ABSTRACT
Spaniard being as much a celebrity in the US, Europe, South America, and Asia as intel-
lectuals might hope for. There are a number of reasons that account for this (Ilunda´in-
Agurruza 2013a), but one of the more interesting ones is that many of his ideas have
become familiar in one way or another, as Philip Silver notes in his introduction to a
compilation of Ortega’s signature phenomenological works (Ortega y Gasset 1975, 7).
Sport philosophy in English echoes the academic silence. There are few references to
his work, much less dedicated focus, excepting David Inglis’ splendidly thorough Medi-
tations on Sport (2004), Klaus Meier’s signal An Affair of Flutes, (1980), Orringer’s erudite
Ortega y Gasset’s Sportive Vision of Plato (1973), and my work (2008, 2010, 2011, 2012,
2013). Inglis harangues us: ‘we must seriously attend to Ortega’s ideas and rescue his
shade from the penumbra into which it has in part been cast’ (2004, 94). As further
endorsement and spur for readers, I add that long before academia seriously considered
sport, Ortega enthusiastically and fearlessly jumped into the arena of sport and made it
a pivotal element of cultural and philosophical significance. Indeed, he built a genuine
and thoroughly sportive philosophy.
