Chapter 8 - The Value of Serious Things before and after Death

Summary

To say that a certain play or painting is “serious” (spoudaios) art is often not the same thing as saying that tragedy is more “serious” than comedy. The former is an evaluation made from outside the act of play, the latter describes the goal-oriented or “serious” mode of engagement within the act of play. But what is the connection between these two senses of “serious”? It is argued that there is an unnoticed goal-oriented aspect that persists in the notion of “serious” even when it denotes “important”, “good”, or “of value”—and, further, that this temporal, goal-oriented structure underlies the very notion of value itself. To approach this idea, visions of the Greek afterlife as an eternity of play are considered, such as that of a lost threnos of Pindar, the underworld in Aristophanes’ Frogs, and numerous Greek burials containing board-games, dice, and other such playthings. What is “serious” in premortem life does not remain constant for a timeless, postmortem world. The reason for this is that, when “serious” is used as a term of evaluation, this evaluation is occurring under the assumption of a projected future full of implicit goals.