ABSTRACT
The author motivates and examines the topic of athletes’ aesthetic experiences. Play can give one not just pleasure but aesthetic pleasure, especially when one is playing skillfully, when one is ‘in the zone’. Csikszentmihalyi ’s notion of flow is interpreted as not just peak experience but also a type of aesthetic experience. Montero’s notion of proprioceptive aesthetics is critically examined in light of McFee’s rejection of proprioception as an aesthetic sense. The author concludes that a proprioceptive aesthetics is promising, though mirror neurons, which may register others’ actions as well as one’s own, fail to imply that one can literally proprioceive another’s movement.
