engleski

On Leisure in the Grasshopper- Aristotle, J. Pieper, and B. Suits

In this paper, I am focusing on the notion of scholé or leisure in the Bernard H. Suits masterpiece The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia. My intention is threefold. First, I intend to show where and how Suits is using the term. Leisure was mentioned 7 times in the book in three different meanings: firstly as something “good” contrary to “survival” (Suits, 1978, pp.8) ; secondly as notion “leisure activities” equivalent to “play” (ibid., pp.15, 16), to life of Grasshopper (ibid., pp.16), and to “playing a game” (ibid., pp. 15, 16) ; and thirdly in the formulation “the metaphysics of leisure time” (ibid., pp.176). My second aim, however, is to put more light on the meaning and the usage of the term per se and related to The Grasshopper. In that regard, I will use Aristotle's understandings of leisure presented in the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics, and Josef Pieper in the Leisure. The Basis of Culture. Thus, leisure is something opposite to human labor as an existential provider of the necessary. In that sense, Aristotle claim that “happiness seems to be present in leisure, for we engage in unleisured pursuits in order that we may be at leisure” (Aristotle, 2002, pp.217) is more than significant. On the other hand, leisure is “of all things principal” (Aristotle, 2009, 1337b): free time for self-realization, creativity, science, contemplation, “a space of freedom, of true learning, of attunement to the world-as-a- whole” (Pieper, 1998, pp.57), and - play(ing games). My final aim is to show that Suits is impoverishing the content of the “metaphysics of leisure time” by focusing (only) on just one meaning – playing games. Furthermore, how come that in Suits “intelligible” Utopia (Suits, 1978, pp.171), not like in the other philosophically developed Utopias (T. More, T. Campanella, F. Petrić, F. Bacon), only the game-playing is seen as an “ideal of existence” (ibid., pp.166)?

leisure, utopia, Aristotle, J. Pieper, B. Suits

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