Bernard Suits’ Response to the Question on the Meaning of Life as a Critique of Modernity

ABSTRACT

The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia by Bernard Suits is one of the most influential works in the philosophy of sport. In the book, Suits investigates two fundamental issues in general philosophy: (a) the possibility of providing definitions and (b) the exploration of the meaning of life. In this article, I will focus on the latter in order to analyze an underdeveloped aspect of Suits’ work, namely, his critique to the predominant notion of the good life in modern society, that is, the life consisting in instrumentally valuable activities (work). In doing so, I will portray Suits as a critic of modernity.

KEYWORDS:

• Games
• good life
• critical theory
• philosophy
• ethics

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Mike McNamee and John William Devine for inviting me to present an earlier version of this article at the 2018 Conference of the British Philosophy of Sport Association (BPSA) in Swansea, Wales. Also, I am thankful to those who gave me feedback on it, with special mention to the two anonymous reviewers of the journal.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. As Kretchmar also acknowledges, it is important to note that the two protagonists of not only Suits’ Utopian world but also of The Grasshopper are the ants, Prudence and Skepticus, and Grasshopper. Both embody two different attitudes toward life. The ants represent survival and prudence, whereas the Grasshopper personifies intrinsic satisfaction and autotelicity (Kretchmar 2006, 68).

2. Remarkably, despite often being viewed as a critic of modernity, Marx shares both goals with proponents of modernity, for the dream of modernity is the rational administration of the world in order to promote the emancipation of humanity.

3. This contrast with ‘heteronomy’, that is, with the determination of the will by external laws.

4. Therefore, no doubt, the sovereignty of man lieth hid in knowledge … now we govern nature in opinions, but we are thrall unto her in necessity; but if we would be led by her in invention, we should command her in action. (Bacon 1857, 80, my emphasis)

5. The attempt to provide a scientific explanation of the world is motivated by the goal of finding technological means to control the world. This closely ties modern scientific knowledge with and technology. However, as Adorno and Horkheimer argue, the use of knowledge to dominate the world is not exclusive to modern society but rather of Western society. Knowledge is a tool for self-preservation: At the turning points of Western civilization, whenever new peoples and classes have more heavily repressed myth, from the beginnings of the Olympian religion to the Renaissance, the Reformation, and bourgeois atheism, the fear of unsubdued, threatening nature – a fear resulting from nature’s very materialization and objectification – has been belittled as animist superstition, and the control of internal and external nature has been made the absolute purpose of life. (Horkheimer and Adorno 2009, 24)

6. Spinoza’s proposition: ‘the endeavor of preserving oneself is the first and only basis of virtue’, contains the true maxim of all Western civilization … those who entrust themselves directly to life, without any rational reference to self-preservation, revert the realm of prehistory. (Adorno & Horkheimer, 2009, 22)

7. To be human is to be rational, and to be rational is to maximize efficiency. This view of human nature is at the heart of the social sciences, in particular political theory, economy and psychology. For instance, with regard to the rational character of the individuals situated in the original position, John Rawls (2001, 87) states, ‘the parties are rational if they can … adopt the most effective means to one’s ends; to select the alternative most likely to advance those ends’.

8. S: Yes, it seems a perfectly straightforward case of an anxiety dream. You were acting out in a disguised way certain hidden fears you had about your thesis concerning the ideal of existence. G: No doubt. But tell me, Skepticus, were my repressed fears about the fate of mankind, or were they about the cogency of my thesis? Clearly they could not be about both. (Suits 2005, 160)

9. [P]rudential actions (e.g. those actions we ordinarily call work) are self-defeating in principle. For prudence may be defined as the disposition 1/ to sacrifice something good (e.g. leisure) if and only if such sacrifice is necessary for obtaining something better (e.g. survival), and 2/ to reduce the number of good things requiring sacrifice–ideally, at least–to zero. The ideal of prudence, therefore, like the ideal of preventive medicine, is its own extinction. (Suits 2005, 27)

10. By drawing on this claim, Suits differentiates between games and the rest of leisure activities, such as playing the trombone, reading novels, contemplating the world and vacationing. In the latter activities, individuals might autonomously choose to engage in the activity for its own sake, however, the activities are often attached to a goal that is imposed on those who engage in the activity. For instance, those who contemplate aim to attain knowledge. The activity of contemplation might be valuable in itself, but it is also a means to knowledge, that is to say, the activity is a means to a further end. In line with this, in ‘Words on play’, Suits offers the following description of contemplation in a dialogue between two Roman soldiers, Gluteus and Salvatorius (to whom Suits refers as ‘G’ and ‘S’, as he will later refer to Grasshopper and Skepticus): S: Here it is. Even though you hope for no additional advantage, either on earth or in heaven, from your contemplation of God, don´t you expect to become a better God-contemplator the more you contemplate? If that is so, then your contemplation would not be purely autotelic activity, but would have an instrumental aspect as well./G: I can put your mind at rest, Salvatorius. I believe with an unshakeable conviction that I am as good at contemplating God as I shall ever become. /S: In that case … put your gluteus up to the battlements with maximum speed and lend us a hand. Playtime comes after we save civilization. (Suits 1977, 131)