The Play in the Game Utopians are Playing

ABSTRACT

Distinguished for the game-parabling expressed in The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia, Bernard Suits is revered as the author of the unorthodox claim that Utopia is intelligible and game playing is what makes Utopia intelligible. Reasonably embraced as a game in itself, the purpose of this metaphysical brainteaser is to present the reader with an enigma, with the challenge of its resolution serving as the very means by which one is to be brought into line with the logic of the Grasshopper’s Utopian thesis. Appreciating the fine intricacies of this challenge, the purpose of this essay is to advance the quest for resolution via a consideration of play as a necessary element of the Grasshopper’s game playing Utopia. As foundational to the enigma, I begin with a portrayal of the Grasshopper’s tangle of riddles about play, games and the good life. Converging upon the insights of the Grasshopper and/or his disciples in respect to the nature, meaning and significance of play in its conceptual relation to work, I entertain—and successively reject—the play-to-work labour ethic, the work-to-play leisure ethic and the play-at-work labour ethic as inadequate to account for the ideal of human existence. Next, in an effort to move beyond the existential stuckedness portrayed in the tale, I entertain—and also reject—the possibility that Utopia might instantiate as a work-at-play labour ethic, with this possibility established upon the foundation supplied by Suits’ distinction between primitive play and sophisticated playing. Finally, entertaining the possibility that work, play, playing and game might interrelate to account for the ideal of human existence, I conclude with the proposal that the Grasshopper’s Utopia might be best conceptualized as a work-at-play game playing ethic.

KEYWORDS:

• Ideal of existence
• Utopia
• play
• playing
• game playing

Acknowledgements

I wish to express my appreciation to the editors of this special edition of Sport, Ethics and Philosophy as devoted to the legacy of Bernard Suits, as well as the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments designed to enhance the quality of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.