1.1 Play
Through history, play has generally found legitimation in being a place for âkids to be kidsâ, and as an antidote to the goal-driven doing (praxis) and making (poesis) that is often seen as a purpose for life. As a result, other than the hedonic value that it offers in making learning more enjoyable, play has been frequently presented as having no utility on its own. One of the definitions of Play in the Oxford English Dictionary Online (OED) is that play is of the â[s]enses relating to recreation, pleasure, and enjoymentâ, having sub-entries of play as â[t]o engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than for a serious or practical purpose; to amuse or divert oneselfâ and â[t]o pretend to be, represent, or imitate as a game or for funâ (2017). Although views on play have been changing through the past century, numerous thinkers through history have suggested that play is merely carefree phantasy and frivolous nonsense, an escape from reality, or an interruption from the continuity of our purposive lives (Fink et al. 1968).
As the major motivating factor for play is the intrinsic motivation of play itself, it quickly contrasts itself from other human activities whose goals are external to themselves. It is likely this stark contrast from work that has relegated play to its limited role in life as a periodic antithesis. I will argue here that this is a misunderstanding of the ontology of play, and that play performs a major role in both childhood and social development. Similarly, I will propose later in this chapter that aesthetic play (a back and forth of presentation and reception between a performance and an audience) has potentials for self-unconcealment , the disclosure of aspects of oneâs own being that occurs while the art event presents itself. Throughout our life, aesthetic play also generally resists against the fading of our experiences into habituated action, a forgetting of our being. Selectively fighting against this forgetting of being is important in that it allows us to adapt to new situations and to understand novel stimuli.
Huizinga has proposed that through history âa certain play -factor was extremely active all through the cultural process and ⊠it produces many of the fundamental forms of social lifeâ (2009, 173), concluding that civilization âdoes not come from play like a babe detaching itself from the womb: it arises in and as play, and never leaves itâ (2009, 173; emphasis in original).
Another definition of play in the OED is that play is of the â[s]enses relating to movement, exercise, and activityâ, with sub-entries of play as â[t]o exercise or occupy oneself, to be engaged with some activityâ, or â[o]f a living being: to move about swiftly, with a lively, irregular, or capricious motionâ, or â[t]o move, revolve, or oscillate freely, esp. within a definite spaceâ, or â[o]f a thing: to move briskly or lightly, esp. with alternating or irregular motionâ (2017). Similarly, the etymology of play likely comes from pleyen, which means âto dance, leap for joy, rejoice, be gladâ (2017). Related to this, play is crucial in the juvenile development of most mammals and birds, and continues into adulthood in a few species such as primates, elephants, cetaceans, and parrots (Behncke 2015). As these species have too varied an ancestry, adult play is unlikely to have come from a single origin, and has instead been suggested to be tied to their shared âintricate sociality, longevity and large brainsâ (Behncke 2015, R24), with adult play influencing social bonding and adaptive intelligence. During her research, Behncke has observed an incredible amount of trust and voluntary risk-taking involved in the play of bonobos, with juveniles often surrendering their fate to a more powerful individual. She has suggested that the positive emotions that are intrinsic in play can help introduce individuals to novel stimuli in their environment, rewarding them for engaging with the world, further increasing the complexity that they are exposed to, and providing them with salience which helps learning and memory (2015).
In developing a workâplay binary, one might also consider there to be some opposition between stress and play. On the contrary, mild and transient stress is an important aspect of play as long as it happens in a benevolent context. Sapolsky agrees with this, stating,
Similarly, moderate, transient stress can motivate us to be concerned with novel stimuli (Sapolsky 2017). Too little stress can leave us bored, while too much stress will leave us overstimulated. Each individual has their own range of how much uncertainty that they will enjoy and are motivated to participate in. As such, play is a celebration of uncertainty, and a benevolent openness to challenging levels of novelty. Playing should not be considered easy as it is hard work exposing ourselves to new ways of experiencing our environment and ourselves (Lotto 2017). This kind of play exposes us to our habits and our assumptions, leading us to question these assumptions, and thus encouraging adaptability and cognitive complexity.What do we call that optimal amount of stress? Being engaged, engrossed, and challenged. Being stimulated. Playing. The core of psychological stress is loss of control and predictability. But in benevolent settings we happily relinquish control and predictability to be challenged by the unexpected. ⊠Surprise meâthis is fun. (Sapolsky 2017, 131; emphasis added)
1.2 Play in Aesthetics
Other definitions of play according to the OED is that play is of the â[s]enses relating to the performance of instrumental musicâ and of the â[s]enses relating to acting and dramatic performanceâ (2017). While Kant did not introduce the idea of play into aesthetics (Plato already considered the play of mimesis to be integral to the arts), he needed the concept of play to allow individuals to actively participate in their sensual experience even during experiences where transcendental concepts would not be communicated, such as during aesthetic experiences. First of all, Kantâs move to include active participation was a big step forward from previous theories of passive perception (e.g. Locke ) where the mind only passively receives ideas, seen in Locke (1803). This change is especially significant as Kant subscribed to the Cartesian mindâbody distinction . And, in the mindâbody distinction, if one is to exist as a mind separate from the world, the only means for one to communicate and share his/her experiences with others is to either have a connecting apparatus to the world that is identical to that of everyone else, or for everyone to passively experience the world. Without these identical connecting apparatuses, one would risk everyone synthesizing their sensory information in their own solipsistic ways when actively participating in their experiences, resulting in individuals not being able to relate to one anotherâs sensory knowledge. For this reason, Kant compensated against this solipsism by introducing synthetic a priori knowledge (this could be simplified as being a little mind chip that we would all have to connect us to our bodies in the world).
Second of all, Kant âs active participation in experience was also a big step forward and required play , as Kant did not think that art had transcendental concepts that could ground it. If art lacks these transcendental concepts, then people would not be able to use their synthetic a priori knowledge that Kant had just introduced as a means to experience and contemplate it. This would lead to complete relativism in art, again resulting in individual and subjective experiences that could not be shared or adequately communicated with one another. To counter this, Kant appealed for at least some sense of a universality of taste, so he proposed a âfree playâ of intuition and understanding. Also, without transcendental concepts, intuition would not be directly linked to understanding, but would instead be allowed the freedom to play with understanding to create a sense of harmony between them. Kant considered this harmony to be the goal of art. He also described this free play of the faculties as having a purposiveness without a purpose, matching the intrinsic motivation found in play for the sake of play (Kant 2007). Unlike most forms of play, however, Kantâs play of the faculties does not have an in-between-ness , as it exists either entirely in the mind of the individual or in the qualities of the artwork, separating the experiencer from the experienced, the subject from the object.
This lack of an in-between-ness can be seen to follow from a Cartesian ethics of disengagement, where one, as a mind, must remain an objective scientist as much as possible. This Cartesian ethics suggests that if people use reason alone, they can inhibit their subjective biases and emotions to acquire an objective and universal knowledge (Vilhauer 2010). As such, in aesthetic appreciation people should dislocate their thoughts from the meaningful context that they happen to reside within, while extracting the formal elements from the work to disinterestedly contemplate them, allowing a free play of the faculties. Unfortunately for music, this aesthetic goal of separating oneself from the art object to allow a disinterested harmonizing of the faculties does not allow music without lyrics to fare well for reaching fine art status. Kant determined that music did not lend itself easily to be brought into words, nor was it readily an art object to be contemplated. As a result, he considered music to have an impoverished arousal of understanding, and thus he regarded music as ânothing but sensations without concepts, so that unlike poetry it leaves us with nothing to meditate aboutâ (2007, §328).
Although numerous aesthetic theories have been grounded in a Cartesian ethics of disengagement to focus on art objects, there have been a number of philosophers, especially from the continental tradition, who have slowly moved away from this attempt to objectify aesthetics . One of these philosophers was Heidegger , who proposed that we are thrown into...