Hermeneutics of Play

The Absent Structure

Abstract

In several philosophical traditions, play is supposed to express a (methodological,ontological) state of non-foundedness. I retrace the philosophical function of play in the hermeneutic tradition as it has been developed by Ast, Boeckh, Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer. I also refer to important parallels in Derrida and Wittgenstein. Those philosophers identify ‘play’as a sort of ‘style’ that is not necessarily empirically present, but which can still be ‘seen.’ I contrast this intellectual model with Gehlen’s anthropology of games. Play as an ‘absent’ (stylistic) concept is compared to the idea of the‘absent structure’ in structuralism.