Play and Purpose

Play is sometimes denigrated as being 'purposeless', but the example of game-playing exposes the shortcoming of such a judgement. The invention of a game, such as chess, entails definitions of not only the board, the pieces, and the moves, but of the end of the game, i. e. what constitutes the last move of the game, as well. In chess, that last move is the taking of a King, but a different game, involving the same other preconditions, could be defined as ending when the last of one player's pieces have been taken, or, when a Pawn is surrounded on three sides by a Knight, a Rook, and a Bishop. In any case, the 'purpose' of the game is the defined last move, so, that purpose is continuous with the moves that precede it, and is not something transcending the context of the game. Furthermore, purpose shapes the course of the game, without necessarily being the motivation for playing it. For, wanting to play chess, and wanting to win at chess are two different motivations, which is why there are chess players who are especially fascinated by certain phases of the game, e. g. experts on openings. So, first of all, game-playing illustrates that and how purposes are invented, and, hence, that they are products of Play, even as a response to Need, e. g. to get a drink of water is an invented purpose in response to a dry mouth. Furthermore, it demonstrates that purposelessness, in the sense of having no ulterior purpose, means nothing more than there being no further defined moves, so, if the last move of one game were preliminary to the further moves in a supervening game, then the former game would not be without ulterior purpose. For example, insofar as checkmate is followed by the receipt of an award, by some recognition, by a party, by enhanced intellectual powers, etc., then chess has an ulterior purpose, e. g. to earn some money, to gain fame, to socialize, for intellectual satisfaction, etc. Hence, the assertion 'Play is purposeless' is ambiguous--in particular cases it means that a purpose has not been contrived for an activity, while, in general, it means that Play is the source of purposes. Neither supports a derogatory attitude towards Play.