Abstract

Philosophical understanding of the importance of amateur stayer practices for the comprehensive development of a person and the promotion of this kind of physical activity is an urgent task, given the generally small number of people who regularly practice this type of physical activity. The center of the formation and spread of amateur running movement in the world is the United States, which allows us to make an assumption about the stimulation of running activity by the peculiarities of their national culture. The subject of consideration is the cultural content and humanistic potential of the running practices of amateur stayers, explicated through the worldview and categorical apparatus of the main directions of classical American philosophy - transcendentalism and pragmatism, the choice of which is due to their ideological features, most suitable for the study of the existence of a "running man" ‒ democracy, holism, meliorism and focus on the experience of everyday life in everything its diversity. The methodology of the subject area of the study used the historical method, the method of categorization, the descriptive method, the method of analysis. The second part of the article is devoted to the study of the influence of the ideological heritage of the American pragmatists C. S. Pierce, W. James and J. Dewey on the development of mass stayer running. This influence is seen in the fact that pragmatists considered it important to live in the tension associated with the transformation of the impossible by a person into the possible, which forms the horizon of meaningfulness of life. Unlike joggers, semi-professional runners, who are close to the worldview of pragmatists, are focused not on expanding the running experience, but on deepening it, which allows them to discover aspects of running locomotion that are inaccessible without significant stress, long-term practices, asceticism and risk, the most effective in their humanizing power. The key themes of pragmatism, important for the formation of the conceptual equipment of semi-professional running practices, are the desire for meliorism as a constant deepening into the running experience in order to increasingly reveal their potential; reliance on an experimental method in the training process, a positive attitude to the risk inevitable in long-distance running; faith in their ability to resist pain; habits to compliance with the regime; a playful attitude to running activities as valuable in themselves; recognition of the motivating value of meditative and mystical experiences; dynamism of fronesis; readiness for extreme actions and experiences.