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Homo Ludens
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Homo Ludens is a book written in 1938 by Dutch historian and cultural theorist Johan Huizinga.[1] It
discusses the importance of the play element of culture and society. Huizinga suggests that play is
primary to and a necessary (though not sufficient) condition of the generation of culture. The Latin word
Ludens is the present active participle of the verb ludere which itself is cognate with the noun ludus.
Ludus has no direct equivalent in English, as it simultaneously refers to sport, play, school, and
practice.[2]

Contents
1 Reception
2 Foreword controversy
3 Contents
3.1 I. Nature and significance of play as a cultural phenomenon
3.2 II. The play concept as expressed in language
3.2.1 Play-category, play-concept, play-function, play-word in selected languages
3.3 III. Play and contest as civilizing functions
3.4 IV. Play and law
3.4.1 Three play-forms in the lawsuit
3.5 V. Play and war
3.6 VI. Playing and knowing
3.7 VII. Play and poetry
3.8 VIII. The elements of mythopoiesis
3.9 IX. Play-forms in philosophy
3.10 X. Play-forms in art
3.11 XI. Western civilization sub specie ludi
3.12 XII. Play-element in contemporary civilization
4 Quotations
5 Editions
6 See also
7 External links
8 Notes
9 References

Reception
Homo Ludens is an important part of the history of game studies. It influenced later scholars of play, like
Roger Caillois. The concept of the magic circle was inspired by Homo Ludens, that is based on
Durkheim's distincion between the sacred and the profane. While it did not play a central role in
Huizinga's thinking, it was later popularized and expanded by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmermann in
Rules of Play within game studies.

Foreword controversy
Huizinga makes it clear in the foreword of his book that he means the play element of culture, and not

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the play element in culture. He writes that he titled the initial lecture the book is based on "The Play
Element of Culture". This title was repeatedly corrected to "in" Culture, a revision he objected to. The
English version modified the subtitle of the book to "A Study of the Play-Element In Culture",
contradicting Huizinga's stated intention. The translator explains in a footnote in the Foreword,
"Logically, of course, Huizinga is correct; but as English prepositions are not governed by logic I have
retained the more euphonious ablative in this sub-title."

Contents
I. Nature and significance of play as a cultural phenomenon

Play is older than culture, for culture, however inadequately defined, always presupposes
human society, and animals have not waited for man to teach them their playing.[3]

Huizinga begins by making it clear that animals played before humans. One of the most significant
(human and cultural) aspects of play is that it is fun.[4]

Huizinga identifies 5 characteristics that play must have:[5]

1. Play is free, is in fact freedom.

2. Play is not "ordinary" or "real" life.
3. Play is distinct from "ordinary" life both as to locality and duration.
4. Play creates order, is order. Play demands order absolute and supreme.
5. Play is connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained from it.[6]

II. The play concept as expressed in language

Word and idea are not born of scientific or logical thinking but of creative language, which
means of innumerable languages—for this act of "conception" has taken place over and over
again.[7]

Huizinga has much to say about the words for play in different languages. Perhaps the most
extraordinary remark concerns the Latin language. "It is remarkable that ludus, as the general term for
play, has not only not passed into the Romance languages but has left hardly any traces there, so far as I
can see... We must leave to one side the question whether the disappearance of ludus and ludere is due to
phonetic or to semantic causes."[8]

Of all the possible uses of the word "play" Huizinga specifically mentions the equation of play with, on
the one hand, "serious strife", and on the other, "erotic applications".[9]

Play-category, play-concept, play-function, play-word in selected languages

Huizinga attempts to classify the words used for play in a variety of natural languages. The chapter title
uses "play-concept" to describe such words. Other words used with the "play-" prefix are play-function
and play-form. The order in which examples are given in natural languages is as follows:

Greek[10] (3)
παιδιά — pertaining to children's games

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ἄθυρμα — associated with the idea of the trifling, the nugatory

ἀγών — for matches and contests

Sanskrit[11] (4)
krīdati — denoting the play of animals, children, adults
divyati — gambling, dicing, joking, jesting, ...
vilāsa — shining, sudden appearance, playing and pursuing an occupation
līlayati — light, frivolous insignificant sides of playing

Chinese[12] (3)
wan — is the most important word covering children's games and much much more
cheng — denoting anything to do with contests; corresponds exactly to the Greek agon.
sai — organized contest for a prize

Blackfoot[13] (2)
koani — all children's games and surprisingly also in the erotic sense of "dallying"
kachtsi — organized play

Japanese[14] (1)
asobu — is a single, very definite word, for the play function

Semitic languages
la’ab (a root, cognate with la’at) — play, laughing, mocking
la’iba (Arabic) — playing in general, making mock of, teasing[15]
la’ab (Aramaic) — laughing and mocking
sahaq (Hebrew) — laughing and playing

Latin (1)
ludus — from ludere, covers the whole field of play[16]

III. Play and contest as civilizing functions

The view we take in the following pages is that culture arises in the form of play, that it is
played from the very beginning... Social life is endued with supra-biological forms, in the
shape of play, which enhances its value.[17]

Huizinga does not mean that "play turns into culture". Rather, he sets play and culture side by side, talks
about their "twin union", but insists that "play is primary".[17]

IV. Play and law

The judge's wig, however, is more than a mere relic of antiquated professional dress.
Functionally it has close connections with the dancing masks of savages. It transforms the
wearer into another "being". And it is by no means the only very ancient feature which the
strong sense of tradition so peculiar to the British has preserved in law. The sporting element
and the humour so much in evidence in British legal practice is one of the basic features of
law in archaic society."[18]

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Three play-forms in the lawsuit

Huizinga puts forward the idea that there are "three play-forms in the lawsuit" and that these forms can
be deduced by comparing practice today with "legal proceedings in archaic society":[19]

1. the game of chance

2. the contest
3. the verbal battle

V. Play and war

Until recently the "law of nations" was generally held to constitute such a system of
limitation, recognizing as it did the ideal of a community with rights and claims for all, and
expressly separating the state of war—by declaring it—from peace on the one hand and
criminal violence on the other. It remained for the theory of "total war" to banish war's
cultural function and extinguish the last vestige of the play-element.[20]

This chapter occupies a certain unique position not only in the book but more obviously in Huizinga's
own life. The first Dutch version was published in 1938 (before the official outbreak of World War II).
The Beacon Press book is based on the combination of Huizinga's English text and the German text,
published in Switzerland 1944. Huizinga died in 1945 (the year the Second World War ended).

1. One wages war to obtain a decision of holy validity.[21]

2. An armed conflict is as much a mode of justice as divination or a legal proceeding.[21]
3. War itself might be regarded as a form of divination.[22]

The chapter contains some pleasantly surprising remarks:

1. One might call society a game in the formal sense, if one bears in mind that such a game is the
living principle of all civilization.[23]
2. In the absence of the play-spirit civilization is impossible.[24]

VI. Playing and knowing

For archaic man, doing and daring are power, but knowing is magical power. For him all
particular knowledge is sacred knowledge—esoteric and wonder-working wisdom, because
any knowing is directly related to the cosmic order itself.[25]

The riddle-solving and death-penalty motif features strongly in the chapter.

Greek tradition: the story of the seers Chalcas and Mopsos.[26]

VII. Play and poetry

Poiesis, in fact, is a play-function. It proceeds within the play-ground of the mind, in a world
of its own which the mind creates for it. There things have a different physiognomy from the
one they wear in ‘ordinary life’, and are bound by ties other than those of logic and

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causality."[27]

For Huizinga, the "true appellation of the archaic poet is vates, the possessed, the God-smitten, the
raving one".[28] Of the many examples he gives, one might choose Unferd who appears in Beowulf.[29]

VIII. The elements of mythopoiesis

As soon as the effect of a metaphor consists in describing things or events in terms of life
and movement, we are on the road to personification. To represent the incorporeal and the
inanimate as a person is the soul of all myth-making and nearly all poetry.[30]

Mythopoiesis is literally myth-making.[31]

IX. Play-forms in philosophy

At the centre of the circle we are trying to describe with our idea of play there stands the
figure of the Greek sophist. He may be regarded as an extension of the central figure in
archaic cultural life who appeared before us successively as the prophet, medicine-man, seer,
thaumaturge and poet and whose best designation is vates.

X. Play-forms in art

Wherever there is a catch-word ending in -ism we are hot on the tracks of a

play-community."[32]

Huizinga has already established an indissoluble bond between play and poetry. Now he recognizes that
"the same is true, and in even higher degree, of the bond between play and music"[33] However, when he
turns away from "poetry, music and dancing to the plastic arts" he "finds the connections with play
becoming less obvious".[34] But here Huizinga is in the past. He cites the examples of the "architect, the
sculptor, the painter, draughtsman, ceramist, and decorative artist" who in spite of her/his "creative
impulse" is ruled by the discipline, "always subjected to the skill and proficiency of the forming
hand."[35]

On the other hand, if one turns away from the "making of works of art to the manner in which they are
received in the social milieu"[36] then the picture changes completely. It is this social reception, the
struggle of the new "-ism" against the old "-ism" which characterises the play.

XI. Western civilization sub specie ludi

We have to conclude, therefore, that civilization is, in its earliest phases, played.
It does not come from play like a baby detaching itself from the womb:
it arises in and as play, and never leaves it.[37]

XII. Play-element in contemporary civilization

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In American politics it [the play-factor present in the whole apparatus of elections] is even
more evident. Long before the two-party system had reduced itself to two gigantic teams
whose political differences were hardly discernible to an outsider, electioneering in America
had developed into a kind of national sport.[38]

Quotations
"Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a
man when he plays." (On the Aesthetic Education of Man — Friedrich Schiller)
"It is ancient wisdom, but it is also a little cheap, to call all human activity 'play'. Those who are
willing to content themselves with a metaphysical conclusion of this kind should not read this
book." (from the Foreword, unnumbered page)

Editions
Huizinga, Johan (1938). Homo Ludens: Proeve Ener Bepaling Van Het Spelelement Der Cultuur.
Groningen, Wolters-Noordhoff cop. 1985. Original Dutch edition.
Huizinga, J. (1949). Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul.
Huizinga, Johan (1955). Homo ludens; a study of the play-element in culture. Boston: Beacon
Press. ISBN 978-0807046814.

See also
Luden, from Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's Noon Universe
Homo faber
Man, Play and Games
Hermann Hesse's The Glass Bead Game ("Magister Ludi")

External links
J. HUIZINGA, Homo Ludens (1949 Edition) (http://art.yale.edu/file_columns/0000/1474
/homo_ludens_johan_huizinga_routledge_1949_.pdf); Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd

Notes
1. Huizinga, Johan (1944). Homo Ludens. 9. Starting from his remark on Professor
Switzerland: Routledge – via http://art.yale.edu Buytendijk's use of the word "love-play",
/file_columns/0000/1474 Huizinga remarks that in his own opinion "it is
/homo_ludens_johan_huizinga_routledge_1949_. not the act as such that the spirit of language tends
pdf. to conceive as play; rather the road thereto, the
2. "JM Latin English Dictionary | Free Latin preparation for and introduction to "love", which
Dictionary". www.latin-dictionary.org. Retrieved is often made enticing by all sorts of playing. This
2016-09-19. is particularly true when one of the sexes has to
3. Huizinga 1955, p. 1 rouse or win the other over to copulating." Today
4. Huizinga 1955, p.3 one uses the word foreplay to describe this "love-
5. Huizinga 1955, p. 8-10 play". Huizinga, 1955, p.43
6. Huizinga 1955, p.13 10. Huizinga 1955, p.30
7. Huizinga 1955, p.28 11. Huizinga 1955, p.30-1
8. Huizinga 1955, p.36

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12. Huizinga acknowledges the assistance of
Professor Duyvendak (http://www.umass.edu
/wsp/sinology/persons/duyvendak.html)'s
"friendly help [which allows him] to say
something about the Chinese expressions for the
play-function". Huizinga 1955, p.32
13. The information on the Blackfoot language used
by Huizinga comes from Professor Christianus
Cornelis Uhlenbeck. Huizinga 1955, p33. See the
book Montana 1911: A Professor and his Wife
among the Blackfeet for further details behind this
contribution of the Blackfoot Indian language to
Homo Ludens.
14. Huizinga acknowledges the assistance of
Professor Johannes Rahder, Huizinga 1955, p.34.
Having identified a single word, Huizinga then
goes on to explain that the matter is more
complicated, Specifically, he mentions bushido
(which was enacted in play-forms) and later
asobase-kotoba (literally play-language — for
polite speech, the mode of address used in
conversation with persons of higher rank).
15. Huizinga makes a point of noting that this Arabic
word is used for the "playing" of a musical
instrument, as in some modern European
languages. Huizinga 1955, p35.
16. Huizinga then makes a point of noting that jocus,
jocari does not mean play proper in classical
Latin. Huizinga 1955, p35. The primary reason
for making this point here is that later he shall
note the disappearance of ludus to be supplanted
by jocus in the emergence of the Romance
languages.
17. Huizinga 1955, p.46
18. Huizinga 1995, p77.
19. Huizinga 1955, p84.
20. Huizinga 1955, p90.
21. Huizinga 1955, p91.
22. Note from the translator: "Huizinga's own English
MS. replaces this third factor by "the cessation of
normal social conditions"." Huizinga 1955, p91.
23. Huizinga 1955, p100-01.
24. Huizinga 1955, p101.
25. Huizinga 1955, p105.
26. Huizinga 1955, p109. Details of the contest are
not easy to come by. Just after the fall of Troy,
Mopsos meets Chalcas. Chalcas points to a fig
tree and asks him: How many figs are there on
that fig tree over there? Mopsos answers 9;
Chalcas say 8. Chalcas is wrong and drops dead
on the spot. Symboles, mythes et légendes
(http://www.au-grand-jardin.info/augrandjardin
/b/banian/symboles.htm) Date of last access 10
September 2008.
27. Huizinga 1955, p.119
28. Huizinga 1955, p120.
29. Huizinga, p121. The spelling of Unferd is
sometimes given as Unferth in other texts.
30. Huizing 1955, p136.
31. One might wish to consult related Wikipedia
articles Mythopoeia and Mythopoeic thought.
32. The quotation is taken from Chapter XII The
Play-element in Contemporary Civilization. It
seems appropriate to bring it forward to Chapter
X Play-forms in Art to characterize the naturally
occurring -isms of Impressionism, Cubism and so
on. One wonders if Huizinga also had in mind the
politically occurring -isms of Communism,
Fascism, Republicanism, Socialism and so on.
Huizinga 1955, p.203
33. Huizinga 1955, p.158
34. Huizinga 1955, p.165
35. Huizinga 1955, p.166
36. Huizinga 1955, p.169
37. Huizinga 1955, p173.
38. Huizinga 1955, p.207

References
1. Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens. Beacon Press (1 June 1971). ISBN 0-8070-4681-7
2. Huizinga, Johan (1955). Homo ludens; a study of the play-element in culture. Boston: Beacon
Press. ISBN 978-0-8070-4681-4.
3. Sutton-smith, Brian (2001), The ambiguity of play, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
ISBN 978-0-674-00581-5, OCLC 46602137
4. Wilhelmina Maria Uhlenbeck-Melchior, Mary Eggermont-Molenaar, Christianus Cornelius
Uhlenbeck, Alice Beck Kehoe, Klaas van Berkel, Inge Genee; translation from Dutch by Mary
Eggermont-Molenaar (2005), Montana 1911: A Professor and his Wife among the Blackfeet,
Calgary: University of Calgary Press, ISBN 978-1-55238-114-4, OCLC 180772936

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