Jeremy Sampson

Living in an era of immense and bewildering change in technology, pandemic and war, humanity has had cause to challenge the apparent old fixities and certainties of life. Essentially, are we being played? The premise of this volume is that all of human life is underpinned by powerful dynamic systems, so tightly interwoven into our daily lives that we are barely aware of them, whose true nature only comes to light at times of profound disruption or crisis. These powerful dynamic systems, philosophical or otherwise, often fall under the umbrella of ludic theory. Within these pages, some of the leading thinkers of ludic theory from three continents explore its diversity and relevance through the perspectives of some of the world’s most famous philosophers. In many ways, this volume follows on from Sampson’s 'Being Played: Gadamer and Philosophy’s Hidden Dynamic' (2019). It also draws upon other ludic-centred and ludic-inspired texts that include Mattice’s 'Metaphor and Metaphilosophy' (2014) and Arthos’ 'Gadamer’s Poetics: A Critique of Modern Aesthetics' (2014), together with Frazier’s 'Reality, Religion and Passion' (2009) and Homan’s 'A Hermeneutics of Poetic Education' (2020). Although this is not the first volume offering an integrated approach to ludic theory, see Ryall (ed), 'The Philosophy of Play' (2013), it offers a diverse and detailed approach to the subject, including not only Western philosophers, but also thinkers from Ancient China, 16th-century India and modern South America. This volume will be not only of interest to scholars and students of ludic theory and philosophy in general, but because of its deliberate globalised content, it is hoped it might have a wider appeal globally as humanity continues to grapple with significant challenges created by these current winds of change.

Are we being played? Is our understanding of the traditionally fixed and static concepts of philosophy based on an oversimplification? This book explores some of the theories of the self since Descartes, together with the rationalism and the empiricism that sustain these ideas, and draws some startling conclusions using Gadamer’s philosophical study of play as its starting point. Gadamer’s ludic theory, Sampson argues, reveals a dynamic of play that exists at the deepest level of philosophy. It is this dynamic that could provide a solution in relation to the Gadamer/Habermas hermeneutics debate and the Gadamer/Derrida relativism debate, together with a theory of totality. Sampson shows how ludic theory can be a game-changer in understanding the relationship between philosophy and literature, exploring the dynamic between the fictive and non-fictive worlds. These worlds are characterized simultaneously by sameness (univocity of Being) and difference (equivocity of Being). The book questions Heidegger’s idea that the univocity of Being is universal, instead maintaining that the relationship between the univocity of Being and equivocity of Being is real, and that ontological mediation is required to present them as a unified whole. Using the works of Shakespeare, Beckett and Wilde, Sampson contends that such a mediation, termed ‘the ludicity of Being’, takes place between literature and its audience. This literary example has profound implications not only for literature and its attendant theories but also for philosophy — in particular, ontology and hermeneutics. This book will be of particular interest to scholars of philosophy and literature, for it seeks to develop our understanding of ontology and hermeneutics. It should also engage the general reader who wishes to understand literature and philosophy with a genuinely new set of perspectives.