The question of whether or not sport is art has been discussed by many scholars of the philosophy of sport. Taking this discussion into account, we now know that a simple conclusion regarding sport as art is not adequate, because it is clear that there is a politics of culture concerning sport and art behind the discussion. In this paper, the author summaries this broader, background discussion as the context for critically reviewing Wolfgang Welsch’s paper “Sport – Viewed Aesthetically, and Even as Art?” (XIVth International Congress of Aesthetics, 1998). Specifically Welsch considers modern sport as an example of today’s aestheticization of the everyday, and regards sport as art.

An important matter we should pay attention to in Welsch’s paper is that he proposes two different concepts of art, that is: “art-art” and “sport-art.” Welsch’s strong point is that he clarifies the ambiguity of the contemporary concept of art and suggests a broad extension of the notion of art beyond the traditional concept of art through the discussion of the relationship between sport and art. Welsch’s discussion is based on his idea of “recurrence” to the original meaning of aesthetics, aisthetis.