MODERN AND ANCIENT OLYMPISM--excerpted from 'Philosophy of Olympism" by Ljubodrag Simonovic
[This is the third and longest cut from Simonovic's book 'Philosophy of Olympism. I won't burden the reader with another rambling introduction. Suffice to say, Simonovic sent me these last two pieces to post in honor of the upcoming World Cup.
But since then Montenegro has decided to follow its ciggie-smuggling gangster president Djukanovic and declare its independence from Serbia. The delusion that such 'self determination' (or self-destruction) as is expressed by a 51% or 55% majority of those who turn up for these stage-managed state-jackings will legitimate a thoroughly illegal and in every way, politically, socially, economically, militarily, irrational unto criminally insane gesture is typical of the corrupted consciousness that militarized waste capitalism has forced onto the world.
Simonovic's analysis of the corruption of sport, the distortion of play, from Attic Greece to today, unearths the root causes of the balkanization and neo-liberal occupation of Yugoslavia, brought about by a globalized Western aggression made to look like civil war. And just when we thought the barbarians might rest after breaking off Kosovo, now there is a very good chance that the fires of Western extorted civil mayhem will burn again in Montenegro. And that Simonovic might have to update the dedication his work from
To the children killed in the NATO aggression against Yugoslavia in the Spring of 1999.
to
For all the young lives wasted since.
--mc]
Excerpt from the book “Philosophy of Olympism” by Ljubodrag Simonovic, Belgrade, Serbia. E-mail : simonovic@simonovic.info
MODERN AND ANCIENT OLYMPISM
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 "renovate 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.
''Restoring the Ancient Olympic Games''
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 according 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 "renovation 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. Milos Duric 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 Milos Duric "in the Homeric poems the gods are already subjected to a sharp criticism, 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.
Modern and Ancient Olympic Paganism
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 Duric "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 Duric:
"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 becomes a positivist cult that devours all spirituality. To purify the world from the vestiges 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 prokop_ 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.
Coubertin's "Utilitarian Pedagogy" and Ancient Paideia
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 Duric 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 hig- her 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 origi- nal 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, Milos Duric 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, Milos Duric 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 20th 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 criticism 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.
Modern and Ancient "Sport"
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. Milos Duric 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 criticism 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 invol- ves readiness to kill the "opponent", represents the main feature of sports "friendship".
According to Milos Duric, 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, Milos Duric 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 criticism 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 _uri_ 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 fanatically 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) Cou- bertin 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 asce- ticism 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.
The Body and the Mind
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 20th 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 pri- ests (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, becomes a means for inseminating man by the Social Darwi- nist 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 tehne 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 tehne 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, tehne does not have a productivistic and liberating, but a religious and restricting character. Coubertin does not rely on the ancient tehne, 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 ex- cuse 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.
Olympism and Eros
Hellenic society was an erotic community par excellence. The erotic affinity between men was one of its most integrative bonds, and the male body in combatant effort was the highest erotic challenge. The Olympic Games were a major erotic manifestation. The clash of the naked bodies in bloody fierceness, with provocative stances and movements, was a dramatic erotic performance and an exceptional erotic stimulus. The fights between naked boys (ephebos) presented a special treat for the spectators: the Olympic Games were a festivity of pederasty. Since the Olympic gods were anthropomorphic and represented the deification of the Hellenes' qualities and dispositions, it can be assumed that the Olympic Games were a superb erotic spectacle and thus a peculiar "seduction" of the gods. The road to immortality, via "honour", was paved with a passionate erotic tension.
Praising Hellenic society as an unattainable model for the Modern Age, Coubertin, like many other bourgeois Hellenists, ignores the homosexual and pedophilic "details" from the ancient heritage in order to preserve the picture of an idealized world in which the (petty)bourgeois is to find the highest range of the human and a spiritual refuge. The ancient Olympic Games, as well as the gymnasion and palaestra, were pulsing with unhidden eroticism (which was an extraordinary provocation for sexual fantasies) with which Coubertin tries to deal at all costs by means of his muscular pedagogy (guided by Jesuitism and progressism), and thus sterilize the life force of Hellenic society. In antiquity, physical exercises were not meant to restrain Eros and deal with it, but to stimulate and cultivate it. The arete gymnastike involves control of the instincts, but not a fight with man's erotic nature, as was the case in Coubertin's "utilitarian pedagogy". In gymnasion, the meeting point of the aristocracy, the old courted the young who seduced them with their bodies. Physical exercises were a peculiar foreplay and the highest form of the aristocratic physical agon. Coubertin claims that in Hellenic society "both the old and the young lived in a brotherly community" - but he nevertheless proclaims the view that "brotherhood is for angels and not for people" one of the most important principles of his Olympic doctrine - although he does not say anything about the nature of these relationships. In spite of the hypocrisy involved in the justification of pedophilic relations in antiquity, what is important is that love satisfaction is placed in the context of the development of wider ("friendly") relations between people. "Romantic relationships" between the members of the aristocracy appear as the highest form of racial and class integration, i.e. as the most direct form of creating an organic unity of the community. The fact that, according to ancient culture, erotic relations are not based on crude, but on a spiritually stimulated sexuality, is of exceptional importance. It is reflected in the dominant model of the body and the movement that are immortalized in sculptures, reliefs and paintings. In spite of giving primary importance to physical strength, the suppleness of the extremities and of the body (and this is the most important distinction between the body of a Hellene and that of a slave - whose body is stiff and graceless) represents the foundation on which the rhythm of the erotic movement is based: what dominates is the dynamics of the body and "softness" of movement. At the same time, a strong and cultivated body is not merely a form of expressing racial exclusivity and racial superiority to the "barbarian peoples", it is the expression of the final victory of the patriarchal (Olympic) over matriarchal (chthonian) gods.
In antiquity, the erotic impulse is connected with the strivings to shape the body so that it is in harmony with the geometrically constructed cosmos. Hence, "chiseling of the body" in the gymnasium, similarly to the exhibition of naked physical strength on the Olympic playgrounds, has a ritual character. Physical training becomes the form of the pulsation of man's erotic impulse and the highest form of worshipping the gods, which is one of the foundations of ancient eurhythmics. At the same time, it is the realization of the instinctive in a religious form. In antiquity, man had to be fully incorporated into the cosmos, and physical harmony with the cosmos was the basic presupposition of a spiritual unity with it. Ancient aesthetics appears as a unity of the erotic and the cosmic. Hence harmony becomes the most important erotic challenge. Since the basic task of Coubertin's "utilitarian pedagogy" is a complete incorporation of man into the existing world, he also emphasizes harmony, in which he sees the "sister of the order". At the same time, rhythm acquires significant importance, since Coubertin's conception of "progress" has a dynamic character. It symbolizes the throbbing of the capitalist life pulse and an eternal renewal of its life force that appears as a fateful power.
Coubertin rightly concluded that the Hellene, working on his body, actually worked on his spirit. "Chiseling of the body" becomes a religious ritual through which the ancient principle gnothi seauton is realized. Physical exercises become the way of subjecting (giving) one to the gods - and Coubertin replaces them with the "country" and "flag". It is an endeavour to deify the established order by worshipping its most important symbols. In modern Olympism there are no anthropomorphic symbols that represent the ruling power of the order, as was the case with the gods in antiquity. That role is assumed by sportsmen, whose body and physical appearance are completely submitted to the nature of the dominant order. Also, in modern Olympism, the cult of the body has nothing to do with a wider religious context, as was the case in antiquity; it is based on Social Darwinist and progressistic spirit of capitalism and is symbolically expressed in Coubertin's maxim mens fervida in corpore lacertoso. What is dominant is the industrial mimesis and mechanization of the body and in connection with that a combat with Eros and man's natural needs. Furthermore, in antiquity there was no principle of "greater effort"; the dominant principles were "measure is best" (metron ariston) and "nothing too much" (meden agan), as well as the principle of "beautiful and good" (kalokagathia). In Coubertin, man's muscular body in a combatant effort, as a symbolic expression of the dominant spirit of capitalism, is the highest erotic challenge. In that context, Coubertin seeks to deal with Eros which directs man to the development of his affective nature and human closeness, and turn that energy into the driving force of "progress". Unlike the Hellenic world, based on a geometrically constructed cosmos whose power is embodied in the Olympic gods, Coubertin's world is based on the expansionist power of monopolistic capitalism. To conquer the world and oppress the "weak" are the basic erotic stimuli. A love of the power to kill, as the means of establishing domination over the "weak", becomes the subs titute for the love of gods as a fateful power. Hence a love of arms, as the high- est symbol of the conquering power of the capitalist world, represents the climax of an "erotic" enthusiasm, and arms become the highest sexual symbol ("fetish"). From an early age, sexual desire is directed to an explosive muscular strength, the uniform, horses...Playing with arms replaces playing with the penis.
As far as the relations between sexes in antiquity are concerned, one of the most important arguments against the love for women, which can be found in Plutarch's treatise on love, is that it is "nothing more but a natural disposition".(75) Foucault cites Protegen:
"Protegen refers to the naturality of the relation between man and woman because he wants to show their imperfection and distinguish those relations from the love for boys which despises those necessities and strives to something much more sublime."(76) And he continues: "So, there is only one true love, and it is the love for boys; it is true because in it there are no ugly sensual pleasures and because it involves friendship which is inseparably connected with virtue."(77)
Even in ancient Greece, pedophilic demagogy was unmasked. Foucault writes: "Daphne brands the hypocrisy of the pederast. The lover of boys likes to present himself as a philosopher or as a wise man, as if Achilles, all in tears, did not speak of Patrokles' thighs, as if Solon, speaking of boys in the prime of youth, did not sing about the "velvety softness of their thighs and their lips"... (78)
Coubertin rejected both the naturalistically based Eros and the ancient pedophilic doctrine. The relation to the woman shows that in antiquity there existed a difference between a sexual relationship which is supposed to satisfy the senses and the one which is supposed to realize a "higher" relation between people, and which is connected with the idea of spiritual affinity. In Coubertin, there is neither of the two: sexual relation is reduced to the technique of insemination, the senses being included only to the extent and in the way that should enable insemination. As far as the "friendship" based on homosexual affinity is concerned, it could, if we follow Coubertin consistently, be realized in the world of angels, but not among people, since they cannot be "brothers", but only "rivals". Coubertin is not a pedophile nor is his erotic disguised in platonic erotology. He does not connect Eros with "chastity", but with a masculine strength and is delighted with man's muscular body, military parades, horses and arms... Coubertin abhors "pederast ethics" (Foucault) which, as a higher form of friendship, involves a help in trouble, a sacrifice in fight, care in the old age, the lover's duty to return love and so on. (79) It is no accident that collective sports are excluded from Coubertin's "utilitarian pedagogy". He strove to prevent man from developing a sense of solidarity and closeness between people. An endless greediness and selfishness are the most important qualities of the bourgeois. Coubertin discards the ancient cult of "war friendship" based on the sexual closeness of warriors, symbolized by the relation between Achilles and Patrocles. Eros which is "delighted by combatant virtue and moral discipline" (80) is excluded from the modern Olympic mythology. There is only an eroticized rivalry based on the clash of bodies that symbolize the expansionist power of capitalism. As for the mutual "respect" of "contestants", it is the respect for the ruling (murderous) power embodied in "rivals". In antiquity, Eros was supposed to incite a belligerent spirit; in Coubertin, the suppression and mutilation of Eros should result in a "wonderful energy" which should be directed to the instrumentalization of man so that the interests of the ruling "elite" are achieved. The belligerent passion in ancient heroes springs from their passion for living based on a respect for and development of all physical potentials, and not on their crippling. They are not restrained by Coubertin's petty-bourgeois prejudices and progressistic logic (the absolutized principle of performance, quantification, "the principle of greater effort", mechanization of the body, etc.), but seek to live their lives to the full - it is short and should be lived as intensively as it is possible - in order to gain "honour" and thus ensure eternity. Coubertin's erotic energy is not only aggressive, it is (self)destructive since the relation of man to man and the relation of man to himself are mediated by the principle of "greater effort" that does not have any outer or inner boundaries. At the same time, unlike antiquity, Coubertin's Eros is not a victory over the original disorder, (81) nor is it a return to the original disorder; it is a victory over man's cultural and natural being.
As we have seen, Coubertin deprived man of the need to love and be loved. From sexual relations not only the emotional enthusiasm is eliminated, but also the enthusiasm of mating that is characteristic of animals - which only indicates the real nature of Coubertin's "naturalistic" conception. Insemination is carried out by blocking and suppressing man's erotic nature, and by eliminating imagination. The woman is reduced to the owner of the womb, a peculiar racial (national) incubator, while man is reduced to the owner of the material for insemination and the sexual relation to a sheer insemination technique. Marriage is not the relation of emancipated persons connected with love and a need for a family, but it is an institutionalized bond of reproductive organs: the spouses are reduced to the tools of racial reproduction. Pater familias treats his wife and children as a protector since, according to Coubertin, the woman does not have any human or civil rights. Coubertin does not depart from man (citizen) as a constitutive segment of society, but from the existential interests of the race, whose highest values are embodied in the ruling "elite".
According to Coubertin, the "Oedipus complex" is not possible. The family is not founded on the need for satisfying sexual desire, but on the need to insure the biological reproduction of the race and create the initial authoritarian structure of society that corresponds to the structure of the animal community and represents a direct connection with it. The family, as the "basic cell of society", is the basis of the organization of society and the means for destroying the social structure based on sovereignty and equality of the citizens. Since for Coubertin the family is "the natural" basis of social structuring and the foundation of the hierarchy of power, the role of the father as pater familias is of primary importance. The authority of pater familias has a natural and legal character and relies on his physical strength and the order in which that strength ensures the dominant economic position. He is the bearer of the will to power and thus an indisputable master of his wife and children. As far as the relation to wife is concerned, she, as the symbol of "weakness", does not deserve to be fought for, particularly because the relation of sons to their mother is not based on sexual desire, but on the model of relations dominant in patriarchal society: the woman is the national (racial) incubator and a servant. In Coubertin's conception, the father and the sons are collaborators, and their rivalry is based on the struggle for a position in the hierarchy of power. Here also we can see that Coubertin is not a consistent Social Darwinist: between the father and the sons there is no fight for sexual domination over the mother ("female"), which is characteristic of the animals. Patricide on the part of the mother and son is not possible, since it symbolizes a revolt of the "weaker" against the indisputable authority of pater familias on which the existing hierarchy of power in society is based. The sons treat their father not only as someone who is stronger then they are, but as a symbolic incarnation of the ruling power. They should not cherish any animosity to their father, since it can be the germ of a revolt against the dominant order: the father is the indisputable master, leader and idol.
Modern Olympism represents an eroticized "cult of the existing world". It is no accident that Coubertin speaks with great enthusiasm of the French colonial exploits and that he is so delighted with militaristic ceremonies, which are the highest form of the eroticized conquering (oppressive) power of capitalism. Instead of a "love of God", the highest challenge becomes the love of the laws of evolution, which in the "progress" reach their highest and final form. In Coubertin, the deerotisation of man and the relations between people (sexes) is accompanied with the erotisation of the relation to sport (especially boxing) and sportsmen as the symbolic incarnations of the spirit of capitalism, particularly with the erotisation of the Olympic Games. The rhythmic pulsation of a mystified dominant power appears in the form of militaristic pederasty: rhythmical marching, flags, hysterical euphoria... The Olympic spectacle, with its aggressive choreography, represents a peculiar foreplay, which is meant to stimulate the senses and keep man in the state of erotic tension. The Olympic Games become the superb ritual of giving oneself to the dominant spirit of capitalism, similarly to the ancient Olympic Games, where man was giving himself to the Olympic gods. However, in Coubertin, we see the deerotisation of the ancient physical culture through a Jesuit Puritanism and progressism which involves quantification and the industrial mimesis. Olympism becomes the climax of man's dehumanization and denaturalization. Coubertin follows the tendency of a "desexualisation of organism that is necessary for a social utilization of organism as the working tool", (82) and extends it to the bourgeois in order to create the ideal tool for the realization of the expansionist strivings of monopolistic capitalism. The development of the capitalist way of production, which appears in the form of quantification and mechanization of the relations between people and man's relation to himself, represents the power with which the laws of evolution are "superstructured". Sport becomes the capitalist form of denaturalizing Social Darwinism.
Coubertin's "Eros" is close to the phenomenon that Marcuse called "non-repressive sublimation", in which "the sexual stimuli, without losing their erotic energies, overcome their immediate object and eroticize the normally non-erotic and antierotic relations between individuals, and between them and their surroundings".(83) However, in spite of Coubertin's insisting on spontaneity, we here deal with a peculiar coercion, since the "circumstances", in which the child is to grow up, involve the child being compelled to behave in a particular way. Hence the development of a sado-masochistic character becomes a necessary consequence of the process of sublimation. At the same time, Coubertin appeals to (positive) conscious that should persuade man that the order of violence is indispensable and that it is useless to resist it. One of the most important tasks of sport is to abolish the duality between desires and will, in the context of a forced struggle for domination and survival, and create from man a conflictless personality. In spite of Coubertin's strivings to abolish the sphere of consciousness and, through sport and physical drill, immerge man into everyday life at the level of the subconscious, (positive) conscious constantly appears as a corrective and an instruction for action. It is due to the fact that social life is not unambiguous and it repeatedly conditions and reproduces man's need for closeness with other human beings and for freedom.
In Coubertin, what is dominant is not shame and fear, as it was in antiquity, nor is it Eros which demands "self-control, self-restraint and fidelity". (84) The normative sphere that enables the senses to be kept "in a state of peace and serenity", not to be a slave of the senses, to "reach that kind of life which is characterized by a complete enjoyment in oneself or a complete control over oneself", is eliminated. (85) Coubertin insists on a fanatical sado-masochistic activism with which the erotic energy, which directs man to man, is transformed into a conquering (oppressive) activism. It is the creation of the cult of the existing world through an agonal physical activism: through the fight between people for victory by achieving a higher result and through a physical drill based on the principle of "greater effort". Physical exercises become a combat with sexual fantasy and the direction of imagination to victory and "progress", which comes down to conquering the world. Physical suffering becomes the form of discharging the erotic energy, a peculiar prolonged orgasm, which is also present in Huizinga, except for the fact that he praises blood, despair, death as an extraordinary erotic challenge. Coubertin's bourgeois is in the state of constant sexual tension: sexual desire is "realized" through the conquering (oppressive) activism and self-punishing of the body and turns into the chief force of the drive for domination. Sport becomes the way of a systematic suppression of sexual needs and the direction of a "liberated" energy to building a fanatical combatant character oriented against one's own body and against other people. "The passionate cry" of Coubertin's Olympic winner becomes the highest form of discharging man's suppressed erotic being, a peculiar orgasm. Coubertin noticed very well that emotional connection between people questions the fanatical focusing of a sportsman on a given goal. The destruction of genuine relations between people becomes the basic way of creating an asocial fanatic, who is focused on the combat with his original human (natural) needs and on the development of the explosive muscular strength, resulting in the development of a sado-masochistic character. In Coubertin's "humanism" man becomes to man the object for gratifying the suppressed and degenerated instincts.
Coubertin needs erotic symbolism to integrate people as a race, class and gender at the level of "collective subconscious". The muscular body in a combatant effort becomes an idealized racial model and a symbol of the expansionist power of capitalism. The swollen muscles of a male, ready to strike, and an unsheathed sword, ready to penetrate the body of the "opponent", represent the highest erotic symbols. At the same time the swollen muscles of the "master's body", ready to conquer the world, become a symbolic incarnation of the phallus in the climax of tension, while sadistic violence becomes the highest form of sexual "intercourse". Coubertin's "utilitarian pedagogy" insists on the explosive discharge of the suppressed erotic energy and thus on the transformation of the erotic energy into a murderous power. Coubertin's relation to boxing indicates the orgasmic character of his conception:
"Boxing is the struggle for life, a spectacle of the struggle for life; man carefully chooses his moment, selects the spot and bang! - He strikes his opponent with his fist in which is invested all his strength and determination. What a pleasure! And not to mention the benefit of such an exercise." (86)
In Coubertin's doctrine, the gratification of sexual needs is transferred from the field of the (love) relation between man and woman to the field of the fight between men for victory. Instead of a love play between man and woman, Coubertin offers a merciless sports fight between "opponents"; instead of a love passion, Coubertin offers a combatant fanatism and a victorious passion; the frustration resulting from unsatisfied primal needs is the source of energy that, through physical exercises and sport, transforms into an antihuman (sado-masochistic) activism. In Freud's terms, Coubertin performs the "transferring of instinctive goals", but the sublimation of the sexual instinct is not executed through labour, (87) but through a combatant activism. Unlike Christianity, which suppresses man's instinctive nature through his physical passivization and sublimation in the form of an intensive spiritual activism (spiritual onanism), in Coubertin, in the agonal physical activism and physical drill the sexual instinct is fully realized. Sport is a means with which the erotic energy is transformed into an aggressive muscular energy - and becomes the driving force of "progress".
In Coubertin, we deal with a heterosexual relationship: love of the oppressive power is at the same time man's giving to that power. It is openly manifested in Coubertin's principle of "greater effort", which is reduced to a masochistic torturing of one's own body. Torturing of one's own body becomes a peculiar sexual intercourse through giving oneself to the dominant spirit and thus a compensational form of masturbation. Heterosexuality is founded on a sado-masochistic character. The torturing of the "weaker" and masochistic submission to the dominant power are the forms in which a complete (activist) submission of man to the existing order is manifested. Sexual suppression becomes a way of building a masochistic character in the context of dep- rivation (enduring pain, suffering) as the basic presupposition for the projected result: the suppression of Eros, senses, spirit, imagination becomes the source of the "will to win". What is typical of Coubertin's sado-masochistic character is not a "love for the strong and hatred for the weak", as was the case with the Nazis, (88) but a love for the strong and contempt for the weak, which is expressed in an instrumentalized "mercy". Hatred is res- erved for those of whom Coubertin feels a mortal fear: for the revolutionary proletariat.
Coubertin's positive bourgeois does not suffer from neuroses, since Coubertin abolished the normative sphere and deprived man of his sexual needs and thus of imagination. Idealizing the ancient world Coubertin concludes that the "present world was happiness". (89) It already realized what man is striving for, or more precisely, man can strive only for that which has already been realized in the present world. Speaking of dreams Freud concludes: "The Ego, liberated from its ethical bonds, corresponds to all the demands of the sexual instinct, with those which our esthetical upbringing has already convicted, and with those that are opposed to all moral demands of restraint. The instinct for pleasure - libido, as we call it - chooses its object without any barriers, and most often those forbidden." (90) In Coubertin's positive world there is no place for imagination, which is the projection of the suppressed. Coubertin's positive bourgeois dreams only of that which corresponds to "progress" and the interests of the European colonial states. Coubertin, a positivist, abolishes, according to Fromm, Freud's "greatest discovery": "the conflict between thinking and being". (91) In Coubertin, everything occurs "above" man's nature, and man is by his nature a "lazy animal". He does not count on his instinctive needs, as is the case in Nietzsche, but on "progress", as the highest form of evolution. The human nature is determined by the nature of the capitalist order: the bourgeois is the highest form in the development of civilization and is thus the embodiment of capitalist "progress". The unequivocality and unambiguity of "progress" conditions also the unequivocality and unambiguity of the nature of positive man in which everything is in functional unity and who is at the same time in functional unity with "progress". This is the essence of Coubertin's eurhythmics. Coubertin tries to deal with the civilizatory barriers that hinder the "combatant instinct", which means the instinct for domination and possession. It has for Coubertin the same importance that Eros has in Freud - as the expression of the life energy and the basis of man's survival. Coubertin does not try to "tame" the destructive instinct, direct it towards other objects and give Ego the power over nature, but to develop greediness in man (the bourgeois) and thus develop his instinct for domination and possession. In Coubertin's evolutionary and progressistic conception there is no place for Freud's destructive instinct, which "acts in every living being and whose final aim is to reduce living things to an inorganic state". (92) Since Coubertin's "progress" expresses the unstoppable course of evolution of the living world and since man is the highest form in its development, there is no instinct in it that strives to reduce life to the original conditions of inorganic matter, but there burns a life force manifested in the form of the "will to power". By abolishing the destructive instinct, Coubertin abolished the conflict between Eros and Thanatos. As for man's "lazy" animal nature, it is not a contrast, but the basis for the development of his conquering-oppressive character. Coubertin rejects Freud's "principle of Nirvana", and thus the "narcissistic Eros, the first stage of every erotic and aesthetical energy," which according to Marcuse, "seeks above all to reach tranquility"... It is a tranquility in which the senses can perceive and hear only that which is suppressed in everyday work and leisure, that in which we can really see, hear and sense what we are and what things are". (93) Coubertin's "overman" is dominated by tension which is conditioned by a ruthless crippling of man's personality and by the tasks that the expansionist capitalism poses before the bourgeois: he is a fanatic seized by the desire for conquering and getting rich. As far as death is concerned, it is the condition of a rebirth of the life force of order. "Progress" is eternal - man is transient and his life is meaningful only if it contributed to its development. He, as an individual, disappears in the abstract "mankind", which appears as a sheer tool of "progress" with which it removes all the barriers on its path.
Coubertin's doctrine is basically close to Freud's conception, which reduces civilization to the repression of instincts, and it derives from the "eternal primordial struggle for survival ...that continues up to the present day". In Freud, the reason for society to restrict the instinct is economical: since society "does not have enough resources to ensure life to its members if they do not work, it must try to reduce the number of the members and direct their energies from their sexual activities to their work". (94) In Coubertin, what is dominant is not the struggle of society for survival, but the struggle between individuals, classes and races for survival. Not to ensure survival through work, but to ensure the dominant position of the parasitic classes and an increase in their wealth through their plundering the working ''masses'' - this is the starting point of Coubertin's doctrine. The repression of instincts is not based on economic reasons ("deprivation"), but results from the need to develop in the parasitic classes a tyrannical character. The authority in society is not constituted on the division of labour, but on the laws of evolution which enable the strong to rule, and the weak to submit. Coubertin does not depart from civilization, but seeks to return mankind to the state of "nature" without any civilizatory norms that restrain the tyranny of the rich "elite" over the working "masses", the relation between people being mediated by a Jesuit Puritanism and a dehumanized technique. Coubertin argues for an unrestricted action of the instincts, but it must appear in the form of a ruthless combatant character and a conquering practice. It is the repression of the manifestation of instincts which would make a man closer to other men, and the direction of the manifestation of the instincts to the struggle of men (the strong, the bourgeoisie) with other men (the weak, the workers). Coubertin seeks to abolish all the norms and institutions that restrain the conquering (oppressive) character of the bourgeois, as well as the relations and norms that enhance the realization of the instincts in the form of the development of human relations, which means the sense of solidarity, friendship and love. The repression of primal needs is the most important means for the development of a sado-masochistic character of the bourgeois, greediness becoming a compensation for the unrealized primal needs. In Coubertin, the restrictions of the instinct are not imposed by deprivation and work, as is the case in Freud, but by greediness that sucked in man's instinctive structure and turned it into the need for domination. He does not associate satisfaction with the gratification of the sexual instinct, but with the satisfaction of the instinct for acquiring and oppressing. In Coubertin, the members of the parasitic classes have an animal nature not because of their sexual instinct, but because of greediness as their life imperative that derives from Social Darwinist structure of society, which means that their survival is based on grabbing. It is the foundation of the impulse for acquiring and mastering. In greediness man's animal nature experienced a qualitative leap by virtue of the capitalist principle of "progress": the bourgeois is a capitalistically mutated beast. Sport and physical drill, which are based on the principle of "greater effort", are the most important means for transforming the "lazy" animal nature into an activist-greedy nature and for creating the "master race". As far as progress is concerned, it is not based on labour, but on a ruthless struggle for survival and domination between the races, in which the white race has acquired the qualities that make it "superior" to the "colored" races and that enabled it to become, in the form of the "white" bourgeoisie, the highest and final form in the development of the living world. From it follows that "progress" is possible only as further "perfectioning" of the rich and plundering "elite", which becomes the basis for the "perfectioning of mankind".
Like Coubertin, Freud deprived man from the need for and the capability of loving and reduced him to a murderer, sadist, beast... Freud:
"A small part of a readily denied truth, hiding behind all this, is that man is not a meek being who needs love and can defend himself when attacked, but that because of his instincts he must be considered strongly inclined to aggression. Therefore a fellow man represents not only a possible assistent and a sexual object, but also a temptation to satisfy on him his aggression, to use his labour without compensation, to sexually abuse him without his consent, to appropriate his property, to humiliate him, to injure him, to torture and kill him. Homo homini lupus. Does anyone have the courage to reject this saying after all the life and historical experiences? As a rule, cruel aggression looks for a provocation, or employs some thoughts whose end could be achieved by milder means. In favourable circumstances, when the spiritual counter-forces that restrain it are removed, the spontaneous is manifested, and man is exposed as a wild beast that cannot spare its own species. Whoever remembers the horrors of migrations, the invasions of the Huns, the so called Mongols under Jingis Khan and Timur Lenk, the siege of Jerusalem by pious Crusaders, and the atrocities of the last World War, must before the truthfulness of this view humbly bow his head." (95)
The psychological portrait of the members of the parasitic classes, which corresponds to the nature of the ruling and plundering order, becomes the criterion for determining the "true" human nature. To make things even more bizarre, Freud did not only reduce man to a pathological psychological prophile of the members of the parasitic classes, but did the same thing with animals. Coubertin is close to Freud: aggression is man's natural need and by it he achieves unity with his natural being. However, while Freud in the aggressive drives that are deeply connected with sexuality sees a constant threat to the survival of civilization and compels the culture to "mobilize all possible enforcement" against them, (96) in Coubertin, the creation of the state of nature, in which the "law of the stronger" and natural selection freely operate, becomes the most stable existential state of mankind: in it, the order and progress are in complete and undisturbable unity. For Freud, capitalism is "the highest and most developed form of social structure"; for Coubertin, capitalism is the highest form in the development of the animal world, and its "perfectioning" is reduced to the elimination of the emancipatory heritage that can jeopardize its free development and to the creation of a "civilized" menagerie in which culture is abolished. According to Coubertin, it is precisely the unlimited aggression that enables capitalism to survive.
Freud does not make any difference between civilization and culture and regards culture as a repressive normative mechanism that keeps man's aggressive nature under control, and not as a possibility of cultivating man's instinctive nature and developing his specific nature. Speaking of Freud, Fromm concludes that "the key notion of his system is control". (97) Fromm has in mind the social (political) character of Freud's theory:
"The psychological notion corresponds to social reality. Just as in society the minority rules the majority, so the psyche should be controlled by ego and superego. The danger of the penetration of the subconscious carries with it the danger of a social revolution. Suppression is a repressive, authoritarian form of protection of the internal and outer status quo. It is, undoubtedly, the only way of resisting the social changes. But threatening with force, in order to avert "danger", is necessary only in authoritarian systems, where the protection of status quo represents the highest aim." (98)
By reducing man's nature to the aggressive and destructive nature of capitalism, Freud's theory opens the door to establishing totalitarism. The survival of society is possible only if there are repressive social institutions that can efficiently hold man under control. By the development of capitalist destruction, which gives rise to man's ever more aggressive and destructive behaviors, there is a need to increase repression over man. Instead of man's "positive" energy being directed to eradicating the causes of the destructive behavior, it is directed to creating from "society" a concentration camp of capitalism - which is the basic generator of destruction. Speaking of the contradictoriness of Freud's theory, Marcuse concludes:
"But, Freud shows again that this repressive system really does not resolve the conflict. Civilization falls into a destructive dialectic: constant restraints of Eros eventually weaken the life drives and thus strengthen and liberate the same powers against which they have been ’mobilized’ - the powers of destruction." (99)
Coubertin regards the aggressive instincts in the same way as Freud, but instead of arguing for their restriction, he argues for their free realization: they become the chief "anthropological" means for a combat with man's culture and his creative being. Coubertin, like Nietzsche, sees in the restriction of the aggressive instincts a weakening of the life force of the ruling class which consists in a tyrannical will to power, which is the basic integrative force of society and the bearer of progress. In Coubertin, there is a confrontation between instincts and civilization in so far as civilization with its norms and institutions frustrated man's most important instinct: the instinct for conquering and domination. The main task of the Olympic doctrine and practice is to eliminate all the barriers that hinder the development of the will to power of the new "master race". Coubertin is not against repression, but he is against the repressive institutions which, at the time of the "rise of the masses", restrict the self-willedness of the ruling class and thus weaken their will to power - which Coubertin identifies with the life force. He opts for a direct confrontation of the "elite" with the "masses", when the instinct for domination will be fully realized - as the privilege of the "master race". In Coubertin, life force, in the form of aggressive instincts, becomes the power that breaks the bonds of culture and leads man to the destruction of everything human. Coubertin seeks to create a civilization without culture, or more precisely, a civilization from which everything that can cultivate man has been eliminated. In that sense, Coubertin argues for the elimination of all the obstacles that restrain man's instinctive nature and for the realization of man's complete unity with his instinctive nature, in which the instinct for domination is indisputably prevalent. At the same time, by insisting on "progress", Coubertin introduced into his conception the power that offers the possibility of controlling nature and the workers, but at the same time represses and degenerates the instincts since their realization is mediated by the absolutized principle of performance. Man's life energy, which is based on his instinctive nature, is transposed to science and technique, the main tools of the fatal "progress", and becomes the means for destroying life. The conflict between Id and Ego becomes the form in which Superego, as the embodiment of the expansionist spirit of monopolistic capitalism, destroys man's instinctive and cultural being. In that context, Coubertin's conception does not know of Freud's "uneasiness in culture" since it deals both with culture and man's erotic being: it represents the "overcoming" of incest and all other forms of sexual intercourse.
Departing from Freud's conception of the structure of personality, it could be, only conditionally, said that Coubertin's "lazy" animal nature corresponds to Id, and that the conquering and oppressive character represents Ego - which is under control of Superego as the embodiment of "progress" in man, and which directs Ego to deal with his instinctive nature in order to obtain energy that it will transform into a tyrannical practice. However, in Coubertin, Superego does not have a normative nature and does not appear in man as a moral conscious (conscience), but derives from the life "circumstances" and affects man through the logic of relations based on the principle "might is right" and natural selection. Since Coubertin abolished history by "progress" and placed the past and future at the same time level, Superego is not based on the confrontation between past and future, especially not on the confrontation between necessity and freedom, since freedom is impossible. Speaking of the sense of guilt which is expressed as a "need for punishment", Freud says:
"Thus, civilization acquires primacy over the individual's dangerous desire for aggression by making him weaker and disarming him through a mediator, within himself, who supervises him, just as a garrison supervises a seized town." (100)
Coubertin exempted the bourgeois from responsibility for his (criminal) acts, and from the moral conscious (conscience), and thus abolished the possibility of Freud's "transformation of destructiveness into a self-punishing conscious". (101) Masochism of his "positive man" does not result from a need for self-punishing, but from a need to "subdue" his "lazy" animal nature that is an obstacle to "progress".
Coubertin is not a "pacifist" like Freud - who, in his letter to Einstein, says that pacifists possess a "constitutional intolerance for war", (102) which means that they manage to suppress their instincts - but sees in war the highest form of natural selection on which "progress" and the "perfectioning" of the white race are based. As for the following Christian ideas : "people are brothers", "love thy neighbors", their resistance to violence ("Do not kill!"), doing good as the highest human challenge, and especially that man is essentially a "divine being", which means that he is entitled to dignity and respect independently of his race and social status - they are for Coubertin sheer nonsense. Starting from the principle of natural selection and "might is right", Coubertin's most important precept is: attack thy neighbors, especially if he is weaker than you! "On the sports field, there are no friends, only enemies" - this is one of the "golden rules" of sport underlying Coubertin's Olympic doctrine. Sport is a preparation for war and everything should serve the development of a ruthless combatant character and a fanatical conscious. Coubertin regards the attempt to pacify the (bourgeois) youth as the worst of crimes, particularly if it involves the development of man's affective nature and the relations between people based on that nature. Now it becomes clear why, in Coubertin, just as in the bourgeois philosophy, love play is never mentioned. It is not only that, as Fromm says, by "experiencing love the need for illusions is eliminated", (103) but love questions the mechanism with which the erotic energy is transformed into aggressive behavior creating a ruthless combatant character. Coubertin was well aware that love returns man to his erotic being and destroys a belligerent fanatism ("combatant motivation") with which he tries to poison it. He attacks girls because of their "seductive behavior", since the sexual energy of the bourgeois youth is directed to the woman and thus the fanatical focusing on the conquering (oppressive) activism is being destroyed. It is in that context that we should understand Coubertin's firm resistance to the participation of women at public competitions, as well as to games between boys and girls.
In Coubertin, the ruling class is the exclusive bearer of the will to power and thus of progress, which means that it experiences the expansion of the aggressive instinct and thus the eruption of libido. The working ''masses'' are at the mercy of the exhausting labour that weakens their instincts and thus their life force, making them ever more dependent on the bourgeois "will to power", in spite of the fact that they are the bearers of reproductive processes and that they acquire knowledge that makes them superior to their masters. That is why sport is a way of "disciplining" the workers and at the same time the means for the development of the bourgeois conquering (oppressive) character. Unlike many other bourgeois "humanists", Coubertin does not instruct man to escape from suffering, but expects him to find "happiness" in enduring injustice and flattering his masters. In that context, he relies on the Christian man, who regards the torturing of the body as the highest form of "victory" over his natural being. Seeking to deify the existing world of injustice and destroy man's resistance to it, Coubertin made the "pleasure" in suffering the highest principle of his social theory: the creation of a masochistic character in the oppressed is one of the most important aims of his "utilita- rian pedagogy". All that appears as a possibility of developing resistance to the unjust world becomes in Coubertin's theory a means for integrating man into the existing world.
Finally, it should be said that it is not only the fear of the working "masses" that gave rise to Coubertin's hysterical aggressivity. His dwarf-like stature, squeaking voice, a severe debacle in the military academy (St.-Cyr) due to his physical inferiority, and most importantly, his fear of women, all that influenced the formation of his pathological relation to the "weaker". Unable to resort to the phallus, Coubertin, like Nietzsche, resorts to the whip.
Creation of a ''Positive Man''
The basic aim of Coubertin's Olympic doctrine and practice is the creation of positive society by way of the creation of a "new (positive) man". Hence "utilitarian pedagogy" occupies the central position in Coubertin's Olympic doctrine. The ultimate aim of his theory is a final and irrevocable destruction of everything that can question the established class order and the creation of society in which the guiding principles of the French Revolution will be realized. Coubertin's "new man" represents the final form of the capitalist degeneration of man.
In spite of dealing with the normative sphere, Coubertin's "utilitarian pedagogy" is based on the creation of the model of man that does not depart from individual, intellectual, spiritual, emotional and physical specificities of man, but from the class, racial and patriarchal structure of society. In that sense, it contains two separate fields: pedagogy for the ruling rich "elite" (bourgeoisie) and pedagogy for the oppressed (working "masses", "lower races", and women). The aim of the former is to create from the European bourgeoisie a "master race", which will be capable of holding dominion over the workers and woman for ever and will conquer the world; the aim of the latter is to produce "good workers", obedient "lower races", and a subordinated wife. Olympic pedagogy does not depart from man's unalienated human and civil rights, but from the strategic interests of monopolistic capitalism that appear in the form of the absolutized principle "might is right" embodied in the bourgeois "elite". The unbridgeable existential antagonism between parasitic classes and the oppressed conditions an uncompromising and naturalistic character of Coubertin's Olympic pedagogy: the oppressed literally have the same position relative to the ruling "elite" as the herbivorous animals have relative to the beasts. That is why Coubertin claims that people as individuals are only "formally" equal. In other words, people are similar to one another, but they are different in terms of their human value - which depends on the race, class and gender. Their "difference" is conditioned by their different social roles imposed on them by the ruling order: the rich are predestined to conquer and rule while the submitted are predestined to work. From it follows that "perfectioning" of the bourgeois class involves the improvement of its qualities as the master race (class), while "perfectioning" of the oppressed involves the destruction of their libertarian dignity and the deve- lopment of a "peace-loving" character and a slavish conscious. The creation of "masters", on the one hand, and the creation of "civilized" slaves, on the other, - that is the most important "practical" aim of Coubertin's "utilitarian pedagogy".
What is common to class pedagogical models, and what becomes the basis of the "universal" (Olympic) pedagogical model, is that they tend to deal with man's playful nature (imagination, Eros, spontaneity), the feeling of solidarity, critical reason, creative potentials, libertarian dignity, moral reasoning: they correspond to the ideal of a positive man, who represents the abolishment of the emancipatory heritage of mankind. Coubertin's humanité is not only the abolishment of the normative model of the human, which is the basis of human self-recognition, but a form of man's physical and mental degeneration. Pathological psychological profile of the imperialist bourgeois, based on insatiable greediness, becomes the basis of the mental profile of Coubertin's "model" citizen. The original need of a human being for another human being turns, by way of Coubertin's "utilitarian pedagogy", into the "need" to sadistically abuse the others, which culminates in one's "need" to kill people and find in it one's utmost "pleasure". Coubertin's model of the relation of pater familias to his wife clearly shows that his "utilitarian pedagogy" involves man's mental degeneration: Coubertin's bourgeois not only does not seek to have an emotional and erotic relation to his wife, but he is incapable of it, and can treat her only as an incubator and the object of sexual gratification. Spea- king of Coubertin's relation to women, Boulongne says that Coubertin was an "incorrigi- ble misogynist", (104) which indicates his painful handicap and which, among other things, conditioned Coubertin's profiling of the mental faculties of his model bourgeois.
The basic anthropological starting point of Coubertin's conception is the view that man is by nature a "lazy animal". During its fight for survival the white race, embodied in the European bourgeois "elite", experienced mutation and acquired the features that make it "superior" to the "colored races". The bourgeois is for Coubertin only one of the historical forms in which the rich "elite" appears and thus is the embodiment of the "master race". The members of the "master race" are more intelligent, physically stronger and "pureblooded", which enables them to preserve and develop their "noble" racial features and, most importantly, they possess a superior combatant character. The bourgeoisie, thus, has genetic predispositions that make the foundation for overcoming its "lazy" animal nature and develop a master character, unlike the members of the working "masses", "lower races" and women - who are genetically predestined to be slaves. Coubertin relied on the model of ancient society and on the model of the aristocracy and the slave. That is why he insists so much not only on the exclusive character and conscious of the bourgeois, but also on his physical exclusivity. In the Social Darwinist context, it is the creation of the model of beast and the model of sheep. A bourgeois who is reduced to a trained beast ready to attack his victim at any moment - that is the highest and ultimate challenge for Coubertin's pedagogy. The basic role of sport is to help the "master race" develop a master character, and the oppressed - an obedient character. Sport should "teach" the latter to respect the order ruled by the stronger and should "draw" them into the spiritual orbit of capitalism at the level of "civilized" slaves. Bearing in mind Coubertin's endeavour to create from Olympism a universal political means for resolving all social problems and enabling a stable development of capitalism, it can be said that Coubertin's "utilitarian pedagogy" is basically a social pedagogy (prophylactic), and his anthropology is but a side product of his social (political) theory.
Coubertin points out that Arnold's greatest contribution was his creating from physical exercises (sport) the means for the moral building of man (bourgeois) - which became the indisputable model for Coubertin's "utilitarian pedagogy". Praising Arnold's pedagogy, Coubertin concludes:
"The muscles are made to do the work of a moral educator." (105)
However, Coubertin's assertion that "...character is not formed by the mind, but primarily by the body" (106) is totally meaningless, since the basis of Coubertin's pedagogy is not a respect for and a spontaneous development of natural needs and specific qualities of the body, but their distortion through special physical exercises in order to obtain a certain character. It is a normative model that is imposed on man from his early age in the form of "circumstances" that involve a ruthless struggle for survival in which man must oppress the others - or be oppressed himself - as well as the physical exercises that are reduced to a militaristic drill. Physical exercises (drill) on which Coubertin insists are the projection of the ruling ideology that is meant to deal with the emancipatory heritage of civil society, which is essential to a modern (emancipated) personality. They become the means by which the ruling order seeks to repress and distort those qualities of man (organism) which could enable the development of an integral and truly happy individual and create from him the tool for achieving their anti-human (anti-social) aims.
Coubertin admires Arnold because in his reforms of physical education at Rugby he found the source of the colonial strength of the British Empire. Speaking of Arnold, Coubertin comes to the following conclusion:
"He was one of the great Englishmen who, in the middle of the 19th century, did great things for the welfare of humanity. Arnold sought to find in sport the greatest moving force of human education - something that nobody had done before. Also, he was the first to have sought to build man and citizen not only in physical, but also in moral and social terms. Thus he used sport as the most efficient and most reliable element of physical and spiritual perfectioning that man, when the development of young people is concerned, has at his disposal". It is a "wonderful transformation of the curriculum" in England, "which is the first and basic cause of the development of all those powers that in recent times have been beneficial to the British Empire". (107)
Following Thomas Arnold's pedagogy, Coubertin comes to the conclusion that the "muscles and character" are the most important things for those who want to "conquer the world". "Why something", asks Coubertin, "that has proved so successful in Great Britain cannot be applied in France?" (108) Coubertin, a fanatic nationalist, is obsessed with the idea to insure France "the leading role among nations". Through a natural or divine law a highly developed industrial civilization must gain a colonial empire in order to reach natural resources and show its strength. In that respect, Coubertin follows the spiritual tradition of Bar, Gobineau and Liotey. According to Boulongne, the third French Republic "made all his wishes come true". (109) According to Boulongne, in the period up to 1915 Coubertin argues for a "militant imperialism". (110) He is not in favor of a war revenge against Germany, since in that way both countries would only lose, but proposes to Germany to share Africa and Asia with France. (111) Coubertin creates his pedagogy for the bourgeois "elite" in the attempt to make colonial phalanges with a "holy mission" to conquer the world. That is why, for Coubertin, a pacifist education of the bourgeois youth is the worst of crimes. "Boys, who learn to command at matches, learn to command the Indians" - this is the basic "pedagogical" postulate of Coubertin's Olympic pedagogy intended for the "master race". (112)
The basic purpose of Coubertin's "utilitarian pedagogy" is not the creation of a "healthy body", but the creation of a positive character and conscious and certain human relations, ultimately - a positive society. Hence in Coubertin, the process of upbringing (the creation of a "positive" character) precedes the process of education.
"The first of the truths that Coubertin adopted" by reading Arnold is, according to Boulongne, "the truth that upbringing is more important than education (...) he accepted that practice unreservedly: Coubertin praises the British system of education because in it upbringing, which creates masculine people and builds strong-willed characters, acquired primacy over education, which offers knowledge and enriches the spirit. The task of the educator "is not to create slaves, but masters!" - masters who, much earlier than law allows them, become free to use subordinates and to abuse them." (113)
Boulongne concludes that Coubertin's most important pedagogical rule, which he took over from Arnold, is the one according to which "a young man is a sole master of his fate". According to Boulongne, it follows that "freedom must determine the relations between pupils". (114) "Freedom" becomes a "natural right" of the stronger to submit the weaker disregarding their elementary human and civil rights. According to Coubertin's doctrine, man is not born free, but as a master or a slave, depending on his class, race or gender, and this is the unchangeable basis of social structuring. From there follows that an upbringing aimed at creating free people is pointless (and this for Coubertin, an utilitarist, means "harmful"). The point is to create people who are deprived of any sense of solidarity and tolerance, as well as of any moral responsibility for their action. What was for Coubertin of greatest importance in Arnold's pedagogy is the privilege of physically stronger pupils to compel their peers by sheer force to submit to them, as well as the rejection of the right of the weaker to oppose tyranny. School becomes a peculiar "civilized" menagerie and thus the preparation of the bourgeois youth for the fulfillment of its most important "social duty": to establish an indisputable power over the workers and women and realize its "colonial mission". As we have seen, the essence of Coubertin's elitism is "natural selection": "in the college, it is the same as in the world - the weak are eliminated". (115) Sport becomes a training for life and the means for making a "natural selection" in order to form an "elite" made up of the strongest and most unscrupulous, who will be the moving force of the colonial expansion and the chief force for insuring social peace at home. Urlike Prokop says on that:
"In order to strengthen sport as an institution, in order to practically apply its disciplinary functions - hierarchical thought, control of imagination and spontaneity, readiness to perform tasks - and in order to prepare the civil France for bureaucratization and for leading an imperialist policy, Coubertin sought to introduce at the international level a mechanism that Thomas Arnold successfully applied on the field of public schools - competition". (116) Coubertin:
"There is only one means left: international competition. There lies the future. Contacts are to be established between the young French athletics and nations that for a long time have been engaged in sport. It should be insured that these contacts are regularly renewed and that (their) reputation is not questioned." (117)
In Arnold's pedagogy, Coubertin found one more detail which was to become the foundation of his pedagogy:
"Sportsmen are repeatedly taught by the very circumstances, and thus the indispensability of commands, control and order becomes evident". (118)
Fighting for the application of Arnold's system of upbringing in the French schools, Coubertin concludes that in the groups formed on the basis of competition the young are taught what is acceptable for society: to accept the order ruled by the older, more intelligent and stronger. (119) "The quality" of Coubertin's pedagogy lies in that he does not seek to exert a direct influence on people's (children's) conscious by propagating certain norms, but by placing them in the "circumstances" that will compel them to behave in a certain way (which means to accept from childhood certain mutual relations); this will result in the creation of the character of a loyal and usable citizen, and it will become the foundation on which a corresponding normative conscious will be perched. Nietzsche:
"Not to 'correct' people, not to speak to them of some kind of morality, as if there were some "morality in itself" or some ideal type of man in general: the point is to create circumstances in which the stronger people are indispensable: they, in turn, will need a morality that gives them vigor (or, to put it better, a certain physical-spiritual discipline), and they will therefore have it!" (120)
Coubertin is close to Nietzsche, apart from the fact that he attaches special importance to the habit of obeying commands:
"Boys who join a regiment are already acquainted with the instruments of sport, and since they are accustomed to obeying commands, they possess a double advantage; not only do they already know part of what they are supposed to learn, but they learn the rest much more easily; not only are they better prepared to endure the efforts, but, for them, the effort will be lesser." (121)
Circumstances, which means a ruthless struggle for survival, abolish every possibility of choice and impose on man the existing order as the only possible order. "The evidence" excludes both the knowledge and thinking of causality, appearance and essence, falsity and truthfulness, the good and the bad... For Coubertin, life which is based on the principles of natural selection and "might is right" is the origin of sport. It becomes a direct ("spontaneous") form of creating from society a "civilized" herd, and this becomes the basis of "neutrality" of Coubertin's "utilitarian pedagogy". Human beings should become enemies before they develop their humanity, so that a corresponding normative conscious can be perched on an animal character without any human resistance. Coubertin's pedagogy does not depart from society as a community of equal and close people (freedom, equality, brotherhood), but from the existential requirements placed before man by capitalist society. "The fight of all against all" and "man is another man's wolf", as the most important life principles of capitalist society, determine the character of a "model citizen" with the corresponding "model" of the body and physical movement, which should be sought for.
Coubertin claims that his pedagogy is aimed at developing a man's character regardless of his values. "Even criminals are brave" - concludes Coubertin. It is no accident that it is the criminals, and not the fighters for freedom, that Coubertin compares with the members of the ruling class: a ruthless aggressive and plundering mentality is a common feature of criminals, aristocrats and bourgeois. Just as, according to Schiller, "an upbringing by way of art becomes an upbringing for art", so does an upbringing by way of a mindless combatant physical activism becomes an upbringing for killing and producing the "cannon fodder" (Bloch). The original standpoint of Coubertin's "utilitarian pedagogy" - that the "battle at Waterloo was won on the sports fields of Eton" - clearly indicates the basic purpose of Coubertin's Olympic doctrine. The way in which a "strong will" and "courage" are acquired and developed is crucial for creating a personality. Coubertin's "objectivism" is misleading, as it is not the muscles but the nature of physical exercises and the way of training, more precisely, the relation of man to man and the relation of man to himself, considered in the comprehensiveness of his human development that influences the creation of man's personality. That is why boxing is the main discipline of Coubertin's utilitarian pedagogy from an early age and the chief means for children's upbringing, and not gymnastics or mountaineering, particularly not art. It is no accident that Coubertin, who constantly refers to antiquity, never mentions music as a means of man's upbringing. What is most important for Coubertin is to prevent man from developing a sense of companionship and solidarity - and that is the main reason for Coubertin's arguing against team sports. Homo homini lupus - this is the starting point of Coubertin's "value-neutral" conception.
The principle of "natural selection" represents the crucial part of Coubertin's "competition". Man's need to develop his universal creative powers, and thus gain respect in the community, "turns" by way of sport into man's "need" to "be better than others", by fighting against them and beating them. Sport becomes a symbolic form of the struggle for domination by eliminating the weak from the fight for a place under the sun. It becomes the way of dealing with man's cultural and libertarian being, and the creation of egoistic individuals to whom man is an "opponent" and thus the means for satisfying their private interests. Instead of man being to man, via his libertarian and creative practice, the mirror of his humanity, he, via sport, becomes a (curved) mirror of inhumanity. The existential logic that applies in the animal world becomes the basic source and support of sport. With it, man's "lazy" animal nature is to be overcome, and man is to be turned into a super-beast that appears as the highest form in the development of the living world. Speaking of Arnold, Coubertin points out that the purpose of his pedagogy is the creation of such relations between people that correspond to the Social Darwinist model of living, which means man's obedient submission to the existential spirit of capitalism. Hence for him boxing (together with rowing with which the will to a "greater effort" is developed) is the "basis of an efficient and rational culture" which children (including girls) should practice, unlike most other exercises", "from the age of eight or nine". Coubertin has in mind the so called "French boxing" in which the kicks are produced not only by fists, as is the case in "English boxing", but with legs. (122) That boxing, "the fine man's sport", was a great inspiration for Coubertin's imaginative spirit can be seen from his insisting that the performance of Beethoven's "Ninth symphony", and particularly its "unique finale", be supplemented by "several wonderful boxing stances". (123) Even when boxing is concerned Coubertin only states the "fact" that "even in young people and in man there is a combatant instinct" which is "normal" and thus acceptable. "Therefore", concludes Coubertin, "the upbringing of boys is not complete unless it is to some extent connected with martial sports". (124) Obviously, it is not a libertarian or creative "combatant instinct" but the instinct for submission and oppression of the weaker - which is dominant in the Social Darwinist and cosmological anthropological models. A boxer is for Coubertin, as well as for Hitler, one of the most authentic "civilized" phenomena of the "overman".
We have seen that Coubertin's "utilitarian pedagogy" does not only deal with critical conscious, but seeks to create a character that will reject critical consciousness in the same way in which an organism rejects an alien body. A proper upbringing does not consist in developing man's self-conscious and his creative powers, but in establishing man's unity with the present world along with the elimination of the (critical) thought that can destroy that unity and the repression and destruction of all in man that can produce such a thought. Upbringing becomes the means for crippling human individuality and molding man according to the model of Coubertin's "positive man". The process of upbringing must be in accordance with the created character, which means that the development of critical thought and a changing attitude to the existing world is eliminated. With it, the vision of the possible is closed within the horizon of the present world. By advising the Nazis how to strengthen their power, Coubertin formulates the view that expresses the gist of his "utilitarian pedagogy" and represents a magic formula for the solution of all social problems:
"You cannot successfully establish control over people by institutions unless you control heads." (125)
Coubertin's pedagogical doctrine represents the breaking of the connection between pedagogy and culture, established by the sophists, which is the corner stone of modern pedagogy: it does not strive to build versatile personalities, but is reduced to training which produces people whose body, character and spirit are crippled.
Hitler's concept of a pedagogical reform and the creation of a "new man" represent the essence of Coubertin's pedagogical concept and the model for his pedagogical practice. Hitler:
"My great educational work I begin with the young people. Look at these boys and girls! What a material! With it I can make a new world. My pedagogy will be merciless. Weakness must firmly be eliminated. In my ordensburgen young people will be raised who will frighten the world. I want a mighty, masterful, daring, merciless youth. Nothing about them must be weak and soft. A free, magnificent beast must always glare from their eyes. I want my youth to be strong and beautiful. I will use all available physical exercises to build it. I want an athletic youth. It is the first and most important thing. In that way I abolish thousands of years of human development. Thus I have a pure, noble natural material before myself. Thus I can create something new."
And he continues:
"I do not want intellectual education. Knowledge spoils the young. I rather let them learn only those things that they, following their playful instinct, accept with their free will. But, to control them - that is something they must learn. They must learn to control their fear of death in the hardest of trials. It is the level of a heroic youth. And it produces the level of free people, who are the measure and center of the world, creative people, God-like people. In my ordensburgen wonderful God-man who controls himself will stand as the image of a cult and prepare the youth for the coming stage of masculine maturity." (126)
Hitler speaks similarly in "Mein Kampf ":
"People's state did not found its whole educational work on pumping pure knowledge, but on the formation of a body as fit as the fiddle. Only then can we start to build spiritual abilities". He goes on as follows: "People's state must start from the assumption that one not so much scientifically educated, but physically healthy man with a strong, determined character, full of audacity and strong will, is more valuable for the people's community than one intellectual whimp." (127)
The Nazi pedagogical doctrine is almost equivalent to the original intention of Coubertin's "utilitarian pedagogy". That is why it is no accident that the Nazis showed so much understanding for Coubertin's doctrine. In his letter to Hitler, from 17 March 1937, Coubertin does not hide how delighted he is because of the Nazi's "appreciation" of his pedagogy:
"Excellence, I was deeply moved by the visit of the State Minister H. Esser on behalf of Your Excellence and I hurriedly express my gratitude. Germany thus joins - and in the most splendid way - the celebration of my jubilee marked on January 20 at the University of Lausanne. On that occasion I was invited to crown my fifty-year work, related almost completely to the education reforms and improvements. Germany has shown appreciation of my work on several occasions and I owe her my deepest gratitude. I hope my health will allow me to consider and accept the kindest invitation handed to me on behalf of Your Excellence. I take it as another proof of Your kindness. I humbly ask Your Excellence to accept my respect and deepest loyalty." (128)
In his interview published on the occasion of the Nazi Olympic Games in Berlin, Coubertin, trying to court the Nazis, follows the Nazi naturalism and insists on the "passionate cry" of the winner. It is no accident that Coubertin speaks of a "passionate cry" in the context of glorifying the Nazi Olympic Games and Nazi regime: it is in complete accordance with the "look of a magnificent beast" of Hitler's "Aryans". The "passionate cry" becomes a peculiar "call of the wildness" and a return to the natural (animal) state in which all civilizatory barriers to the "overman" that can make him sway in his fanatical determination to rule the world are removed. Coubertin and the Nazis agreed on the most vital point: the "new world" should be created through the creation of a new "master race" that will for ever deal with the emancipatory heritage of mankind and establish a total and eternal rule of the white bourgeois "elite" over the workers, the woman and the "lower races". In his "Epistle to the Carriers of the Olympic Torch" Coubertin enthusiastically welcomes the birth of a new fascist world:
"We are living wonderful hours, for unexpected events are happening around us. While, as in the morning fog, the shape of (new) Europe and new Asia appear, it seems that mankind will finally realize that the crisis it is struggling with is above all the crisis of upbringing". (129)
One of the main reasons for Coubertin's decision to bequeath his writings to the Nazis and proclaim them the "guardians" of his Olympic idea (130) is precisely their open "appreciation" of his pedagogical doctrine. Coubertin's texts published in the Nazi papers, in which he advises the Nazis how to use sport and physical exercises to create "a beautiful Aryan race", as well as his broadcast speech with which the Nazi Olympic Games were closed, clearly suggest close affinity between Coubertin's and Nazis' world views. A destruction of spirituality and cultural consciousness and the turning of man into a fanatical crusader of the capital who is not restrained by any civilizatory norms, human dignity and human feelings, are the common features of these two ideologies. Coubertin's endeavour to destroy mankind's cultural traditions by way of sport corresponds to the vandal Nazi feasts, at which millions of books were burnt.
Differences in Coubertin's and Nazi's pedagogical models spring from the nature of their expansionism: Coubertin's model of the bourgeois corresponds to a colonialism that seeks to conquer and exploit natural resources through the exploitation of the "lower races", on which its "civilizatory" role is based; Hitler's model of the "Aryans" corresponds to the genocidal nature of Nazi expansionism. Hence the differences in their conception of Olympism: Coubertin's Olympism opens the possibilities of a spiritual integration of the "lower races" into the established order; Hitler not only rejects every possibility of including the "lower races" into the spiritual orbit of the "master race" by way of Olympism, but sees in it an exclusive means for the racial integration and militarization of the "Aryans", necessary for the destruction of the "lower races". Hence the Nazi model of the Olympic Games seeks its foundations in the original racist character of the ancient Olympic Games and acquires the name "National-socialist Combatant Games" ("Nationalsozialistische Kampfspiele"), which were to have been for ever held at the "German stadium" ("Deutsche Stadion") in Nuremberg (with 400 000 seats), whose construction was committed to the leading Hitler's architect Albert Speer. (131) Coubertin departs from the bourgeoisie as the representatives of the parasitic classes that despise labour and need the "lower races" as the labour force. "The Aryans", on the other hand, are not only the "master race" for whom the slaves will work, but are also the "working people", who with their work can insure their own existence and "progress". Here we can clearly see the difference between Coubertin, an "elitist", and Hitler, a "populist". Coubertin insists on class differences and on sport as the means for militarizing the bourgeoisie and pacifying (depolitizing) the working ''masses''; the Nazis insist on racial and national integration of the "German people" (Deutsche Volk) and on sport as a form of its militarization. Instead of Coubertin's strict distinction between bourgeoisie and aristocracy, on the one hand, and working "masses" on the other, in Nazis there is a unity between the "German people" and their "leader", which is expressed in the maxim "Ein Volk - ein Führer!" Furthermore, the prototype of the Nazi "overman" is not an "international" aristocrat who appears in the shape of a gentleman, as is the case in Coubertin, but the mythical figure of Siegfried, who is the incarnation of the racial spirit of the "Aryans". In addition to his "low origin" (Boulongne), the Nazi "overman" has, according to Coubertin's doctrine, the shortcoming of not being dominated by individualism and egoism, but by the collectivistic spirit of "comradeship" (Kameradschaft) and commitment to the "people's community" (Volksgemeinschaft), which for the ''Aryans'' acquires the same character that polis had for the man of antiquity. Unlike Coubertin, who insists on individual, and opposes team sports, the Nazis insist on team sports, which become the means for creating a "combatant community" (Kampfgemeinschaft), while the "common (racist-militaristic) spirit" becomes the way of submitting the individual to the collectivity which is subjected to the supreme authority (Führer). In his pedagogy Coubertin departs from the bourgeois who already possesses an "elitist" conscious and thus insists on the development of an individual combatant mentality. In that context, the aristocratic model of "chivalry" is paradigmatic for Coubertin's pedagogy. He, above all, sought to develop a combatant bourgeois with self-initiative, and not an organization to which he was to be subordinated. It is one of the main reasons why Coubertin was against team sports.
Coubertin's positive bourgeois deals also with the Christian model of man. Instead of Christian modesty and humility, the bourgeois is dominated by the spirit of aggressive elitism and haughtiness; instead of the spirit of the oppressed - the spirit of the master; instead of asceticism - greediness; instead of the cult of the spirit - the cult of the muscular body; instead of the strivings for the other world - an endless glorification of the present world; instead of sin and redemption - the abolishment of moral reasoning and responsibility; instead of a Christian God-man, Coubertin's "overman" becomes the deification of the positive man.
Coubertin found the building material for his "overman" in the parasitic classes characterized by the "animal nature", the status of the "master" and a conquering fanatism. His "new man" is the result of crossing the crippled and depersonalized ancient "hero", the medieval knight, the English gentleman, the militant Jesuit, the greedy bourgeois, Nietzsche and Nazi's "overman" - all the members of the "master race", which by way of tyranny acquired power and wealth. A love of arms and a contempt for work - these are the main "virtues" of the rich "elite", which proclaimed conquering and plundering the cardinal principles of life. Coubertin turns them into heroic figures that become the role models of the bourgeois youth. They are the synthesis of the best racial features and thus the personification of an idealized model of members of the "master race". Hence the "strength of blood" becomes one of the main sources of the conquering (oppressive) force of the white race, while the preservation of "pure blood" is the basic presupposition of racial stability and racial domination. However, "great people" of the Modern Age do not draw their strength only from their racial roots, or aristocratic heritage, but from the expansionist power of monopolistic capitalism (the spirit of "progress"). Basically, it is a direct instrumentalization of the bourgeois youth on the part of capitalist monopolies, in their attempt to colonize the world and exercise totalitarian power over the working "masses" and women.
To create from the European bourgeois youth, through sport and militaristic physical drill, the "master race" capable of dealing with the emancipatory heritage of mankind and of creating from the world a concentration camp of the West-European colonial states - this is Coubertin's life-long obsession. His Olympic ideal represents the bridge connecting the Victorian England and the imperialist France with the Nazi Germany, and the latter with today's (American) "new world order".
x x x
Footnotes
(1) Carl Diem, "Erneuerung der Olympischen Spiele", In: Carl Diem, Der Olympische Gedanke, Reden und Aufsätze, 22.p. Carl-Diem-Institut, Köln, 1967.
(2) Compare: Rudolf Malter, Der ''Olympismus'' Pierre de Coubertin, Hrsg.Carl-Diem-Institut, Köln, 1969.
(3) Compare: Urlike Prokop,Soziologie der Olympischen Spiele,41.p.Cursive U.P.
(4) Taine H, "Les jeunes gens de Platon", Essais de critique et d' histoire, Septième Edition, 155.p . Librairie Hachette et C-ie, Paris, 1896.
(5) Compare: P.d.Coubertin,Olympische Erinerunngen,109.p.Limpert, Berlin,1936.
(6) Compare: Plutarh,Slavni likovi antike,93.p.I.knj.Matica srpska,Novi Sad,1987.
(7) P.d.Coubertin, "Olympia", In: P.d.Coubertin, The Olympic Idea, 109.p.
(8) Milos Duric, Istorija helenske knji_evnosti, 228.p.
(9) In: Milos Duric, Ibid. 73.p.Cursive M.D.
(10) Fistel de Kulanz, Dr_ava starog veka,200.p. Beograd, 1895.
(11) Milos Duric, Istorija helenske knji_evnosti, 228.p.
(12) Fistel de Kulanz, Drzava starog veka,200,201.p.
(13) Mihailo Duric, Humanizam kao politi_ki ideal, 165.p.SKZ, Beograd,1968.
(14) P.d.Coubertin, "Olympia", In: J.MacAloon, This Great Symbol, 89.p.
(15) Plato, Timaeus, The Collected Dialogues of Plato, 44.d.e.1173.p. Princenton Uni. Press, Seventh Printing, 1973.
(16) Mihailo Duric, Humanizam kao politi_ki ideal, 163, 164.p.
(17) P.d.Coubertin, The Philosophic Foundation of Modern Olympism, In: P.d. Coubertin, The Olympic Idea,131.p.
(18) P.d.Coubertin, "Speech by Baron de Coubertin at the Close of the Berlin Olympic Games", In : P. d. Coubertin, The Olympic Idea, 135,136.p.
(19) Compare : Anica Savi_-Rebac, Helenski vidici, 21.p. SKZ, Beograd, 1966.
(20) In: Mihailo Duric, Humanizam kao politi_ki ideal, 151.p.
(21) Ibid. 152. p.
(22) P.d.Coubertin, "The Philosophic Foundation of Modern Olympism", In: P.d. Coubertin, The Olympic Idea,131.p.
(23) V.Jeger, Paideia,12.p.
(24) Compare:V.Jeger, Paideia,69.p.
(25) V.Jeger, Paideia, 156,157.p.
(26) V.Jeger,Paideia, 11,12.p.
(27) Compare : V.Jeger, 159.p.
(28) P.d.Coubertin, "Speech by Baron de Coubertin at the Close of the Berlin Olympic Games", In : P.d.Coubertin, The Olympic Idea, 6, 7.p.
(29) Compare : Moses Hadas, Helenistische Kultur, 75.p. Ullstein, Wien, 1981.
(30) V.Jeger, Ibid. 355.p.
(31) Milos Duric, Istorija helenske knji_evnosti,471.p.
(32) Compare:Jakob Burkhart,Povest gr_ke kulture,IV tom,IK Zorana Stojanovi_a, Novi Sad,1992.
(33) Aristotel, Politika,1338b5,265.p.Kultura,Beograd,1970.
(34) V.Jeger, Ibid. 13.p.
(35) Milos Duric, Istorija helenske knji_evnosti, 152.p.
(36) Compare : P.d.Coubertin, "L' éducation physique au XX siècle : la peur et le sport", In: P.d.Coubertin, Textes choisis, I tome, 374.p.
(37) Karl Sefold, Klasicna Grcka,15.p.Curs.K._."Bratstvo-jedinstvo",Novi Sad,1973.
(38) Aristotel, Politika,265.p.
(39) Aristotel, Ibid.255.p.
(40) Burkhart, Ibid. 34. p.
(41) P.d.Coubertin, L' Evolution française sous la Troisième République, 355. p.
(42) P.d.Coubertin, Histoire universelle, In:P.d.Coubertin, Textes choisis,I tome, 354.p
(43) P.d.Coubertin, "Speech by Baron de Coubertin at the Close of the Berlin Olympic Games", In: P.d.Coubertin, The Olympic Idea, 6. p.
(44) Compare: Urlike Prokop,Soziologie der Olympischen Spiele, 113.p.Cursive U.P.
(45) Compare: Norman Gardiner, Athletics of the Ancient World, 212-221. p. Clarendon, Oxford, 1930.
(46) Milos Duric, "Znacaj nadmetanja za grcku prosvetu", In: M.Duric, Ogledi iz gr_ke filosofije i umetnosti, 210-211.p. Savremenik SKZ, Beograd, 1936.
(47) Pindar, Ode i fragmenti, Matica hrvatska, Zagreb, 1952.
(48) P.d.Coubertin,"A Modern Olympia", In: P.d. Coubertin, The Olympic Idea, 31.p.
(49) Compare : In: Prokop, Soziologie der Olympischen Spiele, 43.p.
(50) Milos Duric, Istorija helenske etike,74.p.
(51) Milos Duric, "Znacaj nadmetanja za grcku prosvetu", In: Milos Duric, Ogledi iz grcke filosofije i umetnosti, 213,214.p.
(52) Milos Duric, Istorija helenske knjizevnosti, 80.p.
(53) Compare:V.Jeger, Paideia, 99.p.
(54) Ibid. 99.p.
(55) Ibid. 99.p.
(56) Ibid. 99.p.
(57) Ibid. 99,100.p.
(58) P.d.Coubertin, Un Programme, 29.p.
(59) Milos Duric, Sofoklove tebanske tragedije, 30.p. Narodna knjiga, Cetinje, 1955.
(60) Anica Savic-Rebac, Helenski vidici,24.p.SKZ, Beograd, 1966.
(61) A.Savic-Rebac, Ibid.22.p.
(62) Pindar, Ode i fragmenti, Olimpijska XIV,102.p.
(63) V.Jeger,Paideia,60.p.
(64) A.Savic-Rebac,Helenski vidici,6.p.
(65) Compare: V.Jeger,Paideia,369.p.
(66) P.d.Coubertin, "Speech by Baron de Coubertin at the Close of the Berlin Olympic Games", In: P.d.Coubertin, The Olympic Idea, 6, 7.p.
(67) A.Savic-Rebac, Helenski vidici, 107.p.
(68) V.Jeger,Paideia,159.p.
(69) V.Jeger,Ibid.162.p.
(70) K.Sefold, Klasi_na Gr_ka,13.p.
(71) K.Sefold, Ibid.13.p.
(72) Plato, Timaeus, The Collected Dialogues of Plato,34.c.1165.s,44.d.e.1173.p. (73) Compare: Gajo Petrovi_, Suvremena filozofija, 186. p. SK, Zagreb, 1979.
(74) V. Jeger, Paideia, 162.p.
(75) Misel Fuko, Istorija seksualnosti, Staranje o sebi, 223.p. Prosveta, Beograd,1988.
(76) Ibid. 224.p.
(77) Ibid. 225.p.
(78) Ibid. 225.p.
(79) Ibid. 253.p.
(80) Anica Savic-Rebac, Predplatonska eratologija,90,91.p.KZ Novog Sada,1984.
(81) Compare: M.Fuko, Ibid.243.p.
(82) Herbert Marcuse, Eros i civilizacija,39.p. Naprijed, Zagreb, 1965.
(83) H.Marcuse, Ibid. 9. p.
(84) M.Fuko, Ibid. 229. p.
(85) Compare : M.Fuko, Istorija seksualnosti, Koriscenje ljubavnih u_ivanja,31.p.
(86) P.d.Coubertin, Préface-J.B.:Ma Méthode, In:P.d.C.Textes choisis,III tome,182.p.
(87) Compare : Sigmund Frojd, Nelagodnost u kulturi, 19.p.Rad, Beograd, 1988.
(88) E. From, Bekstvo od slobode, 208.p.Nolit, Beograd,1973.
(89) P.d.Coubertin, The Olympic Idea, 109.p.
(90) Sigmund Frojd, Uvod u psihoanalizu, 156.p. Cursive S.F.Kosmos, Beograd, 1964.
(91) E. Fromm, Veli_ina i granica Freudove misli, 32.p. Naprijed, Zagreb, 1986.
(92) In: E. Fromm, Ibid. 132. p.
(93) H. Marcuse, Umjetnost u jednodimenzionalnom dru_tvu, In: Estetska dimenzija, 123. p. _kolska knjiga, Zagreb, 1981, In: Milan Kangrga, Praksa, vrijeme, svijet, 434. p. Nolit, Beograd, 1984.
(94) In: S. Frojd, Uvod u psihoanalizu, 273. p.
(95) Compare: S.Frojd, Nelagodnost u kulturi,47.p.
(96) Compare: H.Marcuse,Eros i civilizacija,42.p.
(97) E.Fromm, Velicina i granica Freudove misli,14.p.
(98) E.Fromm, Ibid,14,15.p.
(99) H.Marcuse, Eros i civilizacija, 42. p.
(100) In: E.Fromm,Ibid. 130. p.
(101) E.Fromm, Ibid, 130. p.
(102) In: E.Fromm, Ibid. 133. p. Cursive S. F.
(103) Erih From, Zdravo dru_tvo, 53. p. Rad, Beograd, 1963.
(104) Compare: Iv-Pjer Bulonj, Olimpijski duh Pjera de Kubertena, 103. p. Narodna knjiga, Beograd, 1984.
(105) P.d.Coubertin, "The Olympic Games of 1896", In: P.d.Coubertin, The Olympic Idea, 11.p.
(106) P.d.Coubertin, "Speech by Baron de Coubertin" - at the Paris Congress 1894, In: P.d.Coubertin, The Olympic Idea, 6.p.
(107) P.d.Coubertin, L' Evolution française sous la Troisième République, 331.p. E. Plon, Nourittet C-ie, Paris, 1896.
(108) Yves-Pierre Boulongne, P.d.Coubertin.Ein Beitrag zu einer wissenschaftlich- en Untersuchung seines Lebens und seines Werkes, In: Die Zukunft der Olympischen Spiele, 89.p. Hrsg. Hans-Jürgen Schulke, Pahl-Rugenstein, Köln, 1976 .
(109) Yves-Pierre Boulongne, Ibid.90.p.
(110) Ibid. 91.p.
(111) Ibid. 90.p.
(112) In: Lj.Simonovic, Olimpijska podvala, 48.p.
(113) Iv-Pjer Bulonj, Olimpijski duh Pjera de Kubertena, 78 p. Cursive Lj.S.
(114) Y.P.Boulongne, P.d.Coubertin. Ein Beitrag zu einer wissenschaftlichen Untersu- chung seines Lebens und seines Werkes, In: Die Zukunft der Olympischen Spiele, 89.p.
(115) In: Iv-Pjer Bulonj, Olimpijski duh Pjera de Kubertena, 79. p.
(116) Urlike Prokop, Soziologie der Olympischen Spiele, 38. p. Cursive U. P. Hanser, München, 1971.
(117) U.Prokop, Ibid. 38. p.
(118) Ibid. 29. p.
(119) P.d.Coubertin, "Are The Public Schools a Failure?", In: U.Prokop, Ibid. 29.p
(120) Fridrih Nice, Volja za moc, 187.p. Cursive F.N.Prosveta, Beograd, 1972.
(121) P. d. Coubertin, "La Force nationale et le Sport", "Revue des Deux Mondes", 1902, Tome Septième, 923.p.Cursive P.d.K.
(122) P. d. Coubertin, "Les échelons d'une éducation sportive", In: P.d.Coubertin, Textes choisis, III tome, 443.p.
(123) P.d.Coubertin, "Arts, letters et sports", In: P.d.C.Textes choisis, II tome, 494.p.
(124) P. d. Coubertin, "Olympic Letters", In: P.d.Coubertin, The Olympic Idea, 63.p.
(125) P.d.Coubertin, "Les sources et les limites du progrès sportif", In: P.d.Coubertin, Textes choisis, I tome, 494.p.
(126) Hermann Rauschning, "Gaspräche mit Hitler", In: Hajo Bernett, Nationalsozia- listische Leibeserziehung, 25,26.p. Karl Hofmann,Schorndorf bei Stuttgart,1971.
(127) In: G.Vinnai,"Leibeserziehung als Ideologie", In: Sport in der Klassengesell- schaft, 12.p. Publ.G.Vinnai, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt a.M. 1972.
(128) In: Hans Joachim Teichler, "Coubertin und das Dritte Reich", "Sportwissen- schaft", 1982, 12(1), 52.p.
(129) In: "Vreme", 21. juli 1936.
(130) Carl Diem, In: Olympische Akademie, Dortmund, 1962.p.17-20, In: Carl Diem, Der Olympischen Gedanke, Rede und Aufsätze, Carl-Diem-Institut Köln,1967.p.127.
(131) Compare: Hajo Bernett, Sportpolitik im Dritten Reich, 73.p. Karl Hofmann Verlag, Schorndorf bei Stuttgart, 1971.
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