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Aristocratic Athleticism: The Philosophy of Sport From Greece to the Modern Day

29-7-2024 < Attack the System 31 3096 words
 

by Ezio Salimbeni






















Ezio Salimbeni explores the aristocratic nature of rowing and its connection to his philosophical beliefs, highlighting how the discipline and values of the sport align with his traditionalist and Nietzschean perspectives.


Rugby is a game for barbarians played by gentlemen. Football is a game for gentlemen played by barbarians. Rowing is a sport for gentlemen played by gentlemen.


— altered Oscar Wilde quote


Though Wilde never wrote the last sentence of the opening quote, I find it a fitting continuation, for the stereotype of rowing as deeply aristocratic and gentlemanly is well-earned. I originally heard this additional extension to the quote yesterday from a friend of mine before we embarked on the much dreaded 2K test — for those who do not know, a 2K is the primary gauge of a rower’s strength on the water — and I am proud to say that with these words ringing in my ears, I was able to shatter two previous personal bests within the span of one week. Though squarely third on the team of around thirty, I still take considerable pride in what I have accomplished over my four years; however, who would believe me if I told them rowing drove my burgeoning interest and work surrounding philosophy? If you are browsing my writing, you will likely have a general understanding of my philosophical convictions, which to summarize, are a cohesive but tenuous mixture of traditionalism, Catholic thought, and a healthy dose of Nietzsche, which are all traditionally lauded for their abstraction and lack of tangibility. However, through my own experience, I seek to pluck these philosophies from the clouds and show that their metaphysical teachings are firmly translatable into even a modern man’s life. I am sure you are already groaning; no one wants to hear another rehash of some bland college application essay or a rehearsed speech by an uninterested student about sports’ impact on character, yet I promise you this dive into my experience with rowing falls in neither of those categories. To illustrate my thesis that rowing shaped my traditionalism and philosophical work, I will draw on my personal journey over my four years with the sport, as well as the overall history of rowing and athletic practice as a whole, and clearly show the undeniable tether between the two seemingly unrelated disciplines.


Man is a fickle creature, and his interests ebb and flow dramatically year by year, decade by decade, and century by century; yet some of his interests extend beyond the exoteric and dip into the primordial, one such example being sport. Great civilizations have always engaged in sport, and there has been much speculation as to why this is the case. Despite the pages upon pages of intellectual jargon that beat around the metaphorical bush eternally on this topic, the answer is painfully simple: sport is a simulation of war. Many may find this analysis juvenile, yet in every period excluding our own, such a simulation has dual interconnected purposes. For one, a great society is characterized by order and stability (stability of structure, not necessarily stability through perpetual peace unless it is peace by absolute domination) yet the youth are naturally predisposed to violence, vitality, and rash physicality. The foremost problem through most of history for sophist lawmakers has been what to do with Hebe (youthful vigor), for there is nothing a gluttonous nature-rejecting bureaucrat disdains and fears more than vitality — a quality in himself which has been left underdeveloped or actively stifled to pursue his decadent path. Here we come upon the famously nihilistic and lamenting quote: “Give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt” (attributed to the poet Juvenile). Juvenile is lamenting the decline of a vital aristocratic regime — what Spengler would call a ‘culture’ — into the empire of hegemony and decadence — in Spenglerian terms, ‘civilization’. Across the globe, we can see the tangible effects of youthful dissatisfaction, whether it be the rise of alternative politics in the West or the emergence of young male Jihadist movements in Africa and the Near East, such as Boko Haram. These movements comprised of young, uneducated, ill-equipped men have shaken the global order to its foundations rather than the seemingly titanic feuds between great powers. Just as the fascists rose to power on the tide of dissatisfied male ethos; just as the bronze age collapsed as a result of vital and nomadic sea peoples; just as Rome — a city of rouges and outlaws — dominated the Etruscans surrounding them; so will increasingly radical groups of young men come to shake our present age of rigid convention. The concept I laid out has been fairly well established by both the academic works of Costin Alamariu, such as Selective Breeding and the Birth of Philosophy, and his popular (though admittedly unacademic) exhortation Bronze Age Mindset, and is the fundamental foundation of Nietzschian aristocratic political philosophy. In essence, the nihilistic view of sports is merely that it is a means for sophists to channel youthful vitality in highly controlled and sterilized situations, yet as an athlete, this answer is unsatisfying and represents only an accurate reflection on the adulteration of sport, not its true essence.


Sport can be an opium, or it can serve as a highly influential demarcation of virtue and worthiness. In Nietzsche’s view, an aristocracy will arise through a pastoral conquest of a settled, agrarian society. From that point of initial contact, some semblance of a social contract can be found. The resources of the masses flow toward the cultural pursuits of the distinct aristocratic class, and the military prowess of the ruling class establishes security beyond the primeval rule of custom through law; this is the essential symbiosis that founded civilization as we know it, not merely that of the West. Once the aforementioned marriage of forces created such a civilization, the noble task of cultivating an ever-complex cultural identity and upward-oriented state begins. During this process, relative peace becomes more common, and Thomas Hobbess’ requirement for a noble state to overcome the state of nature, in his words: “I demonstrate, in the first place, that the state of men without civil society (which state we may properly call the state of nature) is nothing else but a mere war of all against all; and in that war all men have equal right unto all things,” (Præfatio (Preface) of De Cive), becomes satiated through a rigid hierarchy. However, the fundamental power and vitality that allowed for the initial spark of excellence in these nomadic populations arose from their hyper-militaristic primal roots, so civilization, luxury, and peace posed a distinct risk to their ruling spirit. Edward Gibbon, through his groundbreaking history of the decline of Rome, reflects the basis for such a profound fear. His thesis states that Rome’s fall was due to a fundamental shirking of duty and weakness within their formerly vital patrician class, not external factors. Unfortunately for the Romans, though they borrowed much of Hellenic culture, they were unsuccessful in the primary Greek ideal of a physically vital ruling class.


…in the Greek vision, the physicality of war and sport were indistinguishable from each other on an esoteric level.


Of course, my statement is somewhat dramatized. Greece also went through periods of aristocratic decadence and decline, which eventually led to its dissolution as an independent civilization, yet the fundamental truth of their physical notions remains poignant. The primary term to associate with this cult of physicality is Kalokagathia, essentially equating the beauty of the body with the virtue of the soul. Additionally, the term was essential to the concept of a vital aristocracy, not merely an individualistic standard. Coined in Athens, the term was used among the aristocracy to communicate the standard that each aristocrat was expected to live up to; unlike modern ideals, it was an expectation rather than a detached hope that one would become an almost intermediary being to the realm of the gods. Based on the previous paragraphs, it is clear why this ideal — so flagrant in its refutation of the modern ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ mentality — became the ruling philosophy of Hellenic civilization and ultimately cared for the already sown seed of the original nomadic domination. The Greeks fundamentally understood the connection between civilizational survival, greatness, and retaining the original spark of vitality that allowed pastoral people to conquer a more numerous agricultural group, which was often only preserved through war. Here we stumble upon the dilemma of empires: ever-expanding the borders of one’s holdings will allow for a constant honing of the physical and military character of their aristocracy — the beating heart of any civilization — however, what happens when those ever-extending plains cease to be unknown; when there is no step left to fight for; when the entire store of fuel the civilization was predicated on, conquest, runs dry? Look to modern Greece, Italy, and England; you will find the once-raging torrents of civilization frozen over in indecision and mediocrity — desperately looking towards their past while not having the courage to embark on the deeply turbulent path to escape from the mire that their mythical forefathers arose from.


However, not all civilizations took the path of insatiable conquest and survived with thriving noble classes despite lacking the riches and spiritual benefits of perpetual conquest. Civilizational survival lies in another Aristotelian value, eudaimonia, which expresses that the true heights of man are only reached through the cultivation of balance. For an aristocracy, balance is essential: balancing military commitments with artistic ones, balancing heavy-handed justice with civil content and self-determination among the peasantry, balancing readiness for combat with religiosity, and finally, balancing their vitality with cool-headed rationality to administrate a state while stimulating cultural development. Medieval feudalism and Greek aristocracy are the systems that best exemplify such self-sustaining civilizations of balance, which bred stability and noble cultivation like none other. The similarities, differences, and eventual dissolution of these two civilizations would require multiple books, so in the spirit of sport, I will focus on athletic competition as a heightening institution as opposed to the sophist pacifier it could, unfortunately, mold into. To comprehend the importance of sport and non-military physical arts to these people, one must look to their art, for our purposes, sculpture. The first category of Greek sculpture that heralded the emergence from the Grecian Dark Ages was the Kouros, which became the primary cultural output of archaic Greece. These statues have been cited as not holding a religious connotation; however, through their embodiment of Kalokagathia and Hebe, they served as an essential representation of the intermediary between the divine and the tangible found through the symmetry of the athletes’ rippling muscles. These statues were used primarily to commemorate not great warriors — though much of Greek civilization at the time was structured around honoring military prowess — rather, they honored athletes. As can be seen from the emergence of the Olympic Games early in Grecian history, sport would often take primacy over war and internal conflicts, evidenced by the ékécheiria (Olympic truce); in the Greek vision, the physicality of war and sport were indistinguishable from each other on an esoteric level. Even the renowned crowning ceremony, which saw victorious athletes crowned with olive branches, represented the unshakable tether between the strength of the body and the virtue of the soul, for the elevation of athletes to near-divine figures honored both qualities in conjunction. Julius Evola famously said: “The blood of the heroes is closer to God than the ink of the philosophers or the prayers of the faithful,” (Julius Evola, Revolt Against the Modern World), yet Evola was a medievalist and scholar of the classical world, so I have no doubt the quote could be extended to encompass the ‘sweat on the athlete’s brow’. In the case of Classical Greece, we find sport used for the heightening and honing of an aristocratic civilization: a way for the spiritual fortitude engendered by athletic prowess to translate into a noble caste without necessitating the blind instability and Faustian pursuit of constant warfare and conquest.


By this point in the essay, I am sure my stance on the state of modern sports is evident. Rather than heightening the ideals of classical civilization and nobility, modern sports seek only to distract — hence why it has become so corporatized. The foremost industries in the modern day are all characterized by their capitalization on the distraction of the masses, and sport has been instrumental in serving as one of these cultural anti-depressants. As mentioned before, the path of modern sports is far from uncharted; such a path leads to ultimate civilizational decay. How long did the Roman bread and circuses ploy last until the great columns erected by the early patricians crumbled to dust under vital barbarian hordes? The mentality is not hard to understand, for it is the mentality of every bureaucratic secular government (though pioneered by the Enlightenment). The primary goal of government fundamentally shifted, initially predicated on elevating the spiritual state of a culture, yet now focused merely on suppressing vitality and discontent. When scientifically assessed, it is only logical; measuring societal success by lifespan is a far easier task than taking the time to analyze closeness to the divine through artistic output and spiritual vitality. When sport becomes a science on how to distract and entertain, its original function of channeling youthful vitality and heightening the highest echelons of society is tossed to the wind. In the modern day, sports from grammar school to the professional leagues fundamentally separate the physical, intellectual, and spiritual elements of athleticism; symbolic of most evils of modernity, in our scientific pursuit of categorization and isolation, we have lost the nobility of harmony that even the ancients had a fundamental understanding of. We can see the effects of this daily; society is controlled by men who have neither the courage nor the discipline of the past, and lack the duty to the divine that physical excellence once cultivated in an aristocracy. They promote technological progress, restriction, and separation from nature, for they fear nature — whereas the athlete has mastered her. The society we reside in was crafted by urban intellectuals who fear, reject, and destroy nature, hence why they seek to relegate sport to a secondary role. They are much the same as the primeval farmer, ruled by custom and fear, unable to separate the inventions of their manipulative shaman from natural, divine realities. The time we live in spiritually is far less advanced and natural than it once was, no matter how many veneers of technological advancement are placed in front of our eyes to distract us. Man’s goal of discovering the divine through his own ‘nature’, pioneered by the athlete, has been entirely subverted.


These last few pages have been both impersonal and exceedingly academic, yet I find a rigorous and thorough analysis warranted for such an important topic. Sport is not merely a means for distraction or keeping the general population healthy through elevated children’s games: sport is a profound means of preserving cultural, moral, and intellectual cohesion and prowess. For much of my childhood, I, unfortunately, rejected these fundamental truths, not only because I was lazy but also because our society so radically shifted what it meant to be an athlete. Crew, however, changed that, because though it is a team sport like none other — requiring perfect timing with those on your boat — the relationship each man cultivated with the oar and the boat differs wildly. When I am cranking the faded blue handle, caked in the blood and sweat of countless athletes before me, it is what I tell myself in those excruciating moments between the 900-meter and 500-meter mark that hold the power to make or break my workout. Those who never hear that voice within are relegated to perpetual mediocrity; they constitute the meat and potatoes of the team that provide a foundation for the few to build off of. However, those who find that voice calling out to them in the wilderness are a breed like no other, and in cultivating that voice, they can turn a whisper into a cry capable of triumphing over all primal instincts. The connection to aristocratic morality is apparent, for they too master their nature. Rather than living for sustenance, they reject the mere primacy of life and chase metaphysical ideals; a rower scoffs at his fatigue and physical pain to achieve much the same glory. The aristocrat does not find pleasure or release in mere work but rather in excellence to a level as biological as trained; a rower is never satiated by achievable goals. A nobleman must devote his life to martial training, where even the minute movements decide life or death; a rower’s hands dropping an inch can lead to a sizable defeat in the heat of a race. Just as a duel, a race is only mere minutes, and once it begins, there is no going back. If the rower lacks the mental fortitude to cultivate perfection for six minutes, he loses, and the nobleman, in turn, loses his life. There are no substitutions, no breaks, and no lulls in the action; each second demands an absolute commitment that most cannot muster. The question as to why rowing was and still is a staple of the British aristocracy is quite simple: it is the complete synthesis of all they stand for. Sport, though bastardized at the high levels, still retains its deeply traditional foundations, and rather than rejecting the lot because of the few adulterations, we should instead seek to purify the noble institution to cultivate mastery, not subversion or distraction.



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