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The Role of Play in the Philosophy of Plato

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Gavin Ardley
Gavin Ardley
Affiliation:
University of Auckland, New Zealand
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Extract

We are little accustomed in modern times to think of philosophy in terms of play. With few exceptions, philosophers in the last few centuries are conspicuous for their gravity. If a lighter touch enters their writings it is rather as a douceur with which to punctuate argument. To charge a philosopher with playing games is to condemn his activity as trivial and futile.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 42 , Issue 161 , July 1967 , pp. 226 - 244
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1967

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References

page 228 note 1 Huizinga, Johan, Homo Ludens (English translation, London 1949), p. 151.Google Scholar

page 228 note 2 I have contended elsewhere that the birth of the modern exact sciences in the seventeenth century came about not so much by any intellectual tour de force, as by virtue of a few people learning to play a new kind of game. They had little conscious notion of what they were about. And the philosophers from Descartes onwards, with few exceptions, because of over-seriousness failed to grasp the situation; instead of gaining insight into the exact sciences, as they purported to do, the philosophers produced nonsensical pseudo-metaphysics. An infusion of paidia would seem to be requisite for any genuine philosophic discourse on the exact sciences.

page 232 note 1 Citations from Plato are taken, sometimes with emendation, from the standard English versions: Jowett, Lindsay, Taylor, ect.

page 233 note 1 This passage from the Republic was chosen by Søren Kierkegaard as the motto for his Concept of Irony.

page 234 note 1 Rahner, Hugo in his Man at Play (English translation, London 1964) provides an admirable sketch of the theology of play.Google Scholar