play

play is a difficult concept to get a grip on, and randolph feezell has a paper arguing for a pluralistic conception of play as

  • behavior or activity,
  • motive, attitude, or state of mind,
  • form or structure
  • meaningful experience (see meaningnessmeaningness
    meaningness is a book describing the eponymous quality of having meaning as well as the study of this quality and a stance that acknowledges it.

    when we talk about the meaning of X, we are emp...
    )
  • ontologically distinctive phenomenon

I like to think play is, as Brian Upton says, free movement within a systemsystem
a system is a set of objects connected in space or time.

for deleuze and guattari, systems always have vectors of deterritorialization.
of constraints. A gamegame
a game is an institution for play. $G = (S, {P_i}{i=1}^{n}, {\Omega{P_i}}_{i=1}^{n})$
is the clearest instantiation of play, one that can be analyzed and understood more rationally. Thinkers of play (and games) include

  • Huizinga, who wrote Homo ludens (1938)
  • Roger Caillois, who wrote Man, Play and Games (1958). He used the taxonomy of agon, alea, mimicry, ilinx. He points out that play is free and not obligatory, separate from the real world, governed by rules, with outcomes uncertain in advance.
  • kantkant
    immanuel kant (1724 - 1804) was a philosopher from prussia. he was christian. he was inspired by hume. he wrote critique of pure reason, Critique of Practical Reason.

    For Kant, there i...
    , propagated into literature by Romantics like Coleridge
  • friedrich schillerfriedrich schiller
    friedrich schiller (1759-1805) developed the idea of spieltrieb, or play drive, inspired by kant's views on play.

    TODO
  • gadamer Private or Broken Links
    The page you're looking for is either not available or private!
  • nietzschenietzsche
    friedrich wilhelm nietzsche (1844-1900) was a philosopher from germany. in 1869, at the age of 24, he became a professor. his first book was The Birth of Tragedy, published in 1872, about greek tra...
    – the kosmos is in aesthetic play. The Birth of Tragedy, Thus Spake Zarathustra.
  • Oscar wildewilde
    Oscar Wilde was a poet, playwright, and novelist, trained in the classics.
  • Herbert spencer Private or Broken Links
    The page you're looking for is either not available or private!
    in Principles of Psychology
  • wittgensteinwittgenstein
    ludwig wittgenstein (1889-1951) was a philosopher, one of the most influential of the 20th century. his work pertained to language among other things.

    wittgenstein was born to a wealthy vienes...
  • Vladimir nabokovnabokov
    vladimir nabokov (1899 - 1977) was a writer of novels and poems. he grew up in russia speaking russian, french, and english. he went to cambridge.

    play was an important part of...
  • Lewis carrollcarroll
    lewis carroll was a mathematician, logician, and writer from england. educated at oxford, he wrote the alice books, alice in wonderland and through the looking-glass.