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Sports as Pleasure and Contest 1. Since the nineteenth century, the term ‘sports’ (from ‘disport’; ‘to amuse oneself.’ ‘to frolic’)—to busy the body by play, and in pleasure, but, at the same time, in fair competition, and according to strict rules—has become an umbrella concept for all kinds of corporeal motion and playing (with or without the character of a competition). In the connection of the two components, a normative meaning resonates, influencing the ordering and acknowledgment of sports in modern society. The origin of all sports activity on the part of the human be…

The meaning of the Greek word eídolon is ‘image,’ ‘shadow,’ or ‘phantom,’ or also, in a narrow sense, ‘sacred image.’ In Greco-Latin ecclesiastical language, the concept attaches to the ‘image of the gods of the pagans,’ a ‘false god.’ In this sense, it denotes polemically an object or person shown an extravagant, immoderate reverence, or ‘deified.’ In a neutral sense, ‘idol' can also designate the material picture of a deity. In this meaning, it plays an eminent role in all cultures, whether as canon…

Abstract and Concrete Utopia 1. Etymologically, the word ‘utopia,’ derived from the Greek, means the ‘place [ tópos] that is not [ ou],’ or ‘no such place.’ Ever since Thomas Moore's De Optimo Rei Publicae Statu, deque Nova Insula Utopia (Lat., “The Best State of the Republic, and the New Isle of Utopia”), ‘Utopia’ has been a luminous popular concept. As a generic concept, it denotes the (mostly literary) forms of utopian delineations (‘utopian state novel’). Henceforth Utopia, the ‘not-place,’ is an imaginary place, a wish-picture, …