Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The Fact of Play Entails both Mind, and Freedom But in acknowledging play you acknowledge mind, for whatever else play is, it is not matter [...] Play only becomes possible, thinkable and understandable when an influx of mind breaks down the absolute determinism of the cosmos. The very existence of play continually confirms the supra-logical nature of the human situation. Animals play, so they must be more than mechanical things. We play and know that we play, so we must be more than merely rational beings, for play is irrational (3-4) Main Characteristics of Play 1) FREEDOM - All play is voluntary activity (7); it is freedom (8); Play is superfluous, it is never imposed by physical necessity or moral duty (8) 2) EXTRA-ORDINARY - play is not ordinary life or real life (8); play adorns life (9); play is disinterested, i.e. outside biological processes of nutrition, reproduction, and self-preservation (9) 4) LIMITED - play is characterized by its secluded-ness, its limitedness (9); it involves limitations on time and space (10); play creates order, is order (10) Significance of Play -[Community] Play adorns life, amplifies it and is to that extent a necessity both for the individual--as a life function--and for society by reason of the meaning it contains, its significance, its expressive value, its spiritual and social associations, in short, as a culture function. The expression of it satisfies all kinds of communal ideals (9) -[Ethical] 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 players 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 (11) Spoil-Sports, Cheats -spoil-sport: refusal to acknowledge the game, shatters the play-world (11), apostates, heretics, innovators, prophets, conscientious objectors, etc. [...] outlaw, the revolutionary, the cabbalist (12); may make a new game community -cheat: pretends to play, acknowledges the magic circle, but breaks rules Imagination, Ludic-Function The most we can say of the function that is operative in the process of image-making or imagination is that it is a poetic function; and we define it best of all by calling it a function of play--the ludic function, in fact (25)