ABSTRACT

Play, Philosophy and Performance is a cutting-edge collection of essays exploring the philosophy of play. It showcases the most innovative, interdisciplinary work in the rapidly developing field of Play Studies.

How we play, and the relation of play to the human condition, is becoming increasingly recognised as a field of scholarly inquiry as well as a significant element of social practice, public policy and socio-cultural understanding. Drawing on approaches ranging through morality and ethics, language and the nature of reality, aesthetics, digital culture and gaming, and written by an international group of emerging and established scholars, this book examines how our performance at play describes, shapes and influences our performance as human beings.

This is essential reading for anybody with an interest in leisure, education, childhood, gaming, the arts, playwork or many branches of philosophical enquiry.

chapter |16 pages

Introduction

‘Just’ (pre)tending: the performativity of philosophising play

part I|57 pages

Play and the performance of morality

chapter Chapter 1|14 pages

Do toy guns kill people? Playing with guns

chapter Chapter 3|14 pages

A playful approach to cultivating intellectual virtues

Why so serious?

chapter Chapter 4|14 pages

Ethical dimensions of play and care

Reflections based on Donald Winnicott’s theory of play and the ethics of care

part II|42 pages

Language and play in/and ‘the real’

chapter Chapter 5|14 pages

Language, play, and understanding

What semantics might learn from children 1

chapter Chapter 6|13 pages

Living on the edge

Zhuangzi, Ludus, and 遊 (you)

chapter Chapter 7|13 pages

Robert Pfaller and the disappearance of play in contemporary culture

Illusions without subjects

part III|53 pages

Playful aesthetics

chapter Chapter 8|13 pages

Stop making sense

Notes on playful cinema and performance

chapter Chapter 10|14 pages

The complexity of play

A response to Guyer’s analysis of play in Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man

chapter Chapter 11|14 pages

Computer game design and moral engagement

How mechanics take over

part IV|61 pages

Play’s performative praxis

chapter Chapter 12|15 pages

Unexpected movements as meaningful expression in play

Strange twists of the body

chapter Chapter 14|14 pages

Time and creativity in survival games

Bergson plays with the Tao

chapter Chapter 15|16 pages

Digital play as an epistemic experience