PHIL-145 Games and the Good Life: Theorizing Utopia
Besides his account of the essence of games, Bernard Suits is most well-known for his view that the ideal human life is one immersed primarily in gameplay. For Suits, utopian lives are free from the demands of material scarcity in a way that enables endless enjoyment of gameplay. This class studies Suits’s conception of how a human life goes best and related topics. Students will read the entirety of several of Suits’s most influential works as well as recent scholarship responding to them. The class explores these sorts of questions: Is gameplay the central activity of the best kinds of human life? If so, are specific sorts of games more ideal than others? What is the relationship between work and play? What kind of work, if any, would people do under utopian conditions?
First Year Course (18)
Credits
1