Body Place Existence: Phenomenology of Cristiano Ronaldo

What does the Portuguese football star Cristiano Ronaldo (CR7) have to do with concepts of place and space? A lot: I believe that examining CR7’s gestures on a football pitch can provide valuable insights into the seamless continuity between ‘body’, ‘place’, and ‘existence’. I mean actual, concrete, bodily existence in a specific place, or even better, existence as being-in-place, which subsumes the other possibility: the concrete existence of bodies, things, or objects in space. This apparent dualism between place and space requires a brief introduction before I delve into the main topic—the implacement of Cristiano Ronaldo and the analysis of his gestures on a football pitch.^[1]

As I mentioned in a previous article, I believe that place refers to the realm of concrete things (‘place is the arena of things’ I have said), whereas space refers to the domain of thought (‘the arena of thoughts’).^[2] To paraphrase an old saying by Democritus, space exists in opinion, but it’s place that truly exists in reality, manifesting in various forms, including physicochemical, biological, social, and symbolic states. On this website, my goal is to reestablish the reciprocity between the two modes of being – one concrete and actual, the other abstract and potential — as a means to knowledge that transcends dualism. To achieve this, I believe it’s essential to define limits and boundaries between these two modes, allowing us to identify differences, continuities, and correlations, and avoid the risks of confusing the concrete with the abstract, and vice versa. We incur the first risk when we think that we live in a world of subjective concepts and symbols that represent an external world inaccessible to us. The second risk involves believing that certain abstract concepts represent real entities, when in fact they represent abstract entities. For example, we take this risk when we mistake space as the concrete physical continuum in which we live. To clarify the latter proposition, while concepts are inherently abstract as creations of the human mind, I believe some represent abstract entities, whereas others represent concrete entities. This is especially true for the concepts of ‘place’ and ‘space’, which require not only intuitive reasoning and logic to understand, but also knowledge of their histories and the terms used to narrate those histories and meanings. We can all agree that ‘place’ and ‘space’ are terms associated with specific concepts: nonetheless, I maintain that while place represents — is — the concrete and actual (that’s why I’ve said ‘place is the arena of things’), space represents — is — the abstract and ideal (that’s why I’ve said that ‘space is the arena of thoughts’). When we use the abstract concept of space to describe concrete situations, (that is, every time we use the term space as a metaphor or as a geometrically based concept in circumstances where the actual conflates with the ideal – e.g., this is the case when we use a common expression like ‘physical space’, which is an oxymoron in the end), we must be aware of the epistemological limitations, consequences, and risks that come with it, even if we acknowledge its abstract nature. As I mentioned in the Preliminary Notes, quoting a passage from Middlemarch by George Eliot, ‘all of us, grave or light, get our thoughts entangled in metaphors, and act fatally on the strength of them.’^[3] In other words, we live as if our bodies, not just our minds, are entangled in space, when in reality, our bodies and minds are situated in place from the start. The risk behind the use of a metaphor is to misplace the difference between the abstract and the concrete. And since, by definition, abstract concepts are selective representations of concrete wholes, this can lead to the mistaken assumption that the non-abstracted parts are absent or insignificant, resulting in potentially fatal consequences. In the specific case of space, a concept with a dimensional nature (etymologically, space refers to an extension, measure, or distance—see the article Back to the Origins of Space and Place), it is impossible to conceive of dimension or extension without considering matter and duration, which are inherently linked to them. Focusing on space, we tend to overlook time (an inconsistency Einstein addressed) and matter, or the underlying processes. This brings us back to the central theme of my research: place has concrete foundations, although it can also have more abstract implications; in contrast, space is abstract. This means that reality is a concrete place, having concrete grounds to begin with. Whenever the situation and the linguistic context allow, we should avoid thinking of and referring to actual bodies as existing, living, or moving through space; instead, we should recognize that they exist, live, and rest in a specific place, or move from one place to another.

To return to our starting point, Cristiano Ronaldo’s concrete physical presence is rooted in place, not in space (not even in spacetime, which is another abstract entity—a mathematical model or framework and not a physical substance or medium), because place is what truly exists, whereas space is merely an opinion (unless we believe that the real CR7 is an opinion or even a hologram, rather than a flesh-and-blood person). To add depth to my stance on the concepts of place and space, I argue that CR7 is situated in a place, ‘implaced’, long before being spatially located, or ‘spatialized’.^[4] ‘Spatialization’ — an ambiguous concept, whose ambiguity I would resolve by understanding it either as the characteristic of a body to exist in space (hence an ideal body existing in an abstract space or domain — a ‘res cogitans’ to use a Cartesian terminology), or as the characteristic of a body to be spatially extended (in which case, ‘spatialization’ and the adverb ‘spatially’ would metaphorically refer to the real extension of a body existing in a real place, as a ‘res extensa’) — requires the reflective and ingenious intervention of the human mind, whereas ‘implacement’ – the characteristic of a body, or an object, to be actualized in place – only necessitates the physical presence of the body or object itself. As an intuitive example of ‘spatialization’ in the first case, consider the process that transformed CR7 into a virtual character within the digital environment of an electronic game, which can be described as a space or spatial domain, indeed.

Image 1: Cristiano Ronaldo’s ‘spatialized’ presence within the digital environment of an electronic game; indeed, that environment can be understood as a space, or even as a virtual or imaginary place.

Within that digital environment, we can confidently assert that CR7, the virtual character, exists in a space—a concept that, unless otherwise specified, always represents an abstract domain born from the human mind’s ability to abstract and create symbolic entities. Alternatively, we could say that the virtual CR7 inhabits a virtual, imaginary, or symbolic place; therefore, place can possess both concrete and abstract values, see the article What Is Place? What Is Space? But the ‘real’ Cristiano Ronaldo, the flesh-and-blood entity who scores goals, receives awards, and earns money for his performances on and off the pitch, well, that Cristiano Ronaldo ‘is’ or ‘exists’ only in place. Not just ‘in’ place, where that ‘in’ could respectively mean the entire stadium, as well as the football pitch, or even the team where the phenomenon, CR7, showcases his exceptional performances; CR7 himself — his very body (and obviously his mind as a part of the body) — is a place: the place where his being is actualized, or, to quote a passage from Heidegger commented by philosopher Edward Casey, ‘the place (Stätte) which Being requires in order to disclose itself.’^[5] Then, the place of his concrete bodily presence coincides with his body and his being: ‘Eu Estou Aqui’, ‘I am here’, ‘Io sono qui’, is CR7’s motto, which we could also term ‘CR7’s axiom’. Before all, ‘here’ belongs to ‘being’ as an internal, intrinsic, attribute of the body, not a specification of an external position.  Place-and-existence, existence-and-place: I believe that any alternative that neglects the primacy of place, such as the actual existence of things in space or spacetime, should be rejected.

After this introduction, I will explain why I chose Cristiano Ronaldo as an example to explore questions of place and space, and how analyzing his gestures on the football pitch revealed valuable spatial/placial insights to me. Better than by words, surely much better than I’m able to do, and more straightforwardly than many phenomenological accounts on space, place and existence — or experience —, I believe CR7 is able to convey the full sense of what it means to be (to exist), with few symbolic gestures and in a direct and intuitive way: ‘to be is to be in place’, the famous Archytian axiom says.^[6] That’s the core argument of this brief article, which I hope it won’t be seen as a superficial follow-up to the previous one — The Place of a Thing (Place in Greek is Τόπος -topos- which literally stands for ‘whereabouts’). Therefore, we are now going to speak about ‘the place of Cristiano Ronaldo’, where his gestures and posture on a football pitch proclaim to the world: ‘It’s me. I am here’. In doing so, CR7 offers a personal interpretation of that ancient axiom, a self-evident truth that is often overlooked or underappreciated.

I’ve always believed that Cristiano Ronaldo’s physical presence on the soccer field is deeply connected to a sense of place and existence evident from the moment he assumes his characteristic stance before kicking a penalty or free kick; his way of standing still for instants that seem to freeze the moment in an eternal present; his static presence on the pitch before kicking the ball, with legs open and arms slightly open, straight down to his side, evoking a statue-like presence that exudes stability amidst the uncertainty surrounding him; a constant presence, something you can count on, making his goal-scoring seem almost inevitable, like the execution of a predetermined outcome; something — somebody, actually — firmly put into place, something that stands out, ultimately. He has a physical presence that can catalyze all of the energies within and around him, not just his own, but those of an entire stadium. ‘I’m here’, Cristiano Ronaldo seems to say, that is, here, in (this) place.

Image 2: CR7’s peculiar stance before kicking a penalty or a free-kick.

A fundamental aspect of my thinking on questions of space and place is that ‘here and being’ — the being of any thing-as-physical substance — are sympathetic to each other, much like two sides of the same coin. Cristiano Ronaldo seems to instinctively understand this, as evident in his peculiar stance and postures, which showcase to the world his awareness of his powerful physical presence and his complete immersion in a given situation at a precise moment. ‘I am here, in this place, right now’. The ‘here’ of ‘this place’ — I argue — is an ‘extended place’, an extended field of localization where various forces interact: this place encompasses not only his physical body but also the football pitch he steps on and the surrounding stadium. Through this particular stance, Cristiano Ronaldo’s body internalizes the pitch and the entire stadium, effectively merging them into a single entity: a place. This is a genuine act of ‘implacement’, to use a technical terminology which we have already introduced.

Image 3: Original ‘withness’ between things: CR7’s bodily presence, the football pitch and the stadium constitute a unique entity, a composite whole, or place; as a matter of fact, the body, by means of perception, brings together the here (of the body) and the there (of the objects perceived around the body) in a unique encompassing structure: a place.

Having in mind Cristiano Ronaldo’s peculiar posture before kicking a free-kick, in a previous article — Back to the Origins of Space and Place — I examined the semantic connection between the concept of place and various static notions, which Cristiano Ronaldo, with his distinctive pre-free-kick stance, is able to interpret through his body language. In brief, we have observed that a web of significance exists between many words related to situation, position or locale, all of which share the root ‘sta’ as a generator of meaning (hence terms like ‘static’, ‘standing’, ‘stance’, ‘statue’, ‘stability’, ‘constant’, through which we have just described Cristiano’s peculiar attitude before kicking a ball), and converging towards the notion of place. In fact, from a linguistic perspective, we have observed that the root ‘sta’ may be linked to the Proto-Indo-European verbal root *steh₂-, which forms the basis of ‘general words for a place’.^[7] By assuming certain positions that are denoted by terms including the linguistic root ‘sta’, CR7 demonstrates his deep connection to his surroundings, understood as a precise situation and moment, through his body language, showcasing his modality of being ‘implaced’. In essence, the fundamental condition of existence (to exist) is to have a distinct stance that sets one apart from others (things); it means being different, appearing different, from what is all around as a kind of realisation — or actualization —, of the self as something unique and distinct, cut out from what is all around – the physical environment; a mode of standing forth, or of standing out, ultimately. CR7 instinctively understands the correlation between one’s being, as the characteristic stance of one’s body over against what is all around (a term, stance, which is formally and semantically related to ‘existence’ and ‘essence’), and place; so that being is always being-in-place (implacement). His gestures and posture convey a fundamental truth: existing (Being) means staying, and staying means staying in place. ‘I am. I-am-here’ is Cristiano Ronaldo’s insightful bodily interpretation of the old Archytian axiom. CR7’s profound self-awareness — the profound awareness of his Being-in-place evident in his upright posture and straight stance — resonates with Heidegger’s words, which explore the original meaning of Being among the ancient Greeks, in the essay Introduction to Metaphysics: ‘… this standing-there, this taking and maintaining a stand that stands erected high in itself, is what the Greeks understood as Being.’^[8]

However, what is truly exceptional with Cristiano Ronaldo is that, in particular circumstances, he visibly recomposes differences within unity so that the stadium, the football pitch and his very presence and body merge into a unified whole, or ‘extended place’, thereby revealing through his gestures the original connection between existence (Being), body (being), and the surrounding environment (place).^[9] This often precedes a CR7 goal, triggering a genuine celebratory ritual of self-implacement: he runs pointing first his fingers to his chest – ‘I am…’ (Image 4, below) -, and then to the ground – ‘… here!’ (Image 5, below).

Image 4: CR7’s celebratory ritual after scoring a goal: ‘I am…’

Image 5: CR7’s celebratory ritual after scoring a goal: ‘… here!’

After that, while running, he leaps high into the air, emphasizing the vertical aspect of his movements by raising his arms to the sky and spinning his body around, before landing firmly on his feet. The ground or, better, the football pitch is a powerful source of attraction, a primal place he pays homage to by stretching out his arms and lowering them to the ground with his hands wide open.  Finally, he he assumes his characteristic static posture once again, a modern form of ‘stabilitas loci’, with his legs divaricated, firmly planted onto place, his shoulders and arms angled towards the ground/pitch, as if drawn by the gravity exerting its force on his body (Image 6, below).

Image 6: CR7’s celebratory ritual of ‘self-implacement’ after scoring a goal – ‘I am, here!’- could be synthesized as CR7’s axiom.

In this celebratory ritual of ‘self-implacement’, Cristiano Ronaldo’s body, the football pitch and the stadium become one (place); for him, and possibly his fans, it’s a genuine moment of complete fusion with the surroundings – a sort of peak experience, as a psychologist might describe it. When I first observed this kind of celebration and the peculiar stance of his body before kicking a penalty or a free-kick, I began to see him as a genuine embodiment of the profound truth behind the Archytian axiom: ‘to be is to be in place’. To adhere to Cristiano Ronaldo’s gestural and non-gestural modes of communication, this axiom could be rephrased as: ‘I am, here!’ which could be synthesized as CR7’s axiom, the ultimate truth that CR7 is saying to the world with his unique way of celebrating goals and kicking free kicks. Nobody better than him, or more directly than him, is able to convey such profound truths to a large audience without saying a word; his gestures are enough.

The power of Cristiano Ronaldo is the power of a body-standing-in-place, the power of his bodily presence in place: a mode of standing – the stance of his body on the pitch with-in the stadium — where the body itself and the stadium are the relative loci that are necessary for being genuinely in place (or implaced). He didn’t need to read the fragments on place attributed to Archytas of Tarentum, or to read Aristotle’s theory of place, or Simplicius’s corollaries on place; nor did he need to know Kant’s and Whitehead’s views on the body’s role in implacement, or Husserl’s arguments on the relation between kinesthesia and the near-sphere, or Merleau-Ponty’s insight on the capacities of the lived body;^[10] finally, he didn’t need to read Heidegger’s belated recognition of the placial significance of Being-as-Dasein, to intuitively understand the intimate bond between body, place, and existence.

So, when Cristiano Ronaldo moved from Real Madrid to Juventus F.C. in the summer of 2018, everyone in Italy expected him to score many goals from his first official match in the national League—Serie A. However, expectations were disappointed: not only did he fail to score in the opening match, but he also failed to score for three matches in a row! So everybody in Italy, including supporters, magazines, tabloid, newspapers, TV programs, etc., was wondering where Cristiano Ronaldo had been all this time (the ‘where’ is a question of place, ultimately). Everybody wondered if CR7 was a finished player and his glorious days over because of the age (34). The answer — or ‘CR7’s axiom’, as I have named it — was provided by Cristiano Ronaldo himself, and was reported in capital letters by the opening title of an Italian newspaper the day after CR7 scored his first two goals in the same match, during his new Italian campaign: ‘IO SONO QUI!’, meaning ‘I AM HERE!’, or ‘EU ESTOU AQUI!’ in his native Portuguese (it’s interesting to note that, in this and other cases, the Portuguese language uses ‘being’ – to be – in the form of staying – e-sto-u – properly).

Image 7: ‘IO SONO QUI’ the title of an Italian sports newspaper says after Cristiano Ronaldo scored his first goals in the ‘Serie A’ league.

Accordingly, for Cristiano Ronaldo, in flesh and blood, the celebratory ritual of ‘self-implacement’ continues with a new shirt after scoring a goal. While his ‘spatialization’ — his existence in space within the ‘unbounded limits’ of a digital environment such as an electronic game, where the past or a hypothetical future becomes an eternal present — can go on and on, indefinitely (Image 1, above). The actual CR7, the corporeal or physical entity, is a placial entity which exists only in real places. In contrast, the ideal CR7, the virtual entity, properly, exists in space (as a spatial entity), or in virtual and imaginary places. As concrete, sensible, and bodily entities we exist ‘in place’ before being ‘in space’; we are implaced entities before being spatialized entities, since it is only through the creative agency of our minds that we can have access to space, or to any other abstract or hybrid domains, which are highly structured symbolic and representational worlds. Where there is no mind there is no space: ultimately, space is first and foremost a creative thought or concept in our minds, which is imposed on the world ‘out there’ for representational scopes. Conversely, place is within and without our bodies: it is the conditio sine qua non of actual existence. Like a novel Archytas, Cristiano Ronaldo understands that ancient truth very well: first and foremost, to be is to be in place.

Image 8: CR7’s trademark represented on the lining of his jacket at the Golden Soccer Awards in Dubai, 2020.

Notes

[1] I have borrowed the term ‘implacement’ — rather than using the more common ‘emplacement’ or even ‘placement’ — from Edward Casey. According to Casey, ‘the im- of implacement stresses the action of getting in or into, and it carries connotations of immanence that are appropriate to the inhabitation of places’. See: Edward S. Casey, Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,1993), xiii, 315. I think this type of ‘active’ connotation accurately conveys my idea of place when I say that a place is always a place of processes that cannot be severed from the entities – which are states of place – that accompany them; when these processes become actual, they are actualized as entities-place or, simply, places. I believe the term ‘implacement’ accurately describes the intrinsic relationship between processes and entities, which can be understood as places where those processes are actualized—what Casey refers to as ‘elemental thing-place’ (ibid., p. 216).

[2] See the introductory article Preliminary Notes.

[3] George Eliot, Middlemarch (New York: Barnes and Nobles Classics, 1996), 80. See Thoughts Entangled in Space

[4] For a brief account on the meaning of the term ‘implaced’ derived from ‘implacement’ see Note 1, above, and Note 5 in the article What Is Place? What Is Space?

[5] Edward S. Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), p. 261.

[6] I borrow the expression ‘Archytian axiom’ and its statement from the American philosophers Edward Casey. The original statement refers to the ancient belief of the Pythagorean thinker Archytas of Tarentum (428-347 B.C.), who wrote a lost treatise on place, of which only fragments survived; one of them is cited by Simplicius: ‘… it is obvious that one has to grant priority to place… the first of all things… since all existing things are either in place or not without place.’   In: Edward Casey, Getting Back into Place, p. 14. See also notes 48 and 53, page 320, in the same book. The ‘modified version’ of the original Archytian Axiom can also be found in: Edward Casey’s The Fate of Place, page 4.

[7] ‘General words for “a place” are built on the verbal root *steh2- “stand”, hence we have *ste´h2tis (e.g., Lat statio “position, station”, NE stead, Lith stacias “standing”, Grk stasis “place, setting, standing, stature”, Av staiti- “station”, Sktsthıti- “position”)’, in J. P. Mallory and D. Q. Adams, The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World (New York: Oxford University Press Inc., 2006), 287, 295.

[8] Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Gregory Fried and Richard Polt (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 63.

[9] I have used the expression ‘withness of the body’ borrowed from philosopher Alfred N. Whitehead’s Process and Reality, to highlight the uninterrupted continuity between a living organism (a living body) and its physical environment. This continuity, or withness is twofold (etymologically, that which is ‘continuous’ is related to the Latin cum+tenere ‘to hold together with’, or ‘continere’, ‘to hang together’): on the one hand, I am with my body (I am always with my body in any act of perception – ‘we see with our eyes… we touch with our hands…’ Whitehead says – a form of continuity that denies the division mind/body); on the other hand, my body is simultaneously (continuous) with particular regions of the environment around me. The body, together with the environment, forms a second type of continuity that rejects the sharp distinction between the organism and the environment, a distinction we are used to. According to Whitehead, objects and bodies, both here and there, are situated in what he termed ‘the obvious solidarity of the world’: I name this ‘solidarity of the world’, which brings together here and there, bodies and objects, a place, or an extended place (see Figure 3). For a brief and penetrating analysis of the notion of ‘withness’ and the Whitehead quotations I’ve referenced, see Casey’s The Fate of Place (p. 214, 215).

[10] At this regards, see Image 8 of Paragraph 1.4. – Part Four: The Reappearance of Place -, in the article Place and Space: A Philosophical History.

Works Cited

Casey, Edward S. Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.

—. The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

Heidegger, Martin. Introduction to Metaphysics.Translated by Gregory Fried, and Richard Polt. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.

Mallory, James P. and Adams, Douglas Q. The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World. New York: Oxford University Press Inc., 2006.

Whitehead Alfred North. Process and Reality – An Essay in Cosmology. New York: The Free Press, Corrected edition, 1978.

Image Credits

Featured Image (source) by Raushan Vd on kindpng.com

Images 3 and 8 by Alessandro Calvi Rollino, CC BY-NC-SA