Sacred and profane in the Olympic running event of Antiquity

Abstract

Stadion (running race) is the first and for a long time the only type of Olympic Agon, the “founder” of sports in its modern sense. The sociocultural background related to the emergence, development and modification of running sport of Antiquity is the spiritual foundation of the athletic competitiveness of modernity (“Olympism”), which underlines the philosophical importance and the relevance of research. The dualism of sacred and profane permeated not only athletic Agons, but Antiquity as w whole, being its Zeitgeist – 0 “spirit of the time’”. Through the prism of this binary opposition, running race is viewed as the original type of Olympic competitions. The acquired results can be applies in social philosophy, philosophical anthropology, and philosophy of sports. The novelty of this article consists in determination of attributes of the sacred (gratitude to the gods, obedience to their will, fear of their anger, and being rewarded by the deity), as well as attributes of the profane (cultivated “sprint” race as a symbol of a higher stage of development of the society, professionalization of running, running as a means of upbringing, health promotion and social dynamics, an indicator of civic maturity, etc.) components of the Olympic running race of Antiquity. The author also conducts their dialectical correlation within the framework of explanation of the straight trajectory of Olympic running, unity of the peacekeeping and military-applied significance of the Agons, as well as the pursuit of God-likeness and channeling of the socially dangerous energy of ambitiousness in running competitions of the athletes.