On ascetic practices and hermeneutical cycles

Sports reflection is rather locked into a binary view of narrow and broad internalists. Narrow internalists, or formalists, argue that sports are solely constituted by their rules: the ‘autotelic’ stance. Broad internalists, or interpretivists, on the other hand, reason that sport is more than just a lusory end in itself. This paper will revitalize reflection on sports as a locus of the human condition by breaking through this binary opposition. It will focus on the positive aspects of the concept of ‘agon’ (suffering, enduring). As an ‘agonal’ or competitive social practice, sport may be a means to a ‘heterotelic’ end that surpasses the concept of sport as self-referential play: seeking knowledge, understanding the human condition and cultivating virtue. As such, self-improvement through repetitive practice (‘askesis’) has always been a key theme of human existence. Our ‘ascetic planet’ is inhabited by individuals who are constantly and relentlessly training themselves for the better. This may be self-focused, but it may also have a broader scope: we train ourselves to become better humans, contributing to a just and sustainable society. Paradoxically, however, this will only work when we become aware of our exercises as forms of life that engage the practising person. A hermeneutics of endurance cycling can enrich our understanding of this sports activity as a form of asceticism. As such, it will elaborate a view on cycling as an upwardly oriented ‘spiral’ that can contribute not only to self-knowledge and self-improvement on the individual level (‘metanoia’), but also to an ‘ecosophical renaissance’ on the collective level.