Gadamer’s Ethics of Play: 8 Quotations
Vilhauer, M. 2017. Gadamer’s Ethics of Play: Hermeneutics and the Other. Plymouth: Lexington.
- ‘Play… is something fundamentally larger than the individual player or their mental state; it is a pattern of movement that surpasses both the players, and is something to which both players belong.’ (p32)
- ‘“In order for there to be a game, there always has to be, not necessarily literally another player, but something else with which the player plays and which automatically responds to his move with a countermove. Ball games will be with us forever because the ball is freely mobile in every direction, appearing to do surprising things of its own accord.”’ (p33)
- ‘Play is less of a thing a person does, and more of a thing done to them – or, better, an event in which one becomes caught-up. “All playing is a being-played… the game masters the players”.’ (p35)
- “Seriousness in playing is necessary to make the play wholly play. Someone who doesn’t take the game seriously [as in – ‘it’s just a game’] is a spoilsport.” (p35)
- ‘…in every artistic presentation there exists an articulation of our reality… or of some subject matter… highlighting certain aspects of a thing, leaving others out [so that] “the being of the representation is more than the being of the thing represented”.’ (p37)
- ‘When one accomplishes the task of becoming “caught up” in the performance [or work of art], one reaches a state of… “being outside oneself”… [which] in a very basic way means opening yourself up to something “other” than yourself and allowing it to affect you.’ (p39)
- ‘Representing and imitating are themselves modes of knowing, and our recognition of what the other knows and shows us… is a way of joining in on that knowing.’ (p41)
- ‘As an interpretation, articulation, and meaningful presentation of something… the picture exists as something unique in itself and, thus, has its own being.’ (p43)
from https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OpHGMPhDFJjmPXo4SFMzzxovClF7qUY_Wx6T7ExiIuY/edit