2025 Volume 47 Issue 1 Pages 87-100
The question of how to define sport has long been at the heart of the philosophy of sport. Analytical approaches have traditionally sought to delineate its formal features, such as rule-governed competition, physicality, and skill. While these efforts have illuminated key aspects of sport, they have often fallen short of addressing its deeper purpose as a cultural and human practice. Definitions confined to formal criteria risk neglecting the richer dimensions of why sport exists and what it fundamentally seeks to achieve.
This paper aims to bridge this gap by turning to an Aristotelian teleological framework to rethink the essence of sport. Aristotle’s notion of essence places the “end (telos)”—the purpose of a thing—at the core of its identity. Building on this foundation, the paper argues that sport is best understood not merely as a set of formal structures but as a practice oriented toward generating enjoyment that resonates with fundamental human desires.
By approaching sport through the lens of its “end (telos),” this study seeks to integrate its structural features—rules, competition, and physical skill—into a cohesive framework that reveals their functional relationship to sport’s overarching end. In doing so, it also underscores the role of fairness and rules in shaping the essential experiences of competition, progress, and risk-taking, which lie at the heart of what makes sport meaningful.
