Heidegger on the Sports Field: Resisting Neoliberalism and Why It Matters

As human life is fundamentally communal life, finding ways of living well together is vital for all people to flourish. How a form of life interprets, understands and communicates their world must convey life-affirming ways of being. A people’s stories, songs, sculptures, paintings, carvings, dance, drama and sports are repositories of learning which serve to express ideas and values that constitute our human way of being. At their best, the messages they transmit help to guide enriching relationships between people and uphold ways of living that are fitting and sustainable. Many of these practices also show what happens when we don’t do a good job of it. Drawing on the work of Heidegger to situate the discussion within our fundamentally embodied, embedded, and interrelated human condition, this paper focuses on sport as one form of intergenerational communal expression. The paper maintains that sport at its best conveys norms and codes of conduct through which participants come to embody the social competencies required for responsive and responsible interaction. However, a tension exists between sport as a guiding communal practice that can enhance human flourishing, and sport shaped by a pervasive neo-liberal ideology. Showing how neo-liberalism’s emphasis on hyper-individualistic, market-driven, profit-oriented practices has unhinged sport from its vital role in shaping responsive and responsible people, the paper goes on to identify practices at the margins which can be engaged in the struggle to overcome the pernicious effects of neo-liberalism, enabling sport to do the human work it is capable of.