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Document Details : Title: Het spel als filosofisch probleem Subtitle: Huizinga in dialoog Author(s): VINCKEN, Simon Journal: Tijdschrift voor Filosofie Volume: 87 Issue: 4 Date: 2025 Pages: 611-634 DOI: 10.2143/TVF.87.4.3295733 Abstract : Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens (1938) remains a landmark reflection on the cultural significance of play. This article revisits Huizinga’s conception of play as an autonomous, culture-generating force by placing it in dialogue with three other thinkers: Freud, Caillois, and Fink. Freud’s reading of the Fort-Da game exemplifies a functionalist account in which play is subordinated to psychic mechanisms. Huizinga, by contrast, defines play as a 'magic circle' with its own rules and order. Caillois both critiques and extends this account by introducing a typology (agon, alea, mimicry, ilinx) and highlighting the ambivalence of play as both ordering and disordering force. Finally, Fink’s Spiel als Weltsymbol reframes play metaphysically, as a symbolic form of existence itself. Taken together, these perspectives show that play is not marginal or derivative but a mode of world-disclosure, central to how humans inhabit and interpret reality. |
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