This paper is concerned with the current discourse on and practice of physical education, which tend to see this discipline more and more in function of broader societal goals: the education of the sporting and moving body gets legitimized, because of the possibilities it offers to promote health, because it helps to foster a sense of hygiene and the willingness to take care for one’s own body, and because P.E. seems an exquisite opportunity to generate all kinds of social competencies (fair-play, leadership, coping with winning and losing), democratic values and, of course, national prestige (we should now stimulate toddlers to become competitive sportsmen and -women in order to double the rate of golden medals at the Olympic Games of 2028). So, there seems to be a tendency to evolve towards a physical education that is seen as an instrument that should be applied to contribute to educational goals which have solely an extrinsic relation to the exercising and moving human body. That is why we want to deal with P.E. the other way around, viz. starting from the experienced significance of being in movement and practicing sport in educational contexts. In particular we will focus on the democratic dimensions of P.E. In contradistinction to the current demand that P.E. can and should contribute to the raising of tolerant and political active citizens, we will try to articulate another form of democracy which is an inherent possibility of “being in movement together”. This democracy is not to be taken in an institutional sense and doesn’t refer to the traditional values of the willingness to aggregate, to deliberate and to give everyone a voice. It rather is about a very particular experience we might undergo as corporeal creatures (while being in movement). Democracy is then seen, not as the product of work, but as something we find ourselves to be part of. Our point is that some practices such as lying down on the ground together, dancing, as well as risky and adventurous sport, might offer the undergoing of an experience in which we are exposed to a corporeal loss of self-control, which makes at the same time any positive identification and the adherence of hierarchical positions meaningless. We are unremittingly submitted to a democracy of the flesh. This interruption of any set order has therefore an important educational and emancipatory significance. Educational experience is here used in a Foucaultian way.

As the sense of this corporeal democracy resides IN the situation of people exercising together, it is mandatory to give a descriptive analysis of what we concretely experience while taking in a standing/lying position, while dancing or while putting ourselves at risk. The overarching framework we apply is phenomenological and will start from Plessner’s distinction between Leiblichkeit (experiencing one’s body as an expression of self-mastership) and Körperlichkeit (undergoing the anonymous and automatic functioning of one’s flesh). This will allow to treat corporeality without falling back on a dualistic anthropology, as well as without presenting the body as a forgotten or repressed source of energy and meaning. We are more interested in the “negative” corporeal experience of loss-of-mastership. We will also use Erwin Straus’s analysis of the impact of bipedality and his distinction between optical and acoustical spaces (and its significance for the issues of autonomy and equality).

We expect to be able to show that there are educational relevant aspects to P.E. to which we remain blind, if we solely treat P.E. as an instrument in realizing the existing goals of democratic edification. Although we will argue that the equalizing experience we might undergo cannot be made productive itself and thus can never be translated in concrete didactical tools, we can formulate practical winks regarding the attitude P.E.-teachers may adopt. This insight will allow furthermore to rethink the approach towards corporeality in general within educational research and within philosophy of education.