Weiss Analysis

Over the past few weeks we have discussed sport largely from the spectator’s perspective, trying to discover the appeal and function of sport. Weiss’ reading discusses what it is to be the athlete and the transcendent experience one encounters on the playing field. It is important to remember that Weiss is discussing the ideal athlete, and much of what he says about the athletic experience is something I have never seen and find hard to believe, as I will mention later, but many of his points are relevant to real athletes today.
Weiss talks a lot about how most regular people are attached to a “multitude of tasks” and “the confusions characteristic of daily life,” and discusses how a few people are able to detach themselves from that material world and focus solely on the action itself without regard to the fruit of that action. He says that like artists, religious men, and intellectuals, athletes put aside their “economic demands and the satisfaction of appetites,” and immerse themselves in their own little world where it is just them against what Weiss calls “Actuality.” “Actuality” is like finality or truth, and according to Weiss all the artists, religious men, scholars and athletes are all trying to find it. The scholar studies and tries to find truth about his world through knowledge, and the zealot tries to find truth through being closer to God. Truth, God, real wisdom, whatever its termed Weiss believes that it is obscured and confused by the conventions of society and by our material world. Generally it means that when we do an action just for a reward, like when we do a job just with the paycheck in mind, we miss the point of the job itself. Weiss argues that the athlete is like this when he steps onto the court, separated from the rest of the world, and just tries to perfectly fuse mind and body together in athletic harmony. In this way he transcends himself and really finds the truth, the finality of the body. I think this is tremendously idealistic when we hear athletes like Latrell “I need to feed my family” Sprewell who are obviously motivated by the fruits of their action (reward) and not just athletic excellence in the action itself. But I think the idea that the athlete can separate himself from distractions in the real world and focus for a short time on pure action is definitely true. Something else I thought of:
Weiss would believe sports are played much more for arête than agon. Agon, the idea of “the fight,” implies a battle between two opposing forces, but Weiss writes that the athletes that oppose each other in a game are “intimately related,” and consider each other to be united in a common quest for excellence, which is evidenced by the “respect accorded [the competitors].” Obviously in real life that mutual respect and empathy is not always there and often the opposite is present, but to Weiss the ideal athletes consider their opponents as brothers with a common goal, that excellence that is arête.