The category of ‘women’s sport’ is not the feminist win some would have you believe. Instead, the segregation of women in sport is just one more way in which women are told to expect less from society. Women had to fight to be included in sport in the first place, and are now only included under far less favourable terms than those enjoyed by men. There are better and more accurate ways to ensure safety and fairness than segregation by gender. (...) And this matters deeply: open play would encourage a more equitable distribution of resources, increase women’s participation in sport and challenge outdated, sexist myths about women and their bodies. (shrink)

Many games are essentially social, yet dominant theories of games struggle to accommodate this. This chapter argues that Bernard Suits’s rightly influential theory lacks a plausible explanation of what it is for two or more people to play a game _with_ one another. It then develops an alternative approach which takes a more interpersonal approach, emphasizing the role of _commitment_ in its account of multi-player games. It argues that this approach has several advantages over rival approaches. It concluded by (...) extending this approach to deal with single-player games. The chapter argues that “game” and cognates are, in one useful sense, family resemblance terms, but in a way that can accommodate what is insightful in Suits’s approach, thus getting the best of both worlds. (shrink)

This paper examines Eugen Fink’s Play as Symbol of the World as an ontological elaboration of phenomenality beyond recursion. In contrast to the reflexive or world-disclosing structures of Husserl and Heidegger, Fink conceives the world as a metamorphic continuity—a process of play in which being unfolds without centre or return. Through a close reading of Fink’s later essays and the Sixth Cartesian Meditation, the paper reconstructs play as the operative structure of openness that precedes both subject and (...) object. Play becomes the ontological principle of world-formation: a dynamic of variation, excess, and self-displacement through which the world sustains itself without ground. (shrink)

Concerns related to the climate crisis and talk of environmental ‘sustainability’ are increasing amongst people working in, researching and doing performance-sport. Yet this appears at odds with the current practices across the sporting industry—business strategies oriented around economic and material growth, hosting mega-events, increasing travel, vast resource use, sponsorship deals with big oil companies and suchlike. In this essay, I argue that these material and ecological contradictions may be best understood via a focus on capitalism. That is, performance-sport, like many (...) other social and cultural activities, is deeply embedded within capitalist structures, logics and practices that are full of tensions and inconsistencies concerning environmental sustainability. I contend that this ought to be the focus of far more attention and reflection when discussing performance-sport and the climate crisis. The pressing task at hand is to imagine and enact an alternative to the ecologically unsustainable, capitalistic model of performance-sport. To that end, I discuss the potentials of shifting from performance to play as the key organising principle for sport. This conceptual shift would directly challenge capitalist ideologies and practices. As such, sport that is oriented ecologically, economically, culturally and personally around ideas of public good and sustainability, as opposed to private capital accumulation and indefinite growth, may be more readily enabled. (shrink)

An important book is always a beginning, a new way of looking at and thinking about things, sometimes including familiar things. C. Thi Nguyen’s Games: Agency as Art is one of those books. I...

We describe the development, testing, and formative evaluation of nine role-play scenarios for teaching central topics in the responsible conduct of research to graduate students in science and engineering. In response to formative evaluation surveys, students reported that the role-plays were more engaging and promoted deeper understanding than a lecture or case study covering the same topic. In the future, summative evaluations will test whether students display this deeper understanding and retain the lessons of the role-play experience.

This is a reply to commentators in the Journal of the Philosophy of Sport's special issue symposium on GAMES: AGENCY AS ART. I respond to criticisms concerning the value of achievement play and striving play, the transparency and opacity of play, the artistic status of games, and many more.

Calls for increasing integration of ethical considerations into business education are well documented. Business graduates are perceived to be ethically naive at best, and at worst, constrained in their moral development by the lack of ethical content in their courses. The pedagogic concern is to find effective methods of incorporating ethics into the fabric of business education. The purpose of this paper is to suggest and illustrate role play as an appropriate method for integrating ethical concerns.

The role of the imagination within Kant’s Critical framework remains an issue for any attempt to unify the three Critique s through the Doctrine of the Faculties. This work provides a reading of the imagination that serves to unify the imagination through its formal capacity, or ability to recognize harmony and produce the necessary lawfulness that grounds the possibility of judgment. The argument of this work exists in 2 parts. 1) The imagination’s formal ability is present, yet concealed, as early (...) as the Schematism in the Critique of Pure Reason and reaches its fullest exposition in instances of harmonious free play in the Critique of the Power of Judgment. 2) This formal capacity is key to not only demonstrating the imagination as an original, unified, and independent faculty across Kant’s Critical framework, but also serves as grounds for the purposiveness of nature – a key aspect of Kantian aesthetics. (shrink)

This article defends the fair-play theory of legal punishment against three objections. The first, the irrelevance objection, is the long-standing complaint that fair play fails to capture what it is about crimes that makes criminals deserving of punishment ; the others are the recently raised false-equivalence and lacks-integration objections. In response, I sketch an account of fair-play theory that is grounded in a conception of the political order as a meta- cooperative practice—a conception that falls somewhere between (...) contractual and communitarian conceptions—and draw on this account to show how the theory can overcome the objections. (shrink)

Background: Since the increasingly complex structure of health care services brings many ethical problems, it is important to use different instructional technologies in the ethical education of future nurses. Aim: The aim of this study was to determine the effect of role play prepared with video support on ethical decision-making and motivation levels of nursing students. Research design: A quasi-experimental study with pretest-posttest design. Participants and research context: The research was conducted in the Nursing Department of a University located (...) in Istanbul, Turkey between October 15 and November 15, 2024. The sample of the research consisted of 3rd year nursing students. Data were collected using the Descriptive Characteristics Form, the Nursing Dilemma Test, and the Instructional Material Motivation Scale for Single-Use. Ethical considerations: Permission was obtained from Bezmialem Vakif University Non-Interventional Ethical Research Committee and the institution where the study was conducted for the implementation of the research. Written and verbal consent was obtained from all participants in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration. Findings: While there was no difference between the students’ Ethical Dilemma Test Principled Thinking pre-test and post-test scores, their Practical Consideration ( p =.005) and motivation levels ( p =.037) post-test scores were found to be higher. There was a weak but significant negative correlation between academic achievement and pre-test teaching material motivation levels (r = −0.375, p =.041). Discussion: The use of different teaching methods and techniques in ethics education in nursing is important for future nurses to find more practical solutions to the ethical problems they will encounter during patient care. Conclusion: The results of the study indicate that the use of video-supported role play can be effective in teaching ethics courses in nursing education. (shrink)

A distinguished group of philosophers discuss a wide range of issues about games, sport, and play - a topic largely neglected in recent philosophical literature. They ask consider what games and sports have in common, pose questions about their value, and add philosophical voices to the on-going debates in game studies.

In this article, I show that Carl Schmitt’s conceptualization of the political can be seen as a skewed phenomenological analysis. From this point of view, it becomes clear why he claims the essence of the political lies in the distinction between friend and enemy, and why this is by no means its invariant element. To this end, I review ancient and modern uses of the adjective political, his questionable approach to the relationship between rule and exception, and his biased reading (...) of conflict, social cohesion, and political activity. Schmitt also carries out an existentialist distortion of the modern experience of the political based on the metaphors of enmity and war, which he found in various of his predecessors. Yet he ignores those derived from sports competition. I then show that, following Johan Huizinga’s work, a more general concept of the political refers to play according to which politics is norm-bounded. Finally, I show the implications of the previous analysis. (shrink)

There is an emerging consensus among political philosophers that state legitimacy involves something more than—or perhaps other than—political obligation. Yet the principle of fair play, which many take to be a promising basis for political obligation, has been largely absent from discussions of the revised conception of legitimacy. This paper shows how the principle of fair play can generate legitimate political authority by drawing on a neglected feature of the principle—its stipulation that members of a cooperative scheme must (...) reciprocate specifically by submitting to the scheme's rules. (shrink)

The debate over whether ‘fair-play’ can serve as a justification for legal punishment has recently resumed with an exchange between Richard Dagger and Antony Duff. According to the fair-play theorist, criminals deserve punishment for breaking the law because in so doing the criminal upsets a fair distribution of benefits and burdens, and punishment rectifies this unfairness. Critics frequently level two charges against this idea. The first is that it often gives the wrong explanation of what makes crime deserving (...) of punishment, since the wrongfulness of murder is not primarily about unfairness. The second is that it implies that all crimes deserve the same degree of punishment, because all crimes create the same degree of unfairness. These objections are viewed as revealing fatal flaws in the theory. Although Dagger attempts to meet these objections by drawing on political theory, Duff responds that this still draws upon the wrong kind of resources for meeting these objections. This paper argues that these two objections rest on a crucial mistake that has been overlooked by both the defenders and critics of fair-play. This mistake results from failing to distinguish between what justifies punishment as a response to crime (which requires a common element to all crime) and what justifies attaching particular penalties to crimes (which requires making distinctions in the severity of crime). The arguments presented will give reasons to consider fair-play as a viable justification for legal punishment. (shrink)

Art is universal across cultures. Yet, it is biologically expensive because of the energy expended and reduced vigilance. Why do humans make and contemplate it? This paper advances a thesis about the psychological origins of perceptual art. First, it delineates the aspects of art that need explaining: not just why it is attractive, but why fine execution and form—which have to do with how the attraction is achieved—matter over and above attractiveness. Second, it states certain constraints: we need to explain (...) pleasure in contemplation, not value extracted from the object by activities other than contemplation. The theory is that aesthetic pleasure is a motivation for learning skills. Two forms of pleasure are postulated. The first accompanies the spontaneous activity necessary for learning a more or less universal basic level of skill. The second accompanies highly skilled activity. This second kind of pleasure is specific to art as such. (shrink)

This article examines various positions on whether children should be allowed to play in late imperial China. Demonstrating distinctly different views from Neo-Confucian thinkers, professional genre painters of “Children at Play” ( yingxi tu 嬰戲圖), and the emerging pediatric specialists, the article maintains that clearly multi-vocal forces coexisted during the Song Dynasty, including a persuasive child-favoring stance that remains unique in global humanities on this issue.

In the sense-certainty chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit, we find one of Hegel’s famous puns, which utilizes homophonic affinities and differences between the verb beiherspielen and the noun Beispiel. I argue that the effect of this pun is that the word Beispiel acquires, beyond its usual meaning of ‘example’ or ‘instance’, the meaning of a play of something inessential, a play in passing. After reviewing all available translations into English, I suggest that, in order to preserve this (...) wordplay, one can translate Beispiel as ‘by-play’. Furthermore, I analyse other occurrences of the word beiherspielen in the Phenomenology and elsewhere in Hegel’s texts. Next, I focus on the crucial importance of this pun for Derrida’s interpretation and critique of Hegel’s dialectic. Only for a certain loose translation of beiherspielen does Derrida’s reasoning appear plausible. I conclude with a discussion of the ideal of terminological uniformity in translating Hegel’s texts. In preserving the wordplay by translating Beispiel as ‘by-play’, one is forced to sacrifice the uniformity of translation. (shrink)

This essay interprets Machiavelli’s famous letter to Francesco Vettori in terms of a play-element that runs across his works. The letter to Vettori is a masterpiece of epistolary form, but beyond its most memorable passage, where Machiavelli recounts his evening in study, it has not received much scholarly attention. Reading the letter in its entirety is to discover Machiavelli’s account of an eclectic political education and the pleasures of playing with others. Machiavelli’s letter speaks to a basic ludicity in (...) his political thinking, in which play is not opposed to the serious, and diverse play forms can be thought together. Hans-George Gadamer’s Truth and Method, Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens, and Roger Caillois’s Man, Play, and Games provide resources for reconstructing this play-element in Machiavelli’s thought. (shrink)

Watching children at play is favorite pastime for many elderlies. However, the growing safety concerns have prompted parents to become increasingly resistant to the idea of having strangers watch their children in parks and playgrounds. This creates an intergenerational gap in communication with potentially detrimental consequences for all social groups. Oral interviews were conducted and written surveys distributed that validated the hesitance of seniors, especially in the United States, to spend time at children’s playgrounds despite their finding the vicinity (...) of children stimulating. Behavioral observations were conducted at playgrounds to quantify the positive and negative effects of supervisors’ ages on children’s play and thus indirectly assess whether there can be mutual benefits of making the presence of older people at playgrounds, which is customary in many countries, more culturally acceptable. Observations focused on the behavior of a pair of siblings showed that there is an increased probability of both conflicts and joyful expressions when the children were in the presence of a middle-aged person than when they were watched over by the elderlies. This has suggested that freer expressions stimulated in the presence of parent-like figures simultaneously induce the undesired and the desired behavioral patterns in the form of propensities for conflict and propensities for expressions of joy, respectively. This has confirmed that the observational stance has a critical effect on the observational outcome and that the age of the watchers has an effect on the behavior of children at play, with the age correlating directly with the calmness of the play, but also with a lower degree of exhilaration. (shrink)

Play is not only a kind of activity, but also a set of attitudes. We may join a card game in a casino without assuming a play attitude; conversely we may transform a seemingly tedious action, such as a walk to the store, into a pleasant experience of spontaneous movements by adopting an attitude of play. Attitudes of Play is a comprehensive study of the persistent human tendency to bring a cheerful and good-humoured outlook to any (...) kind of situation, including the serious and the mundane. Gabor Csepregi offers a phenomenological description of forms of playfulness, showing how, time and again, our attitudes of play redefine and shape diverse activities and experiences – from teaching, healing, or worshipping to political conflict or walking down the street. With play attitudes, we exercise our freedom to colour these scenes or give them an altogether new form, evoking in us more refined sentiments and more acute perceptions. This book seeks to distinguish play activities from attitudes of play, showing that the latter hold value not merely for their educational or other instrumental benefits but also, and perhaps most importantly, for the overall fulfillment and well-being they offer in all stages of human existence. (shrink)

이 글은 니체의 놀이와 아곤(agon) 개념의 문화철학적 의미를 해명한다. 놀이와 아곤 개념은 오랫동안 철학사에서 망각의 상태로 있었다. 니체에서 비로소 이 두 개념은 새로운 빛을 받게 된다. 니체가 이 두 개념에 주목할 수 있었던 것은 그리스 문화에 대한 남다른 이해 덕분이었다. 니체에 따르면 그리스 문화의 본질은 자연성에 따른다는 것이다. 그리스 에서 자연성은 놀이와 아곤을 통해 문화의 형태를 갖추게 된다. 비극과 시민정치는 모두 놀이와 아곤을 통해 시작되고 유지된다. 놀이와 아곤은 모두 힘에의 의지를 긍정한다. 인간의 재능은 힘의 경쟁을 통해 꽃피게 된다. 그러나 그리스에서 (...) 경쟁은 경쟁의 종식을 목표로 하지 않는다. 경쟁은 또 다른 경쟁 을 촉발할 때만 가치가 있다. 그들에게 경쟁은 일종의 힘의 놀이인 셈이다. 따라서 그리스 에서 놀이와 아곤은 무차별적 평등주의의 귀결인 니힐리즘과 승자 독식주의를 극복하는데 중요한 통찰을 제공해줄 수 있다. (shrink)

Plato’s Phaedrus is a famously intriguing dialogue. It employs a wide range of writing styles, such as myth, dialectic discussion, rehearsed and spontaneous speeches, and lines of verse. It makes a sharp transition from speech-making and storytelling, which make up the first half of the dialogue and deal with love, to dialectical discussion and an analysis of rhetoric in its second half. Socrates himself claims erotic madness is man’s greatest blessing. How seriously can we take such a strange dialogue? How (...) serious can we be regarding its message? (shrink)

I argue for an ontology of jazz according to which it is a tradition of musical performances but no works of art. I proceed by rejecting three alternative proposals: (i) that jazz is a work performance tradition, (ii) that jazz performances are works of art in themselves, and (iii) that jazz recordings are works of art. I also note that the concept of a work of art involved (1) is nonevaluative, so to deny jazz works of art is not to (...) judge it inferior to artistic traditions with works, and (2) is univocal across other musical traditions, so to claim there are works of art in jazz would be to use a different sense of the term than we use when, say, discussing classical music. (shrink)

We describe a case of an elderly patient suffering from advanced dementia (Mrs. M) whose chronic confusion has become a source of frustration for her caregivers. Mrs. M experiences a touching interaction with a new nurse (Nathan) who takes a different approach with her. We describe this interaction and elaborate upon it by drawing from Catholic social teaching and the philosophy of play. Cases like these do not involve dramatic or esoteric ethical problematics, but rather the sort of dilemma (...) born of the everyday tragedies of lingering illness, aging and caretakers’ fatigue. Nathan’s approach offers a different way of seeing and being with the wearisome patient. (shrink)

It is now widely acknowledged that play is central to our lives. As a phenomenon, play poses important questions of reality, subjectivity, competition, inclusion and exclusion. This international collection is the third in a series of books that aims to build paradigmatic bridges between scholars of philosophy and scholars of play. Divided into four sections, this book sheds new light on the significance of play for both children and adults in a variety of cultural settings. Its (...) chapters encompass a range of philosophical areas of enquiry such as metaphysics, aesthetics and ethics, and the spectrum of topics explored includes games, jokes, sport and our social relationship with the internet. With contributions from established and emerging scholars from around the world, The Philosophy of Play as Life is fascinating reading for all those with an interest in playwork, the ethics and philosophy of sport, childhood studies or the philosophy of education. (shrink)

Predation games—games in which the player is actively encouraged and often required to hunt and kill in order to survive—have historically been the purview of male players. Females, though now much more involved in digital games than before, generally play games that stress traditionally feminine values such as socializing with others, shopping, and nurturing. This article argues that playing games that virtually simulate predation has many benefits for female players. Predation play teaches participants how to survive and succeed (...) in stressful, competitive, aggressive environments. To remain in the game, players have to understand and enjoy the acquisition and negotiation of power, learn to face fear, willingly accept challenges, and accept the inevitability of failure without allowing it to deter future attempts. Through predation play, females can learn to excel in and enjoy high-risk high-reward environments. The author proposes that such play might help address gender disparities outside of play. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to complete, and build on, the theories of a certain number of scholars, chiefly philosophers of previous generations, and a few eminent performers of classical music who all bring to the fore the essential link between music and play. Because of their impulse value and appealing character, tones and other elements of the performance could generate a playful attitude in the musicians. Play is understood as a reciprocal interaction with something that plays (...) with the player: indeed, tones play with the musicians and, reciprocally, the musicians play with them. While engaging in a musical play, they draw on the remarkable creative abilities of their body, namely its spontaneity, sensibility, and “imaginative” anticipation. The satisfaction provided by the playful activity comes, in part, from the possibility of experiencing the body as a source of creative power and original performance. (shrink)

Considerable ferment exists around the changing nature of children’s play and its place in contemporary childhood. Traditional perspectives on early childhood research have tended to trivialize and obscure the possibilities inherent in children’s ways of knowing. Researchers seldom ask children what play means to them. This article proffers a relatively new image of childhood, one that presents young children as collaborators in research, as competent interpreters of their lived experience. This study investigates children’s knowledge: their knowledge about what (...) play is, how it is experienced, and its role in their lives, at school and at home. Interviews conducted with primary school students reveal how they perceive their lives in relation to the mainstream world of adults. Teachers and parents are seen as those who define, control, and sanction play. These children rely on the particularities and situatedness of everyday events to describe the meaning of play in their lives. Play emerges, to some degree, akin to a state of mind, invariably related to issues of autonomy, agency, and power. (shrink)

Living in an era of immense and bewildering change in technology, pandemic and war, humanity has had cause to challenge the apparent old fixities and certainties of life. Essentially, are we being played? The premise of this volume is that all of human life is underpinned by powerful dynamic systems, so tightly interwoven into our daily lives that we are barely aware of them, whose true nature only comes to light at times of profound disruption or crisis. These powerful dynamic (...) systems, philosophical or otherwise, often fall under the umbrella of ludic theory. Within these pages, some of the leading thinkers of ludic theory from three continents explore its diversity and relevance through the perspectives of some of the world's most famous philosophers. In many ways, this volume follows on from Sampson's 'Being Played: Gadamer and Philosophy's Hidden Dynamic' (2019). It also draws upon other ludic-centred and ludic-inspired texts that include Mattice's 'Metaphor and Metaphilosophy' (2014) and Arthos' 'Gadamer's Poetics: A Critique of Modern Aesthetics' (2014), together with Frazier's 'Reality, Religion and Passion' (2009) and Homan's 'A Hermeneutics of Poetic Education' (2020). Although this is not the first volume offering an integrated approach to ludic theory, see Ryall (ed), 'The Philosophy of Play' (2013), it offers a diverse and detailed approach to the subject, including not only Western philosophers, but also thinkers from Ancient China, 16th-century India and modern South America. This volume will be not only of interest to scholars and students of ludic theory and philosophy in general, but because of its deliberate globalised content, it is hoped it might have a wider appeal globally as humanity continues to grapple with significant challenges created by these current winds of change. (shrink)

Eugen Fink's deep engagement with the phenomenon of play saw him transcend his two towering mentors, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, to become a crucial figure in early 20th-century phenomenology. The Phenomenology of Play draws on Fink's concept of play to build a complete picture of his philosophy from its foundations to its applications, featuring newly translated material including notes from conversations between Fink and Heidegger, and Fink's own essay 'Mask and Cothurnus' on ancient theatre.

In this reply to Paul Gaffney, I raise questions about his strong emphasis on winning as the foundation of athletic virtues such as teamwork. I connect this to his reading of Aristotle on the connection of virtue and happiness, and suggest an alternative reading that I believe is more true to Aristotle and to the experience of sport.

Cet article présente le dispositif de formation et ses objectifs ainsi que l’analyse d’écrits réflexifs produits dans le cadre des travaux certificatifs et dans lesquels les participantes décrivent quelques-uns des effets de la formation sur leurs pratiques professionnelles.

My essay first takes me into the arena in which science, spirituality, and theology meet. I comment on the enterprise of science and how scientists could well benefit from reciprocal interactions with theologians and religious leaders. Next, I discuss the evolution of social morality and the ways in which various aspects of social play behavior relate to the notion of “behaving fairly.” The contributions of spiritual and religious perspectives are important in our coming to a fuller understanding of the (...) evolution of morality. I go on to discuss animal emotions, the concept of personhood, and how our special relationships with other animals, especially the companions with whom we share our homes, help us to define our place in nature, our humanness. It is when we take the life of another being in the ritual of compassionately euthanizing them (“putting them to sleep”) that who we are in the grand scheme of things comes to the fore. I end with a discussion of the importance of ethological studies, behavioral research in which a serious attempt is made to understand animals in their own worlds, inquiries in which it is asked, “What is it like to be another species?” Species other than nonhuman primates need to be studied. I plead for developing compassionate, heartfelt, and holistic science that allows for interdisciplinary talk about respect, grace, spirituality, religion, love, Earth, and God. (shrink)

This paper has two main parts to it. First, it is an attempt to clarify certain metaphysical issues regarding play. Play scholars from any number of academic disciplines have created a vast body of literature on the topic that seems overwhelming. Therefore, I offer descriptions of four characteristics of play that seem most experientially prominent and most indicative of the many play descriptors that previous authors have used. Second, I make axiological claims that follow from the (...) metaphysical descriptions. I argue against many previous authors, as I assert that play is not different in kind from our normal workaday lives but instead is only different by degree. Play is a deeper engagement with the world than that which we normally experience. (shrink)

우리시대 예술을 정의하는 것은 쉬운 일이 아니다. 한 세기 전에는 도저히 생각할 수 없는 것이 예술의 지위를 누린다. 현대 예술의 상황을 가장 잘 설명할 수 있는 주장은 ‘예 술다원주의’일 것이다. 예술다원주의에 정당성을 부여하는 것은 단토의 주장으로 잘 알려 진 ‘예술의 종말론’이다. 예술의 종말론은 단토 이전에 이미 헤겔 니체, 벤야민의 사상에서 도 확인된다. 이들의 공통점은 예술의 사회성과 역사성에 대한 통찰이다. 특히 니체의 예 술생리학은 예술다원주의를 옹호할 수 있는 이론적 근거를 제시한다. 예술다원주의 시대 예술을 이해하기는 쉽지않지만, 현대 예술에서 우연성, 유동성, 실험성, 상호작용 (...) 등의 경 향성은 뚜렷하다. 연구자는 현대예술의 이러한 특징을 놀이정신으로 해석하며, 그 근거를 제시한다. (shrink)

How to Play Philosophy is a series of lyrical, creative essays that explore timeless and timely ideas about who we are and how we live. MIT-trained philosopher Michael Picard shares ideas of numerous philosophers from conflicting traditions and builds an intellectual background to enable readers to draw their own conclusions. Written in a spirit of free and playful inquiry, the essays were composed originally to support public participatory philosophy, or Café Philosophy, which the author has facilitated for decades. Subjects (...) include Play it With Feeling (Desire, Stress, Anger); Games We Play (Intimacy, Loyalty, Betrayal) and Playing Fair (Values, Good, Integrity), alongside epistemological topics including Truth (Knowledge, Certainty, Objectivity) and the perennial metaphysical quandaries (Human Nature, The Sacred, God). Written for everyone interested in exploring age-old subjects in an age of disposable content, How to Play Philosophy offers playful provocations with the aim of enabling independent thinking and deeper public conversations. (shrink)