description of the gladiator events in Apology, in The A nte-N icene Fathers, ed. Ajlan Menzies, trans. Rev. S. Thelwall (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerd- manns Publishing Co., 1885), vol. 3, bk. 1, chaps. 9, 15.
technical process, which lacks as much in morality as it does in chivalry. Yet the ethos o f these processes— and the very fact that pain can be endured to a higher degree points to such an ethos— remains unknown to the present day.
The secret design o f artificial sense organs reveals spaces in which catastrophe plays a central role. In such spaces, the dispatch o f commands must be more dependable, system atic, and secure. We are approaching the point where a news report, public warning, or im m inent threat needs to reach us within minutes. Special forms o f discipline are hidden behind the entertaining aspect o f com m unications technologies, such as radio and film. W ith all likelihood, the broader public will become more aware o f this, as listening, especially to public radio, becomes an obligation.
15.
In all these events we are dealing less with technical changes than with a new way o f life. This is seen m ost clearly in the fact that the instrumental character o f these changes is not restricted to the zone o f technology but strives to place the human body under its command.
This is at any rate the meaning o f the peculiar activity we call sports. Sports should be distinguished from ancient con tests just as much as today’s Olympics are from those o f the Ancient Greeks. Sports are much less about com petition than exact measurement. Neither opponent nor spectator must be present. Instead, the presence o f a second consciousness is deci sive, which records the event with a tape measure, a stopwatch, electricity, or a photographic lens. It thus becom es irrelevant whether a race, javelin throw, or high jum p takes place on tracks next to one another or as far apart as Rhodes and Australia.
The strange desire to document a record down to the small est spatial and temporal numerical unit comes from a need
to know precisely what the human body, as an instrum ent, is capable o f achieving. We can question the meaning o f such events, but we cannot deny their existence. They become absurd the m om ent one no longer grasps them in their sym bolic context.
In watching ski jumpers head down the ski ramp one after the other or race drivers flying by like arrows with helmets and uniforms, the impression one has hardly differs from seeing a specially built machine. These connections are also expressed in human habit. Sports in our sense are not that old, and yet the photographs o f the first teams with their beards and civil attire already seem odd to us. The new face, as witnessed today in the illustrated magazines, looks different; it is soulless, as if made o f metal or hewn out o f special timber, and it no doubt has a real relation to photography. It is one o f the faces in which the worker-type or race o f the worker is expressed. Sports are a part o f the work process, which appears especially clearly here because o f its lack o f real utility. Incidentally, based on this observation one can see readily how normal amateur com pe tition is rooted in old values o f honor. Amateur com petition is linked above all to those realms preserving a remnant o f courtly tradition, such as horse racing and tennis. The exercise o f sports, however, is no doubt a real profession.
In analyzing these figures, one cannot avoid, purely based on appearance, the impression that they are far removed from the zone o f sensitivity. The human will disciplines and outfits this flesh with such painstaking care that it now seems more indifferent to injury. Today, we again are able to bear the sight o f death with greater indifference, since we no longer feel at home in our body as we did before. It no longer accords with our style to stop a flying show or a car race simply because o f a deadly accident. Such accidents lie not outside but inside the zone o f a new kind o f security.
Sports make up only one o f the areas where we can observe the hardening, honing, or even galvanizing o f the human physique. The desire to see physical beauty in keeping with different standards is no less noteworthy. A close connection to photography is also present here, especially to film, which is essentially the model o f beauty. The eye has many occasions to grow accustomed to viewing the naked body, such as in sports, public baths, rhythmic dancing, but also in advertise ments. We are dealing here with forays into the erotic zone, whose meaning has yet to be revealed even if we already have an inkling o f it.
The ambiguity o f such events in an age o f transition is especially revealing. It finds expression in the fact that a nec essary change appears at first as a new kind o f freedom. It is surprising to see, then, that an area o f the most sophisticated individualistic pleasure and self-enjoym ent like psychology suddenly starts to produce precise systems o f measurement. The psycho-technical method constitutes ever more clearly a means to calibrate the demands placed on the race or, what is the same, the worker-type. Notions such as that o f reaction time, first developed in an effort to reduce“ car accidents, con vey an image o f the objective nature o f these demands.
Finally we should mention the extent to which the body has also becom e an object in the field o f medicine. The ambigu ity just noted is also evident in this context. On the one hand, narcosis appears as a liberation from pain; on the other hand, it turns the body into an object capable o f being treated as if it were lifeless matter. Among the trivial observations one can make in our cities is the novel penchant for drugs with ana tomical effects; one registers, for instance, how a sleeping pill
45. Jiinger’s note: “By tJie way, formulations such as the ‘reconstruction