José Luis Chinchilla Minguet

Rhetoric and Power: The Idealism and ‘Philosophy of Life’ of the Olympic Movement

In this article we analyze from a multidisciplinary perspective some of the philosophical foundations which underpin the theories on Olympism fostered by the current Olympic institutions. We start from the theory that Olympist idealism1 is based on social representations of the modern sport, implicit to which is the ideological justification for the political and social practices of the Olympic Movement (OM) regarding the various historical episodes in which it has been caught up. This idealism has shaped an inherited view of the sport which has moved beyond the ambit of the OM and into the realm of sports science, which has adopted and continues to adopt some of the postulates of the Olympist discourse when undertaking a critical review of the Olympic history and philosophy.