PLAY
AS SYMBOL OF THE WORLD.
EUGEN FINKbo eBooks
Play and Philosophy {1966}
SINCE ANTIQUITY, since there was philosophy, the meaning and status of
human play have formed an unsettling and confusing problem for thought. And
at the same time it is precisely the unquestionability, the elated cheerfulness of
play, its blessed repose in itself, that which is unproblematic in the performance
of play, which has posed question after question to conceptual thought. How is it
possible to live for a time as though there were no looming darkness around us,
as though there were not the night of oblivion in which what is known to us is
only a small island, a wretched isle where we know our way around to some
extent and nevertheless actually figure nothing out and realize nothing until the
end—how is it possible to live as though there were not the burdensome toil of
labor that is imperative and compelled by necessity, as though there were not the
frightful struggle for dominance among human beings, not the vanity of the
loving heart and not the shadow of death over all human things? Play is
obviously the most extreme counterpart to everything “serious.” to all purposive
activity that is planned, is related to the future, and has foresight: it is a cheerful
exuberance that takes life lightly and withdraws from every care and
responsibility, and more than anything from the strict conceptual sobriety of
philosophy. In the gloom of our life's setting, human play appears as an
illuminated scene, as a transfigured and transfiguring intermezzo, as an actionthat needs no motive and does not look ahead to an end, as an activity that is
self-sufficient and lives out its impulses unhindered. In contrast, philosophy is
perhaps the most acute form of the “unhappy consciousness.” the persistent
mistrust of everything that exists—even of its own self, a despairing doubt
[verzweyfeltes Zweyfeln] about the “given.” about what is accepted and
traditional. the destruction of the rootedness of existence and indeed by means of
an ice-cold conceptuality bereft of images and hostile to the senses, and in the
medium of an unceasing, abstract reflection.
This is the usual way of portraying the antipodean relationship between
“play” and “philosophy.” assessing it as an opposed relationship between
“immediacy” and “reflective mediation.” However, it should perplex us that
supposedly simple and immediate play goes around confidently with a broken,
fragmented “understanding of Being”—and that, on the other hand, philosophy
that problematizes strives for distinct clarity in the knowledge of beings. The
player's existentiell immediacy moves pleasurably in the labyrinth of Being and
appearance—the thinker’s existentiell fragmentation attempts to force its way
through everything apparent to the true essence. Philosophy wants to disenchant,
to reveal, to unveil, wants to tear things from concealment into the light of
reason, does not want the beautiful for its own sake but at best as a prefiguring
trace of the true. It scorns the charm of veiling. does not dread the unmasking of
the most revered secrets; it wants only sober clear-sightedness into that which
truly is. That implics much more than a psychological typological difference
between player and thinker—the opposition of antipodes lies in the character of
‘the world: in it Being and appearance are unceasingly blended, “essence” and‘Books
“manifestation” are distinguished, in it things have surface and depth, in it
nature conceals itself and opens itself up, in it the emergence and demise of all
beings occur. Playing and thinking are two opposed relations to the world
exhibited by the human who has an understanding of Being. The one: swinging
into the round dance of worlded things, enjoying the polysemy of beings in the
colorful twilight, where essence becomes surface and appearance becomes the
core, where the “ruddy complexion of things” enchants and dons the mask. The
other: the reduction of the colorful and manifold phenomena to the outline of
what is essential, the conceptual insight into the structure of things, dismissal of
the contingent, the working out of the architecture of the universe. If {thought}
nevertheless strives passionately for “essence.” breaks and shatters concealments
in order to advance toward what is genuinely and truly actual, then it has as its
path precisely the appearances that it denies, the trumpery of what is without
essence, which it wants to set to the side; it is fettered to that which it negates.
What is suffused with appearance, whether it be the appearance of illusion, of
error, of hasty, all-too-human opinion, or whether it be the appearance of things
themselves, their external, veiling surfaces or their will-o’-the-wisp sheen of the
beautiful, becomes productive irritation for thinking, which relates itself
negatively to that wherein human play has its joys. Play and philosophy have
more in common with each other than the usual demarcations suppose: they
refer in their immanent understanding of Being to the same appearing and
manifesting of beings in the world, even if, respectively, in different, indeed,
converse ways—they are antipodes on the same globe.1
After this general preliminary explanation of the peculiar oppositional
relationship between play and philosophy, we will now attempt a philosophizing
view of the phenomenon of play. Everyone is familiar with play: it is universally
well known as something that occurs in the human world. Here, too, Hegel’s
dictum holds, that what is familiar [das Bekannte] is not on that account already
understood [das Erkannte]. What is completely trusted in and self-evident often
most tenaciously eludes the reach of the concept. Everyone is familiar with play
from their own life, has had experiences with and of it, is familiar with the
relationship of play among fellows, is familiar with numerous forms that play
takes, is familiar with public games, the spectacles of the masses resembling the
ancient circus, games of diversion, games of sport, competitions, the games of
children and the somewhat more labored, ponderous and uptight games of
adults. Everyone is familiar with elements of play in almost all realms of culture
Homo ludens is not fenced off from homo faber and homo politicus; there are
half-concealed elements of play in the field of work and of politics, enticing and
tempting kinds of play in the interaction of the sexes. Play is a dimension of
existence that is intertwined with all the other fields of life, that determines
interpersonal communities as much as cult, love, work, and ruling do. We are all
conversant with the fundamental possibility of playing. even if we are not
playing at present or are of the opinion that we have already left behind the
phase of life for play. Everyone is familiar with countless situations of play in
the private, familial, and public realms. Play activities are found in abundance
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time and again, are everyday events and occurrences in the human world. Play is
alien to no human being: everyone is familiar with it from the testimony of their
own life. Yet the everyday familiarity often hinders a deeper, more pressing
question conceming the essence, concerning the ontological sense and status of
play, and entirely prevents a question as to whether and how the human
understanding of Being is altogether determined and marked by human
playfulness [Spielereum]. An everyday interpretation of human play for the most
part corresponds to the everyday familiarity with it. This tends to exclude play
as much as possible from the essential core of human existence. to de-
essentialize it, to conceive it as a merely “marginal phenomenon,” to take the
weight of its genuine significance from it. To be sure, one sees how common
play is, human beings’ ardent interest in play, the intensity with which they
pursue it, the increasing appreciation of play in connection with the problem of
free time in a technologized society. The aspect of play that thereby
predominates above all is “recovery,” relaxation, pastime, and cheerful idleness,
a refreshing pause that interrupts the workday or is an activity for holidays.
Wherever play is interpreted exclusively from an opposition to work or to the
serious carrying out of life in general, we have the shallowest yet still
predominant, in an everyday sense, interpretation of play before us. Play is now
principally taken to be a complementary phenomenon, an ingredient, a
supplement for a lifestyle determined by serious business. That implies that play
is not grasped in its very own positivity: it is misinterpreted as an interlude[Zwischenspiel] between the serious activities of life, misinterpreted as a
“pause,” as a way of filling up free time.’
In Plato, who established and founded Western metaphysics, we find a
peculiarly varied, colorful relation of thought to play—of philosophy to poetry,
of the truth of what genuinely is to sensuous appearance in the radiance of the
beautiful. His “critique of the poets” in the Republic, that great text on the state,
is of an incisive, unsurpassed sharpness. A connection between being beautiful
and being true, between kalon and alathes, presides over his thoughts on the
ascent of the soul from the cave's twilight of our earthly sojourn into the ideas’
realm of light, above all in the Phaedbus and in the Symposium. In the work of
his later years, the Nomoi, the “Laws,” Plato constructs the second-best state by
way of a meditation on play. Play is elevated to a principle that structures the
state. The polis is ordered into three ranks, no longer into the static classes of
worker, warrior, and philosopher-king as in the Republic, but rather into degrees
of seniority. The difference in the stages of life is seen in a tension, different in
each stage, between a natural instinctual force and rational insight. As children
relate to their parents and legitimate teachers, so too do human beings in general
relate to the gods. The human race is subject to divine discipline; the means of
discipline, whereby the gods educate and train human beings, is the choral round
dance. The festivals, which are celebrated for the gods and are dedicated to
them, are not merely interruptions of everyday pursuits—the gods themselves
have established them in order to again and again keep human beings once more
under divine discipline. Thus Plato places the work of education and the» eBooks
structure of the state under the guidance and blessing of the gods. Above all, the
guests in the divine festivals are the Muses, Apollo, and Dionysus, and thus the
choral round dance is ordered into three divisions: the chorus of youth under the
guidance of the Muses, the chorus of adults who are at the peak of life under the
leadership of Apollo, and the chorus of the elderly under the banner of
Dionysus, Rhythm is moderately ordered movement, is dance. Harmony is
moderately ordered voice, is song. Dance and song constitute the choral round
dance. The human being’s sense for shythm and hermony is a gift of the gods.
Thus they nusture us. When youths excitedly band together to play in a round
dance, they do not then know what it is in this at bottom that delights them.
They do not understand rhythm and harmony as a numeric relation; they do not
know that in all the joys of play the gods already draw them in the direction of
true insight. The beautiful in its true mathematical nature is still opaque to them.
Yet he who organizes such a musical chorus for youth must have an
understanding of how the true is heralded in the beautiful, how philosophy is
already prefigured in play. The task of a lawgiver organizing the state consists in
allowing the song of praise of right living to sound in all the choruses of the
polis—for the sake of playful inculcation into what is right. The youth chorus of
the Muses and then the Apollonian chorus, too, sing the canticle of virtue, and
by means of this continual bringing to presence, their existence is formed into a
comrespondence to true humanity that is, to be sure, not discemed by them and
yet ig felt. In the youth and in those who are at the peak of their powers the fire
of life blazes up high, they are filled with the Dionysian, the surge of enthusiasm
carries them high. Hence they need the constraint of musical and Apollonianrestriction. The elderly, however, who are matured by long experience, already
proceed along the declining paths of life. It is an irremediable tragedy of human
existence that insight and passion, reason and the primordiality of life do not
coincide, but are rather related in such a way that they are opposed. The chorus
of understanding, yet weary elderly men is supposed to sing the most proper
enchanting song of virtue, fuelled by their apportioned wine, and thus attain the
highest condition: cool wisdom and playful-cheerful delight in life in one, as the
fitting reconciliation of desire and insight, of hedoné and phrondsis. In this
context, Plato gives an odd designation for the human being—from the
perspective of play, he calls the human being paignion theou, plaything of the
god. The human being, the free, creative player, is thereby humbled, pressed
down into a marionette, degraded by the philosopher's “evil eye” into a thing
that is moved about—or is there a deeper sense in the human being as a
plaything of the gods? Does divinity, least in need of all things that are to be
attained by work and struggle, need the human freedom of play—like a higher”
plaything, as it were. in order to dream its dreams, to reach beyond into the
domain of fantastical possibilities and enchanting silhouettes that present a
nothing in Being and a Being in nothing—the divinity that is omniscient reason
and sees through everything that exists’ all the way down to the bottom and
knows no deception?
With this open question, in which an explosive problematic lies,’ we
conclude our train of thought on play and philosophy.