I found an interesting book recommendation at thebrowser.com. The book is called “The Grasshopper” written by the philosopher Bernard Suits. Its subtitle “Games, Life and Utopia” inspired the title of this conference.
Suits thinks games are the highest intrinsic good and he’s found a light-hearted way of getting to that conclusion – by using arguments and considering counter-examples.
The central character of the book is, in fact, a grasshopper! It’s inspired by a fable about a grasshopper and an ant. The ant works all summer and survives the winter, whereas the grasshopper spends his time dancing and singing, so he has nothing to eat and starves to death. The grasshopper is choosing to die rather than giving up his belief that the thing which has intrinsic value in life is play.
The book puts forward a whole theory about the nature of game playing. Suits argues that playing a game is “the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles”. Basically there are three features to all games, and for something to be a game it has to meet all these features. Games must have the “pre-lusory goal”, constitutive rules and the “lusory attitude”.
Suits believes that game-playing is the highest good, because in a utopian world where all our other needs are met, he believes human beings would just play games. They’d set themselves obstacles and willingly try to achieve these pre-lusory goals. They wouldn’t need to worry about anything else. If heaven were real, that’s how we would survive in eternity.
Read the full interview with Nigel Warburton at thebrowser.com
