Chapter 5 - Aristotle’s Demotion of Play

Summary

Considers Aristotle’s rejection of play in regard to his conception of the best life, or what he calls eudaimonia. Although the aesthetic questions are the main focus of this book, it must first be understood why Aristotle demotes play in the way he does, and he discusses these reasons elsewhere in his philosophy, especially in the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics. Remarkably, Aristotle, like Plato and others before him, treats the pleasures of play as self-emanating and intrinsically pleasurable. But, rather than conceiving this intrinsic pleasure as an overflow of pleasurable feeling, he reformulates play as a form of “relaxation” (anesis). Crucially, this removes any notion of goal-oriented action for play, and this is his coup de grâce for play, making it ultimately irrelevant for him in matters of real importance.