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Time, Clocks, and Astrology
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Continue reading →: Time, Clocks, and AstrologyThe western world assumes an inevitable and inescapable “end of the world” due to the scientific field of thermodynamics. This assumption comes from the notorious “second law,” that entropy increases because energy dissipates – essentially, heat and cold balance out and once the balance is achieved, there is no longer…
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Ontological Play: Autotelicity made Manifest
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Continue reading →: Ontological Play: Autotelicity made ManifestRandolph Feezell is a kindred spirit on play theories and philosophy. Feezell (2013) offers an elegant summation and critique of play theories in “A Pluralist Conception of Play,” an essay I’ve practically circumscribed myself in more long-winded fashion. Returning to Feezell’s summary of Stuart Brown and Christopher Vaughn’s (2009) popularized…
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Gadamer’s ‘Ethics of Play’ (edited)
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Continue reading →: Gadamer’s ‘Ethics of Play’ (edited)Despite ample critics of Hans-Georg Gadamer to the contrary, Monica Vilhauer offers a creative retrieval of Gadamer’s use of play in Truth & Method for philosophy. Vilhauer argues in Gadamer’s Ethics of Play his references to ‘play’ prove relevant for honoring, rather than presumably belittling, difference, tension, and plurality. Nearly unanimous criticism argued Gadamer’s…
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‘Play as Life’: Master players wanted.
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Continue reading →: ‘Play as Life’: Master players wanted.Promising perspectives are emerging from a series of collected essays on play entitled The Philosophy of Play(2013) and The Philosophy of Play as Life (2018). While much contemporary scholarship moves beyond conceptualizing play and attempting a fair (reasonably universal) articulation of its ‘definition,’ revisiting these early angles can prove fruitful, if only to…
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Continue reading →: Play: A Diagnostic Tool for an Exposé of PatriarchyPhilosophers Slavoj Žižek (The Specre of Ideology) and Fredric Jameson are attributed with the startling harrowing observation relevant to the contemporary world: it is easier to imagine an apocalyptic end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism. Fredric Jameson reframed this, proving applicable to the…
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A Liturgy of Play: Performing Society into Reality
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Continue reading →: A Liturgy of Play: Performing Society into RealityPicking up where we left off with Pieper and the post-war years… Pieper made the compelling suggestion for a universalize-able theology by the end of his book, in part 2, which focused on the parallels between the poet and philosopher. While drawing upon Christian theologians, such as Aquinas, and demonstrating…
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Continue reading →: Leisure: The Basis of Culture …and the pathway to a playful philosophy?Some final thoughts on Pieper’s short but dense work on Leisure… He moves from a Part One focused on revealing the gaping hole left in society by our detrimental exclusivism against leisure / play to a second part which focuses on the parallels between the poet and philosopher, with ramifications…
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Continue reading →: Conversations and Possibilities: Plato, Philosophy, and Pop CultureIn my readings on play, leisure, and childhood toward a cultivation of the childlike disposition for philosophy, I was struck by two particular references to Platonic dialogues. One appeared in Alison Gopnik’s The Philosophical Baby in which Gopnik rhetorically questions why we do not see more value in the role…
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Continue reading →: Play: Leisure and Gifts in Pieper’s Basis of Culture and Disney’s “Encanto”Josef Pieper’s (1952) Leisure: The Basis of Culture is quick to reveal we don’t talk about play or leisure because we’ve been so engrossed in “total labour” and “total work” in the post-war years of trauma and societal rebuilding. (20, 21) This is just one of many striking similarities between…
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Play, Politics, and Pluralism: Reflections on Carse, con’t.
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Continue reading →: Play, Politics, and Pluralism: Reflections on Carse, con’t.In the prior post on preliminary reflections on Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play & Possibility, we noted a distinction between “having” politics and “being” political, which presents playful possibilities for our contemporary understanding of politics. “To have a politics,” is akin to finite play,…
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Play and Games in Society and Culture
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Continue reading →: Play and Games in Society and CulturePreliminary Reflections on James P. Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility Carse presents compelling definitions of, and distinctions between, play, games, politics, society, and culture. Collectively, these concepts facilitate an embrace of play as a serious, yet open-ended, endeavor. A vision of life…
Hello,
I’m Eli, a play enthusiast
Heraclitus once equated the play of a child with the creative dynamism of the cosmos, or time playing at drafts: “Lifetime (aion) is a child at play, moving pieces in a game, the kingship belongs to the child (frag. 52).” But Heraclitus, also, equated war with the “prerational” chaos of creative forces, anthropomorphizing the dynamism as “the father,” thus ‘rationalizing’ and re-personalizing the impartiality of the cosmos. The equation of war (given its apparent necessity for survival) with the Greek arete, or virtue, began the usurpation of the play-concept to war; arete transliterated into “prowess in battle,” war “the father” became endemic as the patriarchal standard, and the sense of an impartial play of forces became the huge power game of agon. [See M.I. Spariosu, Dionysus Reborn, 13 for more on this antiquated transition of society’s values.]
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Pre(facing) Plato with Play 