Sports and Democracy from a Philosophical and Educational Perspective

The main purpose of this paper is to argue that sports are a useful educational tool for our liberaldemocratic societies. In order to prove this claim, we first analyze the controversial issue of whether or not sports are a serious activity linked to the larger society and some of its values. In so doing, we participate in one of the most important debates in Philosophy of Sport: the debate on the continuity between everyday life and sports. Second, we argue that sports have always had such a connection with society since the beginning of Western society. As sports emerged in Ancient Greece before philosophy and politics did it, we try to show that the origin of these two human activities might be linked to several forces and attitudes pertaining to Ancient sports. To do so, we sketch a hermeneutical—and cross-disciplinary—view of sports to understand their inherent logic. For example, we find out that the following three terms: isonomía, isokratía, and isegoría played an important part in Ancient Greece and Greek sports. Moreover, although sometimes the sporting community forgets about them—probably due to the powerful forces that influence sports—, we show that they are at the core of contemporary sports and society. As a result, we trace a line of continuity between Ancient and current sports to defend that we could use sports to enhance the quality of our liberal-democratic societies.