Professional Documents
Culture Documents
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and
extend access to Ethics
This content downloaded from 92.223.159.135 on Fri, 31 Aug 2018 22:20:21 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
"Work" and "Play"
Richard Burke
Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan
"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." Most jingles rhyme better
than this one, but no proverb is truer. The complement is also true. I ven-
ture to add, without argument, a new item to our store of conventional
wisdom: "All play and no work makes Jack a big jerk." We don't so often
realize, however, that simply alternating between work and play is not
very satisfying either, if the work is drudgery and the play is merely re-
cuperation to enable us to go back to work again. This has been the lot of
most people throughout history, and it is not an enviable one. The lucky
few are not the leisure class, if that means "all play and no work," but those
whose activities combine elements of both. We all know someone whose
job is so satisfying, so rewarding to him that he would rather "work" than
do anything else, regardless of product or profit. And some people are so
serious about their leisure activity, whether it be golf, bridge, or the piano,
that it absorbs more of their energy and discipline than their work does.
I wish to maintain in this essay that the most satisfying kind of work shares
in the freedom and plasticity of play; that the most satisfying kind of play
(in the long run) is purposeful and disciplined, like work; and that the
good life for both individuals and societies must include plenty of both
kinds of activities. As John Dewey put it, "Both [play and work] are
equally free and intrinsically motivated, apart from false economic condi-
tions which tend to make play into idle excitement for the well to do, and
work into uncongenial labor for the poor."1
I. DEFINITIONS
The above thesis sounds plausible, I suppose; but any attempt to jus-
tify it runs into the notorious difficulty of defining both "play" and
"work." The Random House Dictionary lists fifty-three different mean-
ings of "play" and thirty-nine of "work," not counting idiomatic uses like
1. John Dewey, Democracy and Education (New York: Macmillan Co., 1916),
pp. 205-6.
33
This content downloaded from 92.223.159.135 on Fri, 31 Aug 2018 22:20:21 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
34 Ethics
"He made a play for my girl" or "Let's give him the works."2 W
of playing a game, a role, or a musical instrument; of the solitary
infants and animals; of the play of light on the waves. Can there be any-
thing common to all these? "Work" can be physical labor, but it can also
be the functioning of a machine, any paid occupation, an artistic product,
or (in physics) any transfer of energy through force. Wittgenstein has
suggested, using the word "game" as his example, that the most we should
expect in such cases is a "family resemblance" among the various uses,
rather than a single definition applying equally to all;3 and even this may
be too much to ask for here.
To make matters worse for my thesis, the same dictionary gives only
one antonym for "play" ("work"), and only two for "work" ("play"
and "rest"). While this offers some hope for reducing the meanings of
each term to one or two basic ones, it also suggests that an activity com-
bining both work and play is somehow a contradiction in terms. And "the
man in the street" would probably bear this out. Work is difficult and
unpleasant, he might say, while play is easy and fun. But we have already
seen that neither of these is necessarily true: that they reflect what Dewey
called "false economic conditions." Some people enjoy their work, some
have easy jobs, and some even prefer work as a way of spending their
leisure time: in a recent study asking automobile workers how they would
spend additional leisure time if they were to get it, 96.8 percent mentioned
"work around the house," as compared with 48.8 percent for attending
spectator sports, 42.4 percent for hunting and fishing, 24.8 percent for
engaging in athletics, 53.6 percent for travel.4 On the other side, play
can be very demanding: think of intercollegiate football. And it can be
distinctly unpleasant when one is playing poorly or when one's compan-
ions are irritating.
Another dichotomy, equally unsatisfactory, results from defining both
in economic terms: work is whatever you get paid for, and play is every-
thing else. This idea is seldom expressed that crudely; but it lurks beneath
the assumption that a professional athlete, musician, or actor is working
rather than playing, although his activity may be distinguishable from
that of an amateur solely by the fact that he gets paid for it. The fact that
a man "plays" baseball, "plays" in an orchestra, or acts in "plays" suggests
that his activity is in some sense play, even if he is a good enough player
This content downloaded from 92.223.159.135 on Fri, 31 Aug 2018 22:20:21 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
35 "Work" and "Play"
to earn a living at it. And of course a great deal of work is not paid
our society, as any housewife would be quick to point out. Whether w
or play is remunerated seems to be purely a matter of convention, var
from one society to another (how would it apply in premonetary cul-
tures?) and having little to do with the nature of the activities themselves.
What might be called the "common-sense dichotomy" between work
and play, then, need not detain us very long. The two terms are not neces-
sarily mutually exclusive, despite the fact that they are often antonyms.
Nor are they exhaustive of the range of human activities: eating, sleeping,
praying, fighting are normally neither work nor play, and this list could
easily be extended. They are simply two of the activities of man, each
with a characteristic structure which I am trying to discover.
A number of recent theories give more cause for despair, by using
both terms in such extended or paradoxical ways that they threaten to rob
them of all meaning. Everyone seems to be talking about "playing games"
these days. The mathematical "game theory" of von Neumann and Mor-
ganstern is used by some social scientists as a model of rational behavior,
useful in devising strategies for business, international diplomacy, and
war:5 a range of activities about as far from "play" as one can imagine.
Eric Berne, on the other hand, in his best-selling Games People Play, de-
fines a "game" as an interpersonal transaction in which the participants
are governed by ulterior motives of which they are unaware and which
are invariably self-destructive.6 Such behavior is utterly serious and utterly
irrational; indeed, Berne's purpose is to get us to stop playing games with
each other. In philosophy, Wittgenstein's introduction of the term "lan-
guage game" is having an enormous influence. Even morality, which
Kant considered the ultimate in seriousness and therefore diametrically
opposed to play,8 is now being treated as a kind of game with rules, strate-
gies, spectators, etc.9
David Riesman has shown that Freud, reflecting a widespread bour-
geois attitude, associated the world of work with the "reality principle"
and regarded play as wish fulfillment through fantasy-tolerable and even
useful in childhood but hardly appropriate for mature adults.10 Piaget,
after defining intelligence as an equilibrium between accommodation (to
reality) and assimilation (to the self), defines play as "the primacy of as-
5. John von Neumann and Oscar Morganstern, Theory of Games and Economic
Behavior (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1944).
6. Eric Berne, Games People Play (New York: Grove Press, 1964), pp. 48-50.
7. Wittgenstein, p. 23.
8. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. J. H. Bernard (New York: Hafner
Publishing Co., 1951), pp. 176-77.
9. For example, John Rawls, "Two Concepts of Rules," Philosophical Review,
vol. 64 (1955).
10. David Riesman, "The Themes of Work and Play in the Structure of Freud
Thought" (1950), reprinted in Individualism Reconsidered (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press
1954), pp. 326-31.
This content downloaded from 92.223.159.135 on Fri, 31 Aug 2018 22:20:21 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
36 Ethics
II. PLAY
I submit that the following activities are all clearly examples of "play"
and that a definition which excludes any of them is therefore inadequate.
1. A one-year-old child rolling a toy across the floor or wearing his cereal
on his head instead of eating it-or a kitten, puppy, or young chim-
panzee doing the same things
11. Jean Piaget, Play, Dreams, and Imitation in Childhood, trans. C. Gattegno and
F.M. Hodgson (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1962), p. 87.
12. See Susanna Millar, The Psychology of Play (New York: Penguin Books,
1968), chaps. 3-7.
13. Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens, English trans. (London: Paladin, 1970).
14. See Peter Achinstein, Concepts of Science (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press,
1968), chaps. 1-2.
This content downloaded from 92.223.159.135 on Fri, 31 Aug 2018 22:20:21 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
37 "Work" and "Play"
Let me try to formulate a definition that will include all the paradigms
on the list. A few common features emerge: freedom from compulsion,
completeness of the activity itself apart from its result, and a certain arti-
ficial or "pretend" quality which is unobservable and hard to pin down
but which is nevertheless present, I think, in the organized games and
15. Even more interesting is the case of reading for pleasure, which is not nor-
mally considered play, although it is hard to see why not. The absence of bodily activ-
ity, perhaps; but what about chess? Or someone pretending to be a statue?
16. By this formula, the fine arts are forms of play, whether professional or amateur
(but see pp. 46-47).
This content downloaded from 92.223.159.135 on Fri, 31 Aug 2018 22:20:21 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
3 8 Ethics
17. In saying this, I am disagreeing with Huizinga. I will discuss the matter further
in connection with my third criterion.
18. Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man, trans. R. Shell (New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1954), pp. 74-80.
This content downloaded from 92.223.159.135 on Fri, 31 Aug 2018 22:20:21 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
39 "Work" and "Play"
that he got good enough at it to be paid. The pay is extrinsic to the ac-
tivity, which was engaged in for its own sake long before the idea of be-
coming a professional suggested itself and would most likely be engaged in
whether paid or not. The determining perspective should not be that of
the economist, who treats all activities from one point of view (exchange
value), but that of the participant, who distinguishes them according to
their experiential structures. A professional athlete's or performer's work
may become burdensome to him, of course, and probably does to all of
them at times; but it remains an activity which is by its nature intrinsi-
cally complete and satisfying, apart from external rewards like money or
fame.19
Roger Caillois, in his otherwise admirable little book Les jeux et les
hommes, simply assumes that "professionals ... are not players but work-
ers." He also stresses the importance of games of chance in many cultures,
and the necessity for any definition of play to take into account the fact
that the player is far from disinterested in the results of his activity.20
Here, unlike the stakes in baseball, the stakes are the raisin d'etre of the
game. We cannot define play, then, as activity having no consequences at
all; but we can call it activity pursued for its own sake, and in that sense
complete in itself. Many people enjoy gambling when they break even,
and even when they lose. When the stakes become so high that one can-
not afford to lose, or if someone perfects a "system" that assures him of
winning, he passes beyond "play" to more realistic activities.
The same sort of answer can be given to the argument that, since the
play of young children (and animals) serves to develop their abilities, it
is not pursued for its own sake. This time it is the perspective of the biolo-
gist, anthropologist, or developmental psychologist which is falsely given
priority over that of the participant. A parallel fallacy is common in the
treatment of religion by social scientists: the fact that religion forms a
social bond or gives an individual a feeling of security is taken to imply
that this is what religion "really" is, despite the protests of believers that
this misses the essence of the phenomenon. There is a basic issue in epis-
temology here, which I cannot go into further without hopelessly distort-
ing the balance of this essay. I will simply say that some sort of phenome-
nology seems more appropriate to the study of play (and work) than any
form of reductionism, and that phenomenologically play is complete in
itself, although it may serve other purposes as well.
Paradigms 7 and 8 mention what seem to be extrinsic purposes in their
very wording: "for the sake of novelty," "to avoid boredom." Here- the
ulterior motive seems to be a part of the phenomenological structure of the
act itself. They are far from trivial cases for my general thesis, too: the
19. Paul Weiss, Sport: A Philosophic Inquiry (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Uni-
versity Press, 1969), chap. 12.
20. Roger Caillois, Man, Play, and Games, trans. M. Barash (Glencoe, Ill.: Free
Press, 1961), pp. 5-6.
This content downloaded from 92.223.159.135 on Fri, 31 Aug 2018 22:20:21 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
40 Ethics
This content downloaded from 92.223.159.135 on Fri, 31 Aug 2018 22:20:21 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
41 "Work" and "Play"
Every child knows perfectly well that he is "only pretending," or that it was
"only for fun." . . . This "only pretending" quality of play betrays a conscious-
ness of the inferiority of play compared with "seriousness," a feeling that seems
to be something as primary as play itself. Nevertheless . . . the consciousness of
play being "only a pretend" does not by any means prevent it from proceeding
with the utmost seriousness, with an absorption, a devotion that passes into
rapture and, temporarily at least, completely abolishes that troublesome "only"
feeling. . . . The inferiority of play is continually being offset by the corre-
sponding superiority of its seriousness. Play turns to seriousness and seriousness
to play. Play may rise to heights of beauty and sublimity that leave seriousness
far beneath.24
Huizinga first admits too much-I doubt that every playing child
knows "perfectly well" that he is only pretending-then gets hopelessly
confused by using "serious" in two different senses in the same paragraph,
so that play is both serious and not serious, both "inferior" and "superior"
to seriousness. The passage is useful, however, because this distinction be-
tween two senses of "serious" is just what I need to justify my claim that
play is "artificial" activity.
The distinction is between the nature of an activity in itself and the
attitude of the participants on a given occasion. In itself, play is "not seri-
ous" in the sense that it contrasts with hard, everyday reality; with more
earthy activities like eating, working, fighting, sex. It can be, however, and
often is pursued with an attitude of rapt concentration and dogged per-
sistence that surpasses these "more serious" activities. The difference is not
in the degree of absorption involved, or in the value placed on the activity
by the participant, but in its relationship to the life of man. Play is not
just an attitude of mind: it is a type of activity in the world, normally
associated with a certain attitude but not reducible to it. Play involves a
representation or rehearsal of life, especially its agonistic aspects, according
to tacit rules of simplification and projection.25 A child's play world is
composed of elements drawn from his experience but rearranged so as to
be more manageable and meaningful. The same is true of many sports and
games, whether of skill or chance: each generates a finite microcosm,
where the things that can happen are strictly delimited. Not only do they
take place in delimited areas-stadium, court, casino, board, etc.-and with-
This content downloaded from 92.223.159.135 on Fri, 31 Aug 2018 22:20:21 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
42 Ethics
in fixed time limits, but according to rules which artificially equalize the
conditions of competition between players and specify which few of their
countless characteristics and actions will count as relevant to each game.
The result is an artificially simplified world, in which each act has one and
only one meaning. Each game is a system of symbolic acts, the meanings
of which are drawn from real life but then refined and purified of conno-
tations and ambiguities so that they can be combined in new and interest-
ing ways. The best example is probably chess, drawn from military tactics
in ancient India. Performances and impersonations likewise take place in
microcosms, governed by the symbols and conventions of the theater.
This description applies equally well, however, to the exploratory play of
small children, except that the simplification is not for the sake of novelty
and amusement but results from the child's inability to deal with more
complex situations. Freud and Piaget are relevant here, but they adopt a
patronizing attitude toward those who love this simpler world of symbols
and conventions. As Huizinga has shown, the kinship between this world
and the equally symbolic worlds of the arts, of myth and ritual, and of
philosophical speculation is a close one.
Here lies the true significance of play in the life of man: in its more
complex forms, it develops his creative, imaginative ability, enabling him
to live not only in the "real" world but also in countless symbolic worlds
of his own making. No doubt this makes him a more efficient solver of
practical problems; but it also enables him to endow his life with form and
meaning. What art, religion, and philosophy are for the few, play is for
the many: a free, intrinsically satisfying activity governed by rules of
man's own making and giving rise to a finite, meaningful world that man
can call his own. Perhaps this is what Plato meant in a fascinating passage
in The Laws: "What, then, is the right way of living? Life must be lived
as play [7rat~a], playing certain games, making sacrifices, singing and danc-
ing, and then a man will be able to propitiate the gods, and defend himself
against his enemies, and win in the contest."26
One more problem about my definition remains to be faced. On page
36 I assumed that animals as well as humans play. My discussion through-
out, however, has referred to mental states; and what do we know of the
mental states of animals? Although I argued (on p. 41) that play is not
just an attitude but a type of activity, without the attitude the activity
would be fundamentally different. It seems I must either modify the defi-
nition or refuse to apply it to animals. But anyone who has watched a
kitten with a ball of yarn knows it is playing, just as surely as he knows it
about a boy with a toy truck. Or does he? The kitten certainly seems to
be playing, by which I think we mean that it seems to have the same atti-
tude as, or at least an attitude similar to, that of humans at play. But isn't
26. Plato The Laws 7, 803. Huizinga (pp. 37-38) quotes this passage in support
of his own thesis apparently failing to notice the contrast with seriousness implied in
the last lines.
This content downloaded from 92.223.159.135 on Fri, 31 Aug 2018 22:20:21 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
43 "Work" and "Play"
it after all conceivable that its consciousness is quite different from any-
thing we imagine and that there is nothing remotely resembling the human
play attitude in it? Descartes must have seen young animals gamboling
about; yet it was his considered opinion that they are mere automatons,
devoid of thought and even feelings. Experiments may some day be de-
vised which prove that a kitten cannot distinguish between a ball of yarn
and a mouse and that what we call "playing with a mouse" is inherited,
functional, and impossible to extinguish; would we still want to call it
play? All we can say, I think, is that certain animals engage in playlike
activity, but we cannot be sure that they are really playing. One or two
of our paradigms (nos. 1, 3) must yield in the end, then, to the definition
reached with their help. Thus does philosophical dialectic differ from a
formal system!
III. WORK
27. I include this, although we may have to retract it later, because it is unques-
tionably a paradigmatic use of the word.
28. This too is performed by some animals (e.g., nest building), and by machines.
This content downloaded from 92.223.159.135 on Fri, 31 Aug 2018 22:20:21 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
44 Ethics
This list tells us that work can be either physical or mental, either
repetitive drudgery (nos. 1, 4) or creative activity (nos. 5, 6). It can ap-
parently be performed by persons, animals, or machines (nos. 2-5, 8, even
6). Note that it need not be active in any overt way (nos. 6, 7, and some
forms of nos. 9 and 10), so that a Martian would also fail to recognize
these types of work when he saw them. The most striking thing about
this list, however, is the way the various activities fall into clusters: para-
digms 1-4 are of exhausting or repetitive activity; 5-7 all involve arranging
parts (materials, ideas, or people) so that they form a whole; and 8-10
refer to the functioning of a part in a whole. In paradigms 9 and 10, the
"whole" is a social nexus in which one person takes the part (or part of
the part) of another, or in which people participate in a common task and
share in a common product (wealth). Is there a common idea underlying
all three clusters?
The last two clusters are obviously related; let us see whether the first
is related to the others. There are really only two paradigms of work here:
physical toil and repetitive labor. But why does one engage in either of
these unappetizing activities? Clearly because they add up to a result
which is desired and because this is the only available means to that end.
The act, then, should be defined in terms of the desired result ("digging
a grave," "keeping the books"), and the digging or adding is simply the
series of parts making up the whole act. The only difference between this
and paradigms 5 or 6 is that here all the parts are the same, whereas in
building a house or solving a scientific problem a variety of different acts
are required. The same principle applies to repetitive acts performed by a
lone individual: a boxer punching a bag or a musician practicing scales is
working, not because the activity is boring and unpleasant-he may even
enjoy it-but because it is part of the larger task of perfecting his skill.
A single formula, then, seems to cover all types of work: activity
which is part of a larger whole or serves to unite parts into a whole.30 This
applies to intellectual as well as physical work and to supervisory as well
as menial functions. At the minimum, being paid for any activity proves
that one is at least part of an economic whole to which others are willing
to acknowledge one's contribution, even if the activity itself seems quite
unproductive, like that of a business or government sinecure. An activity
can be for the sake of the whole, then, regardless of whether this is the
motive of the participant on any given occasion.
29. Not all work is paid, but all paid activity is work-in one important sense,
anyway. I objected to defining work in terms of pay, but this is surely one of the
paradigmatic uses of the word.
30. To define work in terms of "means to an end" in general, as some writers
have, is too broad: it includes all purposive activity whatsoever, such as reaching for
a cigarette.
This content downloaded from 92.223.159.135 on Fri, 31 Aug 2018 22:20:21 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
45 "Work" and "Play"
This content downloaded from 92.223.159.135 on Fri, 31 Aug 2018 22:20:21 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
46 Ethics
IV. CONCLUSION
This content downloaded from 92.223.159.135 on Fri, 31 Aug 2018 22:20:21 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
47 "Work" and "Play"
This content downloaded from 92.223.159.135 on Fri, 31 Aug 2018 22:20:21 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms