Homo Ludens
* Book: Homo Ludens. A Study of the Play Element in Culture. Johan Huizinga.
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Description
"In Homo Ludens, the classic evaluation of play that has become a "must-read" for those in game design, Dutch philosopher Johan Huizinga defines play as the central activity in flourishing societies. Like civilization, play requires structure and participants willing to create within limits. Starting with Plato, Huizinga traces the contribution of Homo Ludens, or "Man the player" through Medieval Times, the Renaissance, and into our modern civilization. Huizinga defines play against a rich theoretical background, using cross-cultural examples from the humanities, business, and politics. Homo Ludens defines play for generations to come.
"A happier age than ours once made bold to call our species by the name of Homo Sapiens. In the course of time we have come to realize that we are not so reasonable after all as the Eighteenth Century with its worship of reason and naive optimism, though us; "hence moder fashion inclines to designate our species asHomo Faber Man the Maker. But though faber may not be quite so dubious as sapiens it is, as a name specific of the human being, even less appropriate, seeing that many animals too are makers. There is a third function, howver, applicable to both human and animal life, and just as important as reasoning and making--namely, playing. it seems to me that next to Homo Faber, and perhaps on the same level as Homo Sapiens, Homo Ludens, Man the Player, deserves a place in our nomenclature. "--from the Foreward, by Johan Huizinga
(https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/233221.Homo_Ludens?f)
Discussion
Achtman:
"In Homo Ludens, Huizinga discusses the play-element in culture across many spheres of human activity including: law, language, war, poetry, philosophy, and art. He does not explore the play-element in economics, though he suggests the possibility: “Now in myth and ritual the great instinctive forces of civilized life have their origin: law and order, commerce and profit, craft and art, poetry, wisdom, and science. All are rooted in the primeval soil of play.”2 First of all, what does Huizinga mean by play? His most succinct articulation is this: “Play is a voluntary activity or occupation executed within certain fixed limits of time and place, according to rules freely accepted but absolutely binding, having its aim in itself and accompanied by a feeling of tension, joy and the consciousness that it is ‘different’ from ‘ordinary life.’”
These are the attributes of play and without any explicit connection to economics, Huizinga identifies that competition as a fundamental element of play, too. He says, “To all appearances the play-sphere proper and the agonistic sphere are completely merged in the latter word” and, “Who can deny that in all these concepts – challenge, danger, contest, etc. we are very close to the play-sphere?”\ In order to have a hospitality in our imaginations for Huizinga’s anthropological insights, we need only ask ourselves: Is this the case? Is he telling the truth about the nature of human activities? A desire to be the first, to win, to “boast of his success to others,” a “competitive ‘instinct’ [that is] not in the first place a desire for power or to dominate…” He says, “The primary thing is to excel others, to be the first and to be honoured for that.” Is this true?” If we are honest with ourselves, I think he is accurate. We tend to overstate reason and understate instinct. And yet we are somewhere i nbetween. We are prideful, concerned with honour, in pursuit of our own interests, and yet; we defer to those who are more praiseworthy, we recognize the merited dignity of others, and we cooperate with others to realize their interests along with those proper to ourselves.
Huizinga analyzes the “development of culture in play-like contest.”8 With examples, he illustrates that, “art and technique, dexterity and creative power were, for archaic man, united in the eternal desire to excel and win.”9 The competitive impulse in persons is not fundamentally utilitarian or productive. In many cases, whatever is most useful and productive is discovered by accident. That is, the usefulness and productivity in ways of doing things follows from the experimental discovery processes of “contests, performances, exhibitions, challenges, preenings, struttings, [and] showing off…”10 My main point here is to say that competition is a fundamental human experience across various contexts. Far from being uniquely expressed in economic life, the agonistic element is a much more primordial and essential aspect of human existence that is productive of a flourishing culture, not only of a prosperous economy. By broadening our understanding of the role of competition in human affairs, we can appreciate the civilizing function that it serves, because competition correctly expresses the tension of relationship in which persons live and act. And, etymologically, “competition” has a double sense meaning both to “struggle against” and to “cooperate with.”
Glory and superiority, honour, excellence, merit, treating others, parading wealth… these may each sound like matters of pride – and they are. To disregard pride in human affairs constitutes a non-recognition of reality and is simply a different form of pride leading to conceited and utopian visions. “Of course intelligent people overvalue intelligence,” Hayek points out.17 And of course we’d like to minimize the extent to which we think ourselves competitive, prideful, and self-interested. But the competitive spirit is, as Huizinga puts it, also a “play-sense, […] a spirit that strives for honour, dignity, superiority, and beauty.”
Huizinga says that “winning means showing oneself superior in the outcome of a game.”19 I think that “in the outcome of the game” is the most important part of that sentence. This demonstrates the set-apartness of the consideration from ordinary life, outside the context of the game. A game can change the dignity of persons within the game, but not affect their unalterable human dignity which has no reference to performance, sport, or contest but is intrinsic. In the game itself – whether it is war, games, sports, or economics – there is something at stake. That “there is something ‘at stake’ – the essence of play is contained in that phrase,”20 Huizinga argues. But the “something at stake” is, in an important sense, beside the point. The outcome is superfluous to the good and proper execution of the play itself. And this is how it is in all human activities; our evaluations of excellence involve considerations and evaluations beyond utility. We value honour, dignity, grace, style, ingenuity, novelty – really there are competitive exercises toward excellence in all its forms by anyone who tries to do something well and, within each activity, there are standards for what this means. My purpose here is not to say anything conclusive or definitive, but merely to broaden the horizon for thinking about the role of competition in human affairs, so that it is not recognized only within the economic context, but much more broadly as a humanizing orientation toward numerous kinds of excellence.
An analysis of competition in its manifold expressions. He shows the ways in which humans compete for reasons beyond necessity or utility. “Like all other forms of play,” he says, “the contest is largely devoid of purpose.”21 Humans compete for the fun of the competition. Huizinga notes the expression: “It is not the marbles that matter, but the game.”22 Because there are many circumstances in which humans compete where the results – prizes, prices, or praise (which are all derivatives of the same root) are superfluous to the play itself, this shows that we will often subordinate outcomes to the proper execution of the play itself. To the extent that economics is a the study of human action, let’s consider: if social rivalry, in broader culture, transcends utilitarian purposes and is often subordinated to religious and moral ideas about justice, fairness, and excellence, beauty, etc. then perhaps the same can be true about economics – that it is not strictly a matter or necessity, utility, or productivity, but that, as long as humans are the participants, there is, as Huizinga puts it, “… a sense of passion, chance, daring, as regards both economic activity and play activity.”
After competition, the second main element that I identity in Huizinga’s analysis of playfulness that relates to Hayek’s analysis of the extended market order is unpredictability. In tracing the origins of contest in culture, Huizinga says: “Turning our eyes from the administration of justice to that which obtains in less advanced phases of culture, we see that the idea of right and wrong, the ethical-judicial conception, comes to be overshadowed by the idea of winning and losing, that is, the purely agonistic conception” and, importantly: “We still acknowledge the incontrovertibility of such decisions when, failing to make up our minds, we resort to drawing lots or ‘tossing up.’”
There is a need for contest in order to determine merit. And the outcome of the contest is decisive. The decisiveness through the play is then respected. At the heart of play is an “uncertainty, chanciness, and a striving to decide the issue and so to end it.”