Historical Review and Enlightenment of the Family Sports 35 Qualitative Enquiry of Aikido Practitioners from different levels to the Philosophical Discussion between Arts and Sports - The Case of Aikido in-between Şentuna B.(Middle East Technical Univ., Turkey) * , McNamee M.(Swansea Univ., Wales) ** , Korkusuz F.(Middle East Technical Univ.) *** , Kiraz E.(Middle East Technical Univ.) **** Abstract This paper is made of two parts. The first part of it gives out briefly the qualitative findings of 23 Aikido practitioners, from different levels, conceptualization of Aikido from other sports, in the setting of “Art/War and Not Sports” category and their view point of Aikido from these perspectives. The second part discusses these findings within themselves, with Aikido Literature and with Philosophy of Sports Literature mainly concerning the discussion between Best and Wertz on Sport and Art. Key words: Aikido, Philosophy, Martial Arts Introduction “Do practitioners of Aikido approach Aikido as a sport or art?” is the main research question that leads to philosophical discussion in this paper. From the open-ended answers of participants this question is constructed. Whether Aikido is an art or sports and how competition plays a role in this discussion are presented from the view-point of out participants. The review and analysis of documents revealed Art/War and Competition as a category and the following labels reveal that category. In this section we will try to figure out the participant perspectives on Aikido as an art of war and as sports. We have combined the two labels (is an art of war / is not sports) for a better understanding. In the formal definition of Aikido, Aikido is defined as a martial art. In addition to being an “art of war”, it is at the same an “art of harmony” and also an “art of love”. It can be suggested that this is a strong differentiating point of Aikido. In fact, participant perspectives reveal that only 5 out of the 23 subjects indicate that Aikido is a war activity, In addition, only 2 indicate out of 23 that Aikido is not a sports. Those two people also mention that it is an art of war at the same time. An advanced participant, T.K., explains this point as follows: