Abstract
In the first place we must explain why we use the term ‘playing’ as a title for this part of our analysis. We are here following Irving Goffman — to whom we shall frequently refer — who says: ‘In the literature on games, a distinction is made between a game, defined as a body of rules associated with the lore regarding good starting, and a play, defined as any particular instance of a given game being played from beginning to end. Playing could then be defined as the process of move-taking through which a given play is initiated and eventually completed; action is involved, but only the strictly game-relevant aspects of action.’1 Attempting to integrate this distinction into the texture of our argument, it will become clear that we are focussing on action or on activity, though, as will emerge, there is no action without a meaning or, in the case before us, without rules.
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References
‘Fun in Games’, included in Encounter — Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction by Irving Goffman, The Bobbs-Merill Company, New York, 1966, p. 35.
The Theory of Social and Economic Organic Organization by Max Weber, translated by A.R. Henderson and Talcott Parsons, William Hodge & Co., London/Edinburgh/Glasgow, 1947, p. 202.
Ibid., p. 151.
Goffman, op. cit., p. 17.
We follow here the 15th letter of Friedrich Schiller’s On the Aesthetic Education of Man, translated with an introduction by Reginald Snell, Frederic Ungar Publishing Company, New York, 1965, pp. 75ff.
Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man, translated with an introduction by Reginald Snell, Frederic Ungar Publishing Company, New York, 1965, p. 19
Kr. der Urteilskraft, p. 156; transl, p. 164.
Johan Huizinga: Homo Ludens, A Study of the Play Element in Culture, Paladin, London, 1970, p. 22.
Ibid., p. 27.
‘Zur Anthropologie des Schauspielers’, included in Helmuth Plessner: Zwischen Philosophie und Gesellschaft, Ausgewählte Abhandlungen und Vorträge, Francke Verlag, Bern, 1953, pp. 180ff. At this point we may add the following comment: As we emphasize the continuity from reality to play in terms of actors, we must also emphasize the continuity in the reverse direction, at least from the point of view of the theory of catharsis. Catharsis is meant to purify the cathemata or passions of the spectator who is obviously outside the scene, the performance and the team, but who is, directly or indirectly, concerned or addressed to — at least post factum, that is to say, after the play has been written and performed.
Irving Goffman: Strategic Interaction, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1970, p. 68.
Ibid., p. 97.
Ibid., pp. 114–117, 122.
Ibid., p. 96.
On the phenomenon of play, cf. Hans Georg Gadamer: Truth and Method, Continuum, New York, 1975, pp. 91ff. It is said there: ‘What is merely play is not serious. Play has its own relation to what is serious’.
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© 1985 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht
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Rotenstreich, N. (1985). Playing. In: Reflection and Action. Phaenomenologica, vol 97. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-9738-3_5
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