Skillful Striving: Holism and the Cultivation of Excellence in Sports and Performative Endeavors

Abstract

Skillful Striving investigates the nature of the cultivation of excellence, the conditions that render it possible, and its potential for inspiration from the perspective of enactive wisdom—one that by enacting lays down a way or path. Performative endeavors whose telos centrally involves physical performance—sports, martial and performing arts, crafts–—are the focus of this inquiry. These are privileged ways for a holistic cultivation of our talents and limitations. The main philosophical thrust can be summarized as a “thick holism” where naturalism and normativity combine. Skillful Striving is concerned with an integrative bodymind and its ways of knowing and experiencing that issue forth from active engagements with the world, and whose goal is defined by certain standards of qualitative performance that ultimately aim at excellence. The process of cultivation relies on a rich epistemic landscape where skills are coupled to virtues in pragmatic contexts. These contexts are ecologically broad in the sense that our environment, broadly construed, constitutes these. Ultimately, this process results in admirable performances by, and exemplary character for, the enactors. Endowed with unique gifts, it is argued that they should become exemplary in the full sense of their lives. Laudable character is built on discipline, responsibility, and a social framework that provides personal paradigms and standards of excellence. A key element is that this cultivation happens in and through our moving and acting as holistic, integrative bodyminds. Eastern ways or paths, and especially Japanese do, are modes of self-cultivation that are prominent in this regard. They enable working within the framework of this bodymind where its unity is gradually achieved through performance. Importantly for this study, these active endeavors are performer-centered yet deeply communitarian practices. In the end, Skillful Striving is an exploration of how we may flourish as members of practice communities that encourage open, responsible exploration, and the cultivation of our abilities as lifelong quests for human excellence.