ABSTRACT
Donald Winnicott’s conception of play is missing in the current discourse of care ethics even though Winnicott’s concept of play includes underappreciated ethical dimensions that can support and complete the claims of care ethicists. First, beyond the often discussed respect for the Other, the willingness to take childism into consideration (John Wall), and the readiness for transformation, Winnicott sheds light on three other ethical dimensions of play: A) the capacity to exist in ambivalences, B) the capacity to understand one’s deeds as always limited in time and space and C) the capacity to enjoy the precariousness inherent in the negotiation of the plastic boundaries of the Self. Second, Winnicott’s description of human development through the ethically interpreted phenomenon of play fits into the framework of care ethics. However, proponents of care ethics tend to overlook the importance of play within this domain. As both Winnicott and care ethicists present play and care as a phenomenon which is related not only to childhood but also to the realm of culture, society and politics, we show why the playful human existence in caring relationships is an appropriate candidate in the quest for a new account of ethical subjectivity and agency.
Being one of the “essentially contested concepts” (Gallie 1956: 169), play is not only an inexhaustible source of theoretical debates when it comes to its definition, but also a source of a number of intriguing questions. One of them concerns the ethical dimension of playing or the ethics of play. In this chapter, we aim to draw attention to this aspect of play with a special focus on the ethical implications of Donald Winnicott’s concept of the transitional area of play.
