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Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture
In Homo Ludens, the classic evaluation of play that has become a "must-read" for those in game design, Dutch philosopher Johan Huizinga defines play as the central activity in flourishing societies. Like civilization, play requires structure and participants willing to create within limits. Starting with Plato, Huizinga traces the contribution of Homo Ludens, or "Man the player" through Medieval Times, the Renaissance, and into our modern civilization. Huizinga defines play against a rich theoretical background, using cross-cultural examples from the humanities, business, and politics. Homo Ludens defines play for generations to come.
"A happier age than ours once made bold to call our species by the name of Homo Sapiens. In the course of time we have come to realize that we are not so reasonable after all as the Eighteenth Century with its worship of reason and naive optimism, though us; "hence moder fashion inclines to designate our species asHomo Faber Man the Maker. But though faber may not be quite so dubious as sapiens it is, as a name specific of the human being, even less appropriate, seeing that many animals too are makers. There is a third function, howver, applicable to both human and animal life, and just as important as reasoning and making--namely, playing. it seems to me that next to Homo Faber, and perhaps on the same level as Homo Sapiens, Homo Ludens, Man the Player, deserves a place in our nomenclature. "--from the Foreward, by Johan Huizinga
"A happier age than ours once made bold to call our species by the name of Homo Sapiens. In the course of time we have come to realize that we are not so reasonable after all as the Eighteenth Century with its worship of reason and naive optimism, though us; "hence moder fashion inclines to designate our species asHomo Faber Man the Maker. But though faber may not be quite so dubious as sapiens it is, as a name specific of the human being, even less appropriate, seeing that many animals too are makers. There is a third function, howver, applicable to both human and animal life, and just as important as reasoning and making--namely, playing. it seems to me that next to Homo Faber, and perhaps on the same level as Homo Sapiens, Homo Ludens, Man the Player, deserves a place in our nomenclature. "--from the Foreward, by Johan Huizinga
220 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1938
About the author
Johan Huizinga
71 books143 followersJohan Huizinga was a Dutch historian and one of the founders of modern cultural history.
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January 30, 2020
I know, you think this is going to be one of those books where an academic has a stupid idea, but runs with it anyway and then spends half of the book saying, ‘no, no listen, hear me out on this…’ in ever more desperate tones. But this is so much better than that.
This book starts off reminding us that while we like to think of ourselves as homo sapiens (wise man) our ‘wisdom’ has proven increasingly hard to mention without including an ironic wink or an embarrassed cough, at least. We also have occasionally referred to ourselves as homo faber (man the maker) – but again, while this is accurate enough in itself, it isn’t clear that it covers all aspects of what it means to be human. And we need to mention that other animals also make things. The author argues that play isn’t something that solely belongs to humans either (he lists lots of animals that engage in play), but it is something that explains aspects of what it means to be human that can’t really be explained by referring to us as wise or as making stuff. We are something of all three. It isn’t that he wants to replace homo sapiens and homo faber so much – just that he wants to add homo ludens (man the game-player) also into the mix.
I’ve only learnt of this book recently, I’ve been reading about gamification of work and every books I’ve read on the topic refers back to this book as seminal. What I found so interesting here is the scope of ‘play’ that he includes – I had never really thought about it before, but play does seem to structure an awful lot of activities that we humans perform, although for a lot of those activities we would certainly not normally think of them as play. The most controversial that he discusses here is probably religion. I do understand that the religious are hardly likely to be delighted with the idea that he views religion is a form of play – given the standard binary opposition we create between play and seriousness – but I don’t think the author is trying to be disrespectful, in fact, I think he sees play as one of the highest aspects of being human – so his linking it to religion is meant to enhance the worth of both. For him, play and religion both need us to step outside the normal rules of our existence, to enter a magical space, engage in an activity that is primarily defined within its own terms and as something that is other-worldly, something that is totally engrossing, and so on. The connections between play and ritual, play and religion highlighted here seem interesting to me, and well worth thinking through, even if you do ultimately reject them.
The idea that animals also play implies that play is more fundamental to us than culture, if only because it clearly originated earlier than culture. The author sees culture as coming out of forms of play – and he does some lovely work here around poetry, metaphor, painting, dancing, drama in highlighting their play aspects. I’m going to end this review with many, many quotes from the book – you see what I mean from those.
Some of the ideas here are seriously fascinating. For instance, the spatial nature of play – how we enter a ‘magic circle’ and how in that space there are very specific if also very arbitrary rules. But the rules are only arbitrary in the sense that any of them could be different, the truth is that once they are fixed, they become utterly fixed. So that, in chess there is no real reason why a Bishop couldn’t have moved in the way a Knight now moves, but that if you are playing chess and you move your Bishop as if it was a Knight, well… that’s probably as good a way to start a fight as any.
And this is also true of other ‘games’ we might not normally think of as games. At one point he mentions the role of poetry in ceremony – I guess we have all been to funerals where a relative or friend has written a poem to express their grief. But this works (or rather doesn’t work) in reverse. A teacher I once had said that if you want to drive someone you are having an argument with to the point of exploding rage, you should just start rhyming. His point being that in an argument you are meant to be focused totally on the meaning of the words, and not have brain space left over to think about the similarity in sound these words share. By rhyming it is clear that you are not fully focused on the content of the argument – and again, it’s a bit like moving your Bishop as if it was a Knight. By the way, I take no responsibility at all for what happens to you if you are stupid enough to try any of these things.
Also interesting here is the idea that being a spoiled sport is worse than being a cheat. Bourdieu says somewhere that hypocrisy is the compliment bad people pay to the good – in the sense that being a hypocrite implies you know the worth of goodness, even if you can’t quite live by it. Being a cheat means you are so involved in the game that you are prepared to break the rules to win – but compare that to someone bored by a game… there is little worse to the enthusiast. And this is also true in ‘serious’ life too – hence the outrage felt by the religious for atheists. To play implies freedom, in the sense that being forced to play stops it really being ‘play’. As anyone forced to be involved in a work ‘team building’ exercise will tell you, unless you are their manager.
The problem is that seriousness and playfulness don’t make a proper dichotomy, in fact, he argues that playfulness wins here too – since to play properly is to play in all seriousness, whereas play can often undermine the seriousness of a situation.
Pascal is interesting to think about around these ideas too. He often talked about games in – perhaps the most famous being his wager, the idea that if there is a god and you have bet that there isn’t one, hmm, you are pretty well stuffed and stuffed for all of eternity – but if you think there is a god and it works out that there isn’t one, well, what have you lost? He also says that a hunter can spend the whole day out and about only to bring home a mangy rabbit – but that ‘the prize’ really isn’t the point – offering the hunter an already dead deer at the start of the day and saying, ‘now you don’t need to go hunting’, wouldn’t work because the point of the hunt isn’t the prize, it is the process, the game, the play.
He also writes about fashion here and that too is wonderful – I want to include lots of quotes – so I should just shut up and get on with it. I really liked this book. It gives lots to think about. Almost every page is worth stopping over.
Some quotes:
Were I compelled to put my argument tersely in the form of theses, one of them would be that anthropology and its sister sciences have so far laid too little stress on the concept of play and on the supreme importance to civilization of the play-factor. x
Play is older than culture, for culture, however inadequately defined, always presupposes human society 1
This intensity of, and absorption in, play finds no explanation in biological analysis. 2
No other modern language known to me has the exact equivalent of the English "fun" 3
Animals play, so they must be more than merely mechanical things. We play and know that we play, so we must be more than merely rational beings, for play is irrational. 4
Examined more closely, however, the contrast between play and seriousness proves to be neither conclusive nor fixed. 5
It is worth noting that the purely physiological act of laughing is exclusive to man, whilst the significant function of play is common to both men and animals. 6
First and foremost, then, all play is a voluntary activity. 7
the first main characteristic of play: that it is free, is in fact freedom. 8
that play is not "ordinary" or "real" life. 8
Here we come across another, very positive feature of play: it creates order, is order. 10
Paul Valery once in passing gave expression to a very cogent thought when he said: "No scepticism is possible where the rules of a game are concerned, for the principle underlying them is an unshakable truth.. . ." 11
The player who trespasses against the rules or ignores them is a "spoil-sport". 11
It is curious to note how much more lenient society is to the cheat than to the spoil-sport. 11
The participants in the rite are convinced that the action actualizes and effects a definite beatification, brings about an order of things higher than that in which they customarily live. 14
The function of the rite, therefore, is far from being merely imitative; it causes the worshippers to participate in the sacred happening itself. 15
The ritual act has all the formal and essential characteristics of play which we enumerated above, particularly in so far as it transports the participants to another world. 18
We found that one of the most important characteristics of play was its spatial separation from ordinary life. A closed space is marked out for it, either materially or ideally, hedged off from the everyday surroundings. Inside this space the play proceeds, inside it the rules obtain. 19
Sacrament and mystery presuppose a hallowed spot. 20
The play-mood is labile in its very nature. At any moment "ordinary life" may reassert its rights 21
So that the apparently quite simple question of what play really is, leads us deep into the problem of the nature and origin of religious concepts. 25
play is a voluntary activity or occupation executed within certain fixed limits of time and place, according to rules freely accepted but absolutely binding, having its aim in itself and accompanied by a feeling of tension, joy and the consciousness that it is "different" from "ordinary life". 28
The absence of a common Indo-European word for play also points to the late conception of a general play concept. 29
It is quite natural that we should tend to conceive music as lying within the sphere of play, even apart from these special linguistic instances. Making music bears at the outset all the formal characteristics of play proper: the activity begins and ends within strict limits of time and place, is repeatable, consists essentially in order, rhythm, alternation, transports audience and performers alike out of "ordinary" life into a sphere of gladness and serenity, which makes even sad music a lofty pleasure. 42
bearing in mind that the term "playing" is never applied to singing, and to music making only in certain languages, it seems probable that the connecting link between play and instrumental skill is to be sought in the nimble and orderly movements of the fingers. 42
It is not the act as such that the spirit of language tends to conceive as play; rather the road thereto, the preparation for and introduction to "love", which is often made enticing by all sorts of playing. This is particularly true when one of the sexes has to rouse or win the other over to copulating. 43
Language also normally distinguishes between love-play and copulation. 43
Play is a thing by itself. The play-concept as such is of a higher order than is seriousness. For seriousness seeks to exclude play, whereas play can very well include seriousness. 45
The view we take in the following pages is that culture arises in the form of play, that it is played from the very beginning 46
Solitary play is productive of culture only in a limited degree. 47
It is doubly remarkable that birds, phylogenetic ally so far removed from human beings, should have so much in common with them. Woodcocks perform dances, crows hold flying matches, bower-birds and others decorate their nests, song-birds chant their melodies. 47
Closely connected with play is the idea of winning. Winning, however, presupposes a partner or opponent; solitary play knows no winning, and the attainment of the desired objective here cannot be called by that name. 50
Here we have another very important characteristic of play: success won readily passes from the individual to the group. 50
Every game has its stake. 50
We do not play for wages, we work for them. 51
To our way of thinking, cheating as a means of winning a game robs the action of its play-character and spoils it altogether, because for us the essence of play is that the rules be kept-that it be fair play. Archaic culture, however, gives the lie to our moral judgement in this respect, as also does the spirit of popular lore. 52
Luck may have a sacred significance; the fall of the dice may signify and determine the divine workings; by it we may move the gods as efficiently as by any other form of contest. Indeed, we may go one further and say that for the human mind the ideas of happiness, luck and fate seem to lie very close to the realm of the sacred. 56
In the potlatch one proves one's superiority not merely by the lavish prodigality of one's gifts but, what is even more striking, by the wholesale destruction of one's possessions just to show that one can do without them. 58
The word iambos is held by some to have meant originally "derision", with particular reference to the public skits and scurrilous songs which formed part of the feasts of Demeter and Dionysus. 68
Thus, from an immemorial custom of ritual nature, iambic poetry became an instrument of public criticism. 68
That an affinity may exist between law and play becomes obvious to us as soon as we realize how much the actual practice of the law, in other words a lawsuit, properly resembles a contest whatever the ideal foundations of the law may be. 76
The lawsuit can be regarded as a game of chance, a contest, or a verbal battle. 78
It is not so much the abstract question of right and wrong that occupies the archaic mind as the very concrete question of winning or losing. 78
Divine Will, destiny and chance seem more or less distinct to us, at least we try to distinguish between them as concepts. To the archaic mind, however, they are more or less equivalent. "Fate" may be known by eliciting some pronouncement from it. 79
A mark of this heroism is the complete disdain felt by the nobleminded for all material things. A Japanese nobleman shows his education and superior culture by not knowing, or professing not to know, the value of coins. 102
Kenshin, when warring with another Prince by name Shingen who dwelt in the mountains, was informed by a third party that he, though not in open feud with Prince Shingen, had cut the latter's supply of salt. Whereupon Prince Kenshin commanded his subjects to send salt to the enemy, expressing his contempt of such economic warfare by saying: "I fight not with salt but with the sword!" 102
This book starts off reminding us that while we like to think of ourselves as homo sapiens (wise man) our ‘wisdom’ has proven increasingly hard to mention without including an ironic wink or an embarrassed cough, at least. We also have occasionally referred to ourselves as homo faber (man the maker) – but again, while this is accurate enough in itself, it isn’t clear that it covers all aspects of what it means to be human. And we need to mention that other animals also make things. The author argues that play isn’t something that solely belongs to humans either (he lists lots of animals that engage in play), but it is something that explains aspects of what it means to be human that can’t really be explained by referring to us as wise or as making stuff. We are something of all three. It isn’t that he wants to replace homo sapiens and homo faber so much – just that he wants to add homo ludens (man the game-player) also into the mix.
I’ve only learnt of this book recently, I’ve been reading about gamification of work and every books I’ve read on the topic refers back to this book as seminal. What I found so interesting here is the scope of ‘play’ that he includes – I had never really thought about it before, but play does seem to structure an awful lot of activities that we humans perform, although for a lot of those activities we would certainly not normally think of them as play. The most controversial that he discusses here is probably religion. I do understand that the religious are hardly likely to be delighted with the idea that he views religion is a form of play – given the standard binary opposition we create between play and seriousness – but I don’t think the author is trying to be disrespectful, in fact, I think he sees play as one of the highest aspects of being human – so his linking it to religion is meant to enhance the worth of both. For him, play and religion both need us to step outside the normal rules of our existence, to enter a magical space, engage in an activity that is primarily defined within its own terms and as something that is other-worldly, something that is totally engrossing, and so on. The connections between play and ritual, play and religion highlighted here seem interesting to me, and well worth thinking through, even if you do ultimately reject them.
The idea that animals also play implies that play is more fundamental to us than culture, if only because it clearly originated earlier than culture. The author sees culture as coming out of forms of play – and he does some lovely work here around poetry, metaphor, painting, dancing, drama in highlighting their play aspects. I’m going to end this review with many, many quotes from the book – you see what I mean from those.
Some of the ideas here are seriously fascinating. For instance, the spatial nature of play – how we enter a ‘magic circle’ and how in that space there are very specific if also very arbitrary rules. But the rules are only arbitrary in the sense that any of them could be different, the truth is that once they are fixed, they become utterly fixed. So that, in chess there is no real reason why a Bishop couldn’t have moved in the way a Knight now moves, but that if you are playing chess and you move your Bishop as if it was a Knight, well… that’s probably as good a way to start a fight as any.
And this is also true of other ‘games’ we might not normally think of as games. At one point he mentions the role of poetry in ceremony – I guess we have all been to funerals where a relative or friend has written a poem to express their grief. But this works (or rather doesn’t work) in reverse. A teacher I once had said that if you want to drive someone you are having an argument with to the point of exploding rage, you should just start rhyming. His point being that in an argument you are meant to be focused totally on the meaning of the words, and not have brain space left over to think about the similarity in sound these words share. By rhyming it is clear that you are not fully focused on the content of the argument – and again, it’s a bit like moving your Bishop as if it was a Knight. By the way, I take no responsibility at all for what happens to you if you are stupid enough to try any of these things.
Also interesting here is the idea that being a spoiled sport is worse than being a cheat. Bourdieu says somewhere that hypocrisy is the compliment bad people pay to the good – in the sense that being a hypocrite implies you know the worth of goodness, even if you can’t quite live by it. Being a cheat means you are so involved in the game that you are prepared to break the rules to win – but compare that to someone bored by a game… there is little worse to the enthusiast. And this is also true in ‘serious’ life too – hence the outrage felt by the religious for atheists. To play implies freedom, in the sense that being forced to play stops it really being ‘play’. As anyone forced to be involved in a work ‘team building’ exercise will tell you, unless you are their manager.
The problem is that seriousness and playfulness don’t make a proper dichotomy, in fact, he argues that playfulness wins here too – since to play properly is to play in all seriousness, whereas play can often undermine the seriousness of a situation.
Pascal is interesting to think about around these ideas too. He often talked about games in – perhaps the most famous being his wager, the idea that if there is a god and you have bet that there isn’t one, hmm, you are pretty well stuffed and stuffed for all of eternity – but if you think there is a god and it works out that there isn’t one, well, what have you lost? He also says that a hunter can spend the whole day out and about only to bring home a mangy rabbit – but that ‘the prize’ really isn’t the point – offering the hunter an already dead deer at the start of the day and saying, ‘now you don’t need to go hunting’, wouldn’t work because the point of the hunt isn’t the prize, it is the process, the game, the play.
He also writes about fashion here and that too is wonderful – I want to include lots of quotes – so I should just shut up and get on with it. I really liked this book. It gives lots to think about. Almost every page is worth stopping over.
Some quotes:
Were I compelled to put my argument tersely in the form of theses, one of them would be that anthropology and its sister sciences have so far laid too little stress on the concept of play and on the supreme importance to civilization of the play-factor. x
Play is older than culture, for culture, however inadequately defined, always presupposes human society 1
This intensity of, and absorption in, play finds no explanation in biological analysis. 2
No other modern language known to me has the exact equivalent of the English "fun" 3
Animals play, so they must be more than merely mechanical things. We play and know that we play, so we must be more than merely rational beings, for play is irrational. 4
Examined more closely, however, the contrast between play and seriousness proves to be neither conclusive nor fixed. 5
It is worth noting that the purely physiological act of laughing is exclusive to man, whilst the significant function of play is common to both men and animals. 6
First and foremost, then, all play is a voluntary activity. 7
the first main characteristic of play: that it is free, is in fact freedom. 8
that play is not "ordinary" or "real" life. 8
Here we come across another, very positive feature of play: it creates order, is order. 10
Paul Valery once in passing gave expression to a very cogent thought when he said: "No scepticism is possible where the rules of a game are concerned, for the principle underlying them is an unshakable truth.. . ." 11
The player who trespasses against the rules or ignores them is a "spoil-sport". 11
It is curious to note how much more lenient society is to the cheat than to the spoil-sport. 11
The participants in the rite are convinced that the action actualizes and effects a definite beatification, brings about an order of things higher than that in which they customarily live. 14
The function of the rite, therefore, is far from being merely imitative; it causes the worshippers to participate in the sacred happening itself. 15
The ritual act has all the formal and essential characteristics of play which we enumerated above, particularly in so far as it transports the participants to another world. 18
We found that one of the most important characteristics of play was its spatial separation from ordinary life. A closed space is marked out for it, either materially or ideally, hedged off from the everyday surroundings. Inside this space the play proceeds, inside it the rules obtain. 19
Sacrament and mystery presuppose a hallowed spot. 20
The play-mood is labile in its very nature. At any moment "ordinary life" may reassert its rights 21
So that the apparently quite simple question of what play really is, leads us deep into the problem of the nature and origin of religious concepts. 25
play is a voluntary activity or occupation executed within certain fixed limits of time and place, according to rules freely accepted but absolutely binding, having its aim in itself and accompanied by a feeling of tension, joy and the consciousness that it is "different" from "ordinary life". 28
The absence of a common Indo-European word for play also points to the late conception of a general play concept. 29
It is quite natural that we should tend to conceive music as lying within the sphere of play, even apart from these special linguistic instances. Making music bears at the outset all the formal characteristics of play proper: the activity begins and ends within strict limits of time and place, is repeatable, consists essentially in order, rhythm, alternation, transports audience and performers alike out of "ordinary" life into a sphere of gladness and serenity, which makes even sad music a lofty pleasure. 42
bearing in mind that the term "playing" is never applied to singing, and to music making only in certain languages, it seems probable that the connecting link between play and instrumental skill is to be sought in the nimble and orderly movements of the fingers. 42
It is not the act as such that the spirit of language tends to conceive as play; rather the road thereto, the preparation for and introduction to "love", which is often made enticing by all sorts of playing. This is particularly true when one of the sexes has to rouse or win the other over to copulating. 43
Language also normally distinguishes between love-play and copulation. 43
Play is a thing by itself. The play-concept as such is of a higher order than is seriousness. For seriousness seeks to exclude play, whereas play can very well include seriousness. 45
The view we take in the following pages is that culture arises in the form of play, that it is played from the very beginning 46
Solitary play is productive of culture only in a limited degree. 47
It is doubly remarkable that birds, phylogenetic ally so far removed from human beings, should have so much in common with them. Woodcocks perform dances, crows hold flying matches, bower-birds and others decorate their nests, song-birds chant their melodies. 47
Closely connected with play is the idea of winning. Winning, however, presupposes a partner or opponent; solitary play knows no winning, and the attainment of the desired objective here cannot be called by that name. 50
Here we have another very important characteristic of play: success won readily passes from the individual to the group. 50
Every game has its stake. 50
We do not play for wages, we work for them. 51
To our way of thinking, cheating as a means of winning a game robs the action of its play-character and spoils it altogether, because for us the essence of play is that the rules be kept-that it be fair play. Archaic culture, however, gives the lie to our moral judgement in this respect, as also does the spirit of popular lore. 52
Luck may have a sacred significance; the fall of the dice may signify and determine the divine workings; by it we may move the gods as efficiently as by any other form of contest. Indeed, we may go one further and say that for the human mind the ideas of happiness, luck and fate seem to lie very close to the realm of the sacred. 56
In the potlatch one proves one's superiority not merely by the lavish prodigality of one's gifts but, what is even more striking, by the wholesale destruction of one's possessions just to show that one can do without them. 58
The word iambos is held by some to have meant originally "derision", with particular reference to the public skits and scurrilous songs which formed part of the feasts of Demeter and Dionysus. 68
Thus, from an immemorial custom of ritual nature, iambic poetry became an instrument of public criticism. 68
That an affinity may exist between law and play becomes obvious to us as soon as we realize how much the actual practice of the law, in other words a lawsuit, properly resembles a contest whatever the ideal foundations of the law may be. 76
The lawsuit can be regarded as a game of chance, a contest, or a verbal battle. 78
It is not so much the abstract question of right and wrong that occupies the archaic mind as the very concrete question of winning or losing. 78
Divine Will, destiny and chance seem more or less distinct to us, at least we try to distinguish between them as concepts. To the archaic mind, however, they are more or less equivalent. "Fate" may be known by eliciting some pronouncement from it. 79
A mark of this heroism is the complete disdain felt by the nobleminded for all material things. A Japanese nobleman shows his education and superior culture by not knowing, or professing not to know, the value of coins. 102
Kenshin, when warring with another Prince by name Shingen who dwelt in the mountains, was informed by a third party that he, though not in open feud with Prince Shingen, had cut the latter's supply of salt. Whereupon Prince Kenshin commanded his subjects to send salt to the enemy, expressing his contempt of such economic warfare by saying: "I fight not with salt but with the sword!" 102
February 13, 2014
initially:
it took me a long time, but it's not an easy study and most of the references it made seemed to bounce off my head like some blank wall... i so need to study more of everything...
review:
first and foremost, this can't be a review with a plot resume or a linear story line. it's an essay, a study, a scientific paper (a long one, for sure) and it brings along a baggage of information that you can hardly incorporate.
i have only been seriously reading scientific, non-fiction works for about a year, and i only lately decided to step up the game and try approaching the more complex books of the genre. my reason? my culture level didn't permit me to understand such works until then. i had information, but it was scattered and frankly, useless, because it wasn't ordered or in a specific scheme. it just sat there in my brain and floated along, pieces and pieces of everything that i ever learned or randomly memorized.
so, when i started reading this one right here, i immediately felt at a loss. it truly was a book i took my time on, 10 pages at a time, just trying to assimilate the ideas and order them around, make them fit somehow.
i'm pretty sure some of it didn't make it and i lost ir, but that's no big deal, there's always time for another read. and i fully intend to read it again, because there's so many more things to try and understand.
this work is basically an introduction into how play is an undeniable part of human behaviour/mind/culture and how everything we do has a connection, on some basic level, with a ludic reality.
i found most of the information plausible and took pains to research some more while reading, just to check and re check all of it.
long story short, it's been a journey, but i made it and i hope i'll make it again.
it took me a long time, but it's not an easy study and most of the references it made seemed to bounce off my head like some blank wall... i so need to study more of everything...
review:
first and foremost, this can't be a review with a plot resume or a linear story line. it's an essay, a study, a scientific paper (a long one, for sure) and it brings along a baggage of information that you can hardly incorporate.
i have only been seriously reading scientific, non-fiction works for about a year, and i only lately decided to step up the game and try approaching the more complex books of the genre. my reason? my culture level didn't permit me to understand such works until then. i had information, but it was scattered and frankly, useless, because it wasn't ordered or in a specific scheme. it just sat there in my brain and floated along, pieces and pieces of everything that i ever learned or randomly memorized.
so, when i started reading this one right here, i immediately felt at a loss. it truly was a book i took my time on, 10 pages at a time, just trying to assimilate the ideas and order them around, make them fit somehow.
i'm pretty sure some of it didn't make it and i lost ir, but that's no big deal, there's always time for another read. and i fully intend to read it again, because there's so many more things to try and understand.
this work is basically an introduction into how play is an undeniable part of human behaviour/mind/culture and how everything we do has a connection, on some basic level, with a ludic reality.
i found most of the information plausible and took pains to research some more while reading, just to check and re check all of it.
long story short, it's been a journey, but i made it and i hope i'll make it again.
September 15, 2021
Za Hojzingu, igra je starija od kulture. (9)
Čovek jeste homo ludens ne zato što jedini može da (se) igra (dovoljno je setiti se mačića ili druge mladunčadi i teorija o čoveku kao jedinom biću igre zauvek propada), nego zato što je igra u temeljima kulture kao druge čovekove prirode.
„Kultura se ne začinje kao igra, niti iz igre, već prije svega u igri.” (104)
Hojzinga nadahnuto pokazuje ne samo kako je umetnost neraskidivo povezana sa igrom (što je i intuitivno dostupno), nego, na primer i sud ili borba (nadmetanje) u najširem mogućem značenju te reči.
Igra nadilazi čisto biološke i fizičke granice čovekovog delovanja – ona je regulatorna (ograničena prostorom i vremenom i pravi unutar sebe poredak) i smislodavna i poseduje uvek i jedan element nestvarnoga. Postojanje igre uvek iznova potvrđuje nadrazumski značaj našeg položaja u svemiru – jer mi se igramo i znamo da se igramo i da nismo samo razumska bića jer koren igre nije u razumu! (13)
Igra može biti i jedna od mogućih konotacija pojma forme u estetici, ali i stvarnosna granica. Igra je često ne-zbilja, ali to ne znači da je neozbiljna! (15)
„Da bismo razumjeli pjesništvo, moramo biti kadri obući dušu djeteta kao čarobnu košulju i mudrost djeteta pretpostaviti mudrosti čovjekovoj.” (161)
Hojzinga jednako uverljivo piše o etimologiji Indijanaca, staroislandskoj pesmi izmirenja, potlaču*, antičkoj teoriji zagonetke, sociologiji sporta, sofistima, muzici i plesu u kontekstu igara i čemu sve još ne.
*specifičan oblik razmene dobara starosedelaca Britanske Kolumbije, gde se, najprostije rečeno, u posebnim okolnostima nadmetalo u davanju poklona do te mere da su pokloni uništavani.
A ja bih dodao da je i igra poziv na igru. San igre je da se produžava i da se ponavlja. Ako je ponavljanje, što kaže Delez, čudo, onda je igra čudo čuda.
Bacam kockice.
P. S. Koga zanima ova tema neka obavezno pogleda Kajoinu studiju „Igre i ljudi”, koja je od Hojzingine daleko usredsređenija i osvetljava fenomen igre i kroz stranu strukture.
Čovek jeste homo ludens ne zato što jedini može da (se) igra (dovoljno je setiti se mačića ili druge mladunčadi i teorija o čoveku kao jedinom biću igre zauvek propada), nego zato što je igra u temeljima kulture kao druge čovekove prirode.
„Kultura se ne začinje kao igra, niti iz igre, već prije svega u igri.” (104)
Hojzinga nadahnuto pokazuje ne samo kako je umetnost neraskidivo povezana sa igrom (što je i intuitivno dostupno), nego, na primer i sud ili borba (nadmetanje) u najširem mogućem značenju te reči.
Igra nadilazi čisto biološke i fizičke granice čovekovog delovanja – ona je regulatorna (ograničena prostorom i vremenom i pravi unutar sebe poredak) i smislodavna i poseduje uvek i jedan element nestvarnoga. Postojanje igre uvek iznova potvrđuje nadrazumski značaj našeg položaja u svemiru – jer mi se igramo i znamo da se igramo i da nismo samo razumska bića jer koren igre nije u razumu! (13)
Igra može biti i jedna od mogućih konotacija pojma forme u estetici, ali i stvarnosna granica. Igra je često ne-zbilja, ali to ne znači da je neozbiljna! (15)
„Da bismo razumjeli pjesništvo, moramo biti kadri obući dušu djeteta kao čarobnu košulju i mudrost djeteta pretpostaviti mudrosti čovjekovoj.” (161)
Hojzinga jednako uverljivo piše o etimologiji Indijanaca, staroislandskoj pesmi izmirenja, potlaču*, antičkoj teoriji zagonetke, sociologiji sporta, sofistima, muzici i plesu u kontekstu igara i čemu sve još ne.
*specifičan oblik razmene dobara starosedelaca Britanske Kolumbije, gde se, najprostije rečeno, u posebnim okolnostima nadmetalo u davanju poklona do te mere da su pokloni uništavani.
A ja bih dodao da je i igra poziv na igru. San igre je da se produžava i da se ponavlja. Ako je ponavljanje, što kaže Delez, čudo, onda je igra čudo čuda.
Bacam kockice.
P. S. Koga zanima ova tema neka obavezno pogleda Kajoinu studiju „Igre i ljudi”, koja je od Hojzingine daleko usredsređenija i osvetljava fenomen igre i kroz stranu strukture.
October 29, 2016
What is play? Well, now you know - it's a lot of things.
It's a really exciting text, partly because play is fun to think about, and partly because the writer's passion for the topic grabs hold off your imagination. It's not just play, it's play-culture, it's the play-factor. I've written a few blog posts about it because I feel like the ideas deserve it. Very forward thinking for a turn of the 20th century writer.
It's a really exciting text, partly because play is fun to think about, and partly because the writer's passion for the topic grabs hold off your imagination. It's not just play, it's play-culture, it's the play-factor. I've written a few blog posts about it because I feel like the ideas deserve it. Very forward thinking for a turn of the 20th century writer.
Read
January 13, 2019Konačno sam je pročitao, posle dvomesečne borbe :). Zanimljiva, antropološka i istorijska studija o igri kroz vekove i civilizacije. Autor pokazuje poreklo čitave kulture, svih oblasti i vidova čovekovog života kroz ovaj fenomen. Napuštanje igračkog, smatra regresivnim kod ljudskih bića.
Huizinga navodi mnoge običaje sa različitih kontinenata, koji imaju nit igre u sebi, i koji sem različitih naziva suštinski nemaju velikih razlika. Čitajući ovo delo setio sam se etno pesme 'Ajde Jano', koja opisuje igračko svojstvo ne samo Balkanaca (svaka balkanska država ima svoju varijantu ove pesme) već ljudi generalno.
Kroz knjigu saznajemo da je suprotnost igri, zbilja, i da je ona sama sebi cilj, jer čim dobije element ozbiljnosti nestaje. Čovek je homo ludens, od antičkog agona do modernog života, ona prožima naš svet čineći nas živim.
Huizinga navodi mnoge običaje sa različitih kontinenata, koji imaju nit igre u sebi, i koji sem različitih naziva suštinski nemaju velikih razlika. Čitajući ovo delo setio sam se etno pesme 'Ajde Jano', koja opisuje igračko svojstvo ne samo Balkanaca (svaka balkanska država ima svoju varijantu ove pesme) već ljudi generalno.
Kroz knjigu saznajemo da je suprotnost igri, zbilja, i da je ona sama sebi cilj, jer čim dobije element ozbiljnosti nestaje. Čovek je homo ludens, od antičkog agona do modernog života, ona prožima naš svet čineći nas živim.
April 21, 2020
Am citit Homo ludens în studenție, pe sărite, într-o singură noapte înainte de examenul de Teoria literaturii cred, și dacă m-ar fi pus cineva să vorbesc despre carte mai apoi n-aș fi fost sigură că-mi amintesc mare lucru. Acum însă, după ce am recitit-o, mi-am dat seama că mi-au rămas în memorie mult mai multe părți din ea decît credeam, și că multe dintre aspectele ludice ale culturii care acum mi s-au părut mereu atît de familiare încît deveniseră locuri comune în conversație sînt de fapt ideile lui Huizinga. În consecință, n-am să fac o recenzie, am să pun doar cîteva citate:
Gradul de seriozitate cu care este înscrisă povestirea în textul sacru apare ca fiind la fel de greu de determinat, și în fond la fel de neglijabil, ca și întrebarea dacă într-adevăr și-a pierdut vreodată cineva viața din cauză că nu a putut dezlega o ghicitoare. Principalul este motivul ludic ca atare.
*
Poesis doctrinae tanqua somnium, poezia este ca un vis al științei, sună o vorbă profundă a lui Francis Bacon.
*
Mitul izvorăște o dată cu poezia în sfera jocului, iar religia sălbaticului se află, ca și întreaga lui viață, mai mult de jumătate în acea sferă.
*
Poet este cel care poate vorbi limba artistică. Limba poetică se deosebește de cea obișnuită prin aceea că se exprimă intenționat în imagini speciale, pe care nu le înțelege oricine.
*
Chiar și fără o raportare la reprezentări religioase definite, în savurarea muzicii perceperea frumuseții se contopește cu sacrul, iar în această contopire opoziția joc-seriozitate se spulberă.
*
Pentru a-i gusta și admira din inimă pe Rubens, pe Vondel, pe Bernini, trebuie să începem prin a nu privi forma lor de manifestare ca absolut „serioasă".
May 17, 2019
I need to caveat this review by saying I enjoyed the reading experience much more than I did the book's content/thesis, and so the 3* is probably the average of the two.
By reading experience, I mean that it was brilliant to dive again into a book that presents a philosophical and anthropological argument, and to engage with it intellectually; I enjoyed reading, challenging, questioning, noting, and contemplating. It's the first book in a while I've made notes on, and where I sat after each chapter thinking about what I've just read.
With this in mind, it has to be said that you do have to get your (reading) eye in for this and these kind of books. Not only is it dated by about a century now, but it's a translation as well. The upshot is that you either have to take it 10 pages at a time, or just work at it until the tone and style clicks. It's not easy to read, but then often reading doesn't have to be easy to be good.
As to the content:
The best part of the book comes in where Huizinga highlights the vast range of activities and aspects of human culture that involve, essentially, creating imaginary worlds, making abstract rule systems, and present conflicts (which the author calls 'agonistic' which is oddly pretentious, needlessly using as it does an ancient Greek work when a raft of more suitable modern words would be fine). The book can then be summarized as the idea that the human capacity for 'playing' is natural, instinctive, and it is the very reason we have culture and why this culture continues. We are more likely to play (ludens) than be rational (sapiens). Interesting, and I can vaguely get on board with the idea.
I'll give one example Huizinga mentions: the law court is a 'playground' of wigs, of juries, of judges, of benches, of gabels, of speaking orders etc... but everyone plays their roles and everyone obeys the rules. He argues then that wars, too, have a certain 'rule of war' to them and that poerty, literature, philosophy, sports etc... all, when looked at a certain way, have all these functions. In this last bit, I have a problem.
My issue is in how broadly Huizinga defines 'play'. He does give 5 separate criteria fairly early on but, in summary, it amounts to "creating and following rules, that involves competition, and which isn't for any material gain". It can be fun and frothy (ludic) or it can be dead serious.
The rest of the book is spent then picking and choosing all the bits of human life that conveniently fit this...his... definition. I can just about get on board when he talks about the law courts being a type of 'play' or 'performance', but he seriously loses me when he talks about art, philosophy, charity and virtue, literature, culture, poetry, and (the worst for me) war.
It is obvious that Huizinga is cherry-picking examples to fit his theory, rather than, as any good academic, making his theory fit the examples.
Take his chapter on War. He lists all those incredibly honorable and chivalrous moments in history (he does acknowledge but then just ignores how these are likely fabricated or inflated) when people obey the 'rules of war' to make it seem it's a form of play. The obvious counter example is begged: what of the plethora times when war has been brutally, barbarically, and ruthlessly fought? What of those thousands of occasions when the rules of war have been laughed at and stamped on? Huizinga nods to these times but says "these are not humane and therefore not really human".
Like any good quack and pseudo-scientist he has explained away the fact to fit his theory.
So, then, we have arrived at an utterly unfalisfiable thesis. Huizinga picks examples (he's far too heavily fixated on Ancient Greece, in my opinion) that fit his theory. Musicians sometimes had performance duels, therefore it's a play! Art sometimes depicts conflict...it's play! etc..
Furthermore, he conspicuously ignores any counter examples (what, for example, of the majority of artists who do their work only for the sheer private enjoyment?) or those he does raise he can then explain away as "not being true culture" or as "a regression" as he does, pretty much, with the entire 19th century! There is nothing that can be presented as counter-evidence if he has to only explain it as being 'not worthy of humans and human culture'.
I ought not to be too cruel, because I think there is a lot of good to be said about the book. I enjoyed and learned a lot, and the basic point that human nature and human society functions on rule-following, I believe to be true. However, this point I also believe to be both better argued by Kripke and Wittgenstein but is also as old (at least) as Shakespeare's line: "all the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players".
A much more succinct, and iambic, summation of 200 pages.
By reading experience, I mean that it was brilliant to dive again into a book that presents a philosophical and anthropological argument, and to engage with it intellectually; I enjoyed reading, challenging, questioning, noting, and contemplating. It's the first book in a while I've made notes on, and where I sat after each chapter thinking about what I've just read.
With this in mind, it has to be said that you do have to get your (reading) eye in for this and these kind of books. Not only is it dated by about a century now, but it's a translation as well. The upshot is that you either have to take it 10 pages at a time, or just work at it until the tone and style clicks. It's not easy to read, but then often reading doesn't have to be easy to be good.
As to the content:
The best part of the book comes in where Huizinga highlights the vast range of activities and aspects of human culture that involve, essentially, creating imaginary worlds, making abstract rule systems, and present conflicts (which the author calls 'agonistic' which is oddly pretentious, needlessly using as it does an ancient Greek work when a raft of more suitable modern words would be fine). The book can then be summarized as the idea that the human capacity for 'playing' is natural, instinctive, and it is the very reason we have culture and why this culture continues. We are more likely to play (ludens) than be rational (sapiens). Interesting, and I can vaguely get on board with the idea.
I'll give one example Huizinga mentions: the law court is a 'playground' of wigs, of juries, of judges, of benches, of gabels, of speaking orders etc... but everyone plays their roles and everyone obeys the rules. He argues then that wars, too, have a certain 'rule of war' to them and that poerty, literature, philosophy, sports etc... all, when looked at a certain way, have all these functions. In this last bit, I have a problem.
My issue is in how broadly Huizinga defines 'play'. He does give 5 separate criteria fairly early on but, in summary, it amounts to "creating and following rules, that involves competition, and which isn't for any material gain". It can be fun and frothy (ludic) or it can be dead serious.
The rest of the book is spent then picking and choosing all the bits of human life that conveniently fit this...his... definition. I can just about get on board when he talks about the law courts being a type of 'play' or 'performance', but he seriously loses me when he talks about art, philosophy, charity and virtue, literature, culture, poetry, and (the worst for me) war.
It is obvious that Huizinga is cherry-picking examples to fit his theory, rather than, as any good academic, making his theory fit the examples.
Take his chapter on War. He lists all those incredibly honorable and chivalrous moments in history (he does acknowledge but then just ignores how these are likely fabricated or inflated) when people obey the 'rules of war' to make it seem it's a form of play. The obvious counter example is begged: what of the plethora times when war has been brutally, barbarically, and ruthlessly fought? What of those thousands of occasions when the rules of war have been laughed at and stamped on? Huizinga nods to these times but says "these are not humane and therefore not really human".
Like any good quack and pseudo-scientist he has explained away the fact to fit his theory.
So, then, we have arrived at an utterly unfalisfiable thesis. Huizinga picks examples (he's far too heavily fixated on Ancient Greece, in my opinion) that fit his theory. Musicians sometimes had performance duels, therefore it's a play! Art sometimes depicts conflict...it's play! etc..
Furthermore, he conspicuously ignores any counter examples (what, for example, of the majority of artists who do their work only for the sheer private enjoyment?) or those he does raise he can then explain away as "not being true culture" or as "a regression" as he does, pretty much, with the entire 19th century! There is nothing that can be presented as counter-evidence if he has to only explain it as being 'not worthy of humans and human culture'.
I ought not to be too cruel, because I think there is a lot of good to be said about the book. I enjoyed and learned a lot, and the basic point that human nature and human society functions on rule-following, I believe to be true. However, this point I also believe to be both better argued by Kripke and Wittgenstein but is also as old (at least) as Shakespeare's line: "all the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players".
A much more succinct, and iambic, summation of 200 pages.
June 14, 2021
Дуже цікава книга. Ідея автора у тому, що гра, як вид діяльності доступний і тварині, і людині, передує культурі. Людська культура розвинулася з гри та грі. Найбільше гри було у архаїчних культурах, але і далі ігровий елемент був присутній. Загалом, здається, на думку автора, культура розвивається поки у ній присутній ігровий елемент.
Автор дає визначення грі (добровільна діяльність, морально нейтральна, сама собі ціль, відбувається за правилами, визнаними усіма учасниками, у певному відокремленому просторі та часі, має дарувати учасникам втіху та радість). До гри зараховуються також і змагання. І тут виходить, що майже уся діяльність, що провадиться за визнаними усіма правилами, у певному місці і в певний час має ігрові корені. Також автор розглядає семантику поняття "гри" та близьких до нього у різних мовах.
І виходить, що такі сфери як право і судочинство, війна (у сенсі лицарських феодальний воєн середньовіччя), міжнародна політика, поезія, філософія, мистецтво - усе це пішло з гри.
У кінці, щоправда, автор розглядає сучасну йому культуру, і тут продивляється характерний для міжвоєнного періоду песимізм (як у Гессе) - культура занепадає, вироджується, стагнує, у ній відсутній ігровий ел��мент, гра лише симулюється, без культуротворчого духу гри, якою б вона була раніше.
Автор дає визначення грі (добровільна діяльність, морально нейтральна, сама собі ціль, відбувається за правилами, визнаними усіма учасниками, у певному відокремленому просторі та часі, має дарувати учасникам втіху та радість). До гри зараховуються також і змагання. І тут виходить, що майже уся діяльність, що провадиться за визнаними усіма правилами, у певному місці і в певний час має ігрові корені. Також автор розглядає семантику поняття "гри" та близьких до нього у різних мовах.
І виходить, що такі сфери як право і судочинство, війна (у сенсі лицарських феодальний воєн середньовіччя), міжнародна політика, поезія, філософія, мистецтво - усе це пішло з гри.
У кінці, щоправда, автор розглядає сучасну йому культуру, і тут продивляється характерний для міжвоєнного періоду песимізм (як у Гессе) - культура занепадає, вироджується, стагнує, у ній відсутній ігровий ел��мент, гра лише симулюється, без культуротворчого духу гри, якою б вона була раніше.
August 9, 2023
Huizinga relies on a stipulative definition of play. Still, his descriptions of its role in culture are interesting. And I like the idea that culture owes as much to it as to logos.
October 4, 2020
Şüphesiz değerli bir kitap ve önem arz eden bir konuyu ele alıyor. Kitap akademik çalışma havasında hazırlanmış ve dili çok akıcı değil, bu durum okuyucuyu zorlayabiliyor. Yer yer çok fazla ayrıntıya girilmesi yine aynı şekilde yorucu olabiliyor. Yazar okuyucunun birçok şeyi bildiğini varsayarak hazırlamış kitabı, Yunan mitolojisi, Latince terimler, Hint mitolojisi vs. Ağır bir kitap, günümüz popüler bilim kitaplarına bakarak bu kitabı okumaya başlamak yanıltıcı olabilir..
Yazarın oluşturduğu teoriyi kabul edersek kuralı veya belli bir düzeni olan hemen hemen her şey “oyun” ile bağlantılı ya da kitapta geçtiği şekliyle söylemek gerekirse “oyunsal”.
Ben bu teoriye çok fazla katılamıyorum, bir şeyin oyun olması için zorunluluk olmaması gerekiyor bence. Sözgelimi üniforma giymek ve savaşı ele alalım. Üniforma giymek ortaya çıkışı bakımından yazarın tabir ettiği şekilde olabilir ancak günümüzde kimse oyunsal olarak üniforma giymiyor. Kimin üniforma giymeme şansı var ki? Lisede mesela gömlek, ceket, kravat olmadan okula girmek mümkün değildi. Aynı şeyi hukukçuların cübbeleri ve askerlerin kıyafetleri için de söyleyebiliriz. Eğer seçme şansı yoksa oyundan bahsedemeyiz bence. Savaş konusuna bakacak olursak ise evet savaş “strateji” kullanıldığından komutanlar için oyunsal denilebilir buna katılıyorum ancak orduların ezici çoğunluğunu oluşturan erler için bir oyunsallıktan söz etmek mümkün değildir. Erler savaş içerisinde kendi iradeleriyle değil emirlere göre hareket etmektedir ve savaş anında emre itaatsizliğin ölüm cezasına varıncaya kadar çok ağır cezaları var.
Sanatın ise yazarın söylediği gibi oyunsallıktan daha çok kendini ifade etmek ile ilgili olduğunu düşünüyorum.
Yazarın oyunun kültür oluşmasındaki etkisine dair düşüncelerine kısmen katılıyorum ancak yukarıda bahsettiğim gibi birçok düşüncesini de indirgemeci buluyorum. Doğru bir yaklaşım değil bana göre.
Bu kitabın 1938 yılında yazıldığını da belirtmek gerekiyor.
Yazarın oluşturduğu teoriyi kabul edersek kuralı veya belli bir düzeni olan hemen hemen her şey “oyun” ile bağlantılı ya da kitapta geçtiği şekliyle söylemek gerekirse “oyunsal”.
Ben bu teoriye çok fazla katılamıyorum, bir şeyin oyun olması için zorunluluk olmaması gerekiyor bence. Sözgelimi üniforma giymek ve savaşı ele alalım. Üniforma giymek ortaya çıkışı bakımından yazarın tabir ettiği şekilde olabilir ancak günümüzde kimse oyunsal olarak üniforma giymiyor. Kimin üniforma giymeme şansı var ki? Lisede mesela gömlek, ceket, kravat olmadan okula girmek mümkün değildi. Aynı şeyi hukukçuların cübbeleri ve askerlerin kıyafetleri için de söyleyebiliriz. Eğer seçme şansı yoksa oyundan bahsedemeyiz bence. Savaş konusuna bakacak olursak ise evet savaş “strateji” kullanıldığından komutanlar için oyunsal denilebilir buna katılıyorum ancak orduların ezici çoğunluğunu oluşturan erler için bir oyunsallıktan söz etmek mümkün değildir. Erler savaş içerisinde kendi iradeleriyle değil emirlere göre hareket etmektedir ve savaş anında emre itaatsizliğin ölüm cezasına varıncaya kadar çok ağır cezaları var.
Sanatın ise yazarın söylediği gibi oyunsallıktan daha çok kendini ifade etmek ile ilgili olduğunu düşünüyorum.
Yazarın oyunun kültür oluşmasındaki etkisine dair düşüncelerine kısmen katılıyorum ancak yukarıda bahsettiğim gibi birçok düşüncesini de indirgemeci buluyorum. Doğru bir yaklaşım değil bana göre.
Bu kitabın 1938 yılında yazıldığını da belirtmek gerekiyor.
September 9, 2023
You know how there are books where you think, "This was a summary expanded for the sake of me parting ways with $20, $30"? Stop reading those books as soon as you realize it, your time is so precious and finite. Thankfully, refreshingly, this is not that book! Huizinga wrote this book that only he could write and it is splendid. Anthropology, linguistics, psychology, philosophy all in one.
"The reader of these pages should not look for detailed documentation of every word. In treating of the general problems of culture, one is constantly obliged to undertake predatory incursions into provinces not sufficiently explored by the raider himself. To fill in all the gaps in my knowledge beforehand was out of the question for me. I had to write now, or not at all. And I wanted to write."
Also, such direct humility is rare. Perhaps this is just a sensitized subject after I read Interior Castle by Teresa of Avila. I'm not faulting her on disingenuous humility, it's very likely just her style, but it felt so thick as to be self-admonishing. This tongue-in-cheek (dare I say, playful!) humility reads much smoother for me.
--
I. Nature and Significance of Play as a Cultural Phenomenon
"First and foremost, then, all play is a voluntary activity. Play to order is no longer play: it could at best be but a forcible imitation of it. By this quality of freedom alone, play marks itself off from the course of the natural process. It is something added thereto and spread out over it like a flowering, an ornament, a garment."
"Though play as such is outside the range of good and bad, the element of tension imparts to it a certain ethical value in so far as it means a testing of the player's prowess: his courage, tenacity, resources and, last but not least, his spiritual powers—his “fairness”; because, despite his ardent desire to win, he must still stick to the rules of the game."
"The “differentness” and secrecy of play are most vividly expressed in “dressing up”. Here the “extra-ordinary” nature of play reaches perfection. The disguised or masked individual “plays” another part, another being. He is another being. The terrors of childhood, open-hearted gaiety, mystic fantasy and sacred awe are all inextricably entangled in this strange business of masks and disguises.
Summing up the formal characteristics of play we might call it a free activity standing quite consciously outside “ordinary” life as being “not serious”, but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it."
"The rite produces the effect which is then not so much shown figuratively as actually reproduced in the action. The function of the rite, therefore, is far from being merely imitative; it causes the worshippers to participate in the sacred happening itself. As the Greeks would say, “it is methectic rather than mimetic”. It is “a helping-out of the action”."
"Such playing contains at the outset all the elements proper to play: order, tension, movement, change, solemnity, rhythm, rapture."
"Think of the peculiar charm that the mask as an objet d'art has for the modern mind. [...] Modern man is very sensitive to the far-off and the strange. Nothing helps him so much in his understanding of savage society as his feeling for masks and disguise."
--
II. The Play-Concept as Expressed in Language
"When speaking of play as something known to all, and when trying to analyse or define the idea expressed in that word, we must always bear in mind that the idea as we know it is defined and perhaps limited by the word we use for it. [...] Nobody will expect that every language, in forming its idea of and expression for play, could have hit on the same idea or found a single word for it, in the way that every language has one definite word for “hand” or “foot”. The matter is not as simple as that."
"The extraordinary earnestness and profound gravity of the Japanese ideal of life is masked by the fashionable fiction that everything is only play. [...] The convention is that the higher classes are merely playing at all they do. The polite form for "you arrive in Tokio" is, literally, "you play arrival in Tokio”; and for "I hear that your father is dead", "I hear that your father has played dying". In other words, the revered person is imagined as living in an elevated sphere where only pleasure or condescension moves to action."
"It is remarkable that ludus, as the general term for play, has not only not passed into the Romance languages but has left hardly any traces there, so far as I can see. In all of them—and this necessarily means at a quite early period—ludus has been supplanted by a derivative of jocus, which extended its specific sense of joking and jesting to “play” in general. Thus French has jeu, jouer; Italian gioco, giocare; Spanish juego, jugar; Portuguese jogo, jogar; Rumanian Joe, juca; while similar words occur in Catalan, Provençal and Rhaeto-Romanic."
"Who can deny that in all these concepts—challenge, danger, contest, etc.—we are very close to the play-sphere? Play and danger, risk, chance, feat—it is all a single field of action where something is at stake. [...] We have to feel our way into the archaic sphere of thought, where serious combat with weapons and all kinds of contests ranging from the most trifling games to bloody and mortal strife were comprised, together with play proper, in the single fundamental idea of a struggle with fate limited by certain rules. Seen in this way, the application of the word “play” to battle can hardly be called a conscious metaphor. Play is battle and battle is play."
"We can say, perhaps, that in language the play-concept seems to be much more fundamental than its opposite. The need for a comprehensive term expressing “not-play” must have been rather feeble, and the various expressions for “seriousness” are but a secondary attempt on the part of language to invent the conceptual opposite of “play”. They are grouped round the ideas of “zeal”, “exertion”, “painstaking”, despite the fact that in themselves all these qualities may be found associated with play as well. The appearance of a term for “earnest” means that people have become conscious of the play-concept as an independent entity— a process which, as we remarked before, happens rather late. [...] The significance of “earnest” is defined by and exhausted in the negation of “play”—earnest is simply “not playing” and nothing more. The significance of “play”, on the other hand, is by no means defined or exhausted by calling it “not-earnest”, or “not serious”. Play is a thing by itself. The play-concept as such is of a higher order than is seriousness."
--
III. Play and Contest as Civilizing Functions
"In games of pure chance the tension felt by the player is only feebly communicated to the onlooker. In themselves, gambling games are very curious subjects for cultural research, but for the development of culture as such we must call them unproductive. They are sterile, adding nothing to life or the mind. The picture changes as soon as play demands application, knowledge, skill, courage and strength."
"The popular Dutch saying to the effect that “it is not the marbles that matter, but the game”, expresses this clearly enough. Objectively speaking, the result of the game is unimportant and a matter of indifference."
"It is very curious how the words “prize”, “price” and “praise” all derive more or less directly from the Latin pretium but develop in different directions. Pretium arose originally in the sphere of exchange and valuation, and presupposed a counter-value. The mediaeval pretium justum or “just price” corresponded approximately to the idea of the modern “market value”. Now while price remains bound to the sphere of economics, prize moves into that of play and competition, and praise acquires the exclusive signification of the Latin laus."
"To our way of thinking, cheating as a means of winning a game robs the action of its play-character and spoils it altogether, because for us the essence of play is that the rules be kept—that it be fair play. Archaic culture, however, gives the lie to our moral judgement in this respect, as also does the spirit of popular lore. In the fable of the hare and the hedgehog, the beau role is reserved for the false player, who wins by fraud. Many of the heroes of mythology win by trickery or by help from without. [...] In all these instances, the act of fraudulently outwitting somebody else has itself become a subject for competition, a new play-theme, as it were."
"Towards the close of the Middle Ages we see, in Genoa and Antwerp, the emergence of life-insurance in the form of betting on future eventualities of a non-economic nature. Bets were made, for instance, “on the life and death of persons, on the birth of boys or of girls, on the outcome of voyages and pilgrimages, on the capture of sundry lands, places or cities”. Such contracts as these, even though they had already taken on a purely commercial character, were repeatedly proscribed as illegal games of chance, amongst others by Charles V. At the election of a new Pope there was betting as at a horse-race to-day. Even in the 17th century dealings in life-insurances were still called “betting”."
"Anthropology has shown with increasing clarity how social life in the archaic period normally rests on the antagonistic and antithetical structure of the community itself, and how the whole mental world of such a community corresponds to this profound dualism. We find traces of it everywhere. The tribe is divided into two opposing halves, called “phratriai” by the anthropologist, which are separated by the strictest exogamy. [...] The mutual relationship of the two tribal halves is one of contest and rivalry, but at the same time of reciprocal help and the rendering of friendly service. "
"The victory not only represents that salvation but, by so doing, makes it effective. Hence it comes about that the beneficent result may equally well flow from games of pure chance as from games in which strength, skill or wit decide the issue. Luck may have a sacred significance; the fall of the dice may signify and determine the divine workings; by it we may move the gods as efficiently as by any other form of contest."
"The agonistic basis of cultural life in archaic society has only been brought to light since ethnology was enriched by an accurate description of the curious custom practised by certain Indian tribes in British Columbia, now generally known as the potlatch. [...] This curious donative festival dominates the entire communal life of the tribes that know it: their ritual, their law, their art. Any important event will be the occasion for a potlatch—a birth, a death, a marriage, an initiation ceremony, a tattooing, the erection of a tomb, etc. [...]
At the potlatch the families or clans are at their best, singing their sacred songs and exhibiting their masks, while the medicine-men demonstrate their possession by the clan-spirits. But the main thing is the distribution of goods. The feast-giver squanders the possessions of the whole clan. However, by taking part in the feast the other clan incurs the obligation to give a potlatch on a still grander scale. Should it fail to do so, it forfeits its name, its honour, its badge and totems, even its civil and religious rights. The upshot of all this is that the possessions of the tribe circulate among the houses of the “quality” in an adventurous way. It is to be assumed that originally the potlatch was always held between two phratriai.
In the potlatch one proves one's superiority not merely by the lavish prodigality of one's gifts but, what is even more striking, by the wholesale destruction of one's possessions just to show that one can do without them."
"In the pagan Arabia of pre-Islamic times, they are to be met with under a special name, which proves their existence [potlatch custom] as a formal institution. They are called mu'āqara, nomen actionis of the verb 'aqara in the third form, rendered in the old lexicons, which knew nothing of the ethnological background, by the phrase “to rival in glory by cutting the feet of camels”."
"The virtue of a man of quality consists in the set of properties which make him fit to fight and command. Among these liberality, wisdom and justice occupy a high place. It is perfectly natural that with many peoples the word for virtue derives from the idea of manliness or “virility”, as for instance the Latin virtus, which retained its meaning of “courage” for a very long time—until, in fact, Christian thought became dominant."
"According to ancient Chinese texts, the pitched battle is a confused mêlée of boasts, insults, altruism and compliments. It is rather a contest with moral weapons, a collision of offended honours, than an armed combat. All sorts of actions, some of the most singular nature, have a technical significance as marks of honour or shame for him who perpetrates or suffers them. Thus, the contemptuous gesture of Remus in jumping over Romulus' wall at the dawn of Roman history constitutes, in Chinese military tradition, an obligatory challenge."
"Competition for honour may also take, as in China, an inverted form by turning into a contest in politeness. The special word for this—iang—means literally “to yield to another”; hence one demolishes one's adversary by superior manners, making way for him or giving him precedence. The courtesy-match is nowhere as formalized, perhaps, as in China, but it is to be met with all over the world."
--
IV. Play and Law
"The judge's wig, however, is more than a mere relic of antiquated professional dress. Functionally it has close connections with the dancing masks of savages. It transforms the wearer into another “being”…"
"Whether the Divine Will manifests itself in the outcome of a trial of strength, or in the issue of armed combat, or in the fall of sticks and stones, it is all one to the archaic mind. The practice of telling fortunes by cards is rooted deep in our past, in a tradition far older than the cards themselves."
--
V. Play and War
"In history, art and literature everything that we perceive as beautiful and noble play was once sacred play. The tournaments and joustings, the orders, the vows, the dubbings are all vestiges of primaeval initiation-rites."
--
VI. Playing and Knowing
"For this reason there must be competitions in such knowledge at the sacred feasts, because the spoken word has a direct influence on the world order. Competitions in esoteric knowledge are deeply rooted in ritual and form an essential part of it."
"Archaic thought, brooding in rapture on the mysteries of Being, is hovering here over the border-line between sacred poetry, profoundest wisdom, mysticism and sheer verbal mystification. [...] The poet-priest is continually knocking at the door of the Unknowable, closed to him as to us. All we can say of these venerable texts is that in them we are witnessing the birth of philosophy, not in vain play but in sacred play."
"Experimental child-psychology has shown that a large part of the questions put by a six-year-old are actually of a cosmogonic nature, as for instance: What makes water run? Where does the wind come from? What is dead? etc."
"Culturally speaking, advice, riddle, myth, legend, proverb, etc., are closely connected."
"civilization gradually brings about a certain division between two modes of mental life which we distinguish as play and seriousness respectively, but which originally formed a continuous mental medium wherein that civilization arose."
"The “riddle of the Sphinx” still echoes faintly in the later forms of the riddle-game—the theme of the death-penalty is always in the background."
"All these samples of early philosophizing are pervaded by a strong sense of the agonistic structure of the universe. The processes in life and the cosmos are seen as the eternal conflict of opposites which is the root-principle of existence, like the Chinese yin and yang. For Heraclitus, strife was “the father of all things”, and Empedocles postulated φιλία and νεĩϰoς—attraction and discord—as the two principles which rule the universal process from everlasting to everlasting."
--
VII. Play and Poetry
"Poesis doctrinae tamquam somnium—poetry is like a dream of philosophic love"
"The true appellation of the archaic poet is vates, the possessed, the God-smitten, the raving one."
"Professor de Josselin de Jong of the University of Leyden has been able to amass a rich harvest of such social-agonistic poetry [...] of an extremely refined character, from his field-work on the Islands of Buru and Babar in the East Indian archipelago."
-- Great section but excluding due to char limit.
"For instance, a person may be set the task of improvising a poem so as to break a “spell” or get out of a difficult situation."
"Myth, rightly understood and not in the corrupt sense which modern propaganda has tried to force upon the word, is the appropriate vehicle for primitive man's ideas about the cosmos. In it, the line between the barely conceivable and the flatly impossible has not yet been drawn with any sharpness."
--
VIII. The Elements of Mythopoiesis
"as soon as the poetic metaphor ceases to move on the plane of genuine and original myth and no longer forms part of some sacred activity, the belief-value of the personification it contains becomes problematical"
"The playground of the saints and mystics is far beyond the sphere of ordinary mortals, and still further from the rational thinking that is bound to logic. Holiness and play always tend to overlap. So do poetic imagination and faith."
"Yet you do not normally avow your belief in the collar-stud as an entity or idea. You were only falling involuntarily into the play-attitude."
"The play attitude must have been present before human culture or human speech existed"
"The desire to make an idea as enormous and stupefying as possible is [also] a typical play-function and is common both in child-life and in certain mental diseases."
"The epic severs its connection with play as soon as it is no longer meant to be recited on some festal occasion but only to be read."
[Unfortunately, that's the end of my char limit.]
IX. Play-Forms in Philosophy
X. Play-Forms in Art
"All true ritual is sung, danced and played. We moderns have lost the sense for ritual and sacred play. Our civilization is worn with age and too sophisticated."
XI. Western Civilization Sub Specie Ludi
XII. The Play-Element in Contemporary Civilization
"The reader of these pages should not look for detailed documentation of every word. In treating of the general problems of culture, one is constantly obliged to undertake predatory incursions into provinces not sufficiently explored by the raider himself. To fill in all the gaps in my knowledge beforehand was out of the question for me. I had to write now, or not at all. And I wanted to write."
Also, such direct humility is rare. Perhaps this is just a sensitized subject after I read Interior Castle by Teresa of Avila. I'm not faulting her on disingenuous humility, it's very likely just her style, but it felt so thick as to be self-admonishing. This tongue-in-cheek (dare I say, playful!) humility reads much smoother for me.
--
I. Nature and Significance of Play as a Cultural Phenomenon
"First and foremost, then, all play is a voluntary activity. Play to order is no longer play: it could at best be but a forcible imitation of it. By this quality of freedom alone, play marks itself off from the course of the natural process. It is something added thereto and spread out over it like a flowering, an ornament, a garment."
"Though play as such is outside the range of good and bad, the element of tension imparts to it a certain ethical value in so far as it means a testing of the player's prowess: his courage, tenacity, resources and, last but not least, his spiritual powers—his “fairness”; because, despite his ardent desire to win, he must still stick to the rules of the game."
"The “differentness” and secrecy of play are most vividly expressed in “dressing up”. Here the “extra-ordinary” nature of play reaches perfection. The disguised or masked individual “plays” another part, another being. He is another being. The terrors of childhood, open-hearted gaiety, mystic fantasy and sacred awe are all inextricably entangled in this strange business of masks and disguises.
Summing up the formal characteristics of play we might call it a free activity standing quite consciously outside “ordinary” life as being “not serious”, but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it."
"The rite produces the effect which is then not so much shown figuratively as actually reproduced in the action. The function of the rite, therefore, is far from being merely imitative; it causes the worshippers to participate in the sacred happening itself. As the Greeks would say, “it is methectic rather than mimetic”. It is “a helping-out of the action”."
"Such playing contains at the outset all the elements proper to play: order, tension, movement, change, solemnity, rhythm, rapture."
"Think of the peculiar charm that the mask as an objet d'art has for the modern mind. [...] Modern man is very sensitive to the far-off and the strange. Nothing helps him so much in his understanding of savage society as his feeling for masks and disguise."
--
II. The Play-Concept as Expressed in Language
"When speaking of play as something known to all, and when trying to analyse or define the idea expressed in that word, we must always bear in mind that the idea as we know it is defined and perhaps limited by the word we use for it. [...] Nobody will expect that every language, in forming its idea of and expression for play, could have hit on the same idea or found a single word for it, in the way that every language has one definite word for “hand” or “foot”. The matter is not as simple as that."
"The extraordinary earnestness and profound gravity of the Japanese ideal of life is masked by the fashionable fiction that everything is only play. [...] The convention is that the higher classes are merely playing at all they do. The polite form for "you arrive in Tokio" is, literally, "you play arrival in Tokio”; and for "I hear that your father is dead", "I hear that your father has played dying". In other words, the revered person is imagined as living in an elevated sphere where only pleasure or condescension moves to action."
"It is remarkable that ludus, as the general term for play, has not only not passed into the Romance languages but has left hardly any traces there, so far as I can see. In all of them—and this necessarily means at a quite early period—ludus has been supplanted by a derivative of jocus, which extended its specific sense of joking and jesting to “play” in general. Thus French has jeu, jouer; Italian gioco, giocare; Spanish juego, jugar; Portuguese jogo, jogar; Rumanian Joe, juca; while similar words occur in Catalan, Provençal and Rhaeto-Romanic."
"Who can deny that in all these concepts—challenge, danger, contest, etc.—we are very close to the play-sphere? Play and danger, risk, chance, feat—it is all a single field of action where something is at stake. [...] We have to feel our way into the archaic sphere of thought, where serious combat with weapons and all kinds of contests ranging from the most trifling games to bloody and mortal strife were comprised, together with play proper, in the single fundamental idea of a struggle with fate limited by certain rules. Seen in this way, the application of the word “play” to battle can hardly be called a conscious metaphor. Play is battle and battle is play."
"We can say, perhaps, that in language the play-concept seems to be much more fundamental than its opposite. The need for a comprehensive term expressing “not-play” must have been rather feeble, and the various expressions for “seriousness” are but a secondary attempt on the part of language to invent the conceptual opposite of “play”. They are grouped round the ideas of “zeal”, “exertion”, “painstaking”, despite the fact that in themselves all these qualities may be found associated with play as well. The appearance of a term for “earnest” means that people have become conscious of the play-concept as an independent entity— a process which, as we remarked before, happens rather late. [...] The significance of “earnest” is defined by and exhausted in the negation of “play”—earnest is simply “not playing” and nothing more. The significance of “play”, on the other hand, is by no means defined or exhausted by calling it “not-earnest”, or “not serious”. Play is a thing by itself. The play-concept as such is of a higher order than is seriousness."
--
III. Play and Contest as Civilizing Functions
"In games of pure chance the tension felt by the player is only feebly communicated to the onlooker. In themselves, gambling games are very curious subjects for cultural research, but for the development of culture as such we must call them unproductive. They are sterile, adding nothing to life or the mind. The picture changes as soon as play demands application, knowledge, skill, courage and strength."
"The popular Dutch saying to the effect that “it is not the marbles that matter, but the game”, expresses this clearly enough. Objectively speaking, the result of the game is unimportant and a matter of indifference."
"It is very curious how the words “prize”, “price” and “praise” all derive more or less directly from the Latin pretium but develop in different directions. Pretium arose originally in the sphere of exchange and valuation, and presupposed a counter-value. The mediaeval pretium justum or “just price” corresponded approximately to the idea of the modern “market value”. Now while price remains bound to the sphere of economics, prize moves into that of play and competition, and praise acquires the exclusive signification of the Latin laus."
"To our way of thinking, cheating as a means of winning a game robs the action of its play-character and spoils it altogether, because for us the essence of play is that the rules be kept—that it be fair play. Archaic culture, however, gives the lie to our moral judgement in this respect, as also does the spirit of popular lore. In the fable of the hare and the hedgehog, the beau role is reserved for the false player, who wins by fraud. Many of the heroes of mythology win by trickery or by help from without. [...] In all these instances, the act of fraudulently outwitting somebody else has itself become a subject for competition, a new play-theme, as it were."
"Towards the close of the Middle Ages we see, in Genoa and Antwerp, the emergence of life-insurance in the form of betting on future eventualities of a non-economic nature. Bets were made, for instance, “on the life and death of persons, on the birth of boys or of girls, on the outcome of voyages and pilgrimages, on the capture of sundry lands, places or cities”. Such contracts as these, even though they had already taken on a purely commercial character, were repeatedly proscribed as illegal games of chance, amongst others by Charles V. At the election of a new Pope there was betting as at a horse-race to-day. Even in the 17th century dealings in life-insurances were still called “betting”."
"Anthropology has shown with increasing clarity how social life in the archaic period normally rests on the antagonistic and antithetical structure of the community itself, and how the whole mental world of such a community corresponds to this profound dualism. We find traces of it everywhere. The tribe is divided into two opposing halves, called “phratriai” by the anthropologist, which are separated by the strictest exogamy. [...] The mutual relationship of the two tribal halves is one of contest and rivalry, but at the same time of reciprocal help and the rendering of friendly service. "
"The victory not only represents that salvation but, by so doing, makes it effective. Hence it comes about that the beneficent result may equally well flow from games of pure chance as from games in which strength, skill or wit decide the issue. Luck may have a sacred significance; the fall of the dice may signify and determine the divine workings; by it we may move the gods as efficiently as by any other form of contest."
"The agonistic basis of cultural life in archaic society has only been brought to light since ethnology was enriched by an accurate description of the curious custom practised by certain Indian tribes in British Columbia, now generally known as the potlatch. [...] This curious donative festival dominates the entire communal life of the tribes that know it: their ritual, their law, their art. Any important event will be the occasion for a potlatch—a birth, a death, a marriage, an initiation ceremony, a tattooing, the erection of a tomb, etc. [...]
At the potlatch the families or clans are at their best, singing their sacred songs and exhibiting their masks, while the medicine-men demonstrate their possession by the clan-spirits. But the main thing is the distribution of goods. The feast-giver squanders the possessions of the whole clan. However, by taking part in the feast the other clan incurs the obligation to give a potlatch on a still grander scale. Should it fail to do so, it forfeits its name, its honour, its badge and totems, even its civil and religious rights. The upshot of all this is that the possessions of the tribe circulate among the houses of the “quality” in an adventurous way. It is to be assumed that originally the potlatch was always held between two phratriai.
In the potlatch one proves one's superiority not merely by the lavish prodigality of one's gifts but, what is even more striking, by the wholesale destruction of one's possessions just to show that one can do without them."
"In the pagan Arabia of pre-Islamic times, they are to be met with under a special name, which proves their existence [potlatch custom] as a formal institution. They are called mu'āqara, nomen actionis of the verb 'aqara in the third form, rendered in the old lexicons, which knew nothing of the ethnological background, by the phrase “to rival in glory by cutting the feet of camels”."
"The virtue of a man of quality consists in the set of properties which make him fit to fight and command. Among these liberality, wisdom and justice occupy a high place. It is perfectly natural that with many peoples the word for virtue derives from the idea of manliness or “virility”, as for instance the Latin virtus, which retained its meaning of “courage” for a very long time—until, in fact, Christian thought became dominant."
"According to ancient Chinese texts, the pitched battle is a confused mêlée of boasts, insults, altruism and compliments. It is rather a contest with moral weapons, a collision of offended honours, than an armed combat. All sorts of actions, some of the most singular nature, have a technical significance as marks of honour or shame for him who perpetrates or suffers them. Thus, the contemptuous gesture of Remus in jumping over Romulus' wall at the dawn of Roman history constitutes, in Chinese military tradition, an obligatory challenge."
"Competition for honour may also take, as in China, an inverted form by turning into a contest in politeness. The special word for this—iang—means literally “to yield to another”; hence one demolishes one's adversary by superior manners, making way for him or giving him precedence. The courtesy-match is nowhere as formalized, perhaps, as in China, but it is to be met with all over the world."
--
IV. Play and Law
"The judge's wig, however, is more than a mere relic of antiquated professional dress. Functionally it has close connections with the dancing masks of savages. It transforms the wearer into another “being”…"
"Whether the Divine Will manifests itself in the outcome of a trial of strength, or in the issue of armed combat, or in the fall of sticks and stones, it is all one to the archaic mind. The practice of telling fortunes by cards is rooted deep in our past, in a tradition far older than the cards themselves."
--
V. Play and War
"In history, art and literature everything that we perceive as beautiful and noble play was once sacred play. The tournaments and joustings, the orders, the vows, the dubbings are all vestiges of primaeval initiation-rites."
--
VI. Playing and Knowing
"For this reason there must be competitions in such knowledge at the sacred feasts, because the spoken word has a direct influence on the world order. Competitions in esoteric knowledge are deeply rooted in ritual and form an essential part of it."
"Archaic thought, brooding in rapture on the mysteries of Being, is hovering here over the border-line between sacred poetry, profoundest wisdom, mysticism and sheer verbal mystification. [...] The poet-priest is continually knocking at the door of the Unknowable, closed to him as to us. All we can say of these venerable texts is that in them we are witnessing the birth of philosophy, not in vain play but in sacred play."
"Experimental child-psychology has shown that a large part of the questions put by a six-year-old are actually of a cosmogonic nature, as for instance: What makes water run? Where does the wind come from? What is dead? etc."
"Culturally speaking, advice, riddle, myth, legend, proverb, etc., are closely connected."
"civilization gradually brings about a certain division between two modes of mental life which we distinguish as play and seriousness respectively, but which originally formed a continuous mental medium wherein that civilization arose."
"The “riddle of the Sphinx” still echoes faintly in the later forms of the riddle-game—the theme of the death-penalty is always in the background."
"All these samples of early philosophizing are pervaded by a strong sense of the agonistic structure of the universe. The processes in life and the cosmos are seen as the eternal conflict of opposites which is the root-principle of existence, like the Chinese yin and yang. For Heraclitus, strife was “the father of all things”, and Empedocles postulated φιλία and νεĩϰoς—attraction and discord—as the two principles which rule the universal process from everlasting to everlasting."
--
VII. Play and Poetry
"Poesis doctrinae tamquam somnium—poetry is like a dream of philosophic love"
"The true appellation of the archaic poet is vates, the possessed, the God-smitten, the raving one."
"Professor de Josselin de Jong of the University of Leyden has been able to amass a rich harvest of such social-agonistic poetry [...] of an extremely refined character, from his field-work on the Islands of Buru and Babar in the East Indian archipelago."
-- Great section but excluding due to char limit.
"For instance, a person may be set the task of improvising a poem so as to break a “spell” or get out of a difficult situation."
"Myth, rightly understood and not in the corrupt sense which modern propaganda has tried to force upon the word, is the appropriate vehicle for primitive man's ideas about the cosmos. In it, the line between the barely conceivable and the flatly impossible has not yet been drawn with any sharpness."
--
VIII. The Elements of Mythopoiesis
"as soon as the poetic metaphor ceases to move on the plane of genuine and original myth and no longer forms part of some sacred activity, the belief-value of the personification it contains becomes problematical"
"The playground of the saints and mystics is far beyond the sphere of ordinary mortals, and still further from the rational thinking that is bound to logic. Holiness and play always tend to overlap. So do poetic imagination and faith."
"Yet you do not normally avow your belief in the collar-stud as an entity or idea. You were only falling involuntarily into the play-attitude."
"The play attitude must have been present before human culture or human speech existed"
"The desire to make an idea as enormous and stupefying as possible is [also] a typical play-function and is common both in child-life and in certain mental diseases."
"The epic severs its connection with play as soon as it is no longer meant to be recited on some festal occasion but only to be read."
[Unfortunately, that's the end of my char limit.]
IX. Play-Forms in Philosophy
X. Play-Forms in Art
"All true ritual is sung, danced and played. We moderns have lost the sense for ritual and sacred play. Our civilization is worn with age and too sophisticated."
XI. Western Civilization Sub Specie Ludi
XII. The Play-Element in Contemporary Civilization
July 8, 2024
Huizinga pioneered the idea that inherent human behaviour and desire for competition modeled the way society build its fundamental rituals, rules and perception of self and others. Science has certainly moved forward and built upon Huizinga 's ideas, yet the study remains fundamental for understanding human social interactions and the way our nature as a species of playing, learning and competing individuals transforms our social interactions as groups and nations.
January 26, 2022
Some books stand out in one's spiritual and intellectual development for their paradigm-changing power. Not only do these books enrich and broaden, they change the way one sees; they change one's very perception of history and life itself. For me "Homo Ludens" was one such book. As I put it down I am experiencing the same feeling I did when I closed "Ideas Have Consequences" for the first time, or "The Abolition of Man," or "A Secular Age." My own vision has changed. I came to this book in a roundabout way; first I encountered Moltmann's "Theology of Play," and from one of his footnotes I found Hugo Rahner's "Man at Play." I wanted a contemporary view of the theological discourse, so I eventually discovered Brian Edgar's "The God Who Plays." Huizinga's 1944 book on play set the stage for these others and is, I believe, still considered the seminal work on the subject. It's worth noticing that Huizinga's conclusion to his book (a quotation from Proverbs 8 on the Wisdom "playing" next to the Father) is the theologians' starting point.
This book is so remarkably significant because Huizinga offers a new perspective for interpreting history. The old, tired tale of the Enlightenment that people will jettison religion as they become less superstitious... The Marxist view that peoples and nations are simply responding to economic factors... The Nietzschean view that there is a pristine, classical past which pre-dates Christianity and is full of muscular heroism that does away with pity and other emotional weakness and can be returned to via the transvaluation of Western values... All theories and more are countered by Huizinga. Rather than playing their game, however, he shows how the game (play, play-instinct, play-consciousness) is actually playing with all of us.
Our human instinct for play and contest reveals itself in every single pillar of civilization. We have the rule of law because, originally, justice was a game that the gods played with us. We have music, dance, art because the play-instinct moves us to imagine, create, and take pleasure in something for its own sake. We have philosophy because we like to argue, tell riddles, and tell stories of our origins. In every respect in culture throughout history, the human desire to play asserts itself and leads to the conception and construction of civilization.
There are so many brilliant insights in this book that I can't share them all in this review, but I'll end it by saying that Huizinga touched upon something so primeval, so unconscious, that it really re-frames the cultural discussions we're having today about religion, science, and our human destiny. We are the play-things of God (to quote Plato), and if we are not lightly, joyfully playing - if we are only ever building, striving, producing, worrying - then does our civilization have any chance? No. The best thing for our society today very well might be to disband all organized sports for children and let them play in the fields and woods again, to experience the human freedom of play, and thus to put them in touch with the Source of humanity: not just the play-instinct, but the God who plays as He creates the little children (Prov. 8:30), and lets them come to Him (Matt. 19:14).
This book is so remarkably significant because Huizinga offers a new perspective for interpreting history. The old, tired tale of the Enlightenment that people will jettison religion as they become less superstitious... The Marxist view that peoples and nations are simply responding to economic factors... The Nietzschean view that there is a pristine, classical past which pre-dates Christianity and is full of muscular heroism that does away with pity and other emotional weakness and can be returned to via the transvaluation of Western values... All theories and more are countered by Huizinga. Rather than playing their game, however, he shows how the game (play, play-instinct, play-consciousness) is actually playing with all of us.
Our human instinct for play and contest reveals itself in every single pillar of civilization. We have the rule of law because, originally, justice was a game that the gods played with us. We have music, dance, art because the play-instinct moves us to imagine, create, and take pleasure in something for its own sake. We have philosophy because we like to argue, tell riddles, and tell stories of our origins. In every respect in culture throughout history, the human desire to play asserts itself and leads to the conception and construction of civilization.
There are so many brilliant insights in this book that I can't share them all in this review, but I'll end it by saying that Huizinga touched upon something so primeval, so unconscious, that it really re-frames the cultural discussions we're having today about religion, science, and our human destiny. We are the play-things of God (to quote Plato), and if we are not lightly, joyfully playing - if we are only ever building, striving, producing, worrying - then does our civilization have any chance? No. The best thing for our society today very well might be to disband all organized sports for children and let them play in the fields and woods again, to experience the human freedom of play, and thus to put them in touch with the Source of humanity: not just the play-instinct, but the God who plays as He creates the little children (Prov. 8:30), and lets them come to Him (Matt. 19:14).
August 31, 2014
1) ''Play is older than culture, for culture, however inadequately defined, always presupposes human society, and animals have not waited for man to teach them their playing.''
2) ''As a culture proceeds, either progressing or regressing, the original relationship we have postulated between play and non-play does not remain static. As a rule the play-element gradually recedes into the background, being absorbed for the most part in the sacred sphere. The remainder crystallizes as knowledge: folklore, poetry, philosophy, or in the various forms of judicial and social life.''
3) ''All knowledge---and this naturally includes philosophy---is polemical by nature, and polemics cannot be divorced from agonistics. Epochs in which great new treasures of the mind come to tlight are generally epochs of violent controversy. Such was the 17th century, when Natural Science underwent a glorious efflorescence coinciding with the weakening of authority and antiquity, and the decay of faith. Everything is taking up new positions; camps and factions fill the scene. You have to be for Descartes or against him, for or against Newton, 'les modernes', 'les anciens', the flattening of the earth at the poles, inoculation, etc.''
4) ''It has not been difficult to show that a certain play-factor was extremely active all through the cultural process and that it produces many of the fundamental forms of social life. The spirit of playful competition is, as a social impulse, older than culture itself and pervades all life like a veritable ferment. Ritual grew up in sacred play; poetry was born in play and nourished on play; music and dancing were pure play. Wisdom and philosophy found expression in words and forms derived from religious contests. The rules of warfare, the conventions of noble living were build up on play-patterns. We have to conclude, therefore, that civilization is, in its earliest phases, played. It does not come from play like a babe detaching itself from the womb: it arises in and as play, and never leaves it.''
5) ''So that by a devious route we have reached the following conclusion: real civilization cannot exist in the absence of a certain play-element, for civilization presupposes limitation and mastery of the self, the ability not to convuse its own tendencies with the ultimate and highest goal, but to understand that it is enclosed within certain bounds freely accepted. Civilization will, in a sense, always be played according to certain rules, and true civilization will always demand fair play. Fair play is nothing less than good faith expressed in play terms. Hence the cheat or the spoil-sport shatters civilization itself. To be a sound culture-creating force this play-element must be pure. It must not consist in the darkening or debasing of standards set up by reason, faith or humanity. It must not be a false seeming, a masking of political purposes behind the illusion of genuine play-forms. True play knows no propaganda; its aim is in itself, and its familiar spirit is happy inspiration.''
2) ''As a culture proceeds, either progressing or regressing, the original relationship we have postulated between play and non-play does not remain static. As a rule the play-element gradually recedes into the background, being absorbed for the most part in the sacred sphere. The remainder crystallizes as knowledge: folklore, poetry, philosophy, or in the various forms of judicial and social life.''
3) ''All knowledge---and this naturally includes philosophy---is polemical by nature, and polemics cannot be divorced from agonistics. Epochs in which great new treasures of the mind come to tlight are generally epochs of violent controversy. Such was the 17th century, when Natural Science underwent a glorious efflorescence coinciding with the weakening of authority and antiquity, and the decay of faith. Everything is taking up new positions; camps and factions fill the scene. You have to be for Descartes or against him, for or against Newton, 'les modernes', 'les anciens', the flattening of the earth at the poles, inoculation, etc.''
4) ''It has not been difficult to show that a certain play-factor was extremely active all through the cultural process and that it produces many of the fundamental forms of social life. The spirit of playful competition is, as a social impulse, older than culture itself and pervades all life like a veritable ferment. Ritual grew up in sacred play; poetry was born in play and nourished on play; music and dancing were pure play. Wisdom and philosophy found expression in words and forms derived from religious contests. The rules of warfare, the conventions of noble living were build up on play-patterns. We have to conclude, therefore, that civilization is, in its earliest phases, played. It does not come from play like a babe detaching itself from the womb: it arises in and as play, and never leaves it.''
5) ''So that by a devious route we have reached the following conclusion: real civilization cannot exist in the absence of a certain play-element, for civilization presupposes limitation and mastery of the self, the ability not to convuse its own tendencies with the ultimate and highest goal, but to understand that it is enclosed within certain bounds freely accepted. Civilization will, in a sense, always be played according to certain rules, and true civilization will always demand fair play. Fair play is nothing less than good faith expressed in play terms. Hence the cheat or the spoil-sport shatters civilization itself. To be a sound culture-creating force this play-element must be pure. It must not consist in the darkening or debasing of standards set up by reason, faith or humanity. It must not be a false seeming, a masking of political purposes behind the illusion of genuine play-forms. True play knows no propaganda; its aim is in itself, and its familiar spirit is happy inspiration.''
June 19, 2020
Üzerinde tartışılması gerekilen bir kitap ve konu. Oyun'un prehistorya'dan günümüze hayatımızın birçok alanında olduğuna dair ilginç tespitler söz konusu. Oyun ve Ciddiyet arasındaki farklılıktan ziyade ciddiyete evrilen oyundan bahsedilmiş. Tekrar tekrar okunabilecek bir kitap.
November 2, 2023
Un d’aquells assajos que et proposa conceptes que un cop apresos els apliques a tot arreu. La seva tesi és simple: el joc es troba als orígens de la cultura humana. D’acord, interessant, de tant en tant Plató i els upanishads i els Veda treuen el cap per allà per donar una mica de color, però no a primer cop d’ull no et canvia la vida.
Homo Ludens comença a ser flipant quan veus que en bona part del funcionament del dret, de la filosofia, de la creació artística (fins i tot de la guerra!) encara hi ha el joc! Ara bé, en la contemporaneïtat el component lúdic està desapareixent en totes les àrees “serioses”. Sense fer més spoiler, implica una deshumanització bastant bèstia de la vida humana.
Ara, tanpoc és cert que qualsevol activitat humana sigui lúdica; l’autor mateix emfatitza que cal limitar bé el concepte (de fet, per Huizinga lo moral queda fora del joc, cosa que és un bon hot take contra el relativisme cultural).
La part més feixuga és al principi quan defineix el concepte de joc. A partir d’allà el llibre consisteix d’assajos breus on explica com el joc defineix aspectes diversos de les cultures arreu del món i al llarg de la història. Total, que es pot llegir de mica en mica sense cap mena de problema, i encara resulta lleuger i agradable. En resum, el recomano moltíssim!
Homo Ludens comença a ser flipant quan veus que en bona part del funcionament del dret, de la filosofia, de la creació artística (fins i tot de la guerra!) encara hi ha el joc! Ara bé, en la contemporaneïtat el component lúdic està desapareixent en totes les àrees “serioses”. Sense fer més spoiler, implica una deshumanització bastant bèstia de la vida humana.
Ara, tanpoc és cert que qualsevol activitat humana sigui lúdica; l’autor mateix emfatitza que cal limitar bé el concepte (de fet, per Huizinga lo moral queda fora del joc, cosa que és un bon hot take contra el relativisme cultural).
La part més feixuga és al principi quan defineix el concepte de joc. A partir d’allà el llibre consisteix d’assajos breus on explica com el joc defineix aspectes diversos de les cultures arreu del món i al llarg de la història. Total, que es pot llegir de mica en mica sense cap mena de problema, i encara resulta lleuger i agradable. En resum, el recomano moltíssim!
February 7, 2023
O carte care dezvăluie esența ludicului încă din cele mai vechi timpuri. Acest subiect nu trebuie privit cu superficialitate, întrucât jocul și joaca sunt componente necesare în societate, în viețile indivizilor. Astfel, ludicul își are locul în cultur��, în justiție, în poezie și chiar în înțelepciune. O scriere interesantă, cu "accente ludice".
March 22, 2020
..jeigu nueisiu iki savo krėslo lyginį skaičių žingsnių, tai šiandien man nereikės kęsti skrandžio skausmų
Read
July 2, 2024Reading the Century 1938
Read
April 13, 2024"Genuine, pure play is one of the main bases of civilization. To our way of thinking, play is the direct opposite of seriousness."
July 2, 2019
Knygoje keliamas tikslas pažvelgti į kultūrą, kasdienybę bandant atrasti žaidžiančio žmogaus pasaulėjautą, siekius. Apžvelgiama literatūros, teismų žaidybiniai akcentai bei siekiama atskleisti, kad žaidimo naudojimas svarbus kultūros suvokimui.
March 29, 2024
Since last December I have found myself, wilfully or not, in a different world, dissociated, unable to focus on any of my usual interests and activities. Despite my bohemian longings I am not actually irresponsible enough, like everyone else including very normal people, to just vanish from the scene for awhile, but I could barely pay muster any energy towards, for example, all my work in tenants' rights; I can barely keep the laws in my head, I don't want to talk about them, think about them. But it's not just "work" things like that, it's almost everything I'm interested in, history, politics, strategy games, even, to my surprise and consternation, religion. The rest of these things, I have lost interest in before, for example when in love or dealing with grief, but this is the first time religion has joined that group of interests I can't stand to think about for awhile.
I think I know the reason. It is because I know too much, and grew Opinions, and those Opinions begin to overwhelm everything else, and sit like a heavy sleep paralysis demon on my chest, so that I can hardly move my eyes to read, because instead I am arguing. Arguing with every sentence, with every word. Either arguing with the author, or if the author and I agree, with some imaginary, implied, interlocutor who disagrees. I felt it taking over all pleasure last year, reading Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe and Greek Religion and Calvinism: A Very Short Introduction: the impossibility of simply reading, simply learning, because I had an Opinion, I had a Position, and everyone else in the world disagrees with me, but nothing convinces me to change my mind, and everything I read becomes something to fortify my Position or something that I must combat to keep believing what I believe, or else face being defeated. I am very familiar with this feeling. I have many such Opinions and Positions. I am a pacifist, I am an anarchist (these are the same thing to me, or rather the anarchism follows from the pacifism), Positions which no one considers serious and respectable, worth anything but condescending mockery. Even worse, my Opinions on cities and "urbanism", which don't even have names, perhaps are internally inconsistent or contradictory: that cities are Good, natural, human, not incompatible with socialism (that Marx and Engels' vision of "ending the distinction between city and country" is completely insane), not really connected to or reflecting "supply and demand" in any sense, that cars have literally destroyed the world, that street advertising posters and signs are good but also parks are good if they are actually used, that crowds and small apartments are nice, etc etc etc. I only read books about socialism, anarchism, etc when I am in a completely self-punishing, masochistic hate-read mood; I have completely given up reading anything about cities, despite my being passionately in love with them, because it seems the only Positions are terrible: the right-wing Position of wanting to Sodom and Gomorrah them because they are full of CRIME and immigrants, and the "left" -- somehow -- arguing only to neoliberalize and suburbanize them more and more. With religion, I am maybe even more isolated feeling, because at the very least there are people I know and work with in real life, if not in any available book or website, who want better tenant protections and rent control, who are against landlording; but there is no such thing when it comes to religion. The sadness of reading Walter Burkert was realizing that even in the ancient world where people practiced "religion" (a concept which then did not exist) in line with my preference, they already had started thinking and arguing against it, in ethical, even spiritual, and depressingly cynical materialistic terms.
Anyway, so, reading Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, a Mormon true-crime thing about horrible cultists left me feeling depressed and repelled, a sort of 'last straw' feeling that I could not read about religion anymore, and I was truly at a loss what to read next. But I had this book. I had found it in a Little Free Library even before I read The Waning of the Middle Ages, which I loved when I read it last year. And I thought perhaps it would be fun, because it's about play. And it is fun, as well as thoughtful and interesting, though not exactly fun in the way I might have imagined. In an early chapter Huizinga gets into a discussion of various languages' words (or lack thereof) for 'play'. I'm sure it's all badly dated, linguistics is not his field, the number of languages is necessarily very small, but it gave me the joy of plain and simple learning, learning something without arguing about it, or trying to fit it into a Position or refusing to accept it's true because it contracts my Opinion, just learning: oh, the word for play in this language is this, and it has these connotations, how interesting. It's like learning about astronomy or geology; it has no political content, you cannot argue with the orbit of Neptune, it's simply a joy to learn.
Most of the book is not like that, but its arguments are nevertheless free of the sort of trouble that's been bothering me, maybe because its thesis is so unique, and also because it is curiously changeable and completely unpolemical. Huizinga believes most of human culture is play: does he think that play is good or bad? The answer is, sometimes! It depends! He doesn't necessarily care! He can't even really define play in a way that satisfies himself, much less the reader. He says it involves strict rules, a special defined play-space, has nothing to do with economic necessity, involves "pretending" in some way, but all these things are sort of optional. It is a very peculiar argument which argues that the law is play, because trials are a kind of game, but painting is not play, because it is finished rather than observed in process, and doodling or scribbling which are a kind of play are too frivolous to be art. And sometimes play is good, productive of the best culture like dance, sometimes it's completely silly like the fashion for wigs, sometimes it's bad like when statesmen conduct diplomacy and war as a game.
I did go in feeling like I wanted a defense of "play-forms" in "serious matters", which he is constantly finding, because I think we need it. One of the reasons for my depression, and the Opinions, Positions etc which caused it, is the totalizing grim Calvinist insistence that Everything is Serious, because Everything is Political, and any sort of fun or play is necessarily evil and fascist. After all, Fascism "aesthetizes politics", the anti-semite, in Sartre's endlessly quoted formulation, "has the privilege to play". And of course Everything is Political, choosing music or a variety of chocolate is a Political Act, so everything also must be serious at all times. Fun is a sign of privilege; the essentialized lives of the subaltern are always grim and miserable, and so you should always be too. Even the Chapo-left who might disagree with this joyless modern liberalism nevertheless love to mock anything ceremonial, and think (they would never say so) that everything and everyone, including the most powerful and important, should never look or act like anything but "normal" people, that is to say, they should never play. Well, Huizinga provides some material for me wanting to refute this, as when he points out that "international law" is a kind of game, and is the only thing which has managed to mitigate some of the horrors of war, imperfectly as it may be. He does scold Marxism for its "shameful misconception" that "economic forces and material interests determine the the course of the world" alone. But at the same time, he equally says that, indeed, fascism is a kind of perverted, in his words "puerile", play, and decries "the spectacle of a society rapidly goose-stepping into helotry".
That ambiguity is what prevents me from arguing with the book, and holds me back from using it in an argument against invisible foes, whether joyless liberal scolds or right-wing nutcases or smug condescending Marxists. It made me remember how I used to be able to read history, big books about things which have plenty of contemporary political relevance even, like Battle Cry of Freedom or whatever, and wrap them warm around me without arguing with anyone. Just enjoying, as Virginia Woolf says and I constantly quote, the "humane passion for pure and disinterested reading." Disinterest is the key thing; the reason I can happily stare at a painting without arguing in my mind about its brushstrokes, or learn about Japanese sentence structure without having to fight about whether the verb "should" come first or last. I hope I can get back to this disinterestedness, someday soon.
I think I know the reason. It is because I know too much, and grew Opinions, and those Opinions begin to overwhelm everything else, and sit like a heavy sleep paralysis demon on my chest, so that I can hardly move my eyes to read, because instead I am arguing. Arguing with every sentence, with every word. Either arguing with the author, or if the author and I agree, with some imaginary, implied, interlocutor who disagrees. I felt it taking over all pleasure last year, reading Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe and Greek Religion and Calvinism: A Very Short Introduction: the impossibility of simply reading, simply learning, because I had an Opinion, I had a Position, and everyone else in the world disagrees with me, but nothing convinces me to change my mind, and everything I read becomes something to fortify my Position or something that I must combat to keep believing what I believe, or else face being defeated. I am very familiar with this feeling. I have many such Opinions and Positions. I am a pacifist, I am an anarchist (these are the same thing to me, or rather the anarchism follows from the pacifism), Positions which no one considers serious and respectable, worth anything but condescending mockery. Even worse, my Opinions on cities and "urbanism", which don't even have names, perhaps are internally inconsistent or contradictory: that cities are Good, natural, human, not incompatible with socialism (that Marx and Engels' vision of "ending the distinction between city and country" is completely insane), not really connected to or reflecting "supply and demand" in any sense, that cars have literally destroyed the world, that street advertising posters and signs are good but also parks are good if they are actually used, that crowds and small apartments are nice, etc etc etc. I only read books about socialism, anarchism, etc when I am in a completely self-punishing, masochistic hate-read mood; I have completely given up reading anything about cities, despite my being passionately in love with them, because it seems the only Positions are terrible: the right-wing Position of wanting to Sodom and Gomorrah them because they are full of CRIME and immigrants, and the "left" -- somehow -- arguing only to neoliberalize and suburbanize them more and more. With religion, I am maybe even more isolated feeling, because at the very least there are people I know and work with in real life, if not in any available book or website, who want better tenant protections and rent control, who are against landlording; but there is no such thing when it comes to religion. The sadness of reading Walter Burkert was realizing that even in the ancient world where people practiced "religion" (a concept which then did not exist) in line with my preference, they already had started thinking and arguing against it, in ethical, even spiritual, and depressingly cynical materialistic terms.
Anyway, so, reading Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, a Mormon true-crime thing about horrible cultists left me feeling depressed and repelled, a sort of 'last straw' feeling that I could not read about religion anymore, and I was truly at a loss what to read next. But I had this book. I had found it in a Little Free Library even before I read The Waning of the Middle Ages, which I loved when I read it last year. And I thought perhaps it would be fun, because it's about play. And it is fun, as well as thoughtful and interesting, though not exactly fun in the way I might have imagined. In an early chapter Huizinga gets into a discussion of various languages' words (or lack thereof) for 'play'. I'm sure it's all badly dated, linguistics is not his field, the number of languages is necessarily very small, but it gave me the joy of plain and simple learning, learning something without arguing about it, or trying to fit it into a Position or refusing to accept it's true because it contracts my Opinion, just learning: oh, the word for play in this language is this, and it has these connotations, how interesting. It's like learning about astronomy or geology; it has no political content, you cannot argue with the orbit of Neptune, it's simply a joy to learn.
Most of the book is not like that, but its arguments are nevertheless free of the sort of trouble that's been bothering me, maybe because its thesis is so unique, and also because it is curiously changeable and completely unpolemical. Huizinga believes most of human culture is play: does he think that play is good or bad? The answer is, sometimes! It depends! He doesn't necessarily care! He can't even really define play in a way that satisfies himself, much less the reader. He says it involves strict rules, a special defined play-space, has nothing to do with economic necessity, involves "pretending" in some way, but all these things are sort of optional. It is a very peculiar argument which argues that the law is play, because trials are a kind of game, but painting is not play, because it is finished rather than observed in process, and doodling or scribbling which are a kind of play are too frivolous to be art. And sometimes play is good, productive of the best culture like dance, sometimes it's completely silly like the fashion for wigs, sometimes it's bad like when statesmen conduct diplomacy and war as a game.
I did go in feeling like I wanted a defense of "play-forms" in "serious matters", which he is constantly finding, because I think we need it. One of the reasons for my depression, and the Opinions, Positions etc which caused it, is the totalizing grim Calvinist insistence that Everything is Serious, because Everything is Political, and any sort of fun or play is necessarily evil and fascist. After all, Fascism "aesthetizes politics", the anti-semite, in Sartre's endlessly quoted formulation, "has the privilege to play". And of course Everything is Political, choosing music or a variety of chocolate is a Political Act, so everything also must be serious at all times. Fun is a sign of privilege; the essentialized lives of the subaltern are always grim and miserable, and so you should always be too. Even the Chapo-left who might disagree with this joyless modern liberalism nevertheless love to mock anything ceremonial, and think (they would never say so) that everything and everyone, including the most powerful and important, should never look or act like anything but "normal" people, that is to say, they should never play. Well, Huizinga provides some material for me wanting to refute this, as when he points out that "international law" is a kind of game, and is the only thing which has managed to mitigate some of the horrors of war, imperfectly as it may be. He does scold Marxism for its "shameful misconception" that "economic forces and material interests determine the the course of the world" alone. But at the same time, he equally says that, indeed, fascism is a kind of perverted, in his words "puerile", play, and decries "the spectacle of a society rapidly goose-stepping into helotry".
That ambiguity is what prevents me from arguing with the book, and holds me back from using it in an argument against invisible foes, whether joyless liberal scolds or right-wing nutcases or smug condescending Marxists. It made me remember how I used to be able to read history, big books about things which have plenty of contemporary political relevance even, like Battle Cry of Freedom or whatever, and wrap them warm around me without arguing with anyone. Just enjoying, as Virginia Woolf says and I constantly quote, the "humane passion for pure and disinterested reading." Disinterest is the key thing; the reason I can happily stare at a painting without arguing in my mind about its brushstrokes, or learn about Japanese sentence structure without having to fight about whether the verb "should" come first or last. I hope I can get back to this disinterestedness, someday soon.
April 30, 2012
I'd never heard of this book (written in 1938) until recently, when I started running across references to it in a lot of disparate places. It's fascinating, and I wonder if play-theory is going to make a comeback as a major school of literary and social criticism. "Play," after all, is one of the few values that has remained intact across both New Criticism and postmodernism (although I've always found that postmodernism plays lip service to play, favoring narrow identity politics). Huizinga's thesis is that play and play-forms both predate and comprise human culture. This is a more complicated assertion than it may first appear: many aspects of culture that we consider play actually do not meet Huizinga's formal definition (notably, professional sports) whereas traces of actual play, properly rooted in serious and extra-rational ritual, is often hidden.
I'd like to reread this book someday when I have a more firm grounding in Classics and 18th century philosophy--probably not until Matrix downloading technology has been perfected--because I feel as if I absorbed only a small fraction of what is offered here. But I am glad that I'd recently read Jane McGonigal's Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World so to better draw connections between Huizinga's theories and the changing conception in contemporary life of what constitutes play. A major problem I had with the McGonigal book--the fact that she ignores the economic dimension of how video games are consumed--finds complementary criticism here where Huizinga rigorously defines the circumstances under which "play" can occur in a number of contexts.
His approach is highly philological, but even without knowledge of ancient Greek (which, don't get me wrong, would have helped), I still found very interesting Huizinga's instances of how the play-element is embedded in language itself, from Greek to contemporary Dutch (his own language) and English (whose word "fun" Huizinga claims has no perfect analogue in any living language). I'm going to be looking for post-war criticism of Huizinga's ideas; play-theory (not to be confused with game theory, also interesting, but better aligned with economy-centered ideologies) seems to be one of the most constructive lines of cultural inquiry I've been acquainted with in a while.
I'd like to reread this book someday when I have a more firm grounding in Classics and 18th century philosophy--probably not until Matrix downloading technology has been perfected--because I feel as if I absorbed only a small fraction of what is offered here. But I am glad that I'd recently read Jane McGonigal's Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World so to better draw connections between Huizinga's theories and the changing conception in contemporary life of what constitutes play. A major problem I had with the McGonigal book--the fact that she ignores the economic dimension of how video games are consumed--finds complementary criticism here where Huizinga rigorously defines the circumstances under which "play" can occur in a number of contexts.
His approach is highly philological, but even without knowledge of ancient Greek (which, don't get me wrong, would have helped), I still found very interesting Huizinga's instances of how the play-element is embedded in language itself, from Greek to contemporary Dutch (his own language) and English (whose word "fun" Huizinga claims has no perfect analogue in any living language). I'm going to be looking for post-war criticism of Huizinga's ideas; play-theory (not to be confused with game theory, also interesting, but better aligned with economy-centered ideologies) seems to be one of the most constructive lines of cultural inquiry I've been acquainted with in a while.
February 21, 2021
Oyun kavramı üzerine kapsamlı ve çok yönlü bir inceleme arıyorsanız kesinlikle ana kaynak olarak tavsiye ederim. Huizinga; spordan, modaya, hukuktan, edebiyata birçok farklı alanda oyunun kültür üzerindeki etkisini başarılı bir şekilde ifade etmiş. "Her şey oyundan ibaret" gibi bir mantıkla yaklaşmaktan kaçınmış. Onun yerine kelime ve eylem bazlı oyunun toplumlarda ortaya çıkışı ve ilerleyişi üzerinde durmuş. Kitaptaki tek yorucu nokta yazarın etimolojik anlamların üzerinde fazla durması ve nadiren konunun bağlamından uzaklaşması. Buna rağmen genel olarak başarılı bir anlatım ve sade bir çeviri söz konusu. İyi okumalar.
October 9, 2018
"İnsan düşüncesi zihnin bütün hazinelerine egemen olduğunda ve yeteneklerinin tüm görkemini hissettiğinde bile bütün ciddi akıl yürütmelerin dibinde hala problemli bir tortu kalır.
Kesin bir yargının ilanı, kişisel bilinç tarafından tamamen ikna edici olarak kabul edilemez.
Yargının sendelediği bu noktada mutlak ciddiyet duygusu yok olur.
Belki de bu durumda, bin yıllık her şey boşuna sözü yerine her şey oyun sözü kendini dayatır ve bu yeni sözün vurgusu daha olumlu olur..." (Johan Huizina)
İnsanoğlu kendi yaşamsal varoluşunu anlamlandırabilmek adına, binlerce yıldır tüm silahlarıyla saldırıyor evrenin bilinmezliğine.. Işığın tayfıyla ilkin yedi ve daha sonra da kendi içinde milyarlarca renge bölünen çok çeşitlilik, beraberinde anlamlandırma çabalarını da çeşitliyor.. Zihnini kullanan materyalistler, sezgisel akarlara kapılırıverip, denizin masalını yazanlar, ya da hali hazırdaki bu masallara inananlar... İnsanın bir kaşif olduğunu, hem kendisini hem de olup biteni keşfedebileceğini düşünenler.. Ve ne olup bittiğinin farkında bile olmayan medeniyet tutsakları...
Biten yiten herşeye rağmen düşümde düşünüyorum da, hepimiz öyle ya da böyle aynı oyun'un içerisindeyiz... Mızıkçılığın lüzumu yok...
Misal sen. Orda öylece durmaktan sıkılmadın mı? Haydi pabucu yarım çık dışarıya oynayalım... "
Kesin bir yargının ilanı, kişisel bilinç tarafından tamamen ikna edici olarak kabul edilemez.
Yargının sendelediği bu noktada mutlak ciddiyet duygusu yok olur.
Belki de bu durumda, bin yıllık her şey boşuna sözü yerine her şey oyun sözü kendini dayatır ve bu yeni sözün vurgusu daha olumlu olur..." (Johan Huizina)
İnsanoğlu kendi yaşamsal varoluşunu anlamlandırabilmek adına, binlerce yıldır tüm silahlarıyla saldırıyor evrenin bilinmezliğine.. Işığın tayfıyla ilkin yedi ve daha sonra da kendi içinde milyarlarca renge bölünen çok çeşitlilik, beraberinde anlamlandırma çabalarını da çeşitliyor.. Zihnini kullanan materyalistler, sezgisel akarlara kapılırıverip, denizin masalını yazanlar, ya da hali hazırdaki bu masallara inananlar... İnsanın bir kaşif olduğunu, hem kendisini hem de olup biteni keşfedebileceğini düşünenler.. Ve ne olup bittiğinin farkında bile olmayan medeniyet tutsakları...
Biten yiten herşeye rağmen düşümde düşünüyorum da, hepimiz öyle ya da böyle aynı oyun'un içerisindeyiz... Mızıkçılığın lüzumu yok...
Misal sen. Orda öylece durmaktan sıkılmadın mı? Haydi pabucu yarım çık dışarıya oynayalım... "
March 2, 2017
It's a great read. I must say it helps a lot if you have at least basic knowledge of cultural history - history of philosophy (mainly Ancient Greek), religion, history of anthropology (Boas, Malinowski, Maus), literature -, and history in general, also knowledge of Latin and Ancient Greek, as well as German and actually any other language you might know. It's easier and more engaging to read if you have some interest in philology, as the approach is highly philological. Having said that, I do still encourage anyone interested in the topic of games and play to read it, because, although the aforementioned is something that aids in the process of understanding, the basic ideas are explained well enough for anybody willing to understand. And, although I would say that at some points the idea of play wasn't as compelling and seeing it in almost every sphere of culture seemed a bit of a stretch, I was surprised to see play where I definitely did not expect it.
February 2, 2017
Menudo tostón. Me sabe mal puntuarlo tan bajo porque creo que su valor como estudio antropológico es altísimo, y estoy muy de acuerdo con lo que propone, pero... la mayoría del libro es una enumeración insufrible de la presencia del juego en gran cantidad de épocas y culturas; por una parte necesario para respaldar sus argumentos, por otra suficiente como para hacer que mi experiencia leyéndolo haya sido un calvario.
A no ser que tu interés sea antropológico, recomiendo ahorrar tiempo y leer un análisis resumido del mensaje del libro antes que someterse al carrusel de referencias históricas.
A no ser que tu interés sea antropológico, recomiendo ahorrar tiempo y leer un análisis resumido del mensaje del libro antes que someterse al carrusel de referencias históricas.
August 18, 2020
Finally, I am finished. A long and in many ways difficult read but worth it and it made me think. There are issues, specifically that the translation (the book was written on German originally and, it would appear, translated by a historian). But it has a lot of interesting ideas and interestingly enough an comment in the last chapter that is very germane to world politics today.
A very worthwhile read.
A very worthwhile read.
December 9, 2019
"[In Ethiopia] even under Italian rule, litigation still continued to be a passion and a sport that delighted the natives. According to an English newspaper, a judge received a visit from a man who had lost his case on the previous day, but now said contentedly: 'I had a very bad lawyer, you know, all the same I'm glad to have had a good run for my money!'"
December 14, 2019
Huizinga'dan derin birikimini dolu dolu yansıttığı bir eser daha... "Oyun" kavramının insan kültürü üzerinde derin etkileri olduğu konusundaki argümanını etimoloji, antik çağlar, sonraki çağlar ve günümüz üzerinden yorumlarla ele alıyor.
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