Games and Morality

Games are both individual and collective, and the notion of Morality as a game exhibits how one central debate in Morality has been whether it is an individual game, or a collective game. Much of the tradition is indecisive. Utilitarianism begins, with Bentham, explicitly as an individual game, i. e. each should pursue one's own happiness, though it is implicitly collectivistic, i. e. each's pursuit of happiness adds up to collective happiness, while the predominant type has become Mill's collectivist, greatest happiness for the greatest number, principle. Kant explicitly qualifies his greatest good--Happiness in proportion to Virtue--as of an individual, implying that there is a distinct collective greatest good, possibly his Kingdom of Ends. The ambivalence is perhaps starkest in Aristotle's Ethics--on the one hand, Virtue, i. e. the actualization of individual Rationality is presented as requiring a political, and, hence, collectivistic, context, while, on the other, it consists in solo contemplative activity, with no explanation of their systematic relation offered. Now, some games, notably basketball, demonstrate how individuals can become better players in a collective context. Likewise, Formaterialism regards Morality, i. e. 'Phronetics', as a game in which an Individual Evolves through collective activity. So, while some games are plainly individualistic, it is not that others are not individualistic, but, more accurately, are more than individualistic.