Hannah Arendt agonal politics and its parallel with sport in ancient Greece

Abstract

The desire to excel led ancient Greeks to compete with each other. It is what has been called agonistic spirit. It imbibed all areas of the Greeks life and its maximum indicator was gymnastic games. The thinker Hannah Arendt sums this agonistic spirit up the category action and focuses on political activity. This discursive politics replaced military companies. But the entrance of philosophy involved putting contemplation above action for the first time and superseded the center of interest of the Greeks. Thereby agonistic spirit was sacrificed for the sake of mankind intellectual development and its main expressions such as politics and sport were pushed into the background