Citizenship and state-sponsored physical education: Ancient Greece and ancient China

Review of Politics

Volumn 66, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 7-34

  Wooyeal, Paik ^a   Bell, Daniel A ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 43249185648     PISSN: 00346705     EISSN: 17486858     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0034670500042455     Document Type: Article

References (112)

1. Our main concern is the period characterized by small, autonomous and politically dynamic city-states in ancient Greece. This period ends roughly with Alexander the Great's victory over the Greek city-states [c. 335 B.C.E.].
2. We use quotes because the pre-Qin states cannot be described as the culturally unified state of "China" (zhongguo). The "cultural unity" of China owes much to the destruction of local records by the first emperor in 213 B.C. E., a deliberate act of policy aimed at extinguishing local loyalties (Mark Elvin, The Pattern of the Chinese Past [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1973], pp. 21-22), though the process of cultural assimilation of non-Sinitic peoples via war and conquest had begun earlier, as far back as the Spring and Autumn period. For stylistic reasons, we drop the quotes around "China" from hereon.
3. The point at which Chinese states clearly existed and functioned as an interstate system, begins with the effective elimination of Zhou power in 771 B.C.E. The date for the transition between the Spring and Autumn and Warring States period is a matter of controversy. 403 B.C.E. is the officially recognized date for the tripartite division of Jin, although this had taken effect much earlier. We rely on a very rough starting date of 500 B.C.E.
4. While small by today's standards, states in ancient China were larger than Greek city-states.
5. Aristotle Politics 1337b 1, ed. and trans. Ernest Barker (London: Oxford University Press, 1946), p. 335.
6. In the case of ancient China, unfortunately, the historical record is relatively limited. Most of it comes from an elite theoretical stratum (court advice and its dissents) and there are few private documents, secular state papers, and ritual texts.
7. The Greek practice of citizenship may also have helped to generate other innovations. G. E. R. Lloyd argues that the development of generalized skepticism and of critical inquiry directed at fundamental issues in science (and philosophy) can most likely be explained by the social and political context of ancient Greece, namely, the experience of radical debate and confrontation in small-scale, face-toface societies (Lloyd, Magic, Reason and Experience: Studies in the Origin and Development of Greek Science [London: Gerald Duckworth and Co., Ltd., 1999], p. 232).
8. Britannica CD 2000 Deluxe Edition, Entry "Physical Education.
9. See Robert A. Mechikoff and Steven G. Estes, A History and Philosophy of Sport and Physical Education, 3rd ed (New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2002), p. 48;
10. and Mark Golden, Sport and Society in Ancient Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 88-95;
11. Kim Dongkyu, The World History of Physical Education (Kyungsan: Young Nam University Press, 1999), pp. 95-98.
12. See Homer, The Iliad, trans. Martin Hammond (London: Penguin Books, 1987), chaps. 4, 8
13. and Homer, The Odyssey, trans. E. V. Rieu (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 1991), chap. 23.
14. There were four major sporting competitions: the Olympic games, the Pythian games, the Isthmian games and the Nemean games (see Golden, Sport and Society in Ancient Greece, pp. 10-11). These competitions had diverse games that were identical with physical education subjects in the gymnasium.
15. Women were excluded from the Olympic games even as spectators (except for the priestess of Demeter). They could, however, take part in other sporting competition games, with the difference that female athletics had a unique ethos that stressed health and beauty rather than rivalry (see Golden, Sport and Society in Ancient Greece, pp. 125-30).
16. Even critics of Sparta's emphasis on physical fitness do not question the goal of Olympic glory. For example, Aristotle criticizes the Spartans for excessive early physical training on the grounds that this actually reduces, rather than increases, the likelihood of Olympic victories: "The bad effects of excessive early training are strikingly evident. In the lists of Olympic victors there are only two or three cases of the same person having won in the men's events who had previously won in the boys'; and the reason is that early training, and the compulsory exercises which it involved, had resulted in loss of energy" (Aristotle Politics 1339a 8).
17. Plutarch Plutarch's Lives, Lycurgus 82.
18. See Golden, Sport and Society in Ancient Greece, p. 47.
19. Every important Greek city had at least one publicly funded gymnasium, which illustrates the significance of physical education in ancient Greece.
20. The gymnasiarch was elected among men between thirty years old and sixty years old and was expected to carry out the gymnasiarchal law of Zeus, Ge, Helios, Apollo, Hercules, and Hermes (Kim, Joo-Hwa. "A Sport Archeological Study on the Gymnasiarchal Law of Beroea," Korean Journal of Physical Education History 6 (2000).
21. See Mechikoff and Estes, A History and Philosophy of Sport and Physical Education, p. 51.
22. On the practice of infanticide in ancient Greece, see Martha L. Edwards, "The Cultural Context of Deformity in the Ancient Greek World: 'Let There Be a Law That No Deformed Child Shall Be Reared,'" The Ancient History Bulletin 10.3-4 (1996): 79-92.
23. See Kim Donggyu, The World History of Physical Education, p. 99.
24. According to Plutarch, physical education for women in Sparta also was justified in terms of its benefits for childbearing: "He [Lycurgus] made the young women exercise their bodies by running and wrestling and throwing the discus and the javelin, so that their offspring would have a sound start by taking root in sound bodies and grow stronger, and the women themselves would be able to use their strength to withstand childbearing and wrestle with labor pains. He freed them from softness and sitting in the shade and all female habits, and made it customary for girls no less than boys to go naked in processions and to dance naked while young men were present and looking on" (see www.uky.edu/ArtsSciences/ Classics/wlgr/wlgr-greeklegal98.html).
25. Plato, however, argued (in apparent contrast to the dominant Athenian justification) that the point of physical education should not be to develop the body as an end in itself, but rather that the cultivation of the body should be seen as another means to develop the soul (Republic 410c).
26. See Barker, The Politics of Aristotle, Appendix IV, p. 384.
27. The Shiji is a "universal" history of the known world covering the period from the earliest times (the era of the mythical "Yellow Emperor") to the reign of Emperor Han Wudi (156-87 B.C.E.).
28. The Sunzi bingfa is often regarded as the oldest military treatise in the world, but it was compiled over a long period of time and the exact dating of this work is a matter of great controversy (see The Art of War, trans. Ralph D. Sawyer, pp. 157-62).
29. See Shiji, King Wen section. The Shiji, however, presents a controversial account of history. The Shiji may be projecting later ideals into the early Zhou for the purpose of providing a linear account of Chinese history (with the ideal situation represented as the actual past situation).
30. See The Book of Rites (Liji).
31. Kim Donggyu, The World History of Physical Education, p. 44.
32. H. G. Creel, The Origin of Statecraft in China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 256-257, 255. Creel contrasts the (less-than-positive) Chinese attitude toward military matters with the Western Roman's Empire glorification of warfare, but a similar contrast can be drawn with the ancient Greeks.
33. The Commander in Chief of Wu executed two of the king's most beloved concubine-commanders that had disobeyed orders during military practice. The female soldiers were subsequently punctilious in following orders and this led to military victory.
34. Confucius's father furthered his career by means of great individual feats since he was a great weightlifter as well as a military commander (see E. Bruce Brooks and A. Taeko Brooks, The Original Analects [New York: Columbia University Press, 1998], p. 268). But by the mid-to-late Warring States period, individual prowess came into disrepute because mass coordination was the basis of the new army.
35. In Sunzi's The Art of War, the prowess ethic of the warrior had been completely replaced by the colder skills of the operations manager and intelligence chief (see E. Bruce Brooks' website, http://www.umass.edu/wsp/ dummies/sundz/index.html).
36. This period's intellectual legacy has dominated the philosophical, political, and social debates of East Asia to this day, much as ancient Greek philosophy has influenced Western thinking.
37. The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation, trans. Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont, Jr. (New York: Ballantine Books, 1998), 15.1 (modified). Here and elsewhere, the translations of classical Chinese have been modified to our own style and vocabulary.
38. According to the periodization of The Analects in The Original Analects, this would not have been the historical Confucius because The Analects was written over a period of time and only the earliest layers come close to representing the historical Confucius. Brooks's theory about the transmission of The Analects remains controversial, however, as critics argue that it lacks support from historical and/or archaeological evidence.
39. Xunzi, trans. John Knoblock, vol.II (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 15.Id, 222-223
40. William James famously contrasted the "tough-minded" Xunzi with the "tender-minded" Mencius.
41. Xunzi, 15.d, 223-224
42. Benny Josef Peiser reviews the evidence for competitive sporting competitions in early China, but he argues that it is difficult to establish the precise chronology because most modern publications which trace the origins of Chinese sports such as archery, wrestling, charioteering, and soccer rely on mythological traditions and legends that have been revealed as unhistorical fabrications (Peiser, "Western Theories about the Origins of Sport in Ancient China," http:// www2.umist.ac.uk/sport/peiser2.html).
43. See Kim Dongkyu, World History of Physical Education, p. 48
44. and Mark Edward Lewis, Sanctioned Violence in Early China (Albany: State University of New York, 1990), pp. 146-48.
45. Duke Zhao (12th year), Zuo's Commentary (Hunan: Hunan Publishing House, 1996), p 1159.
46. Derk Bodde, Chinese Thought, Society, and Science: The Intellectual and Social Background of Science and Technology in Pre-modern China (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991), p. 293. Bodde does note that this account of archery in preimperial China draws on later sources and may have been idealized to some extent.
47. We use quotes because classical Chinese philosophy did not distinguish between the private and the public. The "private" realm of the family, for Confucian thinkers, has political implications (see, e.g., The Analects, 1.2). The point here is that systematic physical education was not considered to be an important task of the state in ancient China, beyond training for soldiers.
48. Note, however, that the use of the term "body" may be misleading in the ancient Chinese context (see David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, Thinking Through Confucius [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987], p. 20).
49. Derk Bodde does draw an interesting comparison between organized sports in ancient Greece and ancient Rome: in Rome, the prime purpose of organized sports was the amusement of the spectator rather than the physical and moral wellbeing of the participant (as in Greece) (Bodde, Chinese Thought, Society and Science, p. 301).
50. But different regions spoke different dialects - see http://crystalinks. com/ greeklanguage.html.
51. See A. Jarde, The Formation of The Greek People (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 239.
52. For example, Plato argued that inter-Greek fighting should be regarded as "civil strife" rather than "warfare," with the implication that '"[O]ur citizens ought to behave in this [relatively humane] way to their enemies; though when they are fighting barbarians they should treat them as the Greeks now treat each other [i.e., brutal].' 'Then let us lay it down as a law for our Guardians, that they are neither to ravage land nor burn houses'" (Plato Republic, 2nd ed., trans. Desmond Lee [London: Penguin Books, 1987], 471b-c). Of course, Plato was recommending rather than describing, and whether or not cultural commonality actually limited the conduct of intra-Greek warfare is a separate question.
53. The Pan-Hellenic league was more of a confederacy of independent states.
54. Aristotle Politics Ml5b.
55. Ibid., 1275 a-b.
56. Land became concentrated in fewer and fewer hands in Sparta, which led to a decline in the number of citizens. In 480 B.C.E., about 7000 Spartans owned enough land to qualify as citizens; by 371 B.C.E. it had fallen to a couple of thousand, and by the third century B.C.E. to just a few hundred (we are grateful to Ian Morris for this information). According to Aristotle, poor Spartan citizens who could not contribute their quota to common meals were debarred from sharing in constitutional rights {ibid., 1271a).
57. On the practice of deliberation in oligarchies, see G. E. R. Lloyd, Magic, Reason and Experience, p. 261.
58. Plato Republic 423b. In the Laws, Plato argued that the number of households in the state should be limited to 5040 households (737 e if). Aristotle argued that the state should not be too large because the citizens of a state must know one another's characters in order to give decisions in matters of disputed rights and to distribute the offices of government according to the merit of candidates (Politics 1326 b 13).
59. Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey show this military composition, with two great charioteering soldiers (Alexandros and Menalaos) engaging in a one-onone fight. (Homer, The Iliad, Book 3: pp. 325-370, 49-50.) These works are retrospective, however, and may not accurately reflect chariot warfare at the time.
60. Simon Hornblower, "Creation and Development of Democratic Institutions in Ancient Greece," in Democracy: The Unfinished Journey 508BC to ADI993, ed. John Dunn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 4.
61. This is not to deny that there were internal attempts at unification, but these did not succeed. Pericles famously summoned every city-state's delegate to Athens for the purpose of launching a Pan-Hellenic league based on the Athenian political system, but other city-states rejected this overture. "Unification" was only achieved by the force of an outside power, monarchical Macedonia.
62. See Plutarch, Plutarch's Lives, trans. John Driden and rev. Arthur Hugh Clough (London: Dent, 1921), Pelopidas, p.438.
63. Plutarch, Plutarch's Lives, (1921), Ibid, Solon, p. 136.
64. See Homer, The Odyssey, Book 8, pp. 145-150, 110. The Phaeacian people insulted Odysseus since he refrained from demonstrating his physical ability while young competitors were racing, wrestling, jumping, throwing, and boxing in front of him. But he eventually overwhelmed those people by throwing a discus far beyond anybody else.
65. On the ancient Greek valuation of athletic glory, see also Homer, The Iliad, Book 23 (Funeral Games for Patroklos).
66. These states may have been as culturally diverse in the Spring and Autumn era, but a process of cultural assimilation took place (including the suppression of non-Sinitic populations in the state of Lu). The increasing cultural homogeneity may partly explain (along with other factors, such as the massive resource expansion program) the growing commitment to the ideal of unification during the Warring States period.
67. We are using the term "monarch" in the Aristotelian sense. The formal title King was reserved for the successor Zhou rulers.
68. The independent Chinese states had a cultural memory of single overlordship, namely the Zhou situation, which could be invoked (and mythologized) as the Golden Age of peace and harmony. In contrast, the earlier unified Greek phase of history, namely Mycenaean history, has been effectively blotted out in subsequent Greek history.
69. Ge Jianxiong, Putianzhixia (1989), p. 37.
70. See Mark Edward Lewis, "Warring States Political History," in The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 B.C., eds. Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
71. See also Victoria Tin-Bor Hui's (unpublished) article, "Rethinking the Hobbesian Metaphor for International Politics: Comparing the Hobbesianess of the Ancient Chinese and Early Modern European Systems". Hui argues that Qin's eventual domination of other states can be explained by the relative strength of coercive mechanisms vis-a-vis countervailing mechanisms in the processes of international competition. Where coercive capabilities are more limited, as in Early Modern Europe, attempts at domination are less likely to be successful.
72. Note, however, that the dating of the Han Fei Zi is a matter of controversy, much of it may have been composed under the aegis of (later) Han political theorists.
73. Mencius, trans. D. C. Lau (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1984), 7B.1 (modified).
74. Joseph Chan, "Territorial Boundaries and Confucianism", in Boundaries, Ownership, and Autonomy, eds. David Miller and Sohail H. Hashmi (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 96. This is not to deny, however, that classical Confucians also provided practical, morally-informed guidance in a non-ideal political world of competing states. Even Mencius - who is considered to be the most "tender-minded" of the Confucians - argued that it may be justifiable to fortify territorial boundaries between states, for example when a small state is attacked by a larger one (IB.13). 6, 4A.4, 4A.10. 4A.14.
75. Lao Tzu's description of the ideal state - "Make your state small, make your people few" - is the obvious exception (quoted in Roger T. Ames, The Art of Rulership: A Study of Chinese Political Thought [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994], p. 6).
76. See also A. C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1989), pp. 69-70.
77. Some early Warring States societies, however, did have the functional equivalents of constraints on the power of the state - see Victoria Tin-Bor Hui, "The Emergence and Demise of Nascent Constitutional Rights: Comparing Ancient China and Early Modern Europe," Journal of Political Philosophy 9, no.4 (2001). Moreover, some societies did allow for social mobility - e.g., low-ranking persons (other than slaves) could aspire to land ownership, through social merit rather than paterfamilial decree.
78. On the contrast between tianming and liberal-democratic values, see Shi Yuankang, "Tianming yu Zhengdangxing" (The Mandate of Heaven and Political Legitimacy) in Zhengzhi Lilun Zai Zhongguo (Political Theory in China), eds. Joseph Chan and Lo Manto (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2001).
79. Note that there were also non-Confucian ideas regarding the workings of Heaven in the Warring States period. We chose to focus on the Mencian ideas of Heaven because they are closest - yet still far apart - from the Greek idea of democracy.
80. The Analects of Confucius, 13:19 (modified).
81. Even moral universalists such as Plato defended such ideas (see note 47).
82. The Analects of Confucius, 14.2 (modified; Ames and Rosemont translate "ju" more controversially as "wordly comforts" rather than "settled home").
83. See the discussion in Edward Shils, "Reflections on Civil Society and Civility in the Chinese Intellectual Tradition", in Confucian Traditions in East Asian Modernity, ed. Tu Wei-ming (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 70.
84. The Analects of Confucius, 4.11 (modified). See also 4.1, 15.10, 18.2.
85. The Analects, 18.3, 18.4, see also Mencius, 7A.32.
86. Bruce Brooks has cast doubt on this standard account (see note 34), but whatever the historical facts this ideal served to inspire subsequent Confucians (including Mencius, who moved from state to state, looking for opportunities to put his political ideals into practice).
87. The elite military class was most likely self-educated in these skills (as opposed to being educated by the state).
88. The chariot had many defects as a fighting machine, according to H. C. Creel (The Origin of Statecraft in China, 262-271) which may help to explain the transition to infantry.
89. See also Ralph D. Sawyer, The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993), pp. 364-365
90. Lewis, "Warring States Political History," p. 621 (Lewis actually dates the infantry army transition to the Spring and Autumn period). In the same vein, David A. Graff notes that "the aristocratic chariot warfare of the seventh century BC was profoundly different from the conflicts waged by disciplined mass armies of infantry four centuries later
91. (Graff, Medieval Chinese Warfare, 300-900 [London: Routledge, 2002], p. 17).
92. However, E. Bruce Brooks argues that we do not have enough evidence to speak of "the end of the dominance" of the warrior elite (more likely, the class or its social successors continued to provide the officer corps, and that the expansion of the army, not the totality of the army, was made up of infantry of lower social status).
93. Lewis, "Warring States Political History," p. 621.
94. While military service could lead to social advancement under certain states' rules, this would be an instrumental reason for valuing military service, which is not the same as being motivated by patriotism and civic pride (as in the Greek case).
95. In the early Warring States period, military service did arguably lead to quasi-citizenship status for the lower social orders. By the mid-Warring States period, however, the growth of autocratic states meant that there was no need for social negotiation and states could simply compel obedience, with attendant (negative) implications for the "social benefits" of military service.
96. Paul Millett, "The Economy" in Classical Greece, ed. Robin Osborne, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 39.
97. Proximity to the sea also led to the development of marine warfare in ancient Greece (absent from ancient China), which in turn made the knowledge of swimming necessary for Athenians. The ability to swim well was a reason for ethnic pride and the image of drowning enemies recurs in celebrations of victory (Edith Hall, "Drowning by Nomes: The Greeks, Swimming, and Timotheus' Persians" in The Birth of European Identity: The Europe-Asia Contrast in Greek Thought 490-322 B. C., ed. H. A. Khan [Nottingham: University of Nottingham, 1994], 2 (1993): 44). Greek literature, however, says very little about swimming as such, most likely because it was never formally performed at public games in ancient Greece (ibid, p. 52).
98. Jean Hatzfeld, History of Ancient Greece (New York: Norton & Company, 1966), p. 121.
99. A. Jarde, The Formation of The Greek People, p. 253.
100. Slaves from the hinterlands ensured that most Greek citizens did not have to do the hard labor themselves.
101. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1959), p. 27.
102. Tracy B. Strong, Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration, expanded edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), p. 194.
103. Karl Marx, Capital, Vol.3, in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert Tucker (New York: Norton, 1978), p. 441.
104. See Fung Yu-Lan and Derk Bodde, A Short History of Chinese Philosophy (New York: Macmillan, 1961), pp. 25-27.
105. Once again, these sources are controversial and this particular story may be a myth.
106. See Victoria Tin-Bor Hui, "The Emergence and Demise of Nascent Constitutional Rights," p. 383. This was succeeded in Han dynasty (B.C.E. 202-A.D.E. 220), Qin's successor, as "a farm cultivated by the militia" [in Qin, when peasants were conscripted, they abandoned their farming activities and needed to obtain food from others, but under the new system, soldiers in remote areas also grew their own food].
107. Historical evidence for this claim is lacking, however.
108. Mencius, Mencius, VIB.15. Mencius, however, opposed the idea that rulers were expected to continue to engage in production once they assumed their political posts ("There are those who use their minds and there are those who used their muscles. The former rule; the latter are ruled. Those who rule are supported by those who are ruled" [IIIA.4]). The context for this famous passage clearly shows that Mencius was trying to counter the view that "a good and wise ruler shares the work of tilling the land with his people" (Ibid), but unfortunately Mencius has been read to argue for a strict division of labor between intellectuals and peasants (a view that was explicitly challenged to disastrous effect during the Cultural Revolution).
109. The Analects of Confucius, 13.18 (modified). It could be argued Confucius' view is similar to that of Socrates in the Euthyphro (Socrates criticizes Euthyphro for prosecuting his own father on a charge of murder). The point of this dialogue, however, is not to affirm the value of filial piety, but rather to expose the moral/ intellectual vacuity of the socially-respectable theologians of his day (and perhaps to shed light on Socrates' state of mind just before his trial). In any case, Socrates' own personal life - i.e., neglecting his own family members for the sake of the pursuit of "truth" - seems rather far removed from the Confucian emphasis on care for family members.
110. See Hahm Chaibong's paper "The Family vs. the Individual: The Politics of Marriage Laws in Korea," in Confucianism for the Modern World, eds. Daniel A. Bell and Hahm Chaibong (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 337-342
111. See Mencius's comparison of benevolence (yen) with archery: "an archer makes sure his stance is correct before letting fly the arrow, and if he fails to hit the mark, he does not hold it against the victor. He simply seeks the cause within himself (2A.7).
112. See also The Analects, 3.7.