputable suprahistorical ideal of man that appears in the form of the slave-owning, aristocratic and bourgeois “master class”. Coubertin uses this interpretation of antiquity to deal with the bourgeois ideal of man that in the French Revolution acquired a universal character and was normatively shaped in the inalienable droits de l’homme and droits de citoyen. Riding on the wings of a paganized and dehumanized Christianity, Coubertin arrived from antiquity in the Modern Age. Nothing important happened, or to put it in his words, “only the form changed, while the essence remained the same”. (58) Man loses his independence, acquired in the Modern Age, and becomes again the toy of (new) gods. In comparison with antiquity, Coubertin comes closest to the Spartan educational model, which was reduced to a military training. Aristotle’s view of Spartan upbringing as a “one-sided training for war” expresses the essence of Coubertin’s “utilitarian pedagogy” intended for the bourgeois youth. Unlike Sparta, dominated by a militaristically established collectivism which involved a high degree of solidarity and readiness to make sacrifices for the common good, Coubertin insists on the domination of the principle of natural selection, which involves greediness and the “natural right” of the stronger to oppress the weaker.

Guided by a Social Darwinist evolutionism coupled with a Jesuit and petty-bourgeois spirit, Coubertin “overcame” the ancient aristocratic and civil models of education by rejecting their emancipatory essence. Coubertin deals with the cultural heritage of the ancient paideia and establishes a “relation” with antiquity on the level of a spiritless and mindless conquering (oppressive) activism. Such an attitude to antiquity reflects his endeavour to build a “utilitarian pedagogy” dominated by an upbringing without education, with which he will create a new “master race”, which, in its endeavour to conquer the world, is not stopped by universal human considerations. This is the basis of Coubertin’s Procrustean relation not only to antiquity and Christianity, but also to Thomas Arnold and modern pedagogical thought. Coubertin realized that the normative firmament of the ancient paideia, with its demand that man obediently submit to the divine powers that transcend the existing world, opens a possibility of establishing the limits to the self-willedness of the ruling “elite”, which he seeks to avoid at all costs. It is no accident that in the “heroic age” of ancient Greece, with a complete domination of the tribal aristocracy over demos, Coubertin found the source of his Olympism. The conquering (oppressive) character of the slave-owning and racist order of antiquity is the “natural” foundation of modern Olympism as the ideology of monopolistic capitalism. In it, Coubertin, the aristocrat, found the model for a “humanist” foundation of Olympism, which will be confirmed in the medieval “chivalry” codex. The aim of upbringing is not the development of a libertarian and creative personality, but the acquiring of an appropriate class status. Instead of a love of man and freedom – which in the modern era appears in the form of the ideals of freedom, equality and brotherhood – ambition and love of power become the pivots of his elitist ideology. Hence the submission of the “lower races”, ruthless plundering of the working people and a readiness to sacrifice life to defend the order (duel as a “defense of honor”, war as a “play”), represent the most important characteristics of the bourgeois arete. “The chivalrous ideals”, to which Coubertin refers, are but a mask for a lustful and immoral bourgeois.

In spite of referring to the tribal aristocracy in his creation of the model of “his” man, Coubertin does not depart from a statical aristocratic world in which everything is submitted to strict conventional, ethical and aesthetical canons, but from a dynamic bourgeois world that strives for expansion. He tries to make from Olympism a new “dynamic religion” (Brundage) that suits the spirit of a new era and that will not make constraints, but will remove the obstacles that can hinder the development of capitalism. Modern Olympism is the ideology of the bourgeois who hurries to plunder the world riding on the wave of the industrial revolution and capitalist expansion and destroying all normative (customary, moral, legal, religious) boundaries on his way. New conquests give him a new power which produces an ever bigger hunger for acquisition – and so on, ad infinitum. Trying to reach the modern Olympic heights, Coubertin is not guided by the divine models nor by the productivity power of capitalism, particularly not by man’s libertarian aspirations and creative powers, but by the most primitive petty-bourgeois motives: “the will to power” based on greediness is the basic driving force in the “development” of mankind. In its original form, the modern Olympic idea is intended to militarize the European bourgeoisie by way of sport for the sake of a successful colonial expansion: colonial exploits without a good sports preparation represent, according to Coubertin, “dangerous thoughtlessness”. The Olympic Games, as a peculiar knight tournament with the best representatives of the “civilized nations”, is the highest form of the spiritual integration of the new “master race” in its attempt to conquer the world.

Unlike Homer’s heroes, Coubertin’s bourgeois is deprived of Eros, spontaneity, imagination… He is focused only on one “social duty”: to defend, at all costs, the established order and enable its expansion. The rigidity of his positive man is conditioned by the nature of the order he struggles for, which eliminated quality and thus the human individuality and individual differences. What is dominant are unity and quantity, which means a positive one-mindedness and a combat with the creative personality. In Coubertin, there is no spontaneity and unpredictability in behavior, which are the most important features of the characters from antiquity. The voluntarism of Coubertin’s heroes has a utilitarian character and is strictly rational: they are guided by the maxim “to know in order to predict, to predict in order to act”. At the same time, Coubertin abolishes gods and proclaims the rich “elite” the bearers of the ruling power. For Coubertin, man is not “worthless” in relation to the gods, but acquires his “worthiness” as an extended hand of the laws of evolution, which appear in the form of the expansionist spirit of capitalism. In that context, Coubertin gives primary importance to “great people”, who are the bearers of “progress” and the symbolic incarnation of the “will to power”, only a few of whom can show off their “muscular body” – which is by no means the case with the “father” of modern Olympic Games, who was a convincing proof that the theory he so fervently advocated was wrong. In Coubertin, man and his life are not the objects of the cosmic power, whose active force is incarnated in the divine will, but are the incarnation and the bearers of the spirit of capitalism, which is the expression of the natural laws in a direct form. Coubertin does not regard society (and man) as a biological organism, but as the embodiment of imperishable natural laws. Man’s survival is insured through an immortal order which involves the eternal cycle of births and deaths. It is obvious that Coubertin draws a distinction between death (of the body) and perishing. The death of man becomes the condition of immortality of the established world (order), which means the eternal return of the cosmic cycle in which man appears as a “disposable material” of progress: man is mortal – order is eternal. Hence the readiness to die becomes the basic form of expressing one’s submission to order and thus the most important characteristic of both the aristocratic and the bourgeois arete.

The winner at the ancient Olympic Games is not determined by his strength, speed, and prowess, but by his being elected by the gods, just like the speed and direction of an arrow or lance on a battlefield are not determined by the strength and skill of the warrior, but by the self-willedness of the omnipotent Olympic oligarchy. Man is ”God’s toy” claims Plato, which means that the world is God’s playground. In Coubertin, there is no the absolute which transcends the existing world, since he follows a progressistic logic, according to which the future is open, and “natural” laws, which involve a constant struggle for a place under the sun. Coubertin insists on personal initiative, but it is reduced to a dehumanized and denaturalized productivity activism, while other people, reduced to “rivals”, serve as the means for developing individual powers. In any case, Coubertin’s models are not the heroes of antiquity, like Hector, who is guided by nobility: Coubertin’s “philosophy of the will” becomes the philosophy of an unrestrained greediness and self-willedness of the strong.

In antiquity, the Olympic contests, as well as physical exercises, reflected the tragedy of human existence. The ancient heroes are tragic characters who in their highest flight experience their tragic end. In Coubertin’s gnothi seauton there is no hopeless confrontation of man with his destiny; man is “reconciled” to it by never becoming conscious of his tragical position in the existing world: tragedy is removed from Coubertin’s progressistic and optimistic cosmos. Coubertin’s positive man does not strive for something higher – something that transcends the existing world – he strives for something bigger by destroying all the barriers on his way. His does not look up in the sky, but at the parts of the world he wants to conquer and plunder. He is not responsible to the gods, who are symbolized by a statical and closed world in which man is a tragic follower of his destiny given to him by their will, but before unstoppable “progress”. Coubertin’s cosmos does not have outer boundaries and it is up to the bourgeois to develop his conquering and oppressive powers and thus expand his horizons. Ancient Olympism is, in its original sense, a way of proving man’s total and hopeless submission to the deities that rule the world, and that means the mortality and worthlessness of man in relation to the immortality and omnipotence of gods. Speaking of Sophocles’s view of tragedy, Mihailo Đurić stresses “man’s tragic self cognition, which Delphian gnothi seauton extends to the knowledge that the human power and earthly happiness with their worthles- sness resemble a shadow.” (59) Coubertin’s positive man is not confronted with his destiny hopelessly striving to wrench himself from its hands, but is fanatical- ly determined to build the ever higher ramparts around the world he lives in, which is for him the only possible space of life and “happiness”. Coubertin’s maxim mens fervida in corpore lacertoso expresses man’s unity with the existing world and at the same time symbolically incarnates the Social Darwinist and progressistic nature of capitalism. For him, human existence, whose bearer is the bourgeois, is not worthless, for it embodies the dominant spirit of the existing world. It can be seen from the physique of a sportsman: he is not fashioned according to a geometrical pattern, like the ancient athlete, nor is he deprived of the corporal, as a humble Christian, but bursts with (muscular) strength.

Coubertin’s doctrine deals with the aristocratic principle ordre et mesure. Immoderation in possessing and governing is the basic force of “progress”. “The passionate cry” (Coubertin) of the Olympic winner is the expression of the untamable expansionist power of the order – on which its existence is based. An explosive muscular strength and the will to proceed at all costs are the main features of the “new man”. The expansion of capitalism is the basis of Olympic optimism and of the idea of mankind’s “perfectioning”. Modern Olympism establishes unity of the bourgeois aspirations (greediness, immoderation) with the ruling expansionist and progressistic spirit of capitalism. It is a dynamic balance: the bourgeois becomes the bearer of the power that rules the capitalist cosmos, while his insatiable greediness is the driving force of “progress”. All that can remind him that he is a limited human being, that can frighten and tame him, has been eliminated, particularly the things that can arouse in him a sense of solidarity and tolerance. In Coubertin, man does not relate to himself via the relation to something higher than himself, because there is no value that transcends the existing world and that mediates between life and the ideal world which should be sought for. A complete integration of man into the existing world, without any hope of a better world – that is the highest challenge for Coubertin’s “utilitarian pedagogy”. In Coubertin, there is a “self-restraint” by way of sport and physical drill (the principle of “greater effort”), but it destroys man’s playing nature and reason and produces a loyal and usable citizen (subject). Coubertin, also, insists on a “self-restraint” of the bourgeoisie in terms of their duty to maintain the established order, as well as on a “self-restraint” of the oppressed in terms of their duty to work and obediently endure injustice.

Coubertin realized that the expansion of capitalism is the most important condition of its survival. The basic purpose of his eurhythmics is to establish the unity of the strivings of the ruling class with the dominant expansionist and progressistic spirit of capitalism (the absolutized principle of performance), unlike antiquity, where the divine firmament is a restraining principle which finds its expression in the maxim gnothi seauton, and yet “does not diminish the vital importance of tragedy” (60) and its “combatant attitude to life” as opposed to the “passive morality of mysticism”. (61) Since they are “God’s toy” and that nothing depends on their will, the ancient heroes act as if there were nothing they could lose. They do not fight to preserve the world, since it belongs to the gods and is doomed to perish. Man of antiquity was not in unity with himself since nothing belonged to him, including his “human properties”. In his poems Pindar gives thanks to Haritas, the guardians of art: “For all that is beautiful and lovable in people/ you should be thanked; /beauty, wisdom and nobility/ man regards as the gifts of Heavens”. (62) It holds good for strength, speed and other qualities that make up the ancient arete: they are not the qualities peculiar to man, but are the exclusive qualities and properties of gods, which they “bestow” on individuals at will, as special ornaments which indicate that they are the objects of the divine mercy. The same holds good for the winners at the Olympic Games: victory is the expression of the gods’ sympathy and shows man’s worthlessness and their greatness. As we have seen, Pindar does not extol the winners, but the divine will that privileged them to win. By writing odes to the winners and their noble ancestors he wants to show that they are by their origin close to the divine source of life and are worthy of the divine mercy. At the same time, the tragedy of the ancient heroes is caused by their hopeless endeavour to approach the gods by virtue of their “glorious deeds”, and thus avoid the humiliation that awaits them in Hades, in which their “shadow that travels to Hades and as sheer nothingness” (63) will abide among the shadows of the ordinary and despised mortals. The Homeric man stands between Olympus and Hades and he lives and understands his life in terms of those two spheres. Coubertin abolished both spheres and thereby abolished the ancient dialectics and dramatics of life. Coubertin’s bourgeois is not a tragic hero in a world doomed to perish; he is an optimistic (positive) hero, who appears as an incarnation of the ruling progressistic spirit of capitalism and is doomed to eternity. He takes over the task which in antiquity was the privilege of gods: to learn how to be the bearer of the indisputable power of the capitalist cosmos, but also to protect it from the enemies, who are becoming ever more numerous and dangerous. The increasingly realistic likelihood that the order in which the parasitic “elite” prevails over the working “masses” will fail, conditions a rigid attitude to the bourgeois: Coubertin’s hero is reduced to a fanatical fighter for the interests of the rich “elite”. Hence, unlike the ancient heroes who possess contradictory qualities of the human nature, Coubertin’s “uncontradictory” bourgeois appears as a symbolic incarnation of the “progressive spirit” of the rich “elite”, which must constantly confirm its “superiority” in order to justify the “natural” foundation of its dominance over the “lower races”, working “masses” and women. In antiquity, racial superiority is proved in a number of ways and appears in a variety of cultural forms. Unlike the Hellenes, who knew of only “one cosmos in which all the deeds and passions were reflected”, (64) Coubertin submits everything to the development of the bourgeois tyrannical power in which he sees the warring caste. That is why ancient Sparta most resembles Coubertin’s model of society, apart from the fact that, in Coubertin, the dominant spirit is not that of asceticism and solidarity, but that of insatiable greediness as the driving force of “progress”.

The ancient and modern Olympic agon are similar because they appear as a universal principle of life. What makes Coubertin most close to antiquity is the reduction of agon to a struggle between people for domination with an unconditional observance of the ruling order, which means that the struggle of the oppressed against the strong and for freedom, particularly the struggle for the abolishment of the oppressive order, is excluded. The fight against the gods, who symbolize an indisputable power of the plutocratic “elite” over the working “masses”, is the worst of crimes both for the ruling “elite” in ancient Greece and for Coubertin. The ancient Olympism was a spiritual firmament under which a cruel struggle between the Greek states was carried out, the struggle that was to cause the weakening and degeneration of the Hellenic world, and the Olympic Games ignited the war fire which devoured Hellenic civilization. The driving force of the so much praised “Hellenic genius” brought the Hellenic world to its decline. In his “Paideia” Jäger points to a “ruthless fight between the Greek cities”, as well as to a “meaningless self-destruction at the moment when their country and their civilization were under an ever bigger pressure from foreign and hostile peoples”. (65) A lack of belief in their own human powers and in the capability of finding a reasonable solution which could have prevented the destruction and enabled their survival, paved the way that led them to the abyss. If Coubertin had really been a pacifist, he would have recognized in the destiny of the Hellenic world a warning telling him where agon – motivated by the strivings for domination and exploitation and for which war is the “highest test of a male’s maturity” – could lead. For Coubertin, also, man is not the creator of his own history, but is hopelessly submitted to “destiny” (“progress”). A mythological conscious and irrationalism are the common traits of the ancient and Coubertin’s world views. That is why Coubertin put on the first place the combat with critical reason and the idea of freedom – the heritage of the French Revolution and classical German philosophy – for they open the possibility of creating, starting from the universal human interests, a reasonable alternative to the existing world.

Trying to build a positive man, Coubertin rejected the basic principles of the ancient paideia – which was the highest expression of the humanist heritage of Hellenic civilization and is one of the main sources of modern man’s self-conscious. The ancient paideia has a religious nature. The cosmos, which is ruled by the gods, and the myth about man’s divine nature, represent the basis of human self-recognition and the spiritual framework of the existing world that must not be overstepped even in thoughts. Hence a demand for “self-control” is the essence of the principle gnothi seauton, from which follow the general postulates of the ancient paideia: “nothing too much” (meden agan); “measure is best” (metron ariston); “keep to the limit” (peras epitelei); “bow to the divinity” (proskynei to theion); “control ambition” (thymou kratei). (20) Speaking of the philosophy of Aristotle, Mihailo Đurić says: “It is quite understandable that this demand for the development of self-conscious, this demand for conceiving one’s own existence by way of self-control, has a more profound religious sense. Within the religion of Apollo, the question of the relation to oneself was firmly linked to the question of the relation to the one higher than oneself.” (21) Coubertin’s Olympic doctrine represents the rejection of the religious foundation of the ancient paideia. His “utilitarian pedagogy” is the highest form in which the ideology of the expansionist and progressistic spirit of capitalism appears. In the principle of the ancient gnothi seauton Coubertin rightly sees the (normative) boundaries of the practice of the bourgeois, who is moved forward by an insatiable greed for acquiring wealth, and thus the boundaries of “progress”. “Conceiving one’s own existence by way of self-control” is the worst blasphemy for Coubertin’s positive bourgeois.

The conception of the cosmos as a harmonious, geometrically constructed whole in which a complete unity of parts with the whole is established, is the basis of the ancient conception of man’s place in the cosmos and of his being, to which corresponds a pedagogical model as the image of man from a cosmic perspective, which is thus the highest religious and life challenge. A spiritual and physical connection between man and cosmos is the basic assumption for bringing man into a complete harmony with the cosmos, i.e. for reaching his nature that reflects his worthlessness and gods’ omnipotency. To the ancient conception of the cosmos and the cosmic essence of man corresponds a holistic approach to man as a unique physical, ethical and aesthetical being, from which follows the principle of harmonious development of the human powers that represents one of the foundations of ancient eurhythmics (eurhythmos). At the same time, physical exercising becomes a peculiar divine service, and Coubertin himself refers to that claiming that the athlete of antiquity “by chiseling his body with exercise as a sculptor chisels a statue” – “was honoring the gods”.(22) The spirituality of the bodily movement is dominant and it derives from a “religious feeling” that pervades the entire life. Instead of insisting on a muscular body, as is the case in Coubertin, the highest challenge for a physical drill is a geometrically constructed proportion of the body that corresponds to the ideal of a close and finite world and represents the basis of racial self-recognition of the Hellenes. The ruling model of the physical and the spiritual, as well as the very principle of harmonious development of the physical and the spiritual, are derived from the dominant world view that arose from the very essence of Hellenic society and the strivings to preserve the established order: the ancient physical culture had a conservative character. The imperialist bourgeois is not an incarnation of the ancient cosmos dominated by the gods that symbolize the internal richness and conflicting character of the human nature, but represents the incarnation of the spirit of capitalism, which cripples man and reduces him to the properties that enable the expansion of capitalism. The body is in unity with a conquering and repressive character: man is “purified” from all the properties that can stop him from pushing forward and establishing a critical detachment to the present world and thus from creating the idea of a better world. Sport and physical drill become the means with which man pins himself down to the existing world.

To understand the ancient idea of the human being it is of primary importance to know that “the man whose image is revealed in the works of great Greeks is a political man. (…) The greatest works of the Hellenic world are the monuments of a uniquely magnificent state-creating ability, which is struggled for through all the stages of development, from the heroism of the Homeric epics to Plato’s authoritarian state of the philosopher-king, in which, on the field of philosophy, the individual and social community fight their last battle. Future humanism must essentially be oriented according to that basic fact in the character of the widespread Greek teaching, that the Greeks associated humanism and the idea of man with the property of man as a political being.” (23) Coubertin rejects Aristotle’s concept of humanitas in which man is separated from the animal by his ability to create a state (polis). (24) The starting point of his doctrine is not a divinely constructed cosmos, nor is it a polis governed by human laws, but society as an animal herd in which the place under the sun is insured by a constant and ruthless struggle for survival. Coubertin’s man (the bourgeois) is not a political being; he is a higher form of animal, an animal above all animals, which embodies the expansionist power of monopolistic capitalism. The look in his eyes, as in the Nazi “overman”, is the look of a “magnificent beast” (Hitler) ready to grab his victim at the first sign of its masters.

Humanism is, according to Jäger, even in ancient times regarded as the “determinant of the idea of human upbringing”. As for the New Age, “the concept of humanism rests on a conscious connection of our upbringing with classical antiquity. And that connection is, in turn, based on the fact that our idea of a ‘universal’ human upbringing derives precisely from ancient civilization”. (25) Trying to point out the specific features of the Greeks in relation to the Orient, Jäger concludes: “Their discovery of man is not the discovery of a subjective I, but the acquiring of conscious of the universal essential human laws. The spiritual principle of the Greeks is not individualism but “humanism”, if this term can consciously be used in its original ancient sense. Humanism comes from humanitas. That word acquired later, since the times of Var and Cicero, another, higher and stricter meaning, in addition to the older and more vulgar meaning of humanism, which is here excluded: it means to educate man for his true form, for a true human being. It is the true Greek paideia, the one that a Roman statesman took as his model. It does not start from the individual but from the idea. Above the man as the being of herd, as well as above the man as an apparently autonomous I, stands the man as an idea, and that is how the Greeks regarded him constantly as educators, but also as poets, artist and scholars. However, man as an idea means: man as a universal and binding image of a race. In the Greeks, stamping the individual by the form of the community, which we have understood as the essential part of upbringing, starts ever more consciously from that image of man and, in the ever-lasting struggle, eventually leads to such philosophical founding and deepening of the issue of upbringing that, in terms of principality and certainty of end, has never been achieved.” (26) Coubertin does not depart from an “autonomous I” nor from an evaluative model of man, but from the class features of the bourgeoisie and the workers acquired in the process of evolution: the bourgeois has the qualities of a beast, while the worker has the qualities of a ruminant – the structure of the animal world is the basis of the structure of society. Modern Olympism as the “cult of humanism” (of the present world) is not based on the faith in certain superhuman or universal values, but on the living in the present world which comes down to a constant struggle for domination and survival. It does not involve “the upbringing of man for his true form, for a true human being”, but seeks to destroy in man everything that gives him the possibility of creating the image of himself as man and acquire a human dignity. Coubertin rejects the “idea of human nature” that was first conceived by the sophists, (27) and thus the theory of upbringing which was to derive from that idea. According to Coubertin, man does not have a specific nature. He departs from nature, but associates the notion of fysis with the animal world, and not with man, as was the case with sophistry. Man’s “animal” nature does not give rules that should be observed, but contains constraints that are to be overcome. Man is indeed a “lazy animal”, and this suggests the limitation of man’s original (animal) character. The main task of Coubertin’s “utilitarian pedagogy” is not the cultivation of man’s animal nature, but its development by means of physical drill (the principle of “greater effort”) with which man’s instinctive nature is repressed and degenerated and a merciless tyrannical character is developed.

In the Hellenic world there appeared the first contours of a pedagogical model which in the Modern Age developed in the form of “physical culture”, and it, of course, has its true meaning only in the context of the totality of Hellenic culture, i.e. the concrete totality of Hellenic society. In ancient paideia upbringing and education form an inseparable whole. The starting point is the ideal of man according to which the correctness of human action is assessed – as a symbolic incarnation of the ruling social relations and values that are the source of ancient religion and the basis of racial self recognition of the Hellenes. Man as a being in which gods inspired their diverse divine powers and an endeavour to establish their harmonious interaction, is the source of universal pedagogical principles, which are the means for a character, spiritual, intellectual and physical building of man as a complete personality. That was the basis on which were developed both the aristocratic pedagogical model, which prevailed in the Hellenic “Middle Ages”, and the civil model of education, introduced by the sophists, which, with the appearance of demos on the political scene of polis, was to become the dominant form of upbringing and acquire its highest and most systematic form in the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. Speaking of the ancient paideia Coubertin says: “The muscles are made to do the work of a moral educator. It is the application to modern requirements of one of the most characteristic principles of Greek civilization: To make the muscles the chief factor in the work of moral education.” (28) Never in Hellas “were the muscles educators”, as Coubertin claims. That thesis is supposed to create the illusion of a non-normative character of the ancient paideia, and this should give a “Hellenistic” legitimacy to his “utilitarian pedagogy” – which insists on an upbringing without education. Even in the model of upbringing of the ancient tribal aristocracy, in spite of the physical power being the main feature of their arete, the observance of the given evaluative (religious) morality, as well as of the customs, represents the highest imperative. In short, a physical development involves a spiritual and a personal development, i.e. it becomes the way of educating man. In his analysis of the Hellenic culture Moses Hadas emphasizes the important distinction between paideia as “upbringing” (Bildung) and “training” as its counterpart. Homer’s heroes were aware that noblesse oblige and that they had to master a knightly bearing and knightly perfection which did not only involve being good in action (battle), but also with words. Hadas gives the example of the upbringing of Odyssey’s son Telemachus, who he seeks to turn into an “aristocrat who is aware of his responsibility”. In that sense, Homer’s work can be regarded as the “Bible of the Greeks”. (29) As for the civil upbringing, Plato’s view that “a physically fit body cannot in virtue of its excellence make the soul good and excellent while, on the other hand, an excellent spirit can help the body to become perfect”, (30) in a most concise form expresses the basis of the civil arete. Coubertin’s cult of humanism involves an upbringing (character building) without education, which clearly suggests that he rejects the humanist heritage of antiquity. In Coubertin, there does not exist a normative mediation between man and the world. The main means in a child’s upbringing are the “circumstances”: man is from his childhood plunged into the existing world ruled by a merciless struggle for survival. Not the development of man as a cultural being, but the development of a ruthless combatant character by the destruction of human self-conscious – that is the basic aim of Coubertin’s “utilitarian pedagogy”. Hence in the original Coubertin’s “utilitarian pedagogy” there is no place for gymnastics, while (“French”) boxing receives primary importance in the upbringing of the French youth. Coubertin constantly distorted the ancient spirituality in order to reach a man, like the Nazis, who is not “burdened” by the mind and the spirit – which can be obstacles to the establishment of a complete domination of the ruling order over man. “The immortal spirit of antiquity” does not represent a cultural bridge that connects modern and Hellenic societies, but the means for establishing a direct link between the conquering and tyrannical practice of the ancient tribal aristocracy and the imperialistically oriented bourgeoisie.

The principle of “beautiful and good” (kalokagathia) represented in Hellenic society the highest challenge both for the aristocratic and for the civil model of upbringing. Speaking of kalokagathia, Miloš Đurić says that it is a “specific Hellenic notion of the slave-owning class” which involves “physical beauty combined with moral health”. And he continues: “This notion shows that the Hellenes were neither ethically nor aesthetically one-sided: the beautiful and the good coincide in the highest instance, and they thus appear as a people which is in its aesthetics at the same time ethical, and in being ethical it is aesthetical”. (31) A kalokagathos was at the same time endowed with a well-built body, intelligence, education, spirituality, the sense of responsibility for the community, as well as an active participation in public life. (32) It is the Athenian model of upbringing in which the physical and the aesthetical intermingle with the intellectual and the moral. Criticizing the Lacedaemonians for their one-sided physical upbringing Aristotle concludes: “So, in the first place there should stand the noble heroism, and not savageness. For neither the wolf nor any other beast is capable of offering a more beautiful fight. That is something only a good man can do. Those who allow the boys to develop too much in that direction, neglecting the necessary education, create from them ordinary workers capable only of one civil duty, and they are thus, as we have said, worse then others.” (33) The ancient conception of the world and man’s position in it is a speculative and spiritual basis of the ancient relation to the human body. Not a mindless and spiritless agonal physical activism, as Coubertin would have it, but a physical culture – that is the basis of the ancient physical agonistics. The Athenian kalokagathos, the embodiment of the Athenian educational ideal, is totally opposed to Coubertin’s positive man, embodied in the greedy and muscular bourgeois.

As far as music is concerned, it had in the ancient paideia a significant role. Speaking of the ancient music, Jäger says that “the word and tone and, if they act with the word or tone or with both of them, rhythm and harmony are for the Greeks simply the forces that form the soul, since what is crucial in paideia is the active element, which in the formation of the soul becomes even more important than in the agon of physical abilities.” (34) In order to illustrate the importance that the Hellenes attached to music, Miloš Đurić relates the myth of Orpheus “who with the magic of sounds transforms the cosmic order, tames the beasts, moves trees and stones and, finally rescues his dear wife Eurydice from the claws of death. Given the fact that they penetrated so deep into the secrets of the art of music, it is no wonder that music, in the wider meaning of that word, marked the whole development of their spiritual life, and that the expression “the musical man” (…), in contrast to the ‘non-musical man’ (…) meant an educated man in general, and that it, in the narrower meaning of that word as a tone art, occupied the central position and, not only because of its aesthetical, but also because of its physical and ethical function, was connected with all the noble expressions of their internal life and exerted a strong moral and educational influence.” (35) Music in Coubertin’s “utilitarian pedagogy” does not only serve to “form the soul”, but also to contribute to the creation of a “cultural” decoration of the Olympic Games as a cult manifestation and create a “solemn” atmosphere which should arouse “religious excitement” in the spectators. As far as the formation of character is concerned, it is not achieved by mastering the artistic skill nor by developing the musical sense, but exclusively through a combatant bodily activism and physical drill which involves the repression and distortion of instincts, emotions, senses and spirit… and which tends to deal with everything that can weaken the ruthless character of the bourgeois and shatter his fanatical conscious. Coubertin rejects the Dionysian and Orphic, as well as the ancient poiesis. He, like Hitler, does not want to make “peaceful aestheticians”, but “new people” characterized by an “iron body” and the look of a “magnificent beast”. Coubertin wants to take over the political and reject the cultural heritage of the ancient aristocratic education.

The fact that ancient society was an erotic community par excellence dominated by a “homosexual Eros” (Foucault) is of primary importance, and we shall return to it later. It is the reason why taking care of one’s physical appearance and bodily movements was extremely important. Unlike Coubertin’s “muscular body”, antiquity is dominated by the ideal of a harmoniously developed body; instead of an “iron” stamina and explosive muscular strength, the highest challenge in antiquity was to acquire suppleness of the extremities, as well as softness and harmony of movements. Guided by “progress”, Coubertin rejects the ancient principle metron ariston, as well as the aristocratic principle ordre et mesure; he absolutizes the principle of “greater effort” and insists on the dualism of the body and the spirit, as well as on the building of the cult of a muscular body, which is a symbolic incarnation of the expansionist power of capitalism. He does not seek to “chisel the body” by physical exercise in order to bring man into a spiritual and physical harmony with the cosmos, as in ancient gymnasion and palaestra, but to create a combatant and spiritless character of the bourgeois, who is to conquer the world. Unlike antiquity, in which self-control as the basic condition of control over others involves the observance of natural needs, namely, bringing physical needs in harmony with natural needs, in Coubertin, self-control is reduced to a repression and distortion of natural needs. “The cult of physical exercises” comes down to torturing one’s own body and thus represses man’s erotic being and transforms the sexual energy into a conquering (repressive) activism. Coubertin’s relation to the body is mediated by a Christian (Jesuit) fanatism, which is clearly indicated in his concept of the pedagogy of “physical education” for 20^th century. (36)

In antiquity, physical health was the most important preoccupation of man and the most important aim of physical training. Speaking of the ranking of the highest values in the Hellenes, Karl Schefold states an “old song” from antiquity: “For a mortal, health is the most important thing/ then comes his physical built, /the third place goes to material wealth, acquired legally, and the fourth is youth enjoyed with friends.” (37) Coubertin rejects the principle of physical health, which he leaves to the “weaker”. He deals with the maxim mens sana in corpore sano and proclaims the principle mens fervida in corpore lacertoso the starting point of his “utilitarian pedagogy”. His relation to health illustrates the real character of Coubertin’s “naturalistic” conception. Instead of a healthy body, which is man’s direct nature and the most direct form of man’s existence as a natural being, Coubertin insists on a “combatant” and “strong” character, which is acquired through the principle of “greater effort” and is reduced to a ruthless combat with man’s natural being. Even Aristotle, speaking about children’s upbringing, warned about the fatal consequences of excessive physical exertions: “We have agreed, then, that gymnastics should be applied, and how it should be applied. Until the period of adolescence, only easy exercises should be done, a compulsive diet and efforts should be avoided lest the development be hindered. There is reliable evidence that it can easily happen: among the Olympic winners we can find only two or three who won both as young boys and as adults, due to the difficult exercises in their childhood which exhausted their strength.”(38) And he continues: “Namely, for good physical qualities the citizens should have, as well as for health and childbearing, the athletic built is not useful, nor is the one that requires an excessive care or is too weak, but such as is in between these two. The body should be built, but not with excessive efforts and not only in one direction as the body of the athletes, but for all the jobs that free people engage in. This should apply equally to both men and women.” (39) That already in Hellas physical culture was created in which the aspect of health, which became the foundation for a critique of the Olympic Games, was greatly important, can be seen from Hippocrates’ critique of boxing (as an Olympic discipline) because of its fatal effect on the mental health of boxers. Coubertin’s enthusiasm about boxing, as the most authentic expression of the spirit of capitalism, shows just how much his pedagogical doctrine is retrogressive as regards the relation to the humanistic heritage of antiquity.

Coubertin’s appealing to antiquity is also problematic because, according to Jacob Burckhardt, in antiquity the character was thought to be “entirely innate, incorruptible in those who were good, and incorrigible in those who were bad, while upbringing by an educator or nurse was only secondary to it, in spite of the fact that upbringing of a great personality was credited to such people, and, for example, not only Achilles but also Jason are held to be the trainees of Heron, who is in the myth represented as the ideal teacher.” (40) Coubertin holds that people differ in their racial characteristics, which were acquired in their struggle for survival, but they have a relative importance, since man is by his nature a “lazy animal”. “Sport is not in the nature of man”, claims Coubertin, because it is opposed to the principle of “lesser effort” that applies to animals. That is why Coubertin attaches primary importance to upbringing: the basic aim of “utilitarian pedagogy” is the “overcoming” of man’s animal nature through the creation of a ruthless and steady combatant character. Since positive man is beyond good and evil, in Coubertin there do not exist any “good” or “bad”, but only “strong” or “weak” characters, the white race, embodied in the bourgeois “elite” being predestined to a “strong” combatant character based on its racial heritage acquired in the struggle for survival. Most importantly, the creation of a combatant character involves, according to Coubertin, a combat with the spirit and the mind, and thereby with the cultural heritage of mankind. He wants to create a “new man” who will correspond to a New (positive) Age and the expansionist interests of the European colonial states.

From Coubertin’s instrumental relation to man stems his conception of “perfection”. In antiquity, perfectioning involves bringing man in harmony with the cosmic order that represents the unattainable ideal of (divine) perfection. Since perfection is the quality of eternity, by pursuing perfection man pursues eternity. As the earthly life is doomed, the strivings for perfection do not involve the fight for the preservation of the existing, particularly not for the creation of a perfect world, but the performance of such acts that will make man approach the cosmic perfection. At the same time, man looks back to the past since, according to the ancient view, men are all the more imperfect as they move further away from their divine origin. “The wish for perfection” in ancient Greece has a conservative, and not a “progressive” character, as is the case with modern Olympism. In spite of referring to “progress”, Coubertin dismisses the idea of future. The orientation to an idealized past becomes the source of the “true” and “eternal” values symbolized in the flame of the ”Olympic torch” that “must never be extinguished” (Hitler). In Coubertin, the ideal of the right conduct is not evaluatively based, but derives from the logic imposed by life itself, which is reduced to the struggle for survival and is beyond good and evil. “Perfectioning”, as “overcoming the animalist in man”, becomes the destruction of human dignity and the reduction of man to a dehumanized crusader of the ruling order. At the same time, the wish for perfection in sport is connected with achieving results that can be “objectively” and quantitatively compared and involve the absolutized principle of performance: “modern” sport deals with man’s erotic, ethical and aesthetical being. It is upon them that the “pyramid of success” (Coubertin) can be established, topped by the victorious “elite”.

Coubertin shows considerable affinities with antiquity, since both pedagogical concepts have a racist character. Coubertin: “Greece was a confederacy of cities in which an idea appeared, the idea of racial superiority and its predestination. It was quite enough for a temporarily united Greece to rise against the aliens; but, those were the fruits of their genius…” (41) Coubertin’s bourgeois is also the incarnation of the racial qualities of the white race, as the “purest, the most intelligent and the strongest” (42) – which makes it “superior” to other races and entitle it to conquer the world. “The pureness of blood” is one of the most important features of the (white) race, and “the fight for the pureness of the white race remains the basic aim of its members” (Coubertin). The strivings for “perfection” become the strivings for attaining racial perfection in relation to the “lower races” that correspond to the “barba- rous” peoples of antiquity. Hence “utilitarian pedagogy” represents the most important segment of Coubertin’s Olympic philosophy, and not the social theory.

Ancient Olympism was the center of a spiritual cosmos within which the entire life of polis was lived and in which the religious and secular lives could not be distinguished. Fustel de Coulanges says on that: “And so, in times of peace as well as in times of war, religion interfered in all human affairs. It was omnipresent, it enveloped man. The spirit, the body, the private and public lives, the rituals, the festivities, the assembly, the courts of law and the battles – everything was dominated by the city religion. It controlled all man’s affairs, all the moments of his life, and set up his customs. It controlled the human being with such an absolute power that there was nothing outside it.” (10) Modern Olympism appeared and developed in the period in which man was emancipated from religion and in which the religious and secular lives were separated. Coubertin tries to return to religion the status of the dominant spiritual power, not Christian but pagan. That is why he seeks to reaffirm the myth and the cult, which, together with man’s agonal activities, represented the “essential elements of the Hellenic spiritual existence” and were the “central determinant in the Hellenic people’s education and in the appearance of all forms of its spiritual expression”. (11) Modern Olympism involves: the myth about the ancient Olympic Games, the cult of the existing world and the agonal activity in the form of sport. As the cult of the existing world, modern Olympism seeks to become its all-embracing and impenetrable spiritual firmament. Under its wing appears the cult of a muscular body in combatant effort as a symbolic expression of the existing world.

In antiquity, the Olympic Games were one of the central pivots of religion as the unique and indisputable spiritual power; in the Modern Age they are a way of imposing the bourgeois world view as opposed to the movements (ideas) that strive to step out of the existing world and to the emancipatory heritage of modern society that provides the objective possibilities of performing that step. Modern Olympism becomes the corner stone of a new “positive” religion that “overcomes” Christianity by dealing with its humane ideas, particularly with the idea of a better world. It is in that light that we can speak of the “renovation of the immortal spirit of antiquity” which, with the reorganization of the Olympic Games, came again in the forefront to eliminate from the historical scene all the emancipatory things created in the meantime and enable a new beginning in the development of civilization. Coubertin’s Olympism becomes a channel through which a distorted Hellenic culture “flows” into the Modern Age only to drown the idea of future. Here again we should bear in mind that Olympism is one of the answers of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie to the possibilities offered to the workers, in their struggle against capitalism, by the emancipatory heritage of mankind and the development of democratic institutions. Olympism is an exceptional political means for the spiritual integration of the oppressed into the established order. Regardless of the changes, people should for ever remain in the spiritual horizon of capitalist society. It is no accident that the principle of “control in heads” represents the “categorical imperative” of Coubertin’s “utilitarian pedagogy”. By means of Olympism the spirit that governs the world should be inculcated not only in man’s conscious but also in his being and he should be turned into a loyal and usable subject.

The spiritual unity of the ancient world was based on the unity of the state and religion. In antiquity the worship of gods is at the same time the worship of the state as the only possible and indisputable form that insures a communal life. Coulange: “Neither the Greeks nor the Romans knew of those sad conflicts, so common in other societies, between the Church and the State. It was because in Rome, as well as in Sparta and Athens, the State was subordinated to religion. It does not mean that there ever existed an ecclesiastical body to impose its lordship. The old state was not subjected to any clergy; it was subjected to its own religion. This State and this religion were fused to such an extent that it was impossible not only to think of any conflict between them, but even to distinguish one from the other”. (12) Coubertin “resolved” the conflict between the state and the Church by dethroning them as the ruling integrative forces in society and replacing them by laws that dominate the animal world – proclaiming the bourgeoisie its bearers, IOC the holy guardian of their cult, while his works became the peculiar “holy scriptures” showing the path humanity should follow. In antiquity the animal world is opposed to the human community and thus is the negative basis of polis. Coubertin proclaims the laws that apply in the animal world the highest and indisputable. Not a human, but an animal community, in which an unrestrained domination of the stronger (the bourgeoisie) over the weaker is established, represents the basis of social integration. Hence Coubertin, speaking of antiquity, has in mind the period in which the institutional structure of polis had not yet been established and in which the tribal aristocracy had a limitless power over demos. Instead of a political constitution of society, based on the shared existential interest and reason of the citizens, Coubertin wants to establish a natural-laws constitution based on the biological-reproductive connections (family, race) and tyrannical power of the ruling rich “elite”.

In ancient religion there were two worlds: the human and the divine. According to Mihailo Đurić “there are at least two basic points on which the Greek religion particularly insisted: (…) Above all, the Greek religion was greatly concerned with the distinction between human and divine worlds, indicating the limitations, temporality and worthlessness of the human existence in comparison to that of the divine. The Greek religion regarded man primarily as a mortal being, for mortality was for it the essential determinant of the human nature. That is why it valued moderation so highly, that is why it warned man not to compete with gods, to stick to his own, human level without striving to become Zeus. On the other hand, the Greek religion glorified the sensual and physical reality; it was oriented to this world and affirmed life in this world.” (13) Coubertin does not divide the world in this world and otherworld, and he does not confront the worldly and the otherworldly, the transient and the eternal, falsehood and truth. There is only one world (life) and it is at once the embodiment of the ideal world which should be sought for. Coubertin: “Hellenism is above all the cult of humanity in its present life and its state of balance. And let us make no mistake about it; this was a great novelty in the mental outlook of all peoples and times. Everywhere else cults are based on the aspiration of a better life, the idea of recompense beyond the tomb, and the fear of punishment for the man who has offended the gods. But here it is the present existence which is happiness.”(14) Modern Olympism represents a totalitarian and absolutized cult of the existing world. The Olympic sphere does not affirm the immortality of the celestial, but the immortality of the earthly world; instead of glorifying the divine, it glorifies the present world.

In ancient cosmogony man is the product of the cosmic (divine) powers – which created life on earth. The world (life, cosmos) is possible without the earthly life and man: he is only a temporary inhabitant on this planet created by the evasive god’s will. The eternal and omnipotent god’s will is the source of the earthly life and the basis of the “eternal” existence of man (soul). Man is “God’s toy” (Plato), which means that regardless of his actions the divine will decides what will become of him. It is a cruel game of the gods that expresses their absolute power over man and his worthlessness. The divine firmament demonstrates man’s total subordination to the established order and the destruction of his dignity as a human being and the creator of the (his) world. Coubertin’s conception is based on Social Darwinism: man is an “animal” which is not created by a divine will, but is the product of evolution of the living world dominated by the struggle for survival. Hence for Coubertin every endeavour to raise logos above the existing world and try to treat it from the aspect of entities that are the products of man’s pursuit of truth is absurd. Ancient civilization paved man’s way to a world that rises above this world; Coubertin tries to avert man from that road and enclose him for ever in the existing world.

According to the ancient theory of creation, in the beginning there was a state of disorder and it is characteristic of the animal world. The first task of the gods (Uranus) was to establish order, which created the basic presupposition for the establishment of the ancient cosmos. The cosmic order consisting in a harmonious unity of parts with the whole becomes the highest ideal of the earthly order. Even the human body is a form of the cosmic order. According to Plato, the gods, by “imitating the spherical shape of the universe”, concluded that man’s head corresponds most to the divine and as such is the “lord of all that is in us”. (15) A holistic approach becomes dominant: beauty lies in harmony, which becomes the way of connecting man to the divine. We have seen that in Coubertin the order is also the basic existential principle, but the (geometrically constructed) cosmos is not the origin, framework and ideal of the world man should strive for; it is the animal world ruled by the principle “might is right”. For Coubertin, “harmony is the sister of order”, while aesthetics, which has an instrumental and decorative character, is the form of man’s integration into the dominant spirit. Eurhythmics, as the highest spiritual expression of man’s “reconciliation” to the existing world, becomes the road to blissfulness. However, instead of the statical ancient order, Coubertin insists on a dynamic order that corresponds to the progressistic spirit of capitalism and is based on a constant struggle for survival. In that context appears his maxim mens fervida in corpore lacertoso: swollen muscles are a symbolic expression of the expansionist power of capitalism.

In spite of the principal differences, Coubertin’s Olympic ideal resembles the practical and political spirit of the ancient religion. Mihailo Đurić: “So, it is no wonder that the Greek religion attached paramount importance to the practical side of the faith in gods, that the cult played such an important part in it, that it almost identified with the religious rituals. From the point of view of the state, it was the most needed and the most appropriate thing. What else can serve as a more secure sign that the citizens are loyal to the state than the fact that they regularly perform certain ritual acts, that they make sacrifices, read prayers, sing hymns? (…)  It was largely due to the fact that the Greek religion did not know of dogmatic. Although it was backed by the authority of the state, it did not lay claims to the exclusive authority in the questions of faith, nor did it strive to reach human souls. In ancient Greece there were not any sacred books in which everyone could have found an authoritative pattern of religious experience, nor were there any strictly established teachings which anyone could have propounded and  which everybody had to accept unreservedly.”(16) In antiquity the cult acts were the forms of expressing a total submission to the existing order, and in that sense they are suitable for Coubertin’s Olympism as the “cult of the existing life”, which pays respect to the “race” and the “flag”. In one of his last writings on the Olympic idea (“The Philosophic Foundation of Modern Olympism”) he claims: “The first essential characteristic of ancient and of modern Olympism alike is that of being a religion. By chiseling his body with exercise as a sculptor chisels a statue the athlete of antiquity was ‘honoring the gods’. In doing likewise the modern athlete exalts his country, his race, his flag.” (17) Here we do not see any universal values, symbolized by ancient gods, which should spiritually unite the participants at the Olympic Games and to which they should pay due respect, but a spiritless combat of the Olympic contestants, who are reduced to mere physicality, to their country, race and flag. What “unites” them is war, and not a respect for the values that transcend the present world. By fighting for victory at the Olympic Games, the ancient athlete expressed his respect for gods, who were the pivots of the racial, cultural and political integration of the Hellenes as opposed to “barbarians”. In the Modern Age the fight for victory on the playground by achieving a higher result becomes the highest form of a cult act in the honour of the present world. Coubertin follows Comte, according to whom the “theological” and “metaphysical” stages in the development of humanity were over and were followed by a “positive” (and final) stage governed by positive reason which is based on a “respect for facts”. He does not strive to create a religious, but a positive man; not a society dominated by a theological conscious, but a society based on positive one-mindedness. By dealing with the most important intention of Arnold’s pedagogy, to create “muscular Christians”, Coubertin showed that he did not seek to develop a religious conscious in the bourgeois youth but to eliminate it. Like Hitler, he wished to create, through sport and physical drill, “pure material” from which a “new man” would be created, a man who is neither afraid of God nor has any responsibility for people. Not the creation of a religious, but the creation of an activist and fanatical conscious, based on a positive (performative) character – this is the ultimate goal of Coubertin’s “utilitarian pedagogy” and the basis of his religio athletae. Nothing must stop the conquering (oppressive) power of the bourgeois, who is not guided by the faith in the forces that transcend the existing world or the universal human values, but by insatiable greediness that represents the incarnation of the dominant spirit of this world. Coubertin does not advocate an order based on customary, religious, moral or legal norms, but an order based on the principle “might is right” and natural selection. Olympism becomes not only the greatest religious ceremony dedicated to the cult of the present world, and thus the highest integrative “spiritual” power, but the means for eliminating all other spiritual forms that can constrain the self-willedness of the ruling class: it beco- mes a positivist cult that devours all spirituality. To purify the world from the ve- stiges of the theological and metaphysical, as well as critical reason and from the idea of future – that is one of the most important tasks of Coubertin’s Olympism.

The orientation to an idealized past as the source of “true values” and a complete subordination of man to the established order are the most important links between antiquity and Coubertin’s Olympism. In ancient Greece there did not exist the idea of progress or the idea of a new world. The term prokopē denotes a well done job. “Future” is reduced to the oncoming (inevitable) events that linearly follow one another and represent the strengthening of the relations to the past as well as its glorification. What is important happened a long time ago and everyday life is a peculiar copy of those events. To make the copy resemble the original, which means to try to make everyday life resemble the mythologized ideal of the then “true” life as much as it is possible – that is the highest challenge for a citizen. Man does not have any relation to the world, nor does he regard himself as its creator. The world proceeds according to the evasive (self)willedness of the gods, and life is a constant confrontation of man with his own worthlessness and temporality as opposed to the eternal cosmic order, whose active power is embodied in the Olympic gods. The Olympic Games are one of the deified strands that bring order into the chaotical proceedings of the world, and they occur in the shade of Chronos’ hill that symbolizes the endurance in the given and eternal (Olympic) time, in which there is no future. “The sacred rhythm” of the Olympiads does not mark the development of society or the course of time, but an inevitable sequence of events that transcend the cycles of births and deaths of ordinary mortals and represent a rhythm of the immortal divine pulse which animates the world and determines the continuity of the course of life. The strict (ritual) form of the Olympic Games reflects man’s hopeless endeavour to stop the distancing of his human world from its divine source and its approaching the inevitable end. The stability of the form confirms a spiritual continuity and preserves the connection with the cosmic life source, like the “sacred flame” in the temples. “The sacred rhythm” of the Olympic Games appears as a continuous existential and spiritual chain connecting the past and the present – without the future. At the same time, the Games are a form of corrupting the gods in order not only to soothe their anger and ensure their benevolence, but also to keep them interested in the survival of the human world. Plato’s view that man is “God’s toy” means that gods are interested in the survival of the human world as long as people amuse them or as long as it satisfies their vanity. Do not challenge the gods! – That is the essence of the ancient gnothi seauton. To tempt the will of the gods, who have human characteristics among which vanity and revengefulness are the most prominent, means to challenge the survival of the community. The relation of the strong to demos, especially to the slaves, becomes the prism reflecting the relation of the gods to people. At the same time, the fear of disappearing – famine, diseases, natural disasters and the elements having the character of the symbolic phenomena predicting destruction – compels man to constantly express his submission to gods. Coubertin also insists on the maintenance of “the sacred rhythm” of the modern Olympic Games, but it is connected neither to the natural nor to the religious order. Modern Olympism is the “cult of the existing world” and is thus deprived of any naturality and sanctity. It is without any content and thus is the abstract rhythm of the existential pulse of capitalism in people’s heads, which means a forced attempt to introduce order in the spiritual chaos created by the capitalist constant dealing with reason and the emancipatory heritage of modern society. In that context, “the sacred Olympic rhythm” is the bearer of the continuity of one-mindedness and the means for creating a uniform character – instead of traditional religions. The Olympic Games are the “festivity of spring” and “youth”, which means a revival of the life force of capitalism, and their “sacred rhythm” is a symbolic expression of the unbreakable chain of births and deaths: the death of man becomes the basic condition of the survival of order. Coubertin suggests this dialectic in his (broadcast) speech at the closing ceremony of the Nazi Olympic Games, when he speaks of the Olympic Games as the “understandings” that are “stronger than death itself”.(18) The order is eternal – man is transient and his life has meaning only if it contributed to inevitable “progress”. That is why Coubertin attaches such importance to man’s dedication to the work that glorifies the governing spirit: it is the way in which man becomes connected with the “divine”. As for the myth of the past, it has an instrumental character and Coubertin uses it to deal with the idea of future.

According to the Hellenic conception of the world, the very existence of society has a temporary character: society resembles a biological organism that develops and decays. Man’s mortality and transience of mankind is the basic condition of gods’ immortality and the eternity of the cosmic order. Man is fatally submitted to the divine (cosmic) laws and that produces existential pessimism. Heraclites’ panta rei is a peculiar predicament, since future is uncertain. It refers to transience and its tragical character, since what is gone can be no more and what has been missed is lost for ever. It is the course of events in which man finds himself and to which he is submitted. Growing old, as a loss of the life force, which leads to death, is the most important empirical ground for conceiving the change. Relying on the “indestructible” spirit of capitalism and on Comte’s philosophy, Coubertin liberates man from ancient tragicalness and offers him unstoppable “progress” in which he is to find the purpose of life and insure eternity – which results in existential optimism. In Coubertin also we can find fatalism, though not cataclysmic (as in Christianity), but progressistic: man is hopelessly submitted to the course of “progress” deriving from the expansionist and indestructible essence of the capitalist order – which is the incarnation of the natural order in the most direct form and whose course is measured by quantitative shifts in which disappears quality and consequently the human. The ancient tragedy and the Christian curse are replaced by the “curse of progress” (Horkheimer/Adorno).

In the ancient cosmogony man is a born sinner. He does not bear responsibility for his (miss)deeds, but because he is human – a mortal being. His whole life becomes a peculiar ritual of repenting the original sin and of redemption according to the principles of cosmic rightness: sin, justice, purification (hybris, Dike, katarsis). For Coubertin, man is not a sinner, but the highest form in the development of the living world. He deprived man of hybris, and thereby of purification and the possibility of achieving spiritual unity with gods (ekstasis), and thus dealt with the ethical (religious) being of the Hellenes and the tragicalness of their ethics. (19) Striving to remove the barriers that hamper the ruling self-willedness, Coubertin abolishes the ancient normative firmament and absolutizes the principle of utility. He absolves man (the bourgeois) from his “sin” only to absolve him from the responsibility for his (miss) deeds, and thus deals with the idea of personal responsibility born in the period of thriving of ancient democracy. Instead of the struggle between good and evil, dominates the struggle for the interests of the ruling class, which is beyond good and evil: the efficiency in preserving the established order is the most important criterion for determining the “right” action. There is nothing that restricts sheer force, since it is based on the principle “might is right”, as the basis of natural selection, which in turn is the basis of racial “perfectioning” and social “progress”. “The ethics of force” becomes the indisputable source of the Olympic morality.

The thesis that the modern Olympic Games represent the “restoring of the ancient Olympic Games” occupies the central position in modern Olympic mythology. It is on account of that thesis that Coubertin got the title of “The Restorer”. From the very beginning, Coubertin, according to Carl Diem, insisted that the modern Olympic Games conform to the time in which they appeared. He “did not want to build a museum ruin” that would be ”the copy of  antiquity”. Of course, it does not mean that Coubertin was not inspired by the ancient Olympic Games and ancient society. He took over from antiquity, that “high culture of mankind”, the following “Olympic ideas”: ”celebration in the name of peace”, ”dedication to idealism” and the idea of “human perfection”. The program of the Games was intended to be “modern”, which means to express the time in which the Games were created, to serve it and follow its changes. (1) Since for Coubertin the past is unhistorical, he does not “restore” the ancient Olympic heritage, but takes from “the past”, which is ready for use, what might be “useful” to insure free “progress”, and dismisses everything that could get in the way of “progress”. As for Rudolf Malter’s interpretation of Coubertin’s relation to ancient Olympism, (2) Urlike Prokop rightly claims that Malter misunderstood Coubertin: his aim was not to “restore the classical Olympic Games”, but to produce a certain educational effect by adopting the “formal elements” of the old Greek Olympism. (3) It is a political instrumentalization of ancient Olympism, and not an attempt to renovate the Hellenic spiritual heritage. Coubertin idealizes antiquity and uses this idealized picture to create an appropriate spiritual background, give modern Olympism a “cultural” aureole and deal with the emancipatory heritage of Hellenic civilization, which, as an inherent part of the emancipatory heritage of mankind, represents conditio sine qua non of the development of civil society. At the same time, Coubertin tries, like Hypolitte Taine, to portray Hellenic society, in contrast to the “gloominess” of everyday life, (4) as an “ideal world” which should be sought for and thus create a spiritual refuge that should prevent man, in his strivings for a better world, from turning to future. This idealized ancient world takes the role of the “otherworld”, which, like Huizinga’s Middle Ages, becomes an indisputable and unattainable model to the modern world.

Coubertin constantly refers to the original ancient traditions and glorifies their “immortal spirit”, which is actually the racist spirit of free Hellenes, and not the “international” (colonial) spirit of monopolistic capitalism. The ancient Olympic Games were the form of the Hellenes’ spiritual integration and demonstrated their racial “superiority” to “barbarians”. Only “pure-blooded” Hellenes were allowed to take part in the Games, provided that they had never been convicted and had not offended the gods. Ancient Olympism did not pursue globalism, nor was it a form of the spiritual enslavement of other peoples; it was meant to draw a borderline between the “civilized” world and “barbarians”. Modern Olympism, by contrast, tends to be a universal and global spiritual movement, and thus follows the Christian doctrine as a universal ideology, from which it derives the “Olympic missionary work” of the Jesuitical type. It appeared as the crown of the ideology of (colonial) bourgeois “internationalism” and thus is the means for achieving certain global political and economic goals. The first Olympic Games, held in Athens in 1896, were already organized accor- ding to the Romanized Olympic Games, which were devoid of their original religious and racist spirit. In view of that, it is absurd to refer to an “original pureness” of ancient Olympism and, in the Modern Age, try to create a “Church” in which to the “immortal spirit of antiquity” – “all peoples will bow”.(5)

According to the modern Olympic doctrine, the Hellenic world has no dynamics of development and is on the same time level, just as the whole past of mankind. Coubertin borrows from that world what he considers useful for his Olympic idea, disregarding the concrete historical moment in which the given phenomenon appeared and without which its nature cannot be understood. Coubertin raises to the level of myth whatever he finds useful for his conception and transfers it to the Modern Age without any regard for the historical distance that separates us from antiquity. Speaking of a “restoration of the ancient Olympic Games”, he wants to show a direct spiritual link between the ancient Olympic spirit and the modern Olympic Games. The “suprahistorical” character of “ancient Olympism” should give modern Olympism a mythical character and thus insure its eternity. Keeping to the unhistorical approach to antiquity, Coubertin “overlooked” the fact that Hellenic society already experienced a degeneration of the original (religious) Olympic spirit, which had begun at the time of Solon with the corruption of the Games, (6) only to end with the Macedonian invasion and in the Roman period. “The immortal spirit of antiquity” perished within ancient society itself. The “true Olympic Games” moved into the sphere of myth, which becomes the basis of a critique of the established “Olympic” reality. Homeric Hellas, turned into a legend, was the real source of the original Olympic spirit, which in Greece itself was to be distorted and destroyed. When Greece became a Roman province, the Olympic Games lost their sanctity and, organized according to the principle panem et circences, became a banal demonstration of Roman “internationalism”. Thus the Hellenic cultural heritage was abused for the spiritual integration (colonization) of the conquered peoples into the Roman Empire.

Coubertin subordinated his relation to the ancient Olympic Games and Hellenic civilization to the creation of a positive man and positive society. In that context, one of Coubertin’s key views is that the old Greeks “were little given to contemplation, even less bookish”, (7) which became the starting point for his dealing with the Hellenic spirituality and philosophy. Trying to deprive man from the possibility of confronting the existing world, Coubertin eliminates from Hellenic culture – the spiritual cradle of Western civilization – all that can induce man to pose crucial questions on his human existence, the world and his relation to it. The pivots of the ancient religion (philosophy) were not only the Olympic and other playgrounds (Delphi, Eastham, Corinth), the gymnasion and palaestra, but, above all, the temples, the shrines, the mysteries, the cults, the academies, the theatres, the public forums, the sophists’ teachings, the poets’ word, the works of sculptors and architects, the Homeric poems and the accords of the harp… It is only in the light of their spiritual and contemplative life that we can grasp the depths of the ancient conception of life and the Olympic mystery. By reducing the life of the Hellenes to a primitive physical agonal activism, Coubertin failed to see in the Olympic Games the highest religious ceremony that represented the crown of the spiritual life and the philosophy of living of the ancient world and thus the climax of the ancient agon. Miloš Đurić writes about that: “For, all the forms of the Hellenic educational life developed in the sphere of agonal activity, as the richest source of glory: poetry, music, dance, painting, sculpture, building, philosophy, politics, as well as the forms of moral conduct. And the agonal will found its most concentrated expression in real agonistics, namely, at musical contests and the competitions in stadiums and hippodromes on the occasion of great festivities.” (8) The Hellenic cosmos is full of gods who symbolize not only an abundance of the forms of life, but also man’s complexity and the richness of his natural, emotional, spiritual and intellectual being. Only in the totality of Hellenic life the ideals and principles of that world acquire their full significance. Only their critical consideration, starting from the concrete totality in which they appeared (namely, as concrete historical phenomena), can we discover their humanist potential, which can serve as an inspiration for modern man. Coubertin could not apply this method not only because in that way he would have questioned the values of the ancient myths he sought to use for creating his Olympism, but because, at the same time, he would have questioned the legitimacy of modern Olympism as a “humane” movement. It would have turned out that modern Olympism was only a “humane” mask of the world it professed to overcome. Trying to turn modern Olympism into a comprehensive religious world view and way of life, Coubertin removed from Olympus all the deities that questioned his rigid utilitarian world view and his positive man, who is the embodiment of that world. We should bear in mind that the principle of “control in heads” – which means the creation of the character and conscious of a loyal and usable (positive) citizen by using romanticized myths and by producing a mythological conscious is the most important postulate of Coubertin’s “utilitarian pedagogy”. Coubertin deals with the emancipatory heritage of Hellenic civilization and from a distorted and desacralized Olympic myth creates the starting point for a “historical picture” of the ancient Olympic Games and Hellenic society. This distorted picture, which is supposed to give a mythological dimension to the “supratemporal” and “eternal” values on which capitalism is based, becomes the foundation for reconstructing the original.

The ancient religion represents the culmination of ancient spirituality and vividness. The abundance of cults and a constant agonal activism are the expressions of rich forms and an intensive experience of life. Coubertin tends to subject the entire life and man to modern Olympism as a totalitarian spiritual force which not only seeks to create a positive one-mindedness and “purify” man’s being from all that is human and that can question the expansion of capitalism and indisputable domination of the bourgeoisie over the working “masses”, but seeks to cripple it and thus deprive it of the possibility of “restoring” its human character. As a fanatical Procrustean follower, Coubertin deprives man from Eros, imagination, emotions, reason… Most importantly, he discards the libertarian impulses of Hellenic culture, not only the Promethean myth, but also the critical thought that questioned the fundamental relations and values of that world. Not even the indisputable authority of gods could have prevented Hellenic society from resisting injustice and developing a critical thought. According to Miloš Đurić “in the Homeric poems the gods are already subjected to a sharp critique, either through their mutual reproaches or by ‘people complaining of their cruelty’, and this testifies to the open-mindedness of Hellenic society.” (9) The highest level the Hellenic world reached as far as humanism is concerned, which was the result of its emancipatory possibilities, was its capability of generating a thought that questioned the existing world, revealed its inherent lies and injustice and offered the possibility of it being overcome. Only by confronting reality and the ruling ideology, on the one hand, and the thought that sought, by confronting the existing world, to liberate man and elevate the notion of humanum to a higher level, on the other hand, is it possible to grasp the real nature of ancient humanism. In short, a libertarian agon is the essence of Hellenic humanism. The possibility of overcoming the Hellenic world by reviving the conscious of universal creative powers and man’s libertarian dignity – freedom as man’s highest value – represents the best product of Hellenic culture and it planted the seeds that in the Modern Age came to bear fruit. One of the main tasks of modern Olympism is to destroy the seeds of antiquity and thus deal with mankind’s libertarian traditions and human dignity.

In his appealing to the “immortal spirit of antiquity” Coubertin does not have in mind the emancipatory impulses of Hellenic culture, but the conservative spirit of the ancient Olympic Games. What makes the original ancient Olympism and modern Olympism so close is the fact that both tend to be the guardians of the past. Coubertin tried in the Modern Age to deal with the contradiction established in antiquity between the original conservative spirit of the Games and the emancipatory tendencies which, particularly with the appearance of demos on the political scene of Hellas, started to develop. It is in these terms that we can speak of a “continuation of the ancient Olympic spirit” in the Modern Age: through the “immortal spirit of antiquity” modern Olympism becomes the bastion of a militant conservativism.

Coubertin treated Hellenic civilization much in the same way in which the European colonial conquerors treated ancient civilizations. Reading his writings on the ancient world one gets the impression that he is a looter digging the ancient sites in search for something that he might find useful. Unlike those ”noble” representatives of “European civilization” who were after material wealth, Coubertin was after the ancient spiritual wealth – which can be fully appraised only within the civilization in which it appeared – and ruthlessly crippled and tailored it in order to make from it a means for destroying the emancipatory heritage of modern society. The very use of the term “Olympic Games” is a sacrilege of the ancient tradition. Coubertin used that term not because he was inspired by the ancient spiritual heritage, but because it seemed to have a “solemn character”, which means that he saw in it a peculiar decoration for international sports competitions he planned to organize and institutionalize. His political conception is the key to understanding his Olympic idea and his relation to antiquity. Coubertin does not try to “restore the ancient Olympic Games” in order to develop sport, but with a view to contributing to the “development of France’s national strength” and its colonial expansion. That is the original prism through which Coubertin observes the “ancient heritage” and the criterion he uses to select what is “acceptable” for the Modern Age. For Coubertin, Hellenic spirituality does not have a cultural, but a practical and political value; he does not regard it in terms of the cultural development of modern society, but in terms of the realization of anticultural political and economic goals of the ruling bourgeois “elite”. While utilitarism is the starting point, positivism is a speculative prism through which Coubertin observes ancient Greece.

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 an interpretation 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 the character 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 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 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 world and 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 modern Olympic 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 control of 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 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 total submission 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.

The industrial revolution in the 18^th and its development in the 19^th 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 establishing a 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 a scientific 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 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. Simultaneously with 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, but the 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 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: “I would 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 a hopeless 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, 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 free man 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.

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 the conclusion 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, the evolution 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 the realization 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 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 obvious that 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 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 the inevitable 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 the revival 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 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 the slave 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 absolutize and 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 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 not responsible 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 shall never 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 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 the creation 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 progressistic spirit 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, Coubertin suggests 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” (“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, trying at 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 is established – 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 being. Unlike the Olympism in the end of the 19^th 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 it seeks 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.

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 18^th and in the beginning of the 19^th 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 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 to consolidate 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 emancipatory heritage of the 19^th 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 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 the workers 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. Unlike Rousseau’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 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 compassion and 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 social structuring. 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 “spontaneously” develops. Comte created positive philosophy; Coubertin found a way to revive it.

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 ‘the 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 ‘the 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 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 follo- wing Olympic postulate: philosophers have only interpreted the world – but the point however is to prevent it from being changed by all means and at 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”).

The idea of “racial superiority and its predetermination” which, according to Coubertin, originated in ancient Greece, (43) is one of the corner stones of modern Olympism. Speaking about Coubertin’s colonialism and racism, Boulongne  says: “The conquering of new colonies is, in his view, based on the principle of the divine right, that is to say, on the conviction that human races are different with respect to their value and that to the white race, which is by nature above other races, all other races should be subordinated.” (44) And he continues: “Claiming that no one has the right to undertake the Europeanization of other peoples, that etnical religions are equal in value to the Christian religion, that the member of the black or yellow race differs from the white man, but that as a man he is of the same value – these are all”, says Coubertin, “nice sophisms, the validity of which is defended in smoking parlours, but of no value whatsoever, nor efficacy: they represent a paradox associated with a decadence, and they can for an instant bring a smile on our face, but they should never be adopted as a rule of conduct.” (45) It is not the “devine”, but the “natural law”, based on the “might is right”, which is the basis of Coubertin’s racism. Keeping to Social Darwinist evolutionism, Coubertin comes to the conclusion that in its fight for survival the white race has become “the purest, the strongest and the most intelligent” (46) race, which means that “lower races” are by virtue of their genetic (physical and intellectual) properties predetermined to submit to the white “dominant race”. It follows that  members of the “coloured races” originally do not have any civil or human rights: their “rights” originate from the interests of colonial metropoles and self-willedness of their masters. Coubertin does not try to hide that: “The theory proposing that all human races have equal rights leads to a line of policy which hinders any progress in the colonies. Without debasing itself, surely, by imposing slavery, or even a lighter form of serfdom, the superior race is fully entitled to deny the lower race certain privileges of civilized life”. (47) The relation of Coubertin to South-African slave-owning and racist regime shows the extent of Coubertin’s respect for human and civil rights of the “lower races”. Wishing to justify the inhuman exploitation of the African natives by the white minority, Coubertin writes: “Do not forget the regime under which the South-African mines developed. (…) There is nothing that approaches slavery more than the institution there? But it does not hurt human dignity at all, being English, of course!” (48)

Coubertin is strongly opposed to the white people mixing with the “lower races”, since, according to him, it leads to their degeneration. “The fight for the pureness of (the white) race remains the basic aim of its members”-  Coubertin points out. (49) The racial “pureness” of the Hellenic race is its most important feature and it constitutes the origin of the racial power and persistence of the Hellenes. Coubertin follows in Chemberlain’s footsteps: “Human races are, in fact, different in regard to their character, properties, and above all, their individual capabilities, in the same way as a greyhound, bulldog, poodle and the dog of the New Land differ. – Does not every race have its brilliant and incomparable physiognomy? How could Hellenic art have arisen without the Hellenes? …There is nothing so convincing as the awareness of the quality of a race. A man belonging to a pure and definite race, will never lose the awareness of it. The guarding angel of its tree is always on his side, supporting him whenever he loses his balance, warning him whenever he is in danger of getting lost, compelling him to obediance and making him perform feats he would otherwise never have dared to undertake, since he considers them impossible. The race raises man above itself; it arms him with extraordinary – even unnatural – powers. That the quality of a race is of vital importance – it is the fact of immediate experience.” (50) Coubertin, like Gobineau (51) and Chamberlain, (52) call upon the whites not to allow their blood to be polluted by the blood of the “lower races”, including the Jews whom Coubertin proclaimed the “Asians”. The importance Coubertin attaches to racial blood is best seen from his commentary on the Jewish people in his “Histoire universelle”: “Some authors, on the other hand, note that we should not speak about the Jewesh race, since the Jews, dispersed in the course of eighteen centuries all over the world, have mixed with other peoples so much that they have lost the properties that make a race. It is a wrong view. It is true that through faith as well as through propaganda many ethnic elements are connected with the Izraeli religion. But the original strength of Jewesh blood is so great that several drops will suffice to conquer the home.” With respect to Coubertin’s previous claims that the Jews “deep in their hearts remained the Asians”, that they are “cruel and persistant as regards acquiring,” “clever and shrewd in business” and that their role in history is “insignificant” – it is clear that mixing with them would lead to the degeneration of the white race. (53) Here we should note that Coubertin had published these lines some ten years before the Nazis passed their “Racial laws” (September 15, 1935) banning marriages between the Germans and the Jews.

Unlike the Nazis, Coubertin does not call on eliminating the “lower races”, but from his conception of the “natural selection” it follows that the “master race” has a “natural right” to do everything in its interest, including the genocide over other peoples and races. Just as the right of people to life is subordinated to the right of the ruling order to a stable development, so is the right of the “lower races” to life subordinated to the right of the “superior race” to survival. Conquering the “life space” is the legitimate right of the white race based on the dominant order in the animal world – of which the human society is just a part. It is one of the reasons why Coubertin does not criticize the British Empire for its genocidal practice in North America, Australia, China, Africa and India, nor the Nazis who do not hide that the extermination of the Jews, Slavs and Gypsies and conquering the “life space” (Lebensraum) is for the “Aryan over-race” their most important task.

If Coubertin’s theory of evolution is correct, which means that the white race in its fight for survival has become the “purest, the most intelligent and the strongest”, than the victory of the representatives of the “lower races” over the best representatives of the “master race” on a sports field is not possible. The Olympic Games which allow the participation of the “lower races” can only be a demonstration of the “racial superiority” of the whites. The events on sports fields, even during Coubertin’s life, have convincingly demonstrated the unsoundness of Coubertin’s racial conception and his Social Darwinist theory. For, in addition to physical (muscular) strength of those who have “come from the jungle” and therefore represent “unfair competition” (Hitler), (54) what is important is the will to win, the main ingrediant of the “will to power”, which, according to Coubertin, is the exclusive feature of the white bourgeois ”elite”. The maxim mens sana in corpore sano, especially Coubertin’s maxim mens fervida in corpore lacertoso, speak in favour of the “fact” that the “blacks” have a stronger spirit and personality then the whites. We should not forget that for  Coubertin boxing embodies the fundamental principle of capitalist society – “struggle for life” – and is thus the chief means for upbringing the bourgeois youth. (55) However, it is precisely in boxing – which for Coubertin is a “fine manly sport”, where the main characteristics of the “master race”: will to win, quick decision making, “steel agility” (Hitler), persistance and courage are most expressed – that indisputable domination of “black” sportsmen has been established.

If the “facts” from the sports field are analyzed according to Coubertin’s eugenetic conception, which even in Coubertin’s time clearly suggested the trends in the development of sport, we come to the following conclusions: first, the development of civilization according to the principle of natural selection has not led to a physical “superiority” of the white race over the “coloured” races, but opposite; second, the “pureness” of the white race has not led to its improvement, but to its degeneration; and third, mixing between the whites and the blacks leads to the improvement of the genetic properties of the whites and to the weakening of the genetic properties of the blacks. Bearing in mind that for Coubertin the Olympic winners represent the “elite” of mankind, and are thus the representatives of religio athletae, which is a symbolic expression of the dominant spirit of capitalism embodied in the white “master race”, the paradox is complete: the representatives of the “lower races” become the bearers of the “victorious spirit” by which the “superiority” of the white race is proved! If we add that for Coubertin the “improvement” of the white race is the basic sign of “progress”, it is clear that Coubertin’s theory of evolutionary progressism definately comes to nothing. In his racial theory, the constant conflict in Coubertin’s theory between evolutionism, which gives rise to apriorism, and positivism, which insists on “respecting the facts”, reaches its climax.

One of the largest inconsistances in Coubertin’s racial conception lies in his proclaiming the struggle for survival, dominant in the animal world, the pattern of behaviour which should be predominant in human society, while at the same time he denies the “lower races” the right to fight for survival: by Coubertin’s racial theory the “universal” fight for survival is transformed into the privilage of the white race to dominate the “coloured races” for ever. Here also Coubertin applied a model used in determining the social position of the bourgeoisie and workers (women): in the course of evolution, the white race has acquired the qualities of a beast, while the “coloured races” acquired the qualities of a ruminant. From there follows that the natural right of a wolf is to devour the sheep, while the natural “obligation” of the sheep is not to oppose the wolf. Coubertin did not strive to include the “coloured races” through sport into the struggle for domination, but to use sport as a means of their indisputable integration into the “world (colonial) order” in which the supremacy of the “higher (white) race” is permanently established. He is not in favour of giving the right to the representatives of other races to participate, on an equal basis, with the representatives of the white race, but in favour of the dominant white “elite” giving the right to the “lower races” to participate on the sports field with their masters. It is the act of “mercy” (la charité) of the “master race” which, eventually, should discourage the submitted peoples from their liberative struggle and preserve the colonial order. Coubertin claims that sport is an “efficient” means for colonizing the “lower races” – giving as a model the British colonial domination in India. Speaking about the need to spread sport among the “natives”, Coubertin concludes: “Sport is on the whole a powerful instrument for disciplining. It produces all types of positive social qualities, health, hygiene, tidiness, self-control.” (57) Sport becomes the means of creating a submissive conscious in colonized peoples and a way of their integration into the spiritual orbit of their master at the level of “cultivated” slaves. It is no accident that Coubertin finds in Catholic “missions” the model for a spiritual colonization of “lower races”. Efficiant subordination of the workers and “lower races”, and not “love of sport”, is the fundamental principle of Coubertin’s Olympic philosophy. “The Olympic pacifism” means that colonized peoples have for ever renounced both the struggle for liberating themselves from colonial domination, and the struggle against the white race, namely, that the struggle between “master” (white) race and “lower races” is transfered onto the sports field, where it takes on the form of the “equality of chances”, by which the established “world order” is not changed but strengthened. It marks the end of evolution, based on the struggle between races, and starts a new era in the development of mankind, which consists in its “perfectioning” and is based on “peace” and “cooperation between races”. The newly-established “Olympic counting of time” points to the “fact” that the white race has definately conquered the world and that presents both the end of history and the end of imagening the future in which all people, regardless of their racial and social origin, will be free and equal. Coubertin supports the Nazi regime because he sees in it the strength capable of creating a complete and final domination of the white (European) race over the “lower races” and establishing “eternal peace”. Coubertin is congenial to Hitler’s “pacifistic” view from “Mein Kampf”: “Indeed, the pacifistic-humanistic idea can be good only when a virtuous man conquers the world and submits it to such an extent that he becomes the only master of the globe.” (58) The Nazis went even further than Coubertin: their proclaimed goal was not only to establish “eternal peace”, but to establish an order in which “all peoples in the world will be happy”! (59)

The contradiction of Coubertin’s conception is that “educating” the subjects to respect the order ruled by the strong assumes that the winners on the sports field are the whites, and not the representatives of the “lower races”, or else sport becomes the means for dispelling the myth about the white race being the “master race” and the instrument for developing the conscious of resistance in people deprived of their rights. That Coubertin is aware of this danger is clearly seen from his warning the colonial authorities to allow the “natives” only those sports which do not contribute to the development of national conscious and jeopardize the authority of the colonial power. (60) Bearing in mind that propagating sport among the “lower races” and giving them the opportunity to compete with their masters on the sports field is but a part of the colonial strategy of the “master race”, it is clear that Coubertin does not advocate the spreading of sport among the “lower races” at all costs, but only if the “superior race” can use it to secure its dominant position. Accepting the defeat on the sports field is a neccessary evil – as long as sport contributes to the persistence of the colonial power. It is a necessary tactical move in order to achieve the strategic aim: to destroy the libertarian conscious of the “lower races” and integrate them into a global colonial order. That it is a temporary move can be seen from Coubertin’s eugenetic theory. Giving the “right” to the “lower races” to participate on the sports field with the “superior (white) race” does not lead to the “perfectioning” of the “master race”, but to its weakening. Was Coubertin not actually striving for Hitler’s model of the Olympic Games, where only the representatives of the “higher race” would be allowed to compete? Considering Coubertin’s original Olympic idea, according to which the Olympic Games are a contest between “civilized nations”, as well as the fact that in the ancient racist Olympic Games he saw an indisputable model for “his” Olympic Games, it is clear that Coubertin’s wish that the Nazis should be the executors of his Olympic legacy and the guardians of his Olympic ideal has a more profound sense.

In order to deal with the human and civil rights won by man in modern society, Coubertin abolishes the citizen as a constituent part of society, substituting him with family and race (nation). In this way he abolishes civil society and reduces it to an abstract collectivity whose survival and development is conditioned by the effects of natural laws, and which represents a continuous development of the animal world. Actually, Coubertin abolishes society as a human community and reduces it to an animal (biological) community, a peculiar “civilized” herd.

On the basis of his “naturalistic” conception, Coubertin proclaimes the patriarchal family, in which women and children are subjected to the indisputable authority of pater familias, the “basic cell of society”. (31) The family appears as the primary form of social structuring which immediately and spontaneously originates from the state of nature and thus represents the foundation of social organizing. The family hierarchy is founded on biological-reproductive roles and on the “right of might” as the foundation of social formation. The family is not only the biological cell of society, but first and foremost a “natural” and therefore indisputable foundation of a hierarchical and authoritarian structuring of society. The family creates and developes a sense of “cooperation”, which is the basic assumption of sociality, that is to say, of a “social consensus”. Comte says on that: “Undoubtedly, no natural economy deserves more admiration than this happy spontaneous subordination which, having also constituted the human family, becomes then the necessary type of a reasonable social coordination”. (32) It is therefore no accident that women’s struggle for emancipation is for Coubertin the worst of crimes: the disintegration of the patriarchal family involves the destruction of the authoritarian foundation (derived from the natural order) of capitalist society, and that means the destruction of the hierarchy of power on which the social order is founded. Defending the family as a “sacred institution”, Coubertin attacks the ideas of the “equality of sexes”, and of marriage as a “free community”, calling them the most “subversive of theories” that propound a system of relationships not only contrary to logic, but also to the “order of things”. (33)

According to her “natural” position within the family, Coubertan proclaims the woman a physically and intellectually “inferior” being, who is thus the symbol of “weakness”. He strongly condemns the participation of women at the Olympic Games. In his view, public sports competitions in which women take part “assume something monstruous”. (34) In his message to the participants of the IX Olympics, held in Amsterdam in 1928, Coubertin categorically states: “As to the admission of women to the Games, I remain strongly against it. It was against my will that they were admitted to a growing number of competitions.” (35) In his interview for the German Radio in August of 1935, dedicated to the Nazi Olympics of 1936, Coubertin says: “It follows from what I have said that the true Olympic hero is in my view the adult male individual.” (36) Speaking about the Olympic winners, Coubertin repeats: “The only true hero, as I have always repeated, is an adult male. So, it is neither a female nor team sports.” (37) Reducing collective competitions to “secondary” sports, Coubertin concludes: “Women could also take part here if it is judged necessary. I personally do not approve of the participation of women in public competitions, which is not to say that they must abstain from practicing a great number of sports, provided they do not make a public spectacle of themselves. In the Olympic Games, as in the contests of former times, their primary role should be to crown the victors.” (38) In Coubertin’s doctrine sport is the bulwark of a primitive and ruthless sexism, and Olympism is its “humanistic” flag.

During his whole “Olympic” life Coubertin fanatically fought against women’s human and civil rights, as well as against their participation in public life. Coubertin uses offensive names for women who fight for equality and reduces them to “feminists”. He goes as far as to deny them the capability of making reasonable decisions: “A woman who is guided by reason rather then by emotions is not only abnormal, she is monstruous” – says Coubertin, the “great humanist”. (39) He declares the home to be the place of the woman’s “freedom” (“home economy”), reducing it to a particular geto. The basic aim in girls’ upbringing is their physical and spiritual preparation for motherhood, for caring about children and pater familias, and for doing the housework.

Coubertin has crippled man most by depriving him of the ability and right to love and be loved. True friendship between people is impossible. The wife’s “love” for her husband is reduced to a masochistic submission to his authority. The same applies to the relationship between father and children. The relationship of a pater familias to his wife and children is determened by his role of the economic pillar and support of the family, as well as by the nature of family as the foundation of the hierarchical structuring of social power: pater familias is the basic barrier of the authoritarian constitution of society. The relations between people are determined by the nature of the ruling order and the roles people play in it. Since it is not man who is a constitutive part of society, but the race and family, the roles and, accordingly, obligations that people have as members of a race and gender, represent the basis and the framework of their relations. Pater familias does not treat his wife as a human being, nor does he cherish love for her. Sexual relations between men and women are determined by the nature of their biological (reproductive) functions, and correspond to the relations between males and females. What distinguishes people from animals is the fact that, as members of a race (nation), they have a “social duty” to ensure the biological reproduction of the race, the woman being reduced to the tool for racial reproduction, or a peculiar racial (national) incubator. The duty of a husband is to inseminate his wife and support the family, while the duty of a wife is to give birth to children and raise them. Marriage is not the community of emancipated human beings, but an institutionalized bondage of reproductive organs united by duty to a nation (race). Love motives and erotic temptations are excluded from a sexual relationship. The woman is not entitled to sexual satisfaction in marriage, particularly not outside marriage, and she turns the sexual need into the love for children. On the other hand, not only is pater familias entitled to sexual satisfaction outside marriage, but the wife has to accept his “adventures” (40) “with tears in her eyes” and, like a trained dog, play up to him by “always being on her proper place”. (41)

It is amasing how easily the bourgeois interpretors of Coubertin’s work pass over his utterly humiliating relationship towards women. Thus, Boulongne says that Coubertin was an “incorrigible misogynist”, only to proclaim him a little further a “great humanist”. (42) Considering the fact that Coubertin reduced the “coloured peoples” to “lower races”, and European workers to “masses” of primitives, it means that in Coubertin’s “great heart” there was place only for the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie and, of course,  the Nazis. It is to them that Coubertin entrusted a special Olympic mission to be carried out after his death: to take his heart out of his corpse and bury it in ancient Olympia. The Nazis did not let him down: they accomplished the given task skillfuly and enthusiastically.

Like many other members of the wealty youth in France in the second half of the 19^th century, Pierre de Coubertin regarded England as an indisputable model. What made him so enthusiastic was not the English parlamentarism or the emancipatory ideas which originated in England as the cradle of capitalism and the most powerful capitalist country, but its imperialist might. Coubertin went to England to uncover the secret of their colonial expansion and incite them to enter upon new colonial exploits. In his public appearances prior to the Olympic Games Coubertin speaks as a fervent nationalist. His political pamphlets end with a slogan: “Vive la France!”. Coubertin’s fanatism was stirred not only by a complex caused by the humiliating defeat of France in the war with Prussia; it sprang from a desire to enable the ruling “elite” to increase its material wealth in which Coubertin saw the foundations of the social power and stability of the ruling order. Wandering through England in an attempt to find the source of the colonial power of the British Empire, Coubertin came across a book entitled “Tom Brown’s Schooldays” in which Thomas Hughes, the disciple of the English reformer and Headmaster of the school in Rugby Thomas Arnold, outlined in his own way the pedagogical doctrine of his teacher. Coubertin concluded not only that Thomas Arnold, with his pedagogical reform that spread throughout England, “laid the foundations of the British Empire”, (1) but also that he was the founder of a new philosophy that fully embodied the spirit of Social Darwinism and expansionism, which, according to Coubertin, dominated the English society and, as the integral spiritual power of the British imperialist “elite”, presented a challenge to the ruling “elite” of the European colonial states. Coubertin: “If we begin to study the history of our century we are struck by the moral disorder produced by the discoveries of industrial science. Life suffers an upheaval; people feel the ground tremble continually under their feet. They have nothing to hold on to, because everything around them is shifting and changing: and in their confusion, as though seeking some counterpoise to the material powers which rise like Cyclopean ramparts about them, they grope for whatever elements of moral strength lie scattered about the world. I think this is the philosophic origin of the striking physical renaissance in the 19th century. (…) Then came Thomas Arnold, the greatest educator of modern times, who more than any other is responsible for the present prosperity and the prodigious expansion of his country. With him athletics penetrated a great public school and transformed it; and from the day on which the first generation fashioned by his hands was launched on the world, the British Empire had a new look. There is perhaps no other equally striking example of the truth that a handful of good men can transform a whole society.” (2)

Coubertin departs from the view that Modern Age has deprived life of meaning. However, he does not search for a solution of the “moral confusion” and for the “counterbalance to material forces” in the sphere of mind, but in the sphere of a mindless imperialist and opressive activism, which also includes industry and science, and removes the very need for raising the question on the purpose of life. By building a myth about Arnold, Coubertin seeks to establish a spiritual movement which should reject the emancipatory heritage of the European culture and modern society and mark a “new” beginning in the development of European society and civilisation in general. Coubertin’s Procrustean relation to Arnold suggests that he was not interested in the whole of Arnold’s thought, but in the points that could help establish a new ruling ideology in accordance with the progressivistic spirit of the New Age and the expansionist aspirations of European capitalism which does not tolerate any (reasonable or moral) constraints. He takes Arnold’s pedagogy, according to which the strong have the right to submit the weak by means of sheer force, to the extreme, and turns it into the universal principle of social life. Coubertin is not interested in the ultimate goal of Arnold’s pedagogy, which is to create “muscular Christians”, but in how sport, which embodies the unbridled effects of Social Darwinist laws, can be used to create a new “master race”. That race he entrusts with the assignment to create a “new (positive) society” in which a totalitarian domination of the rich over the working “masses”, “lower races” and women will be established.

Talking about Coubertin’s relation to Arnold, Yves-Pierre Boulongne comes to the following conclusion: “Coubertin so openly accepted Arnold’s theories because at that time his social environment was striving to stir within itself the aspirations to power. To strengthen one’s muscles, to be able to will, to be daring, to expose oneself to danger – those were the main topics in French political and military circles, but partly it was the expression of a desire, an aspiration to carry out a patrician reform of nature. It was precisely this atmosphere of rigidity and exertion of muscles and will that  Coubertin found at Rugby, Cambridge and Eton, and that elitism he adopted completely.” (3) According to Boulongne, Arnold’s view that “it is not necessary to have three hundred, one hundred, not even fifty students, but it is necessary for them to be Christian-gentlemen”, Coubertin interpreted in the following way: “You always have in mind the elite, the contribution of an excellent and small phalanx being uncomparably greater that that of a multitude of people with avarage abilities; thus, all institutions seek to provide for those who already possess, as is written in the New Testament.” (4) Boulongne proceeds as follows: “This utilitarian philosophy tends to build self-centred individuals, and about that Coubertin had no illusions, since he himself said that “practical sense of an English student often verges on egoism”. (5) However, Coubertin “accepts the responsibility for adopting this philosophy”, expressing it in the following way: “For a shy, weak, apathetic man, life proves to be unbearable… Never is a selection so ruthless as it is in school. There exist two different kinds of people: those who look other people straight in the eyes, people with strong muscles, their bearing conveying self-confidence, and the kind of sickly people with a resigned and humble expression on the face, who bear themselves as defeated soldiers. Well, in the college it is the same as in the world: the weak are eliminated; this type of education benefits only those who are strong.” (6)

Arnold’s conception represents the “taming” of Social Darwinism by way of Christian moralism; for Christianity Coubertin substitutes Olympism, which becomes the deification of Social Darwinism: modern Olympic agon lacks both the struggle between the good and the evil and the struggle for freedom. However, Coubertin destorted even so reduced Social Darwinism, and adjusted it to fit his political concept. He “overlooked” that natural selection, namely, the evolution of the living world to which he was constantly appealing, involves the struggle of animals to survive and consequently the opposition of the weaker to the stronger – which constitutes the foundation of a “cosmic justice” consisting in the right of every being to fight for its survival. It is precisely the opposition of the weak that Coubertin, with his “utilitarian pedagogy”, seeks to eliminate. Coubertin’s progressistic evolutionism is not opposed only to the dialectic of history, but also to the dialectic of nature. The basic reason for Coubertin’s contradictory stand, as assessed according to the criteria of his own conception, lies in a new quality of the “oppressed”: the ability and willingness to unite and thus become a power capable not only of opposing the ruling “elite”, but also of creating a new world. By eliminating from society the fight for freedom, Coubertin eliminated from nature the struggle of the weak to survive. The indisputable submission of the weak to the strong, which stands in direct contradiction to the logic of bellum omnium contra omnes predominant in the “state of nature”, is the alpha and omega of Coubertin’s Olympic “pacifism”. On account of this, Coubertin is against any forms of trade-unions or political organising of the workers. This fear of the unified forces of the oppressed is the original source of his fanatism and the basis of his political strategy. Coubertin uses the Social Darwinist doctrine as a means of justifying the tyranny of the strong over the weak, and at the same time tries to protect the unudisputable supremacy of the aristocratic and bourgeois “elite” from the effects of Social Darwinist laws. Coubertin actually strives to ensure a privileged position of the rich oligarhy relative to the “natural laws” on which its power is founded. Struggle for freedom can no longer jeopardize the dominant position of the ruling class (race), it can only affirm it. To put it more precisely, the power of the bourgeois “elite” is a “fact” representing the final result of Social Darwinist laws. Accordingly, Olympism is not an instrument for globalizing the principle bellum omnium contra omnes, but an instrument of the ruling “elite” for “teaching” the subjects how to conform to the order based on the principle “might is right”. The Olympic “enlightenment” proves to be the creation of a submissive character and a racially inferior conscious. At the same time, the competition between the “natives” and their masters on the sports field is meant to compensate for the ”natives” renouncement of the struggle for freedom.

Coubertin manipulats with two anthropological models based on the position of man relative to the means of production, and on the race and gender, respectively: the anthropological features of the white rich bourgeois “elite” differ from those of the workers, “coloured races” and women. The highest human virtue – “the passionate desire to rule and possess” (7) is, according to Coubertin, the exclusive anthropological feature of the (white) plutocracy. He emphasises that one of the most important aims of his “utilitarian pedagogy” is to develop the animal nature of the bourgeois, since by his nature he is a “lazy beast”. (8) Therefore, the basic role of sport is to enable the bourgeois to “overcome” the limitations of his originally animalistic nature, to become a super-animal and thus reach the highest stage in the development of the animal world. The highest virtue of workers, women and “lower races” is “goodness”, namely, an indisputable submission to the capitalists, to the pater familias and colonial masters. Unlike Aristotle, who holds that  “opposition” to slavery exists even in people who are “in their nature disposed to submit”, (9) Coubertin removes it from his anthropological conception for practical reasons. Similarly to Comte, Coubertin thinks that the oppressed are endowed with moral “superiority” which enables them to arouse compassion in their masters. “Goodness” of the oppressed takes the role of a “soother” of the ruthless and limitless greed of the ruling “elite”, and their “moral” actions become the chief (compensational) form of their social activity. Coubertin’s preachering is not inspired by Christian moralism, but by practical political motives: it is aimed at allaying the anger of the workers and eliminating them from the political arena in order to establish social peace. The survival of the parasitic classes corresponds to the state of nature which is not subject to any moral reasoning. Just as the devouring a sheep by a wolf is not a moral issue but a “fact” of the state of nature, so is the oppression of “the weak” (poor) by “the strong” (rich) a natural law against which it is “useless to protest”. (10) Hobbes says on this topic: “In the war of all against all nothing can be proclaimed unjust. In such a state the notions of just and unjust are out of place.” (11)

Speaking about the origin of the “doctrine of might is right” in ancient Greece, Miloš Đurić indirectly refers to the nature of de Coubertin’s doctrine: “That doctrine had two roots: philosophical theory and political practice as an aristocratic, reactionary revolution from above. An extensive philosophical argument of that doctrine was given by Callicles from Aharna, Georgia’s disciple, who is known to us from Plato’s Republic. While Protagoras held that justice was necessary to maintain social life, Callicles, together with the sophist and orator Trasymachus in Plato’s Republic, defends with radical pathos the conceptions according to which justice is unworhy of a free man, while  injustice appears as a sign of strength and power. Individual self-willingness, strength and power, to put it shortly, the ethics of power, unscroupulous energy – these things correspond to the morality of the master, while justice and moral laws in general belong to the morality of slaves, invented by the weak as their weapon to frighten the masters, the strong and the powerful.” He proceeds as follows: “The consequences of such teachings in the historical life of Athens are obvious. From it, the vain and ambitious demagogues obtained food for their imperialist policy, which is best reflected in their cruel destruction of the city of Melos and  the fatal invasion of Syracuse. With the voluntarism of a lion, but also with the hedonism of a swine, Callicles appears as the earliest precursor of Machiavelli’s The ‘Prince’ and Nietzsche’s ‘Overman’.” (12) In spite of giving exceptional importance to material wealth, Coubertin is not in favour of hedonism. Not to relish the acquired wealth, but to fight to acquire it, and in particular, to defend the established (looting) order – that is the main task of the ruling class. Starting from the painful historical experiences of the rich “elite”, Coubertin attacks its members for their aspirations to leasure. He regards sport primarily as a means of developing their conquering spirit and of improving the combat readiness of the bourgeoisie at the time of the expansion of the liberating working movement. The affirmation of the status of the ”master race”, in the guise of a “fight for freedom”, should be the basic source of content of the rich and the limit of their egoism.

Coubertin is congenial to Machiavelli’s doctrine, yet their conceptions show considerable differences. Thus, Machiavelli claims that “there are two ways of contending, one in accordance with the laws, the other by force; the first of which  is proper of man, the second to beasts. But since the first method is often ineffectual, it becomes necessary to resort to the second. A Prince should, therefore, understand how to use well both the man and the beast.” (13) Starting from rigid Social Darwinism, Coubertin repudiates social norms and declares the “right of the strong” to be the indisputable basis of social integration. Coubertin comes close to Machiavelli’s view that “all armed prophets have been victorious, while those unarmed have failed”. (14) However, in addition to “courage”, “destiny” and “fortune” are also important for a ruler’s success. At the same time, in laws that apply to natural phenomena Machiavelli finds an analogy that confirms the inevitability of social events, which is contrary to Coubertin’s class voluntarism. (15) Speaking of a “criminal or unscrupulous road” to power, Machiavelli concludes: “Indeed, we cannot regard as a virtue murdering your citizens, betraying a friend, failing to keep a promise, an absence of compassion and faith. All these can bring man to power, but cannot bring him honour.” “Humanity”, which is eliminated from Coubertin’s Olympism, is for Machiavelli one of the most important conditions to “count the Prince among excellent men”. (17) Concluding in his “Appeal to Italy to wake up and set itself free from foreigners” that “everybody is fed up with foreign domination”, (18) Machiavelli calles on Lorenco de Medichi to carry the banner of freedom “with the same enthusiasm and  hope with which man goes to just wars”, (19) and this is in opposition to Coubertin’s Olympic doctrine, which absolutizes the principle “might is right” and denies the oppressed the right to freedom.

Antiemancipatory nature of Coubertin’s Olympic doctrine can also be seen if we compare his doctrine with the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, on which Coubertin appearantly relies. Hobbes claims that man is an egoistical being that struggles to survive and consequently to submit the others. It follows that the lust for power is a constant feature of human nature. The identical conceptions are found in Coubertin. However, Hobbes claims that nature created men equal in terms of their bodily and spiritual abilities. From the assumed natural equality of people Hobbes derives their natural animosity: being equal, people strive for the same things which they cannot share. The creation of the state ends the  “state of nature” in which “war of all against all” (bellum omnium contra omnes) rules and social peace is established through “state sovereignty”. To the “state of nature” Hobbes opposes the “civil state” in which the state keeps its citizens in constant fear from sanctions and thus compels them to obey “natural laws”. In addition to that, there are moral postulates: justice, modesty, charity. They do not derive from human nature, but from reason which discovers them as the necessary conditions of communal life. The establishment of a state is based on a particular agreement or contract between citizens, by which they partly renounce their rights for the sake of the common good consisting in a peaceful and safe life of everybody. The state appears as an institutionalized protection of the basic interests of citizens from self-willingness of groups and individuals, and thus as the “sword of justice”. In Hobbes, the “common interest” is the form in which the emerging citizens are confronted with the self-willingness of the aristocracy as the ruling class. It is oppossed to the principle “might is right” since it gives a “natural” legitimacy to the authority, making it independent of human will and eternal. However, his ideas belong to a political concept which is not struggling to abolish class domination as such, but to abolish the privileged superiority of the aristocracy. Coubertin does not depart from the conflicting interests of egoistical individuals, but from the class (and racial) interest. For him, it is not the citizen who is the constituent part of society, but the power of the ruling (bourgeois) class to hold the working ”masses” in submission by force. For Coubertin, egoism of an individual in the period of the formation of  bourgeois society and liberalism becomes in monopolistic capitalism the ruling egoism of the ruling class. Hence he does not need reason, from which the “common will” is derived, nor the institutions of compulsion (“state sovereignty”) which are supposed to prevent the conflicting egoistical interests of groups and individuals from jeopardizing social existence. Not only does Coubertin’s man not abandon the “state of nature”, he does his best to preserve it. The constant oppression that the strong exert on the weak is, at the same time, the basic means of preserving the combat power of the bourgeoisie – and this is the basic assumption for preserving the established (oppressive) order. While Hobbes seeks to create an institutional framework so as to protect society from disastrous effects of the ruthless struggle between the citizens due to their private interests, Coubertin tries to integrate the bourgeoise as a class and militarize it so as to enable it to efficiently deal with the workers’ movement and realize its “colonial mission”. The principle “might is right”, having a class, racial and patriarchal character, becomes the supreme principle of social “integration” and the foundation of “social peace”. For Coubertin, the matter is settled by the bourgeoisie taking power in its own hands and acquiring the monopoly of power. What he wants to do is to make that power efficient, indisputable and eternal. Therefore, Coubertin abolishes civil society and “rule of law” and proclaims the bourgeoisie the direct carrier of the absolutized authority. In this way, Coubertin abolishes the private and public spheres and raises the partial (class) interest of the bourgeoisie to the level of an indisputable “interest of society”. Hence the ideas and political movements that, according to Coubertin, restrain and threaten the legitimate egoistical interests of the bourgeoisie, at the same time threaten the “interests of society”. The free development of the need of the rich to get richer represents the driving force of social “progress”: greed (of the rich) is the highest human virtue.

The extent to which Coubertin deviates from the original emancipatory ideas of Hobbes’ doctrine can be seen if we compare his Olympism with Hobbes’ conception of man’s freedom as the basic “natural law”, involving the right of every man to use “every means” and “every way” to defend himself. (20) According to Hobbes, “every citizen has the right to decide for himself what is a good and what is a bad action”, and “it is allowed to kill a tyrant”, (21) meaning that every man has the right to oppose injustice. For Coubertin, the Hobbes’ ninth “natural law”, stating that “all men are equal by nature”, (22) represents the worst blasphemy. Besides, Hobbes tries to supress egoism, with its disastrous effects on social organism, by way of Christian “humanism”. “Love thy neighbours like yourself” (23) becomes one of the most important principles of his “Leviathan”, which is a peculiar Christian state. God is not merely the “creator of the whole nature”, he “acts in the hearts of people”. (24) Scriptures become the origin of divine wisdom as the highest truth. (25) What suggests the congeniality of Coubertin and Hobbes are not Hobbes’ maxims bellum omnium contra omnes and homo homini lupus, which apply in the “state of nature”, but the maxim auctoritas, non veritas facit legem which subordinates the pursuit of truth to the preservation of the existing order. However, this principle should be considered with respect to Hobbes’ conception that the “welfare of people” is the ultimate goal of the establishment of the state, (26) based on Cicero’s maxim salus populi suprema lex, which is totally opposed to Coubertin’s plutocratic conception. (27)

Coubertin’s philosophy is also oppossed to the emancipatory heritage of the philosophy of John Lock, who not only insists on  “freedom, equality and independence” of man who, following his inalienable “natural right”, (28) agrees with others to create a “Civil Society”, namely, unite in the “Community” or “Government”, (29) but also that “he who attempts to get another Man into his Absolute Power, does thereby put himself into the State of War with him”. (30) The right to freedom and the right to defend it are the basis of man’s inalienable right – as oppossed to Coubertin’s “might is right” and “social peace” based on it. Considering the socio-economic and political situation in Europe in the second half of the 19^th century, Lock’s appeal to defend freedom could be interpreted as an appeal to workers to stand up to the tyranny of the ruling plutocratic “elite”.