Olympism

For most people, I suppose, the word “Olympic” will conjure up images of the Olympic Games, either ancient or modern. The focus of their interest will be an two-week festival of sport held once in every four years between elite athletes representing their countries or city-states in inter-communal competition.

Most people, too, will have heard of an “Olympiad”, even though it is sometimes thought to refer to a particular Games. In fact it refers to a four-year period, during which a Games may or may not be held. So: the Athens Games are properly referred to not as the XXVIII Games (since there have been only twenty-four, three having been cancelled due to World Wars) but as the Games of the XXVIII Olympiad. The Games are held to celebrate the end of the period of the Olympiad.

Fewer, however, will have heard of “Olympism”, the philosophy developed by the founder of the modern Olympic Movement, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a French aristocrat who had been much influenced by the British Public School tradition of sport in education. This philosophy has as its focus of interest not just the elite athlete, but everyone; not just a short truce period, but the whole of life; not just competition and winning, but also the values of participation and co-operation; not just sport as an activity, but also as a formative and developmental influence contributing to desirable characteristics of individual personality and social life.

Olympism – a universal social philosophy

For Olympism is a social philosophy which emphasises the role of sport in world development, international understanding, peaceful co-existence, and social and moral education. De Coubertin understood, towards the end of the 19th century, that sport was about to become a major growth point in popular culture – and that, as physical activity, it was apparently universalizable, providing a means of contact and communication across cultures.

A universal philosophy by definition sees itself as relevant to everyone, regardless of nation, race, gender, social class, religion or ideology, and so the Olympic Movement has worked for a coherent universal representation of itself – a concept of Olympism that identifies a common range of values to which nations can sincerely commit themselves whilst at the same time finding for the general idea a form of expression which is unique to each nation, generated by its own culture, location, history, tradition and projected future.

De Coubertin, being a product of late 19th century liberalism, emphasised the values of equality, fairness, justice, respect for persons, rationality and understanding, autonomy, and excellence. These are values which span nearly 3,000 years of Olympic history, although some of them may be differently interpreted at different times. They are, basically, the main values of liberal humanism – or perhaps we should say simply humanism, since socialist societies have found some difficulty in including Olympic ideals into their overall ideological stance towards sport.

The contemporary task for the Olympic Movement is to further this project: to try to see more clearly what its Games (and sport in wider society) might come to mean. This task will be undertaken both at the level of ideas and of action. If the practice of sport is to be pursued and developed according to Olympic values, the theory must strive for a conception of Olympism which will support that practice. The ideal should seek both to sustain sports practice and to lead sport towards a vision of Olympism which will help to deal with the challenges which are bound to emerge.

The Olympic Charter

The Olympic Charter (2015) states in simple terms the relationship between Olympic philosophy, ethics and education, as follows:

Olympism is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind. Blending sport with culture and education, Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy found in effort, the educational value of good example and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles. Fundamental Principle 1 (p. 13)

The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity. Fundamental Principle 2 (p. 13)

The practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have the possibility of practising sport, without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play. Fundamental Principle 4 (p. 13)

If we add to this de Coubertin’s famous dicta “All sports for all people” (quoted in During and Brisson, 1994, p. 187), and “All games, all nations” (de Coubertin, 1934, p. 127), we seem to have a recipe for the core values of Olympism: global development, international understanding, fair play, social and moral education and multiculturalism.

A philosophical anthropology of Olympism

Based on its heritage and traditions, each society (and each ideology) has a political and philosophical anthropology – an idealized conception of the kind of person that that society (or ideology) values, and tries to produce and reproduce through its formal and informal institutions.

I have elsewhere tried to present a philosophical anthropology of Olympism as part of an explication of its ideology, and as a contribution to a theory of physical education (Parry 1998a, 1998b). The Olympic idea translates into a few simple phrases which capture the essence of what an ideal human being ought to be and aspire to. It promotes the ideals of:

1. individual all round harmonious human development

2. towards excellence and achievement

3. through effort in competitive sporting activity

4. under conditions of mutual respect, fairness, justice and equality

5. with a view to creating lasting personal human relationships of friendship

6. international relationships of peace, toleration and understanding, and

7. cultural alliances with the arts

Sport and universalism

However, Olympism achieves its ends through the medium of sport, and so it cannot escape the requirement to provide an account of sport which reveals both its nature and its ethical potential. Let me briefly suggest a set of criteria which might begin to indicate the fundamentally ethical nature of sport:

1. human (human development)

2. physical (effort is required)

3. skill (development of human capacities)

4. contest (“contract to contest” – competition and excellence)

5. rule-governed (obligation to abide by the rules, fair play, equality and justice)

6. institutionalized (“lawful authority”)

7. shared values and commitments (due respect is owed to opponents as co-facilitators)

This account reveals the characteristics which together might form a definition of sport: an institutionalized, rule-governed contest of human physical skill. However, it is difficult even to state the characteristics of sport without relying on terms that carry ethical import, and such meanings must apply across the world of sports participation. Without agreement on rule-adherence, the authority of the referee, and the central shared values of the activity, there could be no sport. The first task of an International Federation is to clarify rules and harmonize understandings so as to facilitate the universal practice of its sport.

So, the above account provides both a definition of sport (which might then also act as a demarcation criterion – we now have reasons to offer for or against seeing some activity as a sport) and also a specification of the internal values of sport.

Conclusion

So, this is where Olympism comes from; from the values that are already, necessarily, internal to sport. Some people think that Olympism gives values to sport. But I think that it is the other way around: sport is where Olympism gets its values from. De Coubertin saw what was already there – in everyday sport itself.

Sport as an activity encapsulates and represents the everyday values that are present in all civilized and well-organized communities anywhere in the world. That is why sport is universalizable. That is what the Olympic Games are for.

I say: don’t look to the heavens for inspiration; don’t look to ideology for guidance. Just look at sport itself, and try to understand its logical basis. Then you will see where its ideology comes from, and what gives it its sense and meaning. Then you will see what its values are (and must be).

Everyday sport in everyday life is full of value. It is the source of Olympism.

The future of the Olympic Games relies on our understanding and preservation of these values.

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Bibliography

Brownell, S., and Parry, J., 2012, Olympic Values and Ethics in Contemporary Society (Ghent: Ghent University).

Carl-Diem-Institut (ed.), 1966, The Olympic Idea: Pierre de Coubertin – Discourses and Essays (Stuttgart: Olympischer Sportverlag).

De Coubertin, P., 1934, “Forty years of Olympism” (in Carl-Diem-Institut, 1966, pp. 126–30).

IOC, 2015, Olympic Charter (Lausanne: IOC), http:// www.olympic.org/Documents/ olympic_charter_en.pdf

Parry, J., 1988, “Olympism at the beginning and end of the twentieth century” (Proceedings of the International Olympic Academy, 28, pp. 81–94).

Parry, J., 1998a, “Physical education as Olympic education” (European Physical Education Review, 4, 2, 1998, pp. 153–167).

Parry, J., 1998b, “The justification of physical education” (in K. Green & K. Hardman, eds., Physical Education – A Reader, Meyer & Meyer, pp. 36–68).

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PARRY Jim,"Olympism, the Olympic Movement and the Olympic Games",in:K.Georgiadis (ed.), Olympic Movement: The process of renewal adaption, 55thInternational Session for Young Participants (Ancient Olympia,23/5-6/6/2015),InternationalOlympic Academy, Athens, 2016, pp.102-106.

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