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The Grasshopper’s Error: Or, On How Life is a Game

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2015

AVERY KOLERS
AVERY KOLERS*
Affiliation:
University of Louisville
*
*<akolers@louisville.edu>
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Abstract

I here defend the thesis that the best life is the life that one plays as a game—specifically, a ‘Suitsian’ game that meets the definition proposed in The Grasshopper by Bernard Suits. Even more specifically, it is a nested, open, role-playing game where the life’s quality as a game partly depends on there being no more people than players. To defend this thesis I refute two powerful challenges to it, one from Thomas Hurka (2006) and another from within The Grasshopper itself. In the process, I offer a new interpretation of that enigmatic and challenging book.

La meilleure vie est celle que l’on vit comme un jeu — en particulier un jeu correspondant à la définition proposée par Bernard Suits dans The Grasshopper. Plus spécifiquement encore, il s’agit d’un jeu de rôle ouvert et imbriqué, dans lequel la qualité de la vie en tant que jeu dépend du fait qu’il n’y ait pas davantage de personnes que de joueurs. Pour défendre cette thèse, je réponds à deux critiques qui lui ont été adressées, l’une par Hurka (2006) et l’autre dans The Grasshopper lui-même, tout en proposant une nouvelle interprétation de ce livre complexe et énigmatique.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 54 , Issue 4 , December 2015 , pp. 727 - 746
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Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 2015 

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