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Description
Is philosophy a playful pursuit?
This book's central argument is that playfulness is an essential quality of philosophical practice, and that there is something essentially philosophical about play. Ways of doing philosophy well invariably require the same wonder, hope, co-operation and positive freedom that define healthy modes of play.
Matthew McLennan explores this intrinsic connection in the way that philosophy and play shed light upon one another through three core concepts: the realities of play define what it is and how it manifests; the rules of play determine how it functions; the 'what comes next' of play depends on what we want or hope to find in it. Together, these meditations explain how both play and philosophy are essentially oriented towards the indefinite, the infinite and the possible. Working across disciplinary boundaries and calling on an eclectic range of thinkers, this paradigm-shifting approach redefines how we understand the doing of philosophy and how we perceive the traditions that underpin it.
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- accessibility@bloomsbury.com
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Table of Contents
1. Realities, Rules, and What Comes Next
2. Excursus: Thinking, Playing, with Others
Part One: Realities - The What of Play
3. Child Development: Playing and Reality Revisited
4. Provisional Ontologies: Play beyond Childhood
5. Excursus: River Pickles, or: American Yokai and Multinaturalism
Part Two: Rules - The How of Play
6. Fitting and Guiding
7. Searching
8. Bending, Subverting, and Changing the Game
9. Excursus: Tomahtoes on Bread, or: A Game in Search of, and running from, its own Rules
Part Three: What Comes Next - Desire, Hope, and Fear in Play
10. Affects of Linking: Desire, Hope, and Fear
11. Situating and Repairing Linking
12. Excursus: The Improvisor's stage is never Neutral
Conclusion: Philosophy Militant, Vulnerable, and Playful
Product details
| Published | Jun 25 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 208 |
| ISBN | 9781350469068 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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