Monday, March 6, 2023

Phusiopoiesis or The Art of Training

 I'm reading Debra Hawhee's book Bodily Arts, Rhetoric and Athletics in Ancient Greece, published by the University of Texas Press in 2004.  In this book the author discusses and explores the connections between athletics and the arts of rhetoric.


The exploration starts with the consideration of a statue of an athlete found in a shipwreck.  In examining the statue, the author makes the point that the debates about it, whether it was a god or mortal, athlete or orator "...suggest a convergence of athletics and rhetoric as arts of hexis, in other words, as bodily arts.  (4)  The story this book tells is of a time when the division between training in arts and athletics, for my purpose "academics" and "athletics" did not exist. 

In Greece, the Archaic and Classical periods instead marked a time when training was broad, when arts were intricately interwoven, and when mind and body moved and thought together.   (5)