Homo Ludens (book) - V. Play and War

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.”

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

The chapter contains some pleasantly surprising remarks:

• 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.
• In the absence of the play-spirit civilization is impossible.