By
variously drawing from the philosophical tradition, many authors belonging to
the so-called “phenomenological movement” have thought appropriate to thematize
the relationship between the (apparently ludic) activity of playing games and
the (allegedly serious) philosophical attempt to make sense of the world. Franz
Brentano, for instance, was not only a major chess player and published author
of riddles, but also a reader of Heraclitus’s fragments in which the world is
compared to the play of a child. Husserl has firmly maintained that the crisis
of Pre-Socratic cosmologies, the birth of Plato’s genuine philosophy and the
first breakthrough of transcendental thinking are momentous side-effects of one
major event in the history of philosophy, i.e. that of the Sophist “playing the
game of philosophy”. While discussing Kant’s existential concept of the world,
Heidegger has plainly stated that the world has “the character of play”, while,
drawing from Descartes and the Stoics, Sartre has taken the activity of playing
as evidence for the existential freedom of human consciousness and its power to
transcend the reality of the world as it is. Finally, Eugen Fink has gone as
far as to develop not only a phenomenological anthropology in which “play” is a
“fundamental phenomenon of human existence” (together with “death”, “labour”,
“fight” and “love”) but also a full-fledged metaphysics, entirely revolving
around the idea of the “play as a world-symbol”, and opposing Plato’s
understanding of ludic activities to the importance of Heraclitus’s world
wisdom. In this seminar we will try to 1) present some of these views, 2)
expound their driving motives, 3) see how they differently refer to the
philosophical tradition (Heraclitus, Plato, Gorgias, the Stoics but also
Descartes and Kant), 4) draw a map of their possible connections and 5)
question the reasons and significance of thinking the “world” as a
phenomenological concept from the standpoint of the “play”.
- Učitel: Claudio Majolino