Sports & Aesthetics

 We often talk about sport in the language of aesthetics

– Beautiful swing/stroke (baseball/golf)
– Graceful stroke or stride (swimming/running)
– Beauty, creativity, style, grace, etc

The term aesthetics comes from the Greek "aisthetike" and was coined by the philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten in 1735 to mean "the science of how things are known via the senses."

Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy that is concerned with the nature of art and the criteria of artistic judgment.

 

 The major problem in aesthetics concerns the nature of the beautiful. Generally speaking there are two basic approaches to the problem of beauty:The objective approach asserts that beauty inheres in the object and that judgments concerning it may have objective validity. The subjective approach tends to identify ‘the beautiful’ with that which pleases the observer (context is important
here as well).

The philosopher Denis Dutton identified seven universal signatures in human aesthetics:
1. Expertise or virtuosity. Technical artistic skills are cultivated, recognized, and admired.
2. Non-utilitarian pleasure. People enjoy art for art's sake, and don't demand that it keep them warm or put food on the table.

3. Style. Artistic objects and performances satisfy rules of composition that place them in a recognizable style.
4. Criticism. People make a point of judging, appreciating, and interpreting works of art.
5. Imitation. With a few important exceptions like music and abstract painting, works of art simulate experiences of the world.
6. Special focus. Art is set aside from ordinary life and made a dramatic focus of experience.
7. Imagination. Artists and their audiences entertain hypothetical worlds in the theater of the imagination.

Many athletes seem to characterize sport as an art form. Some, it seems, are involves in sport that are measured by some “artistic” criteria (figure skating, synchronized swimming, etc.) Some philosophers make the stronger claim that sport is art. However, many of sports have some artistic concepts.

Best argues that while there do seem to be aesthetic elements in sport it is constructive to distinguish “purposive” sport from “aesthetic” sport. In purposive sport, the aesthetic is unimportant. the goal is apart from manner of achieving that goal so long as it is within the rules. In aesthetic sport the aim of the sport cannot be isolated from the artistic manner in which it is achieved.

Ref: Sport, Art, & the Aesthetic - Dr. Masucci