ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the notions of ‘play’ and ‘game’ are tailor-made for analysing morality. It is even a fruitful new perspective to conceive of morality as one large game, even though we are often so immersed in ‘playing the game of morality’ that we tend to overlook its ludic nature. If upheld, this view shows that there is a close connection between moral philosophy and the philosophy of play. For instance, morality shares many characteristic features of play: like games, morality is constituted by rules, contains fictive elements and role-play. What is more, analysing morality as game would offer a way to show how a strong conception of morality can be defended against challenges from the cognitive sciences. There are also important objections to analysing morality as game, for instance that morality seems to be more serious than games. In this chapter, I defend and spell out the idea of analysing morality as game with reference to both research on morality and research on play, and demonstrate how an analysis of morality as game can be fruitful for building new bridges between the philosophies of morality and play.
