Thoughts on Zhuangzi and play, and how we can think about games and play in contemporary philosophical context. I am teaching on this today, and will tweet a thread with thoughts. 1/

The notion of play comes up in several places in the Zhuangzi, notably in the concept of free and easy wandering 遊. (it is in the title of book 1 逍遙遊 , enjoyment in untroubled ease).
Why do we enjoy play? What makes play significant for human lives? 2/

A very intriguing but difficult to understand passage is the one on Liezi riding the wind. You can find the passage here with the original, and the translation by Burton Watson here: 3/
https://ctext.org/dictionary.pl?if=en&id=2718

This is a difficult and obscure passage. "wandered through the boundless" is originally 以遊無者, talking about the free and easy wandering (you, 遊) which has connotations of freedom and exercise of agency in it. How are we to understand Liezi's cool and breezy flight? 4/

I will here propose that central to Zhuangzi's concept of free and easy wandering (you, 遊) is the exercise of free agency within a game. I'll draw heavily on @add_hawk 's recent work on games and the art of agency, and the tension between freedom and rules of a game 5/

Now some philosophers have attempted to come to grips with games and play. Perhaps the locus classicus is Huizinga's Homo ludens (1938), an intellectual history that focuses on play in human endeavors (not so much on play per se) and how foundational it is 6/

According to Huizinga play is
* older than humanity (as mammals, birds, play)
* free, freedom (interesting contrast with Suits, see below)
* not connected to material interest (poker-players: “Am I a joke to you”?)
* distinct from ordinary life 7/

The notion of freedom is where I will focus on. As we will see below that @add_hawk puts freedom quite central (like Zhuangzi) in play as a willful exercise of agency distinct from ordinary life, whereas other authors (e.g., Suits) stress limitations in freedom 8/

Bernard Suits attempted to write a definition of games in this classic 1967 paper. It is much criticized, but will set up a helpful contrast with Nguyen ( @add_hawk) so I am putting it here.Also how cool is it this was published in Philosophy of Science? 9/
https://www.jstor.org/stable/186102#metadata_info_tab_contents

According to Suits a game "is to engage in activity directed toward bringing about a specific state of affairs, using only means permitted by specific rules, where the means permitted by the rules are more limited in scope than they would be in the absence of the rules ... "10/

"and where the sole reason for accepting such limitation is to make possible such activity. " - this would distinguish games from work. In work (e.g., baking bread) we choose the most efficient way. In play, it seems we want to deliberately choose an inefficient way 11/

Here is Suits' description of golf. 12/

Suits resists the idea that it’s inefficiency that makes games and work differ. The aim of golf is to get the ball into the hole with the fewest strokes of the golf stick. Thus, Suits prefers: rules are more limited in scope than they would be in the absence of the rules. 13/

Nguyen resists Suit's emphasis on limitation and rather focuses on the aesthetic quality of games. What is it about playing a game that makes it artful? What is unique to the aesthetic experience of a game? (full paper here)
https://philarchive.org/rec/NGUGAT-2  14/

For Nguyen, agency is central to games. Precisely because the rules in games are different, games highlight our ability to substantially, voluntarily, and quickly manipulate aspects of our own agency” 15/

"the artificial rules, the arbitrary goal, and the player’s dedication to winning—are actually central to what makes games both a unique art form and a valuable tool for human self-development.” 16/

For Nguyen, the fact that games have limiting rules help us to express agency in a unique way, and that exercise of agency is what makes the game aesthetically pleasing. You establish an alternative in-game agency by “giving yourself over” to the goals of the game. 17/

How do you give yourself over to the goals of the game? By earnestly trying to win. This, he argues “requires that we submerge ourselves in these alternative in-game agencies—that we take on these temporary ends as something like final ends.” 18/

Personal note: I think that this is very much akin to other play-like activities like music. When you play a piece, such as a Nocturne by Chopin on the piano, you give yourself over to the goals of the piece, of bringing the best interpretation of that piece. 19/

And the more you can do it, more enjoyable the activity. In play, your free agency comes about as a result of your redirecting your goals to the game goals, “Games highlight our ability to substantially, voluntarily, and quickly manipulate aspects of our own agency.” 20/

The aesthetic experience of a game comes then, from experiencing your own agency. Different games thus yield different experiences. This explains why we also derive pleasure from games that afford a sense of power and ease, not only difficult games 21/

The artistic medium of striving games are "the goals, the rules, and the practical environment. The game designer designs a temporary practical agency to inhabit—with its own goals and abilities—and the practical environment that agent will come into contact with." 22/

Back to Liezi and my hot take on this difficult Zhuangzi passage. Liezi is soaring freely within the environment of the game. He restructures his agency while at play. In play, we suspend our everyday worries and concerns and give ourselves over to the aims of the game 23/

In @add_hawk's views, we are able to layer our agency. For the moment of the game of Go or chess, we want to win, we want to immobilize the opponent's king, or surround the enemy's army. and these goals are genuine yet disposable 24/

I think this tension between play and real world explains some of the paradoxical statements in Zhuangzi's passage on Liezi "He escaped the trouble of walking, but he still had to depend on something to get around."-- your agency is different in a game from everyday life 25/

Why would we do this? Why soar in the world of play and not walk for a while? Nguyen writes, "Much of the appeal of games is that we do not have to deal with the complex fluidity of the world and its welter of plural and ambiguous values." Thus games afford a unique freedom 26/

We thus exercise our agency thanks to the specific game environment (of what it takes to win, the game mechanics etc) and this affords us freedom, a free and easy wandering (you) in Zhuangzi's view. 27/

Importantly, it matters that we want to win. These ends are temporary but genuine. We're not just making-believe that the ends matter. But here is an important objection to the games (Nguyen treats several, but I'll just focus on one) 28/

Game ends are clear and the rules are also clear, so there is something artificial about game ends and our pursuit of them. Real life is messy, complex, we are driven usually by complex motivations (in fact, it's terrible to try to see life as a game to win at!) 29/

However, "One of the greatest pleasures of games is that they offer a certain existential balm, a momentary shelter from the existential complexities of ordinary life. In a game, for once in my life, I know exactly what it is that I’m supposed to be doing." 30/

And it is precisely because games are so circumscribed that they offer us this freedom. The freedom of a game, the soaring of Liezi who doesn't need to care (in the game) how he gets around walking is what affords us this unique free exercise of agency 31/

You can fret and worry endlessly whether you made the right decision but over the chess board, it is pretty clear what is a suboptimal move. It's also clear why the move is suboptimal. (see @viral_comment excellent channel for commentaries on chess games) 32/

Different games afford different ways of exercising agency. Their constraints are precisely what permit the free and easy wandering. If you play different games, you get to experience different ways to exercise your agency and derive aesthetic pleasure from this exercise 33/

And that, in Nguyen's view, gives us games as a "library of agencies". Liezi comes back to Earth after 15 days, refreshed from the game. Or so I will argue in class /end (and with thanks to Thi for such a wonderful paper!)