“Sports are a species of performance, in the mode of what Gumbrecht calls ‘presence.’ Presence assumes an anti-Cartesian conception of life. When we think of ourselves as mainly minds, the world, including our own bodies, stands at a distance from us, and we try to make sense of it. Meaning is paramount. In sports, what the body knows is as important as what the mind knows, and the objects in the world are not ‘out there’ to be understood but are part of ourselves.”

Peter Leithart, “Ingested Words“