Play and Idionomy

One reason that Play has been problematic for traditional Philosophical Systems is that it is activity performed for its own sake, and those systems have difficulty accounting for activity performed for its own sake. For, in them, Efficient Causality and/or Teleological Causality are the usual primary Principles, in which cases all events have antecedents and/or consequences, rendering self-contained activity either impossible, illusory, or, at best, inexplicable. Accordingly, in the Practical aspect of these systems, heteronomous behavior is the accepted premise, with freedom from which, when not asserted to be impossible or illusory, definable merely negatively, e. g. Stoic detachment, or equivocally, e. g. Kantian 'autonomy'. In contrast, Formaterialism, especially with its Material Principle explaining Idionomic locomotility, has no such problems, because it can define Individual activity entirely on its own terms, i. e. as a combination of the Formal and Material Principles. Thus, Play is for Formaterialism, not anomalous, but, to the contrary, exemplary activity. It exemplifies Idionomy, which, as has been discussed previously, is a maturation from the Heteronomous and Autonomous stages of Human development.