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The Structure and Classification of Games

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Roger Caillois
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Extract

In 1933, the rector of the University of Leyden, J. Huizinga, chose as the theme of his solemn speech, “the boundaries of play and of work in culture.” He was to take this subject up again and to develop it in a powerful and original work published in 1938, Homo ludens. Most of the statements in this book are debatable. Nonetheless, it opens the way to extremely fertile research and reflection. It is to Huizinga's lasting credit that he masterfully analyzed the fundamental characteristics of play and that he demonstrated the importance of its role in the development of civilization. He wanted on the one hand to find an exact definition of the essential nature of play; on the other hand, he attempted to shed some light on that part of play that haunts or enlivens the principal manifestations of all culture, the arts as well as philosophy, poetry as well as juridical institutions, and even certain aspects of war.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 3 , Issue 12 , September 1955 , pp. 62 - 75
Copyright
Copyright © 1955 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

1. Homo ludens (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1949), p. 13.

2. Ibid., p. 28.

3. As for space: the hopscotch diagram, the checker-board, the chess-board, the stadium, the playing field, the track, the ring, the dueling ground, the stage, the arena, etc…. As for time: the beginning and the end of a game, the complications of a possible prolongation, the kind of disgrace entailed by a default, which the fact of calling, "I give up," represents, or by any withdrawal during the course of a game or of a match, unless it is caused by a physical accident.

4. For example, in the Balearic Islands at a game of pelota, or in Colombia and the An tilles, at cock-fights.

5. It goes without saying that this last need is to be understood in its actual sense, because the baguenaude is really an assemblage of rings, the manipulation of which is complicated and demands the player's extreme concentration and which, therefore, belongs to the category of ludus.

6. Information which Duyvendak communicated to Huizinga, cf. Homo ludens, p. 32.