Homo Ludens
Encyclopedia
Homo Ludens or "Man the Player" (alternatively, "Playing Man") is a book written in 1938 by Dutch
historian, cultural theorist and professor Johan Huizinga
.
It discusses the importance of the play element of culture and society.
Huizinga uses the term "Play
Theory" within the book to define the conceptual space in which play occurs. Huizinga suggests that play is primary to and a necessary (though not sufficient) condition of the generation of culture.
He writes that he titled the initial lecture the book is based on "The Play Element of Culture". This title was repeatedly corrected to "in" Culture, a revision he objected to. Huizinga explains:
The uncredited Englishr of the Beacon Press
version modified the subtitle of the book to "A Study of the Play-Element In Culture", contradicting Huizinga's stated intention. The translator explains in a footnote in the Foreword, "Logically, of course, Huizinga is correct; but as English prepositions are not governed by logic I have retained the more euphonious ablative in this sub-title." Thus, the translator intends no change in meaning, but essentially thought "in culture" sounded better than "of culture".
The version in print and widely available in English is a translation and synthesis of the original Dutch and the first English translation (done by Huizinga himself), because "a comparison of the two texts shows a number of discrepancies and a marked difference in style" (Translators Note, unnumbered page).
Huizinga begins by making it clear that animals played first.
One of the most significant (human and cultural) aspects of play is that it is fun.
This fun aspect is celebrated by Brian Sutton-Smith in his book The Ambiguity of Play:
Huizinga has much to say about the words for play in different languages. Perhaps the most extraordinary remark concerns the Latin language
. “It is remarkable that ludus, as the general term for play, has not only not passed into the Romance languages but has left hardly any traces there, so far as I can see... We must leave to one side the question whether the disappearance of ludus and ludere is due to phonetic or to semantic causes.”
Of all the possible uses of the word "play" Huizinga specifically mentions the equation of play with, on the one hand, “serious strife”, and on the other, “erotic applications”.
The chapter title uses “play-concept” to describe such words. Other words used with the "play-" prefix are play-function and play-form. The order in which examples are given in natural languages is as follows:
Huizinga does not mean that “play turns into culture”. Rather, he sets play and culture side by side, talks about their “twin union”, but insists that “play is primary”.
can be deduced by comparing practice today with “legal proceedings in archaic society":
This chapter occupies a certain unique position not only in the book but more obviously in Huizinga's own life. The first Dutch version was published in 1938 (before the official outbreak of World War II
). The Beacon Press book is based on the combination of Huizinga's English text and the German text, published in Switzerland 1944. Huizinga died in 1945 (the year the Second World War ended).
The chapter contains some pleasantly surprising remarks:
The riddle-solving and death-penalty motif features strongly in the chapter.
For Huizinga, the “true appellation of the archaic poet is vates
, the possessed, the God-smitten, the raving one”. Of the many examples he gives, one might choose Unferd who appears in Beowulf
.
Mythopoiesis is literally myth-making.
Huizinga has already established an indissoluble bond between play and poetry. Now he recognizes that “the same is true, and in even higher degree, of the bond between play and music”
However, when he turns away from “poetry, music and dancing to the plastic arts” he “finds the connections with play becoming less obvious”. But here Huizinga is in the past. He cites the examples of the “architect, the sculptor, the painter, draughtsman, ceramist, and decorative artist” who in spite of her/his “creative impulse” is ruled by the discipline, “always subjected to the skill and proficiency of the forming hand."
On the other hand, if one turns away from the “making of works of art to the manner in which they are received in the social milieu” then the picture changes completely. It is this social reception, the struggle of the new "-ism" against the old "-ism" which characterises the play.
Huizinga died in 1945. Hence his observations on contemporary civilization in the final chapter of the book date back to the end of the Second World War.
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
historian, cultural theorist and professor Johan Huizinga
Johan Huizinga
Johan Huizinga , was a Dutch historian and one of the founders of modern cultural history.-Life:Born in Groningen as the son of Dirk Huizinga, a professor of physiology, and Jacoba Tonkens, who died two years after his birth, he started out as a student of Indo-Germanic languages, earning his...
.
It discusses the importance of the play element of culture and society.
Huizinga uses the term "Play
Play (activity)
Play is a term employed in ethology and psychology to describe to a range of voluntary, intrinsically motivated activities normally associated with pleasure and enjoyment...
Theory" within the book to define the conceptual space in which play occurs. Huizinga suggests that play is primary to and a necessary (though not sufficient) condition of the generation of culture.
Foreword controversy
Huizinga makes it clear in the foreword of his book that he means the play element of culture, and not the play element in culture.He writes that he titled the initial lecture the book is based on "The Play Element of Culture". This title was repeatedly corrected to "in" Culture, a revision he objected to. Huizinga explains:
- "...it was not my object to define the place of play among all other manifestations of culture, but rather to ascertain how far culture itself bears the character of play." (Foreword, unnumbered page)
The uncredited Englishr of the Beacon Press
Beacon Press
Beacon Press is an American non-profit book publisher. Founded in 1854 by the American Unitarian Association, it is currently a department of the Unitarian Universalist Association.Beacon Press is a member of the Association of American University Presses....
version modified the subtitle of the book to "A Study of the Play-Element In Culture", contradicting Huizinga's stated intention. The translator explains in a footnote in the Foreword, "Logically, of course, Huizinga is correct; but as English prepositions are not governed by logic I have retained the more euphonious ablative in this sub-title." Thus, the translator intends no change in meaning, but essentially thought "in culture" sounded better than "of culture".
The version in print and widely available in English is a translation and synthesis of the original Dutch and the first English translation (done by Huizinga himself), because "a comparison of the two texts shows a number of discrepancies and a marked difference in style" (Translators Note, unnumbered page).
I. Nature and significance of play as a cultural phenomenon
“Play is older than culture, for culture, however inadequately defined, always presupposes human society, and animals have not waited for man to teach them their playing.”
Huizinga begins by making it clear that animals played first.
One of the most significant (human and cultural) aspects of play is that it is fun.
This fun aspect is celebrated by Brian Sutton-Smith in his book The Ambiguity of Play:
“Prime credit in play-theory terms for denying the puritanical and work contentions about play in modern times must go to Huizinga who [...] argues that play is a most fundamental human function and has permeated all cultures from the beginning.”
Characteristics of play
To set the scene of the play that he will unfold gradually, Huizinga identifies 5 characteristics that play must have:- Play is free, is in fact freedom.
- Play is not “ordinary” or “real” life.
- Play is distinct from “ordinary” life both as to locality and duration.
- Play creates order, is order. Play demands order absolute and supreme.
- Play is connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained from it.
II. The play concept as expressed in language
“Word and idea are not born of scientific or logical thinking but of creative language, which means of innumerable languages—for this act of ″conception″ has taken place over and over again.”
Huizinga has much to say about the words for play in different languages. Perhaps the most extraordinary remark concerns the Latin language
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
. “It is remarkable that ludus, as the general term for play, has not only not passed into the Romance languages but has left hardly any traces there, so far as I can see... We must leave to one side the question whether the disappearance of ludus and ludere is due to phonetic or to semantic causes.”
Of all the possible uses of the word "play" Huizinga specifically mentions the equation of play with, on the one hand, “serious strife”, and on the other, “erotic applications”.
Play-category, play-concept, play-function, play-word in selected languages
Huizinga attempts to classify the words used for play in a variety of natural languages.The chapter title uses “play-concept” to describe such words. Other words used with the "play-" prefix are play-function and play-form. The order in which examples are given in natural languages is as follows:
- GreekAncient GreekAncient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
(3) - παιδιά — pertaining to children's games
- ἄδυρμα — associated with the idea of the trifling, the nugatory
- ἀγών — for matches and contests
- SanskritSanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
(4) - krīdati — denoting the play of animals, children, adults
- divyati — gambling, dicing, joking, jesting, ...
- vilāsa — shining, sudden appearance, playing and pursuing an occupation
- līlayati — light, frivolous insignificant sides of playing
- ChineseChinese languageThe Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
(3) - wan — is the most important word covering children's games and much much more
- cheng — denoting anything to do with contests; corresponds exactly to the Greek agon.
- sai — organized contest for a prize
- BlackfootBlackfootThe Blackfoot Confederacy or Niitsítapi is the collective name of three First Nations in Alberta and one Native American tribe in Montana....
(2) - koani — all children's games and surprisingly also in the erotic sense of "dallying"
- kachtsi — organized play
- JapaneseJapanese languageis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
(1) - asobu — is a single, very definite word, for the play function
- Semitic languagesSemitic languagesThe Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 270 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...
- la’ab (a root, cognate with la’at) — play, laughing, mocking
- la’iba (Arabic) — playing in general, making mock of, teasing
- la’ab (Aramaic) — laughing and mocking
- sahaq (Hebrew) — laughing and playing
- LatinLatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
(1) - ludus — from ludere, covers the whole field of play
III. Play and contest as civilizing functions
“The view we take in the following pages is that culture arises in the form of play, that it is played from the very beginning... Social life is endued with supra-biological forms, in the shape of play, which enhances its value.”
Huizinga does not mean that “play turns into culture”. Rather, he sets play and culture side by side, talks about their “twin union”, but insists that “play is primary”.
IV. Play and law
“The judge's wig, however, is more than a mere relic of antiquated professional dress.
Functionally it has close connections with the dancing masks of savages.
It transforms the wearer into another ″being″.
And it is by no means the only very ancient feature which the strong sense of tradition
so peculiar to the British has preserved in law.
The sporting element and the humour so much in evidence in British legal practice
is one of the basic features of law in archaic society.”
Three play-forms in the lawsuit
Huizinga puts forward the idea that there are “three play-forms in the lawsuit" and that these formscan be deduced by comparing practice today with “legal proceedings in archaic society":
- the game of chance
- the contest
- the verbal battle
V. Play and war
“Until recently the ″law of nations″
was generally held to constitute such a
system of limitation, recognizing as it did the ideal of a community
with rights and claims for all, and expressly separating the state of war—by declaring it—from
peace on the one hand and criminal violence on the other. It remained for the theory of
″total war″Total warTotal war is a war in which a belligerent engages in the complete mobilization of fully available resources and population.In the mid-19th century, "total war" was identified by scholars as a separate class of warfare...
to banish war's cultural function and extinguish the last
vestige of the play-element.”
This chapter occupies a certain unique position not only in the book but more obviously in Huizinga's own life. The first Dutch version was published in 1938 (before the official outbreak of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
). The Beacon Press book is based on the combination of Huizinga's English text and the German text, published in Switzerland 1944. Huizinga died in 1945 (the year the Second World War ended).
- One wages war to obtain a decision of holy validity.
- An armed conflict is as much a mode of justice as divination or a legal proceeding.
- War itself might be regarded as a form of divination.
The chapter contains some pleasantly surprising remarks:
- One might call society a game in the formal sense, if one bears in mind that such a game is the
living principle of all civilization. - In the absence of the play-spirit civilization is impossible.
VI. Playing and knowing
“For archaic man, doing and daring are power, but knowing is magical power. For him all particular knowledge
is sacred knowledge—esoteric and wonder-working wisdom, because any knowing is directly related to the
cosmic order itself.”
The riddle-solving and death-penalty motif features strongly in the chapter.
- Greek tradition: the story of the seers Chalcas and Mopsos.
VII. Play and poetry
“Poiesis, in fact, is a play-function. It proceeds within the play-ground of the mind,
in a world of its own which the mind creates for it. There things have a different
physiognomy from the one they wear in ‘ordinary life’, and are bound by ties other
than those of logic and causality.”
For Huizinga, the “true appellation of the archaic poet is vates
Vates
The earliest Latin writers used vātēs to denote "prophets" and soothsayers in general; the word fell into disuse in Latin until it was revived by Virgil...
, the possessed, the God-smitten, the raving one”. Of the many examples he gives, one might choose Unferd who appears in Beowulf
Beowulf
Beowulf , but modern scholars agree in naming it after the hero whose life is its subject." of an Old English heroic epic poem consisting of 3182 alliterative long lines, set in Scandinavia, commonly cited as one of the most important works of Anglo-Saxon literature.It survives in a single...
.
VIII. The elements of mythopoiesis
“As soon as the effect of a metaphor consists in describing things or events in terms of life
and movement, we are on the road to personification. To represent the incorporeal and the inanimate
as a person is the soul of all myth-making and nearly all poetry.”
Mythopoiesis is literally myth-making.
IX. Play-forms in philosophy
“At the centre of the circle we are trying to describe with our idea of play there stands the figure of the Greek sophist. He may be regarded as an extension of the central figure in archaic cultural life who appeared before us successively as the prophetProphetIn religion, a prophet, from the Greek word προφήτης profitis meaning "foreteller", is an individual who is claimed to have been contacted by the supernatural or the divine, and serves as an intermediary with humanity, delivering this newfound knowledge from the supernatural entity to other people...
, medicine-man, seer, thaumaturge and poet and whose best designation is vatesVatesThe earliest Latin writers used vātēs to denote "prophets" and soothsayers in general; the word fell into disuse in Latin until it was revived by Virgil...
.”
X. Play-forms in art
“Wherever there is a catch-word ending in -ism we are hot on the tracks of a play-community.”
Huizinga has already established an indissoluble bond between play and poetry. Now he recognizes that “the same is true, and in even higher degree, of the bond between play and music”
However, when he turns away from “poetry, music and dancing to the plastic arts” he “finds the connections with play becoming less obvious”. But here Huizinga is in the past. He cites the examples of the “architect, the sculptor, the painter, draughtsman, ceramist, and decorative artist” who in spite of her/his “creative impulse” is ruled by the discipline, “always subjected to the skill and proficiency of the forming hand."
On the other hand, if one turns away from the “making of works of art to the manner in which they are received in the social milieu” then the picture changes completely. It is this social reception, the struggle of the new "-ism" against the old "-ism" which characterises the play.
XI. Western civilization sub specie ludi
“We have to conclude, therefore, that civilization is, in its earliest phases, played.
It does not come from play like a baby detaching itself from the womb:
it arises in and as play, and never leaves it.”
XII. Play-element in contemporary civilization
“In American politics it [the play-factor present in the whole apparatus of elections] is even more evident. Long before the two-party system had reduced itself to two gigantic teams whose political differences were hardly discernible to an outsider, electioneering in America had developed into a kind of national sport.”
Huizinga died in 1945. Hence his observations on contemporary civilization in the final chapter of the book date back to the end of the Second World War.
Quotations
- "Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays." (On the Aesthetic Education of Man — Friedrich SchillerFriedrich SchillerJohann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life , Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe...
) - "Let my playing be my learning, and my learning be my playing."
- "It is ancient wisdom, but it is also a little cheap, to call all human activity 'play'. Those who are willing to content themselves with a metaphysical conclusion of this kind should not read this book." (from the Foreword, unnumbered page)