Sunday, September 7, 2014

On the Serious Freedom of Art and Play Penetrating All the Dimensions of Social Life

"Insistence on the opposition between life and art is tied to the experience of an alienated world. And failure to recognize the universal scope and ontological dignity of play is an abstraction that blinds us to the interdependence of both [life and art]. Play is less the opposite of seriousness than the vital ground of spirit as nature, a form of restraint and freedom at one and the same time. It is precisely because what we encounter in the creative forms of art is not merely the freedom of caprice or of the blind superabundance of nature, that their play is capable of penetrating all the dimensions of our social life, through all classes, races, and levels of cultural attainment. For these our forms of play are forms of our freedom."

— Hans-Georg Gadamer "The Play of Art" [1973]
in The Relevance of the Beautiful. p130