Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens (1938)

I. Nature and Significance of Play as a Cultural Phenomenon

-topic: play as a significant social function (4) -aim: to “show that genuine, pure play is one of the main bases of civilization” (5) -method: not a search for biological bases or conditions of play, but a primary analysis of the actions and significance of actual, historical play in cultures (4); characterization of play, not rigid definition (7) Play

-is older than culture; it does not presuppose society (1) -correlated to the experience of “fun and enjoyment” (1) -it is a “significant function,” which is to say non-trivial as well as meaningful (1) -involves something that “transcends the immediate needs of life and imparts meaning to the action”; “All play means something”(1) -has a “profoundly aesthetic quality” (2) -“resists all analysis, all logical interpretation” (3) -“in acknowledging play you acknowledge mind, for whatever play is, it is not matter” (3) -“Play lies outside the antithesis of wisdom and folly, and equally outside those of truth and falsehood, good and evil” (6) -is “not susceptible of exact definition either logically, biologically, or aesthetically” (7) -is enchanting, captivating, and is invested with “rhythm and harmony” (10) -“all play has its rules. They determine what ‘holds’ in the temporary world circumscribed by play” (11) -play moves above and below seriousness; it is not opposed to seriousness (18-9)

SUMMARY: Play is “a free activity standing quite consciously outside ‘ordinary’ life as being ‘not serious’, but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no point can be gained by it. It proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner. It promotes the formation of social groupings which tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress their difference from the common world by disguise or other means” (13)

Instinct / [Play] / Mind, Will -play is not reducible to a biological instinct, nor to conscious cognition, not to purpose-driven willing: “If we call the active principle that makes up the essence of play, “instinct,” we explain nothing; if we call it “mind” or “will” we say too much” (1)

The Problems with Explanations of Play

-p.2 top, H lists 13+ scientific attempts to explain play, but they all miss the point and suffer from the same form: play must be explained in terms of biological purposes: “All of these hypotheses have on thing in common: they all start with the assumption that play must serve something which is not play, that it must have some kind of biological purpose” (2) -biological justifications or explanations of play miss the “profoundly aesthetic quality” of play (2) -exacting definitions of play logically, biologically, or even aesthetically always fail (7) -“primitive” forms of play are too close to “pure playfulness” to be analyzed, thus looking to developed, socially manifested “higher forms” of play are the only entry to characterizing play (7)

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 player’s 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)

VI. Playing and Knowing

-agonistic customs of cultures: the riddle as sacred game; civilization bifurcates pure play into play and seriousness

“The riddle ... was originally a sacred game, and as such it cut clean across any possible distinction between play and seriousness” (110) -riddle-solving & philosophy (115)

VIII. Elements of Mythopoesis

-personification, conceptualization: an “innate habit of mind” which may be a “playing of the mind, a mental game”(136); play is primordial “If this innate tendency of the mind, which invests the objects of ordinary life with personality, is in fact rooted in play then we are confronted with a very serious issue. The play attitude must have been present before human culture or human speech existed, hence the ground on which personification and imagination work was a datum form the remotest past onward” (141)

XII. Play-Element in Contemporary Civilization

-decline of play-quality/spirit: 19th/20thC; play is systematized, regimented -“there is now a sporting side to almost every triumph of commerce or technology” (200) -overview of decline of play spirit in sport, economics, art, science, politics, society