Can Sport Exist Without Aggression? On a Certain Thought Experiment by Stanisław Lem

The main objective of the paper is to present and analyse a thought experiment concerning the existence and specifi city of sport in a society completely devoid of aggression. The experiment comes from the novel Return from the Stars by Stanisław Lem, Polish writer and thinker. The article provides an explanation why sports, and boxing in particular, were included in Lem’s refl ections on the problem of evil and attempts to “improve the world”. Lem’s vision of sport in a society subjected to betrization – a procedure that eliminates aggression – is presented and commented on from the perspective of the contemporary philosophy of sport. The presented analysis of Lem’s considerations focuses on their relationships with currently debated issues. An illustration of this thread of considerations is tchoukball – a sport designed to minimise players’s aggression.