Homo Ludens
A unique philosophical perspective regarding the topic of play and it's impact and necessity in human culture.
Stats for nerds
7recommend
17mentions
15people
2010–2026years
53% recommend47% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I read this in college, with a fantastic professor (RIP) who also assigned Huizinga's "Homo Ludens." I loved it ...if only the rest of academic history was so free-thinking and human-centric, I might have stayed.
"Night Battles" is amazing too. And the fact that some of the scholarship in both books is contested adds to the interest - he really rattled some cages and wasn't afraid to take an idea and run with it.
- Excellent essay, thanks for sharing. Several Lapham essays have made their way to HN over the years, which I am grateful for. I don't think I had ever come across a writer with such consistently interesting ideas and so strong a voice. And it seems that he remained curious and playful until the end:
> For Lewis, the greatest game was running a magazine. He played with words and ideas like a beautiful set of hand-hewn stone blocks. He loved the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga’s book Homo Ludens, about the formative role of play in human culture, its five defining characteristics: “1. Play is free, is in fact freedom. 2. Play is not ‘ordinary’ or ‘real’ life. 3. Play is distinct from ‘ordinary’ life both as to locality and duration. 4. Play creates order, is order. Play demands order absolute and supreme. 5. Play is connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained from it.” Lewis discovered and disseminated a way of life and work that was essentially play. So I guess, in the end, he tossed rules 2 and 3 into the trash.
If you enjoyed TFA, the obit from Lapham's Quarterly [0] is similar in tone and also well worth reading.
0: https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/lewis-h-lapham-1...
- The purpose of life is to play.
Please read Johan Huizinga's Homo Ludens.[0]
- Amazing animals!
I strongly recommend everybody interested in play to read Huizinga's Homo Ludens.
- you are taking playing for simulating, and that's not quite correct, as they are very distinctive. There's sim games of course, but they are games first and foremost, not sims. if you want to learn more about play, you should read one of the most interesting writings from 20th century: Homo Ludens, from Johan Huizinga. answering your question, when you ask why is something mainstream or not you should know it has to do with commerce. I should also add killing someone irl is nothing like killing someone at a videogame. It's all imagination play.
- For those of you interested, there's a great book about play called Homo Ludens, from Huizinga.
