Philosophy and Play

Is philosophy a playful pursuit?

This book’s central argument is that playfulness is an essential quality of philosophical practice. Ways of doing philosophy invariably require the same wonder, hope, co-operation and positive freedom that define modes of play.

Matthew McLennan explores this intrinsic connection in the way that philosophy and play shed light upon one another through three core concepts: the realities of play define what it is and how it manifests; the rules of play determine how it functions; the ‘what comes next’ of play depends on what we want or hope to find in it. Together, these mediations explain how both play and philosophy are essentially oriented towards the indefinite, the infinite and the possible. Working across disciplinary boundaries and calling on an eclectic range of thinkers, this paradigm-shifting approach redefines how we understand the doing of philosophy and how we perceive the traditions that underpin it.