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European Journal of Natural History
ISSN 2073-4972
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OLYMPISM AS A SIGNIFICANT CULTURAL FACTOR FOR BRINING CHANGES INTO HUMAN LIFE

Barabanova V.
The article looks into the issues connected with Olympic paradigm and development of modern sport mentality. The author speaks of the term olympism´ and its evolution as well as about the objectives of olympism. Significant role in the development of preconditions for sport played the emerging of liberal and democratic values.
Modern sports are a complicated, full of contradictories, developing process, undergoing the process of integrity revealing its characteristics in the course of long time. Sports do not only mean the realia of modern life, but what it was in the past, in particular in the 20th century. Various phenomena of social life, emerging in the turn of the centuries were its conditions. The powerful impulse was given to the sports by the reviving of the Olympic Games in the end of the 19th century. Olympic Games which brought into life Olympic movement and olympism as a part of spiritual life became immensely important for modern spots as new organic and polymorhpeme integrity. In the late XIX century when the system of the ideas of olympism was created by Pierre de Coubertin sports rose up to the level of self-consciousness. This outstanding person managed not only to revive the Olympic Games which had existed nearly one thousand years and then disappeared but to generate and fix in the Olympic Chart a certain system of ideas. They became the basis for the doctrine and brought about powerful movement (olympic) which established the main features of modern sports [1]. The term "olympism" was introduced in 1912 by Pierre de Coubertin himself, who explained it as following:" Olympism unites as a bunch of sun rays all those principles which facilitate an individual´s perfaction". Pierre de Coubertin believed that "the cult of efforts, competition on the edge of risks, love for the Motherland, the spirit of knighthood, contacts with literature and painting are the basis of olympism". According to him Olympic movement is "movement generated by human´s aspiration to peace and brotherhood" it became the school for brining up both morality and physical strength" [10]. Olympism is based on humanistic values of sports, competitions and training. The objective of olympism is to make sports the main tool for the developing of an individual to encourage the development of peaceful society which will be tacking care of preserving human dignity. The idea of olympic education comprises physical culture and sports as a means of young people´s health improving and what is more important their perfection as citizens who are more honest and strong persons. By creating the Olympic movement Pierre de Coubertin intended to encourage the development of social, pedagogical and moral values based on sports. Pierre de Coubertin made his dream came true having revived the Olympic Games in our era. The new Pierre de Coubertin´s Olympic idea was to comprehend as a platform of for political and economic reforms [2]. In the system of education and teaching the Olympic education was a key element. It comprised the integrity of mind and, skills development and peace in the whole world. Olympism as philosophy which generated Greek culture helped the society in the XXI century. Olympic ideals, symbols, rituals are a big part of modern epoch. Olympism reflects new ideology of sports as an important cultural factor in changing of quality of an individual´s life. Olympism becomes self-consciousness and metaphysics, "becoming a part of essence of spots, determining absolute preconditions of sports and translating cultural values outlook of the epoch in the area of sports" [5]. Let us assume that preconditions of modern sports may be singled out in the process of industrial society establishing. The sport historians reveal on the turn of XVIII-XIX centuries emerge and development of many kinds of physical exercises and competitions, which have become the basic components of modern sport life. The researches of doctors, physiologists and teachers, appealing to use physical exercises to strengthen organisms to improve the physical condition influenced much on its development. The games became the most important factors to establish sports. The main thing is not that more and more people are involved in these games but in broadening activities to organize the given sphere its developing institutionalism. Industrialization and development of engineering influenced positively upon the sport development. However it should be mentioned that the influence was not direct and was implemented as a result of development certain spiritual components of the epoch. To some extend the factors of forming of the latter and at the same time of products of reflections about them became protestant ethics, the ideas of liberalism and democracy [3]. Significant role in the development of preconditions for sport played the emerging of liberal and democratic values.

The Olympic Chart takes for the philosophic basis of modern olympic movement and states the concept of olympism is "philosophy of life" "which unites the merits of body, will and mind". Liberal and democratic values created the preconditions for modern sport. Thus, The Olympic Chart notices that the concept of Olympism is "the philosophy of life", "uniting in the well-balanced entity all merits of body, will and mind" [17]. Reflecting the nature and specific features of Olympism, it is necessary to mention that these ideas have had preconditions in the European history. The humanistic ideas of the Renascence gave the rise to their formation; which possessed the same ontology and axiology of the body which was typical for holism. Consequently, such preconditions bring together Olympism and the idea that an individual is harmonically developed both spiritually and physically. The idea of reviving the Olympic Games appeared as early as in the time of the Renascence. The most advanced part of the society tired of the medieval restrictions appealed to the antique ideals again. Nobel humanistic ideas, harmonic development of an individual, admiration of a human body and its abilities stimulated the art of that epoch and defined its behavior norms. The contests, called "Olympic Games" were periodically held in Europe in the XIX century [14]. Pierre de Coubertin´s revival of the Games in 1896 was the result of the many-century efforts to restore this wonderful tradition. Pierre de Coubertin succeeded not only in reviving the Games, but in giving them more important status and making them regular and really international. But Pierre de Coubertin´s most significant achievement was the concept itself constituting the specific meaningful factor of human´s activity. It is important that due to the Olympic Charter the great ideals and values of world culture became doctrine and institutional ones. Among them are liberty, creative activity, human´s harmonic development, peace, friendship, mutual understanding, respect, communication. Pierre de Coubertin based his Olympic movement on five main values distinguished by German scientist O.Gruppe: "the concept of a developed person; possibility for self-perfection to achieve high sport results; the principle of amateurism as manifestation of self-discipline and rejection of material benefits; forming of sport elite" [4]. The idea uniting the whole world appeared. The system of concepts was created which was equally attractive for all countries and nations, for all strata of population. This concept did not divide people into elite and common ones, into majority and minority, lords and slaves. It was based on the possibility to become better, more beautiful, an individual´s desire to change the measure of a human´s perfection. Owing to the Olympic movement was broken the tendency to develop sport on commercial base. It should be mentioned that the reviving if the Olympic Games dramatically changed the situation in sport connecting it with humanistic, liberal values and motives. The sport started to aim at perception and development those models of the individual in which the sport is interpreted as the unity of body and spirit, psychology and intelligence. Pierre de Coubertin considered moral principles the essence of the Olympic Games. The most attractive in the antique legacy according to Pierre de Coubertin was "one of the most peculiar things of the Greek civilization: the fact that muscles participated in the intellectual development". It was exactly what he wanted to revive trying to make neo-olympism moral and spiritual [18].Thus, studying the genesis of modern sport and olympism as a key element the following conclusion can be made. In general the establishing of this phenomenon is indissociable with the conceptual framework of the idea of the development of all individual abilities through physical exercises and competition [8]. Actually olympism is a dominant factor of modern spot development and consequently it is a doctrine, philosophic concept and spiritual motion of the epoch. Real sport unites people and brings together natural, socio-cultural, spiritual and physical elements of an individual. Consequently sport on theoretical as well as empirical levels of human´s self-consciousness is considered to be one of the factors for solutions of constant contradictions in outer and inner world of an individual [9]. However the idea of olympism does not fill in the whole space of orientations and values. Other ideas, principles and directions oppose it. Two such positions can be singled out. They differ according to their orientations on values of romantism or pragmatism. While romantic line of olympic consciousness is definitely closer to unity of physical and spiritual, pragmatism tends to comprise those modifications of physical consciousness where material spiritual elements are opposed but material is prevailing. Three phases are distinguished in olympic consciousness. The first one is theological, where sport depends on religion. The second one is metaphysical; its development is connected with Olympic Games´ revival and olympism, where sport is based on the main principles of olympic consciousness. The third phase is defined as positive. Its development is connected with finishing of ideological struggle for abstract ideals and aims of Olympism within the Olympic movement as well as with the fact that socio-political doctrines stopped being opposed. All three of its historic forms are represented in modern Olympic consciousness, where theological and metaphysical forms are close to each other. This fact allows us to define them with one and the same term - "romantism". Pragmatism is a positive state of olympic consciousness [5]. Romantism and pragmatism represent two alternative positions in olympism. It let us assume that the relations within this opposition will determine the main tendencies in the development of sports thinking in future. Common civilizational basis for establishing of both trends in olympic consciousness is the modern society´s entering the anthropogenic stage of the development of industrial civilization. It means that the dominants of public consciousness are moving towards absolute values, and material values, filled with technical gadgets, towards more comfortable welfare due to improvements of things in the constantly changing world. Technology, new knowledge, goods and pleasures are becoming the most important indicates of life.All these processes and modern world are reflected in the public consciousness as well as in the sports one. The development of achievements and orientations are becoming their main facts in sport [11-13]. Anthropogenic stage of industrial society development is characterized by replacing of traditional innovations, striving for something new (knowledge, structures, processes). Sports thinking as well as public consciousness as a whole react to it with cult of records. Records are important in all spheres of life but it is more vivid in sport. Romantism comprises two types of thinking, which are manifested in different ways: optimistic and pessimistic. Pierre de Coubertin possessed the first one. He was sure that the Olympic Games would become the festival for the young, the festival of "human spring", efforts, ambitions and all sorts of activities of each young generation [10].Romantism creates "pure" images of sport, manifests its essence, reveal its onthological features, social functions. Such kind of olympic consciousness together with scientific consciousness which operates with the notion "ideal gas" is able to give clear outlines of sport "in itself" to depict it separately from the factors of the environment. It is the main asset of romantism. It reminds all the time about the confidence and power people´s spirit and their ability to strengthen them by means of physical perfection. However the weak point of this kind of thinking is that it cuts the ties of the process and the reality where the given process is taking place. Romantism both in sport and in every day life and especially in the art puts thought above the reality, has illusions and creates utopian images [15]. Presumably because of that a lot of journalists, sportsmen, coachers, theoretical workers of sport define the modern condition of sport as crises. The main reason for the crises is commercialization of the given sphere and that it follows utilitarian and pragmatic purposes and values. It is stated that the high ideals of olympism are in the past and cannot remain in the present [14]. The essence is that sport has stopped being the conditional world. And it means that is mixed with reality of practical life, and absorbs all its problems. Probably because of it sport started to be considered as sphere to satisfy pure practical, utilitarian, out-of-sport interests. Was not it the reason why Olympic movement often is used for ideological and political purposes? Therefore romantic reflection in relation to pragmatic comprehension is necessary. It is it that reminds that technocracy is dangerous for humanism [16].

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