SPORT AS ART

The article presents and polemizes Wolfgang Welsch's postmodern justification of sport as a kind of art. Welsch maintains and tries to demonstrate that contemporary sport passes from the sphere of ethics (that was a peculiar foundation for the ancient traditional olympism) into the domain of aesthetics. This passing is a 'signum temporis' of a more general process called by Welsch (also by Richard Shusterman) the aesthetization of life. When life is permeated by aesthetic values and estimates then all its factors, and sport among others, are close to the experience of art. This is the best argument (and indeed the post­modern argument) to legitimize sport as a noteworthy phenomenon of culture. The thesis of above article is that sport in its Greek origins was and nowadays it goes on to be both ethical and aesthetic phenomenon. Giving up the moral basis would be destructive for sport. Sport is much more conservative than art that can effort experiments with good and evil. Such experiments within the area of sport are not allowed because sport engages human body and its health. Contemporary sport seems not to apply to the rhetoric of postmodern philosophy.