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).
- One wages war to obtain a decision of holy validity.
- An armed conflict is as much a mode of justice as divination or a legal proceeding.
- 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.
Read more about this topic: Homo Ludens (book)
Famous quotes containing the words play and/or war:
“There has been in our time a lack of reliance on language and a lack of experimentation which are frightening to anyone who sees them as symptoms. We know the phenomenon of stage-fright: it holds the player shivering, incapable of speech or action. Perhaps there is an audience-fright which the play can feel, which leaves him with these incapacities.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)
“Signal smokes, war drums, feathered bonnets against the western sky. New messiahs, young leaders are ready to hurl the finest light cavalry in the world against Fort Stark. In the Kiowa village, the beat of drums echoes in the pulsebeat of the young braves. Fighters under a common banner, old quarrels forgotten, Comanche rides with Arapaho, Apache with Cheyenne. All chant of war. War to drive the white man forever from the red man’s hunting ground.”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)