Coubertin – the philosopher of paideia

This article presents some selected aspects of Pierre de Coubertin’s philosophical anthropology. Coubertin’s philosophy of man is conceived as a philosophy of paideia in the perspective of Werner Jaeger, Pierre Hadot and Michel Foucault thought. The author describes three possible ways of interpreting Coubertin’s thought: doxographical, and creative as well as hermeneutical reconstruction. Next, the possibility of objective criticism of the idealistic vision of Coubertin’s Neo-Olympism is taken into consideration. It is pointed out that the principles of such objective and antydogmatic criticism were established by Immanuel Kant, and it is proposed to use them in the process of critical evaluation of Coubertin’s philosophy. By use of this form of criticism, the foundations and philosophical references of Coubertin’s pedagogical philosophy can be properly highlighted. The author creates her own hermeneutical trigger, comparing Coubertin’s anthropological refl ection with the somaesthetics of the contemporary American pragmatist and philosopher - Richard Shusterman.