Homo Ludens — Underrated Book by Johan Huizinga — Human History Interpreted Philosophically as Play
Johan Huizinga was a Dutch historian and one of the founders of modern cultural history.
In 1938 he built up the theory that humans playing in one way or another is primordially important to giving birth to culture and society, although not singularly important, but essential.
The author puts under the microscope the notion of play through the lenses of language, civilization, law, war, knowledge, literature, poetry, philosophy and art.
The point he wants to make is that play contributes to all of these, in a core way, but that also we need to open our mind to what play actually means. He expands upon the baseline definition used today, to allow play to mean not only that which brings us joy or is painless, but boils it down to five characteristics:
- Play is free or one may even say freedom
- Play is not normal day to day life, not ordinary
- Play differs from “ordinary” life in terms of both locality and duration
- Play is structured and orderly, it has rules
- Play is not related to material profit
