''Homo Ludens'' is a book originally published in
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
in 1938
by Dutch historian and cultural theorist
Johan Huizinga
Johan Huizinga (; 7 December 1872 – 1 February 1945) 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 y ...
.
It discusses the importance of the play element of culture and society.
Huizinga suggests that play is primary to and a necessary (though not sufficient) condition of the generation of culture. The Latin word is the present active participle of the verb , which itself is cognate with the noun . has no direct equivalent in English, as it simultaneously refers to sport, play, school, and practice.
Reception
''Homo Ludens'' is an important part of the history of
game studies
Game studies, also known as ludology (from ''ludus'', "game", and ''-logia'', "study", "research"), is the study of games, the act of playing them, and the players and cultures surrounding them. It is a field of cultural studies that deals with a ...
. It influenced later scholars of play, like
Roger Caillois
Roger Caillois (; 3 March 1913 – 21 December 1978) was a French intellectual whose idiosyncratic work brought together literary criticism, sociology, ludology and philosophy by focusing on diverse subjects such as games and play as well as the ...
. The concept of the
magic circle
A magic circle is a circle of space marked out by practitioners of some branches of ritual magic, which they generally believe will contain energy and form a sacred space, or will provide them a form of magical protection, or both. It may be mark ...
was inspired by ''Homo Ludens''.
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 on which the book is based, "The Play Element of Culture". This title was repeatedly corrected to "in" Culture, a revision he objected to.
The English 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."''
Contents
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 before humans. One of the most significant (human and cultural) aspects of play is that it is fun.
Huizinga identifies 5 characteristics that play must have:
# Play is free, is in fact
freedom
Freedom is understood as either having the ability to act or change without constraint or to possess the power and resources to fulfill one's purposes unhindered. Freedom is often associated with liberty and autonomy in the sense of "giving on ...
.
# 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.
Huizinga shows that in ritual dances a person 'becomes' a kangaroo. There is a difference in how western thought expresses this concept and how "primitive" religions view this. Scholars of religion use western terminology to describe non western concepts.
"He has taken on the "essence" of the kangaroo, says the savage; he is playing the kangaroo, say we.
The savage, however, knows nothing of the conceptual distinctions between "being" and "playing"; he knows nothing of "identity'\ "image" or "symbol"."
In this way Huizinga suggests the universally understood concept of play is more fitting to both societies to describe this phenomenon.
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 (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
. "It is remarkable that , 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 and 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:
;
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
(3)
: — pertaining to children's games,
: — associated with the idea of the trifling, the nugatory,
: — for matches and contests.
;
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
(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.
;
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...
(3)
: wan — is the most important word covering children's games and much much more,
: zheng — denoting anything to do with contests, corresponds exactly to the Greek ''agon'',
: sai — organized contest for a prize.
;
Blackfoot
The Blackfoot Confederacy, ''Niitsitapi'' or ''Siksikaitsitapi'' (ᖹᐟᒧᐧᒣᑯ, meaning "the people" or " Blackfoot-speaking real people"), is a historic collective name for linguistically related groups that make up the Blackfoot or Bla ...
(2)
: koani — all children's games and also in the erotic sense of "dallying",
: kachtsi — organized play.
;
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
(1)
: asobu — is a single, very definite word, for the play function.
;
Semitic languages
The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigra ...
: 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.
;
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
(1)
: — from , 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 1955, p. 46.]
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 forms
can 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
International law (also known as public international law and the law of nations) is the set of rules, norms, and standards generally recognized as binding between states. It establishes normative guidelines and a common conceptual framework for ...
" 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 war is a type of warfare that includes any and all civilian-associated resources and infrastructure as legitimate military targets, mobilizes all of the resources of society to fight the war, and gives priority to warfare over non-combata ...
" 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 or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
). 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.
[Huizinga 1955, p. 91.]
# 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
In modern English, the nouns vates () and ovate (, ), are used as technical terms for ancient Celtic bards, prophets and philosophers. The terms correspond to a Proto-Celtic word which can be reconstructed as *''wātis''.Bernhard Maier, ''Dictio ...
'', the possessed, the God-smitten, the raving one". Of the many examples he gives, one might choose Unferd who appears in ''
Beowulf
''Beowulf'' (; ang, Bēowulf ) is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. The ...
''.
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 (see
Mythopoeia
Mythopoeia ( grc, , , myth-making), or mythopoesis, is a narrative genre in modern literature and film where an artificial or fictionalized mythology is created by the writer of prose, poetry, or other literary forms. This meaning of the word f ...
and
Mythopoeic thought
Mythopoeic thought is a hypothetical stage of human thought preceding modern thought, proposed by Henri Frankfort and his wife Henriette Antonia Frankfort in the 1940s, based on their interpretation of evidence from archaeology and cultural anthro ...
).
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 prophet
In religion, a prophet or prophetess is an individual who is regarded as being in contact with a divine being and is said to speak on behalf of that being, serving as an intermediary with humanity by delivering messages or teachings from the s ...
, medicine-man, seer, thaumaturge
Thaumaturgy is the purported capability of a magician to work magic or other paranormal events or a saint to perform miracles. It is sometimes translated into English as wonderworking.
A practitioner of thaumaturgy is a "thaumaturge", "thauma ...
and poet and whose best designation is ''vates
In modern English, the nouns vates () and ovate (, ), are used as technical terms for ancient Celtic bards, prophets and philosophers. The terms correspond to a Proto-Celtic word which can be reconstructed as *''wātis''.Bernhard Maier, ''Dictio ...
''.
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 he play-factor present in the whole apparatus of elections
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...
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 1955, p. 207.]
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 Schiller
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (, short: ; 10 November 17599 May 1805) was a German playwright, poet, and philosopher. During the last seventeen years of his life (1788–1805), Schiller developed a productive, if complicated, friends ...
)
* "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)
Editions
* Huizinga, Johan (1938). Homo Ludens: Proeve Ener Bepaling Van Het Spelelement Der Cultuur. Groningen, Wolters-Noordhoff cop. 1985. Original Dutch edition.
* Huizinga, J. (1949). Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element of Culture. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
* Huizinga, Johan (1955). Homo ludens; a study of the play-element of culture. Boston: Beacon Press. .
* Huizinga, Johan (2014). Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element of Culture. Mansfield Centre, CT: Martino Publishing .
See also
*
Hermann Hesse
Hermann Karl Hesse (; 2 July 1877 – 9 August 1962) was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. His best-known works include ''Demian'', ''Steppenwolf (novel), Steppenwolf'', ''Siddhartha (novel), Siddhartha'', and ''The Glass Bead Game'', ...
's
The Glass Bead Game
''The Glass Bead Game'' (german: link=no, Das Glasperlenspiel, ) is the last full-length novel by the German author Hermann Hesse. It was begun in 1931 in Switzerland, where it was published in 1943 after being rejected for publication in German ...
(''"Magister Ludi"'')
*
Homo faber
''Homo faber'' () is the concept that human beings are able to control their fate and their environment as a result of the use of tools.
Original phrase
In Latin literature, Appius Claudius Caecus uses this term in his ''Sententiæ'', refer ...
* ''
Man, Play and Games
''Man, Play and Games'' () is the influential 1961 book by the French sociologist Roger Caillois, (French ''Les jeux et les hommes'', 1958) on the sociology of play and games or, in Caillois' terms, sociology derived from play. Caillois interpr ...
''
Notes
External links
* J. HUIZINGA
''Homo Ludens'' (1949 Edition) Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.
References
* Huizinga, Johan. ''Homo Ludens''.
Beacon Press
Beacon Press is an American left-wing non-profit book publisher. Founded in 1854 by the American Unitarian Association, it is currently a department of the Unitarian Universalist Association. It is known for publishing authors such as James B ...
(1 June 1971).
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Homo Ludens (Book)
1938 non-fiction books
Dutch non-fiction books
Anthropology books
Play (activity)
Dutch-language books
Books about games
Books about game theory
Books by Johan Huizinga