ABSTRACT

Chapter 10 looks closer at the process of building and handling intellectual knowledge, which has sometimes been called an “academic game.” This has more than a metaphorical meaning. In today’s academic humanistic studies, people especially play two main forms of games: games of words, ideas, and oppositions – and games of numbers, quantitative scales, and derived models. However, the two academic knowledge games have also a common denominator. Whether counting or telling, the scholar thinks “about” a phenomenon, making the phenomenon a thing, an object of curiosity from outside. Certainly, this reification brings gain, but it excludes the dimension of Thou, which is present in human life. What is the relation between play, questioning, and the you-relation?