Though the rise of social media has provided countless advantages and possibilities, both within and without the domain of sports, recent years have also seen some more detrimental aspects of these technologies come to light. In particular, the widespread social media culture surrounding fitness – ‘fitspiration’ – warrants attention for the way it encourages self-sexualization and -objectification, thereby epitomizing a wider issue with photo-based social media in general. Though the negative impact of fitspiration has been well documented, what is less (...) understood are the ways it potentially impacts and molds moral psychology, and how these same aspects may come to influence digital sports subcultures more broadly. In this theoretical paper, I rely on the insights of Friedrich Nietzsche to analyze the moral significance of a culture like fitspiration becoming normalized and influential in structuring and informing self-understanding, notions of value, and how to flourish in life. Using two doctrines central to Nietzsche’s philosophy—The Last Man and his conception of the ’higher self’ – I argue that fitspiration involves a form of hedonism that is potentially harmful to the pursuit and achievement of human flourishing. Through fitspiration, desire is elevated to a central moral principle, underlying the way users both consume and produce its content, catering simultaneously to their desires for external validation and instant gratification. It thereby creates conditions which foster a culture in adherence to the ethos of The Last Man. In doing so, I argue it impedes the cultivation of the virtues and higher values which define the higher individual, regarded by Nietzsche as essential for human flourishing. However, drawing on the ethical framework of the higher individual provides the philosophical and psychological resources with which resisting and overcoming the more harmful temptations of these trends may be possible. (shrink)

This text argues that psychoanalytic philosophy is a valuable tool for the Philosophy of Sport. To situate it within the philosophical tradition, I place Freud’s ideas as an heir to the Philosophy of Impulse of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Then, I explain how psychoanalytic philosophy can be understood as a form of hermeneutics, which aligns well with the interests of the field. I also recognise the importance of questioning whether we can consider sports and their events as analysable psychoanalytic facts. To (...) this purpose, I use Paul Ricoeur’s methodological approach, which proposes to analyse collective and common phenomena hermeneutically as psychoanalytic facts. I demonstrate the consistency of this method and adapt it to the Philosophy of Sport. The method involves a triangular operation that analyses psychoanalytic facts by articulating their relationships of meaning (narratives, manifest content, memories and objects), their relationships of force (resistances, neurotic repetitions, symptoms, latent contents and transfers), and psychoanalytic theory. As an example, I apply this method to conduct a micro-psychoanalytic analysis of Brazil’s defeat to Germany in the 2014 FIFA World Cup, which the Brazilian coach referred to as a ‘blanked out’ moment. I observe that the destiny of drives, which Freud understood as the tendency of unconscious material to return to consciousness in the form of commitments to objects and symptoms, is prominent in sports reality. This may encourage us to see the potential of promising interpretations grounded in the Psychoanalytic Philosophy of Sport. (shrink)