Huizinga and His Critics

Wesleyan University
History and Play: Johan Huizinga and His Critics

Author(s): Robert Anchor
Source: History and Theory, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Feb., 1978), pp. 63-93
Published by: Wiley for Wesleyan University
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HISTORY AND PLAY: JOHAN HUIZINGA AND HIS CRITICS
ROBERT ANCHOR
Johan Huizinga (1872-1945), the pre-eminent Dutch historian of the twentieth century, published his major theoretical work, Homo Ludens: A Study
of the Play Element in Culture, in 1938. Since then, this controversial
pioneering work of cultural history has become a landmark in the growing
literature on the concept of play, its role in human affairs, and its relevance
to the study of history. Huizinga was not the first thinker to view man and
society sub specie ludi. He had a long rich philosophical tradition to draw
upon, dating back to antiquity. At the very dawn of Western thought,
Heraclitus speculated that "the course of the world is a playing child moving figures on a board - the child as absolute ruler of the universe" (Diels,
Fragment 52). Huizinga was especially partial to Plato's view of play.

"What I assert is this; - that a man ought to be in serious earnest about
serious things, and not about trifles; and that the object really worthy of all
serious and blessed effort is God, while man is created, as we said above,
to be a plaything of God, and the best part of him is surely just that; and
thus I say that every man and woman ought to pass through life in accordance with this character, playing at the noblest of pastimes, being oth-
erwise minded than they now are" (Laws, VII, 803). Another important
source of Huizinga's theory of play is the famous passage in the fifteenth
letter of Schiller's Aesthetic Education of Man: "Man plays only when he

is in the full sense of the word man, and he is only wholly man when he
plays." Similar views were expressed by Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and other modern philosophers.'
Although Huizinga was not the first to discover the value of play in
explaining human behavior, he was the first to attempt an exact definition

of play and of the ways in which it infuses and manifests itself in culture, in
all spheres of culture: the arts, intellectual life, politics, and even legal
institutions and warfare. From the very beginning of his long and fruitful
career, Huizinga had always been concerned with the theoretical questions
of what culture is, how and why specific cultures come into being and pass
1. Their views are discussed in Kostas Axelos, Vers la pensee planetaire (Paris, 1964), ch.
1. Play as a philosophical problem is the subject also of Eugen Fink, Spiel als Weltsymbol
(Stuttgart, 1960).
64
ROBERT
ANCHOR
away, how and why they sustain or fail to sustain themselves, and whether
and how the historian is able to grasp their particular configurations. These
were not merely academic questions to Huizinga, because he firmly believed that history is nothing less than "the intellectual form in which a
civilization renders account to itself of its past."2 This definition, he held,

is what distinguishes history from all other branches of learning and pro-
vides its raison d'etre. He also believed, in the tradition of Kant, that the
historian helps to shape the history he writes about. "History itself, and
the historical consciousness, becomes an integral constituent of the civilization; subject and object are recognized in their mutual interdepen-
dence."3 That is, the account a civilization renders to itself of its past
what it includes and excludes, where the emphases fall, how it is structured and communicated - itself becomes an immanent, formative
influence on that civilization. Huizinga believed that history was above all
an "intellectual form" of understanding the past. But he also believed that

the responsible historian could not evade the moral issues that arise in the
course of the civilization's development of which his work is an "integral
constituent." Late in his life, as fascism swept over Europe, Huizinga at
last discovered the concept that he thought would enable him, on the one
hand, to enrich history as an "intellectual form" and, on the other, to meet
his moral responsibility in a time of crisis. That concept, toward which,
without quite realizing it, he had been moving throughout his career, was
homo ludens.
But did not Huizinga's perception of man and society sub specie ludi
imply, as some of his critics later charged, that historical thought itself was
little more than a form of play? And, if so, was this perception compatible
with the intellectual and moral responsibility that Huizinga ascribed to

historical thought? In order to answer these questions and put Huizinga's
position into proper perspective, we must examine how he arrived at his
theory of play, what he meant by it, and whether it is intellectually valid.
I. HUIZINGA'S PATH TO HOMO LUDENS
As a cultural historian, Huizinga had always been more interested in the

arts, literature, religion, rituals, manners and morals, styles and
sentiments - phenomena more closely and obviously related to the imaginativeness and inventiveness of play - than in such "serious" subjects
as politics, economics, and administrative history. Studying such phenom2. "A Definition of the Concept of History," transl. D. R. Cousin, in Philosophy and
History. Essays Presented to Ernst Cassirer, ed. R. Klibansky and H. J. Paton [1936] (New
York, 1963), 9.
3. Ibid., 10.
HUIZINGA AND HIS CRITICS 65
ena sensitized him, as it had his great predecessor, Jacob Burckhardt,4 to

the seemingly endless profusion of forms which culture assumes. But the
study of these play-related phenomena also sensitized him to their appar-
ently irrational and illusory, unpredictable and sometimes escapist aspects.

How were such phenomena, which Huizinga found in abundance in late
medieval Burgundian culture, to be explained? And what did they signify?
Huizinga's problem was complicated by the fact that he had, in his major
essay on historical method, "The Task of Cultural History" (1929), defined
cultural history so as virtually to deprive it of any possibility of grasping

with certainty the configurations which, he claimed, were its proper domain. "Cultural history is distinct from political and economic history in
that it is worthy of the name only to the extent that it concentrates on
deeper, general themes. The state and commerce exist as configurations,
but also in their details. Culture exists only as a configuration. The details
of cultural history belong to the realm of morals, customs, folklore, antiquities, and easily degenerate into curios."5 What Huizinga required,
therefore, was a concept that did not derive, or derive wholly, from the
artifacts of culture themselves (since none could be found, he thought), but

rather a concept that would apply to culture as a whole and serve to
synthesize its various elements (even the apparently senseless and superfluous ones) in the manner of a Kantian regulative idea or a Goethean
Urphiinotnen. "Only when the scholar turns to determining the patterns of

life, art, and thought taken all together can there actually be a question of
cultural history. The nature of these patterns is not set. They obtain their
form only beneath our hands."6
In his wry and amusing autobiographical essay, "My Path to History,"

published posthumously in 1947, Huizinga relates that his interest in history was first aroused when, at the age of seven, he witnessed a carnival
celebrating the entry, in 1506, of Edzard, Count of East Friesland, into the
city of Groningen, where Huizinga was born and raised. The pageantry and
colorful costumes, the masquerade and mock heroism of this celebration of
his country's colorful past caught Huizinga's young imagination and nurtured his own childish sense of play. His interest in history continued in the
form of a hobby, a playful preoccupation with heraldry, coats of arms, coin

collecting, and the like, which produced a "secret vice" that Huizinga
confessed he was never able to shake off: "a hankering for patrician origins
4. For a comparison of the two, see H. R. Guggisberg, "Burckhardt und Huizinga. Zwei
Historiker in der Krise ihrer Zeit" in Johan Huizinga, 1872-1972. Papers Delivered to the
Johan Huizinga Conference, Groningen 11-15 December 1972, ed. W. R. H. Koops, E. H.
Kossmann, and Gees van der Plaat (The Hague, 1973), 155-175.
5. "The Task of Cultural History" in Men and Ideas. Essays by Johan Huizinga, transl. J.
S. Holmes and H. v. Marle (New York, 1959), 28.
6. Idem.
66
ROBERT
ANCHOR
and names, and a certain scorn for my own, all too obviously plebeian,
descent from Baptist pastors and provincial farmers."7 But, as Huizinga
grew older, his childhood interest in history gave way to a love of lan-
guages and literature, which seemed more suitable and potentially satisfying to an adolescent "prone to lyrical and sentimental moods."8 By the
time he entered the University of Groningen in 1891, he had fallen under
the influence of the new Dutch literary movement known as the Tachtigers,
which "rated literature far higher than science, which sought the meaning
of life within ourselves (which was a great blessing) and completely ignored
politics and allied topics (which was a grave fault)."9 Huizinga completed
his doctoral dissertation in Leipzig in 1897 on the subject of the court jester
in Sanskrit drama. For practical reasons he then accepted a job as high
school teacher of Dutch history; but he still considered himself a linguist
and Sanskritist. History had not lost its hold on Huizinga - "it continued
to haunt me as it had in childhood" - but he did not yet regard it as "solid

intellectual fare." 10
Only after Huizinga became lecturer on the history of Ancient Indian

Culture and Literature at the University of Amsterdam in 1903 did his
interest begin to shift away from the ancient East to the medieval West.
This shift grew out of "a vague longing, a longing fed mainly on artistic
notions and greatly re-inforced by the Bruges exhibition of Old Dutch
paintings in the summer of 1902."'l Huizinga's first historical work, The
Origins of Haarlem, was published in 1905; and the same year he was
appointed professor of history at the university of his native Groningen.

The inaugural address Huizinga delivered in honor of the occasion, "The
Aesthetic Element in Historical Thought," which he described as "a rather
long and difficult affair that bored most of my audience prodigiously,"12

attacked the then fashionable positivist historical methods of Karl Lamprecht13 and came to the defense of the theories of the autonomy of the
humanities as held by Dilthey, Simmel, Windelband, Rickert, and other

German thinkers around the turn of the century, who were influenced by
Kant and Hegel. As the title of this first of Huizinga's important commentaries on historical method indicates, he considered the study of history to
7. "My Path to History" in Dutch Civilization in the Seventeenth Century and Other
Essays, transl. A. J. Pomerans (London, 1968), 246.
8. Ibid., 251.
9. Ibid., 252.
10. Ibid., 263.
11. Ibid., 266-267.
12. "The Aesthetic Element in Historical Thought" in Dutch Civilization in the Seventeenth Century, 270.
13. For an analysis of their respective positions, see G. Oestreich, "Huizinga, Lamprecht
und die deutsche Geschichtsphilosophie. Huizingas Groninger Antrittsvorlesung von 1905" in
Johan Huizinga, 1872-1972, 1-29.
HUIZINGA
AND
HIS
CRITICS
67
be more of an art than a science in that history and the arts form images
and treat their subject matter in its individuality, whereas the natural sciences formulate abstract laws and treat their subject matter as examples of
general classifications. "What the study of history and artistic creation
have in common is a mode of forming images." 14 "In natural science, as

Windelband has pointed out, the tendency is toward abstraction, in historical imagination it is toward visualization."15 Why this distinction? Because
historical phenomena resist comparison and analysis, which are essential to
the natural sciences. "Historical analysis and comparison are greatly impeded by the fact that the whole of history is an irreducible complex
comparison because it is impossible ever to find any kind of elementary
similarity between the objects compared; and analysis because the final
historical unit to which it must apply itself is itself a complex problem par
excellence: man and his actions." 16
Huizinga's own playful childhood fascination with the past and his education in the arts bore fruit in this recognition of the importance of the
aesthetic element to historical method. For it comes into play, he discovered, at the very origin of the historian's work - in his perception of the
uniqueness and complexity of historical phenomena and in all the subsequent stages of his activity: the formation of concepts and images, the
selection and interpretation of data, and the language he uses to communi-
cate his findings. Huizinga did not mean that history is only imaginative,
but only that imagination is indispensable in interpreting the past. Although

art and history both originate in the imagination, and the historical sense is
"but a very general, highly developed sensibility," 17 the two are by no
means synonymous. Huizinga always distinguished clearly between art,
which is purely subjective, and history, which makes use of the imagination
to discover the truth about the past. "Only when we deliberately encourage
our imagination to transcend the bounds of historical imagination and to

soar into the realms of pure fantasy, do we risk falsifying the past."18 Or,
again: "For the historian there is only one ethical demand that predominates over all others: to present the truth, or what he understands by the
truth."19 On Huizinga's view, therefore, the aesthetic imagination and historical thought are not identical, but nor are they separable. The importance of aesthetic intuition is that it paves the way for rational explanation.
Huizinga's thoughts on the relationship between history and aesthetics
came to fruition in his best known work, The Waning of the Middle Ages
14. "The Aesthetic Element in Historical Thought," 226.

15. Ibid., 237.
16. Ibid., 229.
17. Ibid., 237.
18. Ibid., 241.
19. Ibid., 242.
68
ROBERT
ANCHOR
(1919; first Eng. ed., 1924). The idea for this study came to him on a
Sunday stroll in the Groningen countryside, when it suddenly occurred to
him, as he reflected on the art of the brothers Van Eyck, that "the late
Middle Ages was not so much a prelude to the future as an epoch of fading
and decay."20 But how was he to test this hypothesis? By the fifteenth
century, were not feudalism, chivalry, the absolute authority of the
Church, and other characteristic medieval institutions and practices already

giving way to new material, political, and cultural conditions that be-
tokened the Renaissance? This view would be correct, Huizinga reckoned,

"if, to understand the spirit of an age, it sufficed to know its real and
hidden sources and not its illusions, its fancies, and its errors. But for the
history of civilization every delusion or opinion of an epoch has the value

of an important fact.'"21 But where were such facts to be found? Not in the
official documents, "which rarely refer to the passions," but rather in the
chronicles, which, however faulty in other respects, always keep before us
"the vehement pathos of medieval life."22 What Huizinga discovered in the
chronicles was that "long after the nobility and feudalism had ceased to be
really essential factors in the state and society, they continued to impress
the mind as dominant forms of life. The men of the fifteenth century could
not understand that the real moving powers of political and social evolution
might be looked for anywhere else than in the doings of a warlike courtly
nobility. They persisted in regarding the nobility as the foremost of social
forces and attributed a very exaggerated importance to it, undervaluing
altogether the social significance of the lower classes."23 Huizinga concluded, therefore, that modern historians, relying on official documents,
had distorted reality precisely in correcting this delusion, this incongruity

between the real conditions of life in the fifteenth century and what men of
the time thought they were. "There is not a more dangerous tendency in
history than that of representing the past as if it were a rational whole and
dictated by clearly defined interests."24 The chronicles convinced Huizinga
that the tension between the ideals of Northern Europe in the fifteenth
century, as expressed most purely in the chivalric code of conduct, and the
harsh realities of the time was the key to understanding the true spirit of
the period and its correct relationship to the past and future.
The reason Huizinga gave for this tension, and why he thought it had
dominated the late Middle Ages, was that the Christian teaching of renunciation had so captivated men's minds by that time as to have inculcated a
deep, pervasive pessimism, which left little room for coping with unpleas20. "My Path to History,' 273.
21. The Waning of the Middle Ages. A Study of the Forms of Life, Thought and Art in
France and the Netherlands in the Dawn of'the Renaissance (Garden City, N.Y., 1954), 57.
22. Ibid., 15.
23. Ibid., 57.
24. Ibid., 94.
HUIZINGA
AND
HIS
CRITICS
69
ant and menacing surroundings other than escape into dream and fantasy.
Forsaking the world out of disgust would have been inconsistent with the
Christian teaching of the basic goodness of God's creation, which is marred

only by man's sinfulness. Renunciation of the world is also the most
difficult and ungratifying solution. A second way, improving the world
through political and social reform, was unknown to the Middle Ages. This
solution first made its appearance during the Renaissance and did not be-
come a significant historical force until the eighteenth century. The only
other way to a more harmonious and better life, "the easiest and most
fallacious of all," was escape into dream. "A promise of escape from the
gloomy actual is held out to all; we have only to color life with fancy, to
enter upon the quest for oblivion, sought in the delusion of ideal harmony.
After the religious and social solution we have the poetical."25 But, while
this "poetical" solution was the one adopted by the fifteenth century, it
was by no means confined to that period. "For at all times the vision of a
sublime life has haunted the souls of men, and the gloomier the present is, the
more strongly this aspiration will make itself felt."26
Readers of this fascinating and controversial27 masterpiece know that
Huizinga found the essence of "the vision of a sublime life" of the fifteenth
century in its view of life as "a noble game."28 This was the first time that
he made use of the idea of play as a tool of historical explication, and it
served an important purpose. For even if we accept Huizinga's theory that
the chivalric code, and the heroic values associated with it, continued to
hold sway over men's minds long after feudalism and the nobility went into
decline, we still want to know why they continued to exert such a powerful
influence for so long. And even if we accept his argument that dream,
fantasy, and delusion are, at all times, the easiest and most tempting ways
to escape a harsh and uncertain existence, we still want to know why
people typically seek escape, at any given time, into one particular set of
dreams, fantasies, and delusions, and not in another. Arnold Hauser has
pointed out, for example, that naturalism in the arts does not usually
flourish among peoples living close to nature, but rather among those so far
removed from nature, like the eighteenth-century court nobility and the
nineteenth-century urban middle classes, that they are in fear of losing it.29
25. Ibid., 38.
26. Ibid., 37.
27. For critiques of The Waning of the Middle Ages, see P. L. Ward, "Huizinga's Approach to the Middle Ages" in Teachers of History. Essays in Honor of Laurence Bradford
Packard, ed. H. S. Hughes (Ithaca, N.Y., 1954), 168-199; E. F. Jacob, "Huizinga and the
Autumn of the Middle Ages" in Essays in Later Medieval History (New York, 1968), ch. 8;
and F. W. N. Hugenholtz, "The Fame of a Masterwork" in Johan Huizinga, 1872-1972,
91-104.
28. The Waning of the Middle Ages, 39.
29. Arnold Hauser, The Social History of Art, vol. 3: Rococo, Classicism, Romanticism,
transit. S. Godman (New York, 1957), 220 ff.
70
ROBERT
ANCHOR
Only then does nature become an object of adoration and a vehicle of

escape from an unnatural existence. It is precisely the remoteness and
unreality of nature at such times that make it susceptible to idealization and
dissolution into dream. But not until a person seeks to escapefrom something will he seek to escape to something; his perception of the former will
govern his expectations of the latter. Just as nature in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries acquired the desirable qualities that the jaded nobility
and bourgeoisie thought were gone from their lives - simplicity and sincerity, innocence and purity - so also did the city come to represent similarly ideal qualities - freedom and opportunity, glamor and excitement - to
the masses that migrated from the countryside to the cities in the wake of the
Industrial Revolution.
The same is true of play, as Huizinga conceived it. Play is the opposite of
seriousness, at least for the mature adult. (Even aesthetic activity, as distinct from play, that is, as involving production and consumption, belongs
to the realm of the serious.) And when the serious business of life becomes
unpleasant or intolerable, we can always resort to play: either by seeking
an alternative to reality in play, or else by transforming reality through

play. Play is not only the easiest and most accessible path to the vision of a
sublime life, it is also the ideal path. For purposes of comparison, let us
consider Huizinga's other two paths. The first, forsaking the world, is not
only the most difficult and the rarest in practice; also, except for those who
believe strongly in an afterlife, strongly enough to be able to visualize it,
this path makes it logically impossible to conceive of what the sublime life
might be. Huizinga's second path, improving the world by political and
social reform, suffers from the fact that it belongs too much to the realm of
the serious. For example, no matter how ardently we may believe in our
vision of a better world, and in our plans for bringing it about, we must, if
we are at all realistic, consider the possibility that our plans may fail or go
awry; or, if they succeed, that they may not endure. Precisely because our
ideals and plans for a better world belong to the same order as those we are
trying to replace, they are subject to the same vicissitudes, distortions,
and uncertain future. But play is the ideal path to the vision of the sublime
life because it is, so to speak, in the world but not of it. Play is a voluntary
activity that takes place outside ordinary life. It proceeds, within its own
proper boundaries of time and space, according to fixed rules in an orderly
manner. It begins and ends with itself. It is not serious. It produces nothing. It creates illusions. (Huizinga notes in Homo Ludens that the word
illusion literally means "in-play," from inlusio, illudere, or inludere.)30 It
contains its own end - fun - which Huizinga calls the essence of play.
"The fun of playing resists all analysis, all logical interpretation."31

30. Homo Ludens. A Study of the Play Element in Culture [1938] (Boston, 1955), 11.
31. Ibid., 3.
Huizinga summarized his definition of play in Homo Ludens as "a voluntary activity or occupation executed within certain fixed limits of time and
space, according to rules freely accepted but absolutely binding, having its
aim in itself and accompanied by a feeling of tension, joy, and the con-
sciousness that it is different from 'ordinary life'."32

Now we begin to see the purpose served by the concept of play in The
Waning of the Middle Ages. On Huizinga's theory, the chivalric code was
able to survive the material conditions that gave rise to it precisely because
it lent itself so well to play. Chivalry was unrealistic, but precisely in its
intentional indifference to reality lay its power "to veil cruel reality under
apparent harmony and make life an art."33 Chivalry did hearken back to a
mythical ideal past, because: "The dream of past perfection ennobles life
and its forms, fills them with beauty and fashions them anew as forms of
art."34 Chivalry did create an incredible world of heroic illusions, dreams,

empty ceremonial rites and rituals, pomp and pageantry, "a world dis-
guised in the fantastic gear of the Round Table,"3" but precisely in order
to bring the sublime within reach. Chivalry was illusory, but it contained,
"besides its ethical value, an abundance of aesthetic value of the most
suggestive kind."36 Chivalric ideals were impractical and unrealizable, but

they served "to accentuate or to fix a lofty moral aspiration. We also find
them supplying romantic and erotic needs and degenerating into an

amusement and a theme for raillery."37
Thus, chivalry, which regarded life as "a noble game," gave ideal expression to the play impulse. So long as its code of honor, loyalty, courtesy, and self-sacrifice monopolized the spiritual sphere, it continued to
perform this function. Only when reality finally broke in upon its fantastic
world, and chivalry was discredited and replaced by a new path to the
sublime, did it cease to serve as an outlet for play. This did not happen
until the Renaissance, when chivalry came to be viewed as an object of
ridicule and irony, as in the art of Cervantes, Ariosto, and Shakespeare.
But even then, Huizinga held, "the fanciful brilliance of the heroism and
probity of a past age . . . linked the Renaissance to the times of
feudalism."38 Although now less important, the chivalric ideal remained

alive as one of the three basic components of the Renaissance. "What we
call the Renaissance is a product of classical, chivalric, and Christian aspirations, in which the classical element is the chief motive power, but not
the only one. Burckhardt's masterpiece has taught us to look upon ambi-
32. Ibid., 28.
33. The Waning of the Middle Ages, 55.

34. Ibid., 39.
35. Ibid., 40.
36. Ibid., 67.
37. Ibid., 89.

38. Ibid., 41.
72
ROBERT
ANCHOR
tion and a sense of honor as the two central characteristics of Renaissance

man. Both of these can be explained more readily as a direct extension of
chivalric honor than as a result of the revival of classical studies. Not

everything that glitters in the Renaissance is antiquity: the highly unclassical chivalric fantasy of the Amadis romances still reigned supreme in the
minds of the sixteenth century."39

In 1915, four years before the publication of The Waning of the Middle
Ages, Huizinga was appointed to the chair of general history and historical
geography at the University of Leiden, where he remained until it was
closed by the German occupation authorities in 1942. One of his first tasks
at Leiden was to prepare a series of lectures on American history, in which
he touched on the role of sport in modern, mechanized society. What he
observed about sport in America, a setting so very different from old
Europe, only confirmed his view of the universal significance of play.
Huizinga attributed the importance of sport in America, and in other tech-
nologically advanced societies, to modern man's quest to save his individuality. Sport, he observed, serves this purpose, because it involves more
merely than the development of physical skills and strength. "It is also the
giving of form, the stylizing of the very feeling of youth, strength, and life,
a spiritual value of enormous weight. Play is culture. Play can pass over
into art and rite, as in the dance and in sacred stage presentations. Play is
rhythm and struggle. The competitive ideal itself is a cultural value of high
importance."40 But at the same time, the mechanization and organization
of sport counteracted the very urge toward individuality that made sport so
popular in America in the first place. "In the immense sport organizations,
like those of baseball and football, we see free youthful forces and courage
reduced to normality and uniformity in the service of the machinery of
rules and play and the competitive system. If we compare the tense athlete
in his competitive harness with the pioneer hunter and the Indian fighter,
then the loss of true personality is obvious.'"41
Huizinga was not unsympathetic to America. In the foreword to his
second work on the subject, Life and Thought in America, based on his
travel notes from a trip to the United States in 1926, he wrote: "If an
American who reads Dutch were to ask me: 'Can't you find anything in my
country to which you can give unconditional praise?' I shall reply to him:
39. "The Problem of the Renaissance" [1915] in Men and Ideas, 90. See also "The Political
and Military Significance of Chivalric Ideas in the Late Middle Ages" [1921] in Men and
Ideas, where Huizinga restates this point: "The chivalric revival was, as it were, a naive and
imperfect prelude to the Renaissance" (197).
40. "Man and the Masses in America," America. A Dutch Historian's Vision, from Afar
and Near, transl. H. H. Rowen [1918] (New York, 1972), 115.
41. Ibid., 115-116.
'Weigh more heavily what I praise than what I seem to blame. We prefer
to speak least of what is best'."42 Nevertheless, Huizinga's criticisms of
America are even sharper in this work than in his earlier lectures. Modern
civilization is on trial in America, he says here. The mechanization of life in

America, the commercialization and trivialization of culture, the vulgar
materialism, the anti-intellectualism, and the naively anti-metaphysical attitude of American science - all come in for sharp criticism. Speaking of
American popular literature, Huizinga asks, in exasperation: "Is the word
itself no longer the product of the man but of the machine? And if so,
where does culture reside, in the man or in the word?"43
Of course, such criticism, even by Americans, was not uncommon in the
1920s. We need only think of Sinclair Lewis, H. L. Mencken, and the
disillusioned expatriates. Moreover, the features of American life that
Huizinga disliked were not, in his opinion, confined to America, but only
most pronounced there. It was the spiritual crisis of modern civilization as
a whole that concerned him in this work. Huizinga, like so many intellectuals of his generation during the terrible war and postwar years, became
and remained a cultural conservative. But his hostility to modem society

and culture, which increased with time, was not due simply to his love of
old Europe and its culture, which he now saw passing away and wished to
save. Rather, he was troubled by the passing away of the very concept of
culture, as he understood it: culture considered as a harmonious balance of
material and spiritual forces. One of the most personal and revealing
passages that Huizinga ever wrote appears in Life and Thought in America:
Golf and the auto, the film and light reading, life at the beach or out camping, and
even concert-going, what are these as forms of culture!
Walking once in Cologne in the lost hours between trains, I became indignant at
the way the holy city on the Rhine had become ugly and banal. Toward dusk I left
the indifferent bustle of the street to enter the church of Sankt Maria im Kapitol. A
service was in progress. In the half darkness the sounds floated low and clear. I
realized at once what a true ritual means in life, what it contains of cultural value,
apart from its value for eternity. I felt the mighty seriousness of a time in which
these things were the essence for all men, and I felt that nine-tenths of our presentday cultural life really doesn't matter.44
Throughout the twenties and thirties, in a series of superbly crafted
essays, Huizinga came to the defense of the culture that he thought did
matter: the Christian culture of Jerome, Abelard, John of Salisbury, and
Erasmus as against that of Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, Hugh of St.
Victor, and Luther. The first was a culture based on "the ideals of a
society combining the purest of faith with the highest of civilization;"45 the
42. Ibid., 230.
43. Ibid., 265.
44. Ibid., 314.
45. "John of Salisbury: A Pre-Gothic Mind" [1933] in Men and Ideas, 176.
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second was a culture of "the burning heart and absolute faith."46 Both
were steeped in classical culture, but the first more so than the second.
Both cultures were ascetic, but the second more so than the first. It is clear
why Huizinga sympathized more with the first. For it was the culture
originating with Jerome that had succeeded in keeping alive the ideals of
classical antiquity, which had nurtured the best in Western civilization
down to the eighteenth century. But Huizinga also recognized that it was
the culture originating with Augustine that had prevailed throughout the
centuries in times of spiritual crisis. "Whenever there was a great religious
crisis the words of Augustine outweighed those of Jerome in the scales of
the ages."47
At the end of the eighteenth century, classicism asserted itself for the last
time: first, as an anachronism in the slogans of the French Revolution and
in the art of David; and second, as the source from which Goethe derived
his purely modern ideals of life. Once Western man became accustomed to
thinking historically, he could no longer believe in the ideals of the past.
"History has taught the world to look forward in its struggle for happiness,
and no longer to drug itself with retrospective dreams of life."48 But the
very historicism that had educated the Western world away from the ideals
of the past failed to produce new ones of comparable human significance.

Huizinga found the shallow optimism of H. G. Wells little better than the
hopeless pessimism of Oswald Spengler, although he did praise the Englishman's faith in human reason.49 And it is no accident that Huizinga
marked the beginning of the decline of the play element in Western culture
as occurring at the same time, the late eighteenth century, as the decline of
classicism as an historical ideal of life. "More and more the sad conclusion
forces itself upon us that the play element in culture has been on the wane
ever since the eighteenth century, when it was in full flower. Civilization
today is no longer played, and even where it still seems to play it is false
play - I had almost said, it plays false, so that it becomes increasingly
difficult to tell where play ends and non-play begins."50
In "The Task of Cultural History" Huizinga returned to the attack on
positivist historiography that he had begun in "The Aesthetic Element in
Historical Thought" and had continued in "A Definition of the Concept of

History." History, he says here, cannot and should not even try to achieve
the exactness of the natural sciences. Historians like Ranke and Lamprecht, who had attempted to do so, had misunderstood the goals and
46. "Abelard" [1935] in Men and Ideas, 195.
47. Idem.
48. "Historical Ideals of Life" [1915] in Men and Ideas, 91-92.
49. "Two Wrestlers with the Angel" [1921] in Dutch Civilization in the Seventeenth Century, 158-219.
50. Homo Ludens, 206.
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methods of history. For one thing, the data of history, unlike the data of
the natural sciences, are never "given." They must be discovered and
selected according to their importance; and the historian's subjectivity, his

sense of coherence and meaning, inevitably enters into this process of
selection. "In order to begin an analysis, there must already be a synthesis

present in the mind. A conception of ordered coherence is an indispensable
precondition even to the preliminary labor of digging and hewing.'"51 The

trouble, for example, with Ranke's famous phrase - wie es eigentlich
gewesen - is that it presupposes a well-defined past reality, which the
historian strives to reassemble completely and accurately in the manner of

a jigsaw puzzle. But this preconception of the past is only a subjective
construction that the historian superimposes on the remnants of the past
available to him; it does not correspond to the objective past, which never
presents itself to the historian as nature presents itself to the physicist. If
the es in Ranke's phrase is to have meaning, "it must be determined

beforehand by a conception of a certain historical and logical unity one is
attempting to delineate more precisely."52
Huizinga's second point is that the historian's conception of the unity of

the past is determined by the questions he puts to it. "Even the best and
most complete tradition is in itself amorphous and mute."53 Moreover,

since the historian's understanding of the past is governed by his inquiry,
his sense of its unity belongs to the present, not to the past itself. It is an
act of synthesis, not of reconstruction only. "That unity can never be an
arbitrary slice of past reality itself. The mind selects from tradition certain
elements it synthesizes into a coherent image, which was not realized in the
past as lived."54 Synthesis plays an especially large role in cultural history

because, in contrast to political and economic history, the former deals
only with configurations: "the manifold forms and functions of civilization

as they can be detected from the history of peoples and of social groups,
and as they consolidate into cultural figures, motifs, themes, symbols, concepts, ideals, styles, and sentiments."55 But the difference between cultural and all other branches of history is one of degree and not kind. All
history is subjective to some extent. Since the data are never given, the
historian can never know how complete they are. Therefore, the concept of
causality is of little use to him. Instead, he forms conceptual contexts,
which remain open and cannot be expressed by "the metaphor of links
forming a chain, but only by that of a loosely bound bundle of sticks to
which new twigs can be added as long as the band around them allows it.
51. "The Task of Cultural History" in Men and Ideas, 25.
52. Ibid., 26.
53. Idem.
53. Idem.
55. Ibid., 65.
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Perhaps more suitable than a bundle of sticks might be a bunch of wild

flowers. In their variety and their difference in value new notions added to
the conception of a historical context are like newly found flowers in the
nosegay: each one changes the appearance of the whole bouquet."56
But what history lacks in exactness, it makes up for in significance. For

it is precisely the synthetic activity of the historian and the indefiniteness of
his data that enable him to discover the meaning that the past has for the
present. "He achieves the living contact of the mind with the old that was
genuine and full of significance."57 This does not mean that the historian
arbitrarily imposes personal meanings on the past. The weakness of literature as a vehicle of historical understanding is precisely "the lack of coherence between its products and its everlasting indeterminacy."58 Real living
contact with the past lies beyond the book of history, not in it. But the
historian must believe, and be able to verify by the canons of historical
research, that what he is describing must have been that way. "The person
who unreservedly chooses the formula that history is merely Sinngebung

des Sinnlosen, giving meaning to the meaningless, is no longer bound by
such a requirement. But as long as history is considered as Sinndeutung
des Sinnvollen, interpreting the meaning of the meaningful, the criterion

obtains that nothing can be called history which does not spring from the
need for a perfectly genuine picture of a certain past."59
Interpreting the meaning of the meaningful, however, goes beyond
adherence to the canons of historical research. The historian can achieve
living contact with the past only by the "historical sensation" that
Huizinga calls Ahnung or intuition; a notion inspired by and similar to
Dilthey's Erlebnis, but not identical with it. "One does not realize the
historical sensation as a re-experiencing, but as an understanding that is
closely related to the understanding of music. Re-experiencing as a method
of cognition assumes a more or less continuous perception constantly ac-
companying the labor of reading and thinking. In reality, this sensation,

vision, contact, Ahnung, is limited to moments of special intellectual clarity, moments of a sudden penetration of the spirit."60 This special contact
with the past "can be evoked by a line from a document or chronicle, by a
print, by a few notes of an old song."61 Ahnung enables us to visualize the
forms in which the past assembles itself in our minds, and thereby to
construct a morphology of the human past, which is the ultimate task of
history, of cultural history in particular.
56. Ibid., 39.

57. Ibid., 24.
58. Ibid., 43.

59. Ibid., 46.
60. Ibid., 54.

61. Idem.
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Alarmed by spreading fascism, Huizinga applied his insights into the

nature of culture and the historian's ability to interpret it to an analysis of
contemporary Western civilization in In the Shadow of Tomorrow (1936).
Europe of the 1930s, like Europe of the late Middle Ages, seemed to
Huizinga to be on the verge of collapse. He began his investigation with the
following broad definition of culture: "Culture, as a condition of society, is
present when the control over nature in the material, the moral, and
spiritual field maintains a state which is higher and better than would follow
from the given natural conditions, and whose characteristics are a harmonious balance of material and spiritual values and a more or less homogeneous ideal in whose pursuit the community's various activities converge."62 From this definition Huizinga proceeded to compare the crisis of
Europe in the 1930s to earlier crises in Western civilization and to isolate
the elements that made it unique and uniquely dangerous - in particular,

the current myths of national and racial superiority, the misuse of science
and technology, the decline of critical judgment, the rise of social conformity and the threat of irresponsible mass action, and the politicization of all
spheres of life. To this list Huizinga added the perversion of play, which he
now considered "one of the most important aspects of the malady of our
time.''63
The most fundamental characteristic of true play, whether it be a cult, or a
festivity, is that at a certain moment it is over. The spectators go home, the players
take off their masks, the performance has ended. And here the evil of our time
shows itself. For nowadays play in many cases never ends and hence is not true
play. A far-reaching contamination of play and serious activity has taken place. The
two spheres are getting mixed up.64
In The Waning of the Middle Ages, Huizinga had discovered the importance of play as a formative force in medieval culture. In his theoretical
writings, he had produced a definition of culture in general and the means

by which the historian is able to perceive, interpret, and evaluate particular
cultures. In his autobiographical essay, he reveals how his sense of play

aroused, sustained, and shaped his own personal interest in the past. Finally, in In the Shadow of Tomorrow, he discovered that the perversion of
play was a serious symptom of the crisis of contemporary Western civili-
zation. All these motifs converged at last in Huizinga's decision to devote a

special study to play and its relationship to culture in general.
LI. HOMO LUDENS
Homno Ludens is neither a history of play, nor a history of the idea of play,
nor a study of play as one among many other human activities. Rather, it is
62. In the Shadoit' of Tomorrow, transl. J. H. Huizinga [1936] (New York, 1964), 46.
63. Ibid., 182.
64. Ibid., 177.
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a morphology of play, a study of play as a structure that manifests itself in

all spheres of human culture. To clarify his intention, Huizinga states in the
foreword: "It was not my object to define the place of play among all the
other manifestations of culture, but rather to ascertain how far culture itself
bears the character of play."65 His findings, in The Waning of the Middle
Ages, that play can ennoble society and, in In the Shadow of Tomorrow,
that its perversion can endanger society led him to realize "the supreme
importance to civilization of the play-factor."66 Huizinga starts with a

definition of the nature and significance of play. From this definition he
explicitly excludes all biopsychological explanations, such as discharge of

excess energy, the need for relaxation or distraction, preparation for life,
desire to imitate, desire to enter into competition to prove one's superiority, sublimation of instincts forbidden direct satisfaction by society, and the
like. Huizinga correctly observes that all these explanations are only partial, that no one of them captures the essence of play, and that most of
them are mutually exclusive. At best, such explanations shed some light on
the motives for and effects of play. But they tell us little about its nature
and significance. Huizinga dismisses them on the grounds that: "All these
hypotheses have one thing in common: they all start from the assumption
that play must serve something which is not play, that it must have some
kind of biological purpose. . . . Most of them deal only incidentally with

the question of what play is in itself and what it means for the player. ...
The intensity of, and absorption in, play finds no explanation in biological
analysis. Yet in this intensity, this absorption, this power of maddening,
lies the very essence, the primordial quality of play."67

Huizinga asserts that play is an irreducible phenomenon, a fundamental
category that can only be defined in terms of its opposite: serious, ordinary, everyday life. Play is a fundamental category, Huizinga argues, not
only because it cannot be explained by anything else ("the fun of playing

resists all analysis, all logical interpretation"),68 but also because it precedes human society and culture chronologically. "Play is older than culture, for culture, however inadequately defined, always presupposes
human society, and animals have not waited for man to teach them their
playing."69 We may question, with E. H. Gombrich,70 whether animals

65. Homo Ludens, i.
66. Ibid., ii.

67. Ibid., 2-3.
68. Ibid., 3.
69. Ibid., 1. Huizinga's source for this point was F. J. J. Buytendijk, Wesen und Sinn des
Spiels (Berlin, 1933).
70. - Huizinga's Homo Ludens" in Johan Huizinga, 1872-1972, 150 ff. Gombrich's sources
are Konrad Lorenz, Das sogenannte Bose. Zur Naturgeschichte der Aggression (Vienna,
1963); N. Tindbergen, "On War and Peace in Animals and Man," Science 160 (28th June,
play, or play in the same sense, as human beings. But Huizinga's assertion
of the primordial quality of play does not stand or fall with his assertion of
the origins of play in the animal world. The strengths (and weaknesses) of
his definition lie, rather, in his careful delineation of play from that which is
not play. Huizinga begins his definition with the proposition that "play only
becomes possible, thinkable, and understandable when an influx of mind
breaks down the absolute determinism of the cosmos."'71 From there he
proceeds to enumerate the formal characteristics of play. Play is the an-
tithesis of seriousness, which is dominated by determinism. It is a "stepping out" from real life. It is voluntary and spontaneous. It takes place
within specified limits of space and time. Play begins and ends with itself
and produces nothing beyond itself. All play has its rules the breaking of
which destroys the fragile play world. Play involves a play community that
sets itself apart from others by means of special uniforms, insignia, or
rituals. The essence of play is fun.
Summing up the formal characteristics of play we might call it a free activity
standing quite consciously outside 'ordinary' life as being 'not serious,' but at the
same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected
with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds within its
own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly
manner. It promotes the formation of social groupings which tend to surround
themselves with secrecy and to stress their difference from the common world by
disguise or other means.72
Using this definition as his model, Huizinga then tries to show how far
the higher forms of culture - religion, language, law, military procedures,
philosophy, poetry, and the arts - manifest the character of play. He finds
that play functions in these spheres in two ways: as a contest for something, or as a representation of something. Huizinga claims, for example,
that religious ritual manifests all the formal characteristics of his definition.
The sanctuary or church is the enclosed space, delimited and separated

from the world and ordinary life, in which the religious ceremony takes
place. In this enclosed space, for a specified time, regulated and symbolic
movements are executed, which are supposed to represent or re-enact
transcendent realities. Just as in play, the participants become totally absorbed in the ceremony, which transports them to another world. Huizinga
insists that all religious ritual, regardless of content, bears the character of
play. He hastens to add, however, that the identification of play with holiness does not detract from the latter, but rather exalts the former. "In play
1968), 1411-18; and W. H. Thorpe, "Ritualization in Ontogeny: I. Animal Play" inA Discussion on Ritualization of Behaviour in Animals and Man, ed. J. Huxley. Philosophical Trans-
actions of the Royal Society of London, Series B, No. 772, CCLI (1966).
71. Homo Ludens, 3.
72. Ibid., 13.
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we may move below the level of the serious, as the child does; but we can
also move above it - in the realm of the beautiful and sacred."73
Play manifests itself in language most visibly as metaphor, which is es-
sentially a play on words, a representation, an imaginative reconstruction

of reality in figurative or poetic terms. In the making of language, the
human spirit constantly plays with the faculty of naming things, and in
naming them raises them into the domain of the spirit. Huizinga's
etymological analysis of the words used in various languages - primitive,
classical, and modern - to express the idea of play convinced him that the
play concept appeared earlier and is more fundamental than its opposite:
seriousness.
The need for a comprehensive term expressing 'not play' must have been rather
feeble, and the various expressions for 'seriousness' are but a secondary attempt on
the part of language to invent the conceptual opposite of 'play'. . . . The appearance of a term for 'earnest' means that people have become conscious of the
play concept as an independent entity - a process which . . . happens rather late.

. . . Leaving aside the linguistic question and observing the play-earnest antithesis
more closely, we find that the two terms are not of equal value: play is positive,
earnest negative.. . . For seriousness seeks to exclude play, whereas play can very
well include seriousness.74
The play element appears in law and warfare in the form of competition,
which, as pure play, is not primarily a will to defeat or to dominate. "The

primary thing is to excel others, to be first, and to be honored for that."75
In his wide-ranging analysis of customs in the primitive and ancient

worlds, Huizinga argues that it is in this striving for excellence, superiority,
and esteem that competitive or agonistic play engenders and ennobles cul-
ture. Competitive play flourishes in the archaic (heroic) stage of a civilization's development, as, for example, in the ritual of the potlatch and in the
sacred Olympian games. Huizinga does not deny that competitive play can
easily degenerate merely into a will to win and assume violent and
exploitative forms. But this does not happen until a civilization grows more
complicated and serious and either loses touch with the original spirit of
play, or else forces it to become serious. In archaic societies, however,
serious matters are settled in play-like contests. Legal processes, for example, assume competitive play forms, of which Huizinga distinguishes
three: the game of chance, the contest, and the verbal battle. Justice in the
primitive world is not decided according to ideal standards of truth and
dignity, but rather according to standards of honor and esteem, which are
satisfied in one or more of these three ways. And the decision arrived at
does not serve as a precedent for future decisions, but instead provides a
73. Ibid., 19.
74. Ibid., 44-45.
75. Ibid., 51.
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solution for a stable relationship in a particular case. Even after civilized

justice makes it appearance, however, it does not entirely lose its play-like
character. Civilized justice still retains qualities of a game of chance, a

contest, and a verbal battle, which is executed at a specified time and place
according to pre-arranged rules.
The play element is also present in the conduct of wars, which are fought
for glory, pride, and prestige as well as for serious political and economic
aims. As with legal proceedings, warfare assumes the form of a noble game
of honor and virtue, which is readily apparent in tournaments, jousts,
crusades, and duels. Huizinga does not deny or minimize the cruelty and
violence of war. But he does defend the civilizing influence of the play
element in warfare inasmuch as it gave rise to chivalry, which in turn

served as a basis for modem international law. International law continues
to bear the traces of its origins in play, and the system of states it regulates
retains something of the character of a play community. Its acknowledg-
ment of reciprocal rights and obligations, its diplomatic procedures, its

insistence on honoring treaties and making formal declarations of war, its
creation of world courts and organizations (referees) to interpret rules and
negotiate disputes - all bear a formal resemblance to play rules in that
they are binding only while the game itself (that is, the need for order in
human affairs) is recognized and respected. Unfortunately, the play element in politics becomes more apparent when international law is violated
than when it is observed. "As soon as one or more of a community of

states virtually denies the binding character of international law and, either
in practice or in theory, proclaims the interest and power of its own
group - be it nation, party, class, church, or whatever else - as the sole
norm of its political behavior, not only does the last vestige of the immemorial play-spirit vanish but with it any claim to civilization at all.
Society then sinks down to the level of the barbaric, and original violence
retakes its ancient rights. The inference from all this is that in the absence
of the play-spirit civilization is impossible.' 76

Play also permeates poetry, which Huizinga regards as its purest cultural
expression. Rejecting theories that explain poetry primarily or exclusively

in aesthetic terms, he observes that poetry combines at one and the same
time ritual, entertainment, artistry, riddle-making, doctrine, persuasion,

sorcery, soothsaying, prophecy, and competition. That is to say that poetry
performs a social and liturgical as well as an aesthetic function. Poetry is
the preferred language of primitive man and children because it is pleasing,
not necessarily because it is beautiful. Poetry as a social activity of little or

no aesthetic value can be found everywhere and in a variety of forms:
antiphonal singing, impromptu versifying, military songs, and religious
76. Ibid., 101.
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hymns. Huizinga traces these social and liturgical functions of poetry to its
origin in the primordial play impulse and its retention of the quality of play.
"All poetry is born of play: the sacred play of worship, the festive play of
courtship, the martial play of the contest, the disputatious play of braggadocio, mockery and invective, the nimble play of wit and readiness."77
Originally, poetry was inseparable from myth; but as belief in the literal
truth of myth declined, poetry retained its function of expressing man's
understanding of the cosmos in play-like language: the language of rhythm,
rhyme, and images. As civilization became more serious, law and warfare,
commerce and science, and the other civilized activities, except poetry,
progressively lost touch with play. Only poetry remained as the stronghold
of vital and noble play: an activity which proceeds within certain limits of
space and time, in a visible order, according to rules freely accepted,

outside the sphere of necessity and material utility, and which evokes
rapture and enthusiasm, and is sacred or secular according to the occasion.
"If a serious statement be defined as one that may be made in terms of

waking life, poetry will never rise to the level of seriousness. It lies beyond
seriousness, on that more primitive and original level where the child, the
animal, the savage, and the seer belong, in the region of dream, enchantment, ecstasy, laughter. To understand poetry we must be capable of don-
ning the child's soul like a magic cloak and of forsaking man's wisdom for
the child's.''78
Huizinga traces the origin of philosophy to the sacred riddle-game, which

was at one and the same time a ritual and a form of entertainment. The play
spirit remained vigorous in Greek philosophy, especially among the sophists. But even their opponents, Plato and Aristotle, took such pains to
refute the sophists as to indicate that their own thought had not yet broken
loose from the archaic sphere of play. The play spirit in Latin life and
literature found expression in the arts of declamation and rhetoric; and
competition was a very pronounced feature of the whole development of
the medieval university and scholasticism. "To beat your opponent by
reason or by the word becomes a sport comparable with the profession of
arms."79 The competitive spirit of play carried over to the literary and
intellectual disputes of the eighteenth century, an age that delighted in
displays of esprit, the grace of rococo, and the charm of the salon. "All
knowledge - and this naturally includes philosophy," Huizinga concludes,
"is polemical by nature, and polemics cannot be divorced from agonistics. ' 80
Of all the arts, Huizinga observes, music and dance remain closest to
77. Ibid., 129.
78. Ibid., 119.

79. Ibid., 155.
80. Ibid., 166.
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play. Even more than poetry, which rises partly into the sphere of ideation
and judgment, the musical arts, by means of rhythm and harmony, produce
and evoke a purely emotional experience. Music has nothing to do with
practical life, utility, duty, or truth, and its values transcend logical ideas.
The pleasure of music is the pleasure of ritual, which is the primordial

ground of play. And Huizinga notes that all true ritual is sung and danced.
The play element is less pronounced in the plastic arts, especially architecture, which are governed by considerations of economics, utility, and existing techniques of production. But Huizinga holds that the inclusion of the
crafts among the arts in the archaic phase of civilization and the recurrent
theme of competitive artisanship in myth and legend have left a definite
impress on the actual development of art and technics, as is evident in the
rich historical tradition of art and architectural contests, which involve
more than purely practical and aesthetic objectives. The least ludic of the
higher forms of culture is science, Huizinga claims, because science, although often competitive and polemical, is too immersed in and concerned
with the real world to qualify as play. Moreover, there is more emphasis in
scientific competition on vanquishing rivals than there is in true play.
Huizinga summarizes his findings thus:
It has not been difficult to show that a certain playfactor was extremely active all
through the cultural process and that it produces many of the fundamental forms of
social life. The spirit of playful competition is, as a social impulse, older than
culture itself and pervades all life like a veritable ferment. Ritual grew up in sacred
play; poetry was born in play and nourished on play; music and dancing were pure
play. Wisdom and philosophy found expression in words and forms derived from
religious contests. The rules of warfare, the conventions of noble living were built
up on play-patterns. We have to conclude, therefore, that civilization is, in its
earliest phases, played. It does not comefrom play like a babe detaching itself from
the womb: it arises in and as play, and never leaves it.81
Homo Ludens ends with a bitter chapter that returns to one of the main
themes of In the Shadow of Tomorrow: the decadence of the play element
in modern times. Here Huizinga depicts contemporary civilization as one in
which material interests, cynicism, and the negation of every norm not only
exist (as they always have), but are elevated into absolutes in place of the
rules that underlie all play, all noble activity, and all honorable competi-
tion. The decadence of play is evident in the breakdown of the distinction
between play and seriousness, whereby the serious business of life
politics, war, economics, and morality - degenerate into pseudo-play,

and play loses its indispensable qualities of spontaneity, detachment,
artlessness, and joy, and thus its power to act as a culture-creating activity.
The decadence of play is evident also in the commercialization, professionalization, and politicization of sport, which perverts recreation and
81. Ibid., 173.
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reduces it to crude sensationalism. It is evident in the perversion of culture
by puerilism, which, instead of making boys into men, adapts the conduct
of the community to that of the adolescent age. All of this, Huizinga concludes, clearly shows that there can be no civilization without play and
rules of fair play, without conventions consciously established and voluntarily adhered to, and without knowledge of how to win and lose graciously. The supreme importance to civilization of the play factor is precisely
that "civilization presupposes limitation and mastery of the self, the ability
not to confuse its own tendencies with the ultimate and highest goal, but to
understand that it is enclosed within certain bounds freely accepted."82
III. HOMO LUDENS: FOR AND AGAINST
Almost all of Huizinga's important critics acknowledge his originality and

eminence as a cultural historian. They respect his work, especially his
insights into the nature of play and its role as a civilizing force, as far as it
goes. Some, however, argue that it does not go far enough, while others
contend that it goes in the wrong direction. Two of them, Pieter Geyl and
Rosalie L. Colie,83 criticize Huizinga's apparent blindness to the importance of politics, which they regard as particularly indefensible, considering
the troubled times in which he lived and wrote. Geyl faults Huizinga on
two specific counts: overlooking the political origin and nature of the world
crisis that culminated in World War 11, and idealizing the past so as to
make the present appear worse than it was. Colie goes farther: "Because
he had so long kept politics at a distance from him, Huizinga was unpre-
pared for the brute fact that an elderly, respectable, honorable professor
was fundamentally a political being. Professors are by definition not neu-
tral, whatever they may think; Huizinga was, not in fact harmless."84 (Presumably, since Colie does not say so explicitly, Huizinga's alleged nonpolitical stance tacitly succored the Nazi cause). After making much of the
influence of Huizinga's Mennonite upbringing on his aloofness from politics
as an adult, Colie then, somewhat unfairly, compares him unfavorably with
his friend, Marc Bloch,85 who served in the French army, joined the resis
tance after the fall of France, and was arrested, tortured, and shot in 1944.
In praising Bloch's undeniable heroism, however, Colie neglects to men-
tion that he was a Jew, whose situation and options as a Jew in Nazi
Europe were uniquely desperate. Exactly how Huizinga at sixty-eight
could have served the Dutch underground, had he joined, or what he would
82. Ibid., 211.
83. P. Geyl, "Huizinga as Accuser of His Age," History and Theoty 2 (1963), 231-262. R.
Colie, "Johan Huizinga and the Task of Cultural History," American Historical Review 69
(1964), 607-630.
84. Colie, 629-630.
85. Ibid., 619-620.
HUIZINGA
AND
HIS
CRITICS
85
have accomplished by martyring himself Colie does not make clear. She
muddies the waters further by invoking Julien Benda as a critic of the
non-political attitude of his generation of intellectuals, when in fact Benda
castigated them for having abandoned disinterested intellectual activity and

allowing their talents to be manipulated for political and nationalistic ends.86
Such criticisms might be justified if they concentrated more on what

Huizinga thought and did than on what he did not think or do. Huizinga,
admittedly, found politics personally distasteful, but he was never blind to
its importance. In "The Task of Cultural History," he insisted that "the
historical forms of political life are already to be found in life itself" - that
is, within the matrix of culture as a whole. But he immediately added:
"Political history brings its own forms: a state institution, a peace treaty, a
war, a dynasty, the state itself. In this fact, which is inseparable from the
paramount importance of those forms themselves, lies the fundamental
character of political history. It continues to enjoy a certain primacy because it is so much the morphology of society par excellence."87 What
troubled Huizinga throughout his career, and increasingly so during the
1930s, was his generation's one-sided preoccupation with and misleading

inflation of the importance of politics to the detriment of historical under-
standing.88 As early as in The Waning of the Middle Ages, Huizinga chided

the medievalists of the time for their overemphasis of social and economic
factors to the neglect of the spiritual values of the Middle Ages. "Combing
the records in which chivalry is, indeed, little mentioned, they have succeeded in presenting a picture of the Middle Ages in which economic and
social points of view are so dominant that one tends to forget that, next to
religion, chivalry was the strongest of the ideas that filled the minds and the
hearts of those men of another age."89 Huizinga summed up his lifelong
attitude toward politics in an article published in 1940:
The importance of the political seems so overwhelming that we are apt to forget
that politics and economics together only form part of that nether domain of human
activity which the Greeks called the acquisitive art. Now if we still agree that the
acquisitive life does not mean civilization, at least not the whole of it, there is no
need for pointing out that the absorption of mental faculties by the political and
economic purposes of society raises grave fears as to the healthy state of our
civilization.... Politics, however important and unavoidable, are always a second-
ary function of human life. They can never be either the essence or the ultimate
pursuit of a civilization.90
Such statements were not those of a man insensitive to the role of poli86. Ibid., 615.
87. "The Task of Cultural History," 58-59.
88. In addition to In the Shadow of Tomorrow', see "Der Mensch und die Kultur" in
Parerga [1938] (Basle, 1945).
89. "The Political and Military Significance of Chivalric Ideas in the Late Middle Ages,"
197.
90. "Conditions for a Recovery of Civilization," Fortnightly Review 147 (1940), 390-400.
86
ROBERT
ANCHOR
tics or to their "paramount importance" as a reflection of the morphology
of society as a whole. But they were the statements of a man who plausibly
viewed politics as symptomatic rather than causative, and who sought to
diagnose the disease of which the myths of national and racial superiority,
and the new justifications for violence, cruelty, and war were the most
conspicuous signs. Such statements, indeed, were not neutral. The Nazis
deemed them dangerous enough to detain Huizinga during the occupation
in the out-of-the-way town of De Steeg.
More to the point are the criticisms of Carlo Antoni and Roger Caillois.91
Antoni's essay, published in 1937, is based almost wholly on The Waning
of the Middle Ages, Erasmus, and "The Task of Cultural History." It
makes only one brief reference to In the Shadow of Tomorrow; Homo
Ludens appeared a year later. On the basis of the writings he used, Antoni
concluded that Huizinga lacked conceptual rigor and was guilty of subjectivism and relativism; that his historiography, therefore, "was itself a
symptom of the evil which he deplored." Antoni's essay ends with the
provocative but misplaced question: "What sort of spirit can be demanded
of the participant in a play called upon to defend that which he knows to be
nothing but a fatuous game? And how is it possible to lament the fact that
all things 'which once stood firm and sacred' have now been shaken?
Especially if one has asserted the relativity of all cultural phenomena and
the legitimate plurality of all forms?" 92
Had Homo Ludens been available to Antoni, he would have known that
Huizinga scarcely thought of civilization as a "fatuous game." He would
have known that Huizinga distinguished sharply between play and seriousness, and held that any confusion of the two perverts both. He would have
known also that, while Huizinga insisted that civilization "arises in and as
play, and never leaves it," he did not mean or imply that civilization is
equivalent to play and nothing more, but only that the higher forms of
civilization originate in and flourish as noble play, and that they suffer
when play declines, as in modern times, or when play gets out of hand, as
in the late Middle Ages. Finally, Antoni would have known that Huizinga
did not rate play above the serious business of life, but made his position to
the contrary clear in the conclusion to Homo Ludens: "Play . . . lies
outside morals. In itself it is neither good nor bad. But if we have to decide
whether an action to which our will impels us is a serious duty or is licit as
play, our moral conscience will at once provide the touchstone. As soon as
91. Carlo Antoni, From History to Sociology, transl. Hayden V. White (Detroit, 1959), ch.
5. Roger Caillois, Man and the Sacred, transl. M. Barash (Glencoe, Ill., 1959), Appendix II.
Caillois presents his own theory of play in Man, Play, and Games, transl. M. Barash (Glencoe, Ill., 1961).
92. Ibid., 206.
HUIZINGA
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87
truth and justice, compassion and forgiveness have part in our resolve to
act, our anxious question loses all meaning."93 What a different picture
from Antoni's Gombrich presents! "I venture to think that none of Huizin-
ga's critics have quite confronted the agony of his position. What had
sustained him throughout his life, indeed what had prompted him to reject
romantic aestheticism in favor of an uncompromising search for truth, was
a faith in absolute values, the values of Christianity and the values of

rationality. What so deeply upset him was the spectacle of reason under-
mining rationality. His stand was to be against relativism in all forms.

Whatever we may think about individual arguments he employed, it was a
noble stand in an important cause."94
Nevertheless, there is an element of truth in Antoni's charge that

Huizinga's conception of the relationship between play and reality is un-
sound. On the one hand, Huizinga repeatedly insisted that play does not
exclude seriousness - if the two were mutually exclusive, it would obviously make no sense to ask how far culture itself bears the character of
play. On the other hand, Huizinga was equally insistent on maintaining

play and seriousness as two separate categories. As a result of this ambiguity, he was unable to provide an objective criterion for judging where
play ends and seriousness begins. Caillois also charged that Huizinga confused the playfulforms of culture with its serious contents. "The military
arts do not explain war, neither does prosody explain poetry, nor does law
explain the requirements of justice. The same is true for the sacred."95 In
fact, Huizinga never claimed that war, poetry, and religion were only play.
But Antoni and Caillois both were correct in observing that his theory
failed to explain how these activities could be simultaneously playful and
serious, and how they could be compatible with yet distinguishable from
the play structures in which they find expression.
E. H. Gombrich attributes this ambiguity to what he calls the "essentialism" of Huizinga's definition of play.96 By "essentialism' he means
that approach which, in the manner of medieval realism, regards things as
epiphenomena, and then classifies them according to similarities that may
be only superficial or coincidental. By starting with a definition designed to
capture the essence of play, so Gombrich's critique runs, Huizinga succumbed to the temptation of treating play as an Urphainoinen, which could
be used to explain almost every regulated, conventional, or gratuitous
human activity. The fallacy of "essentialism" is that it mistakes concepts
for realities. Thus, Huizinga, in order to preserve his definition intact,

subtly transmuted the historical category of play into a timeless philosoph93. Homo Ludens, 213.
94. 'Huizinga's Homo Ludens," 143.

95. Man and the Sacred, 161.
96. "Huizinga's Homo Ludens," 149 ff.
88
ROBERT
ANCHOR
ical category, then re-introduced it into time sub specie aeternitatis. Logi-
cally, he should have decided either that play is not an Urphianomen, or

else that his definition of play was only an a priori construction, having
value as a heuristic device, but not as an accurate description of reality.
Huizinga understandably failed to resolve this dilemma. For to have taken
the first way out would have undermined his thesis that all civilization
"arises in and as play, and never leaves it." To have chosen the second
way would have undermined his distinction between noble play and its
perversion by puerilism or its contamination by reality - that is, the nor-
inative value of-his definition. Huizinga believed that the anthropological

and linguistic evidence he mustered so skillfully was sufficient to warrant
an essentialistt" definition of play. Nevertheless, Gombrich correctly objects that this evidence, however impressive, fails to prove that behavior
which resembles play actually is play, or that play actually is an Urphdnomen.
The linguist, Emile Benveniste, writing shortly after World War 1I, was
even less inclined than Huizinga to view the relationship between play and
seriousness as symbiotic. Benveniste sees play as a "desocializing operation."97 Like Huizinga, he traces the origins of play to the idea of the
sacred in primitive religion. But where Huizinga considered the two as
complementary - "The Platonic identification of play and holiness does
not defile the latter by calling it play, rather it exalts the concept of play to
the highest regions of the Spirit"98 - Benveniste maintains that play results from the separation of myth from rite; that is, from the decomposition
of religious ceremony into its two basic components, which splits play off
sharply from the sacred. Deprived of myth, of the sacred words that give
religion its power over reality, "the rite is reduced to a mechanism ruled by
acts that are henceforth ineffectual, to a harmless facsimile of the ceremony, to a pure game (ludus)." Conversely, myth without rite results in a
simple play upon words (jocus), words without sum or substance. "Jo
is characterized by the deliberately fictive nature of the reality to which it
alludes."99 When this separation takes place, the divine struggle for possession of the sun becomes a football game (ludus), and the probative
riddle of initiation no more than a pun (jocus). From these premises Benveniste concludes:
Play originates in the sacred, of which it offers an inverted and broken image. If the
sacred be defined by the consubstantial unity of myth and rite, we can say that
there is play only when half of the sacred operation is performed - when the myth
alone is translated into words, or the rite alone into acts. We are then outside the
97. "Le Jeu comme structure," Deucalion 2 (1947), 164.
98. Homo Ludens, 19.
99. "Le Jeu comme structure," 164-165.
HUIZINGA
AND
HIS
CRITICS
89
divine and human sphere of the efficient. Play, thus conceived, will have two forms:
jocique, when the myth is reduced to its own content and separated from its rites;
ludique, when the rite is practiced for itself and separated from its myth. From this
dual standpoint, play incarnates each of the two halves into which sacred ceremony
is split. Moreover, play characteristically recomposes, through make-believe, the
missing half in each of its two forms: in word play, we act as if some actual reality
should result; in physical play, we act as if motivated by a rational reality. This
fiction allows the acts and the words to be consistent, in an autonomous world
which conventions have protected from the fatalities of the real world.'00
Benveniste even provides a formula for recognizing the structural rela-
tionship between play, as he conceives it, and serious activity. "Every

coherent and regulated manifestation of collective and individual life is
transposable into play when the rational or empirical motivation, which
makes it efficacious, is eliminated.'"101 But what, then, distinguishes play
from any other gratuitous activity, such as compulsive behavior or appar-
ently motiveless crimes? And if play is distinguishable from seriousness

only by its gratuitousness, how can it be said to have a civilizing influence,
which is Benveniste's thesis as well as Huizinga's? Benveniste's theory
fails to answer these questions. Where Huizinga held that play and seriousness are two distinct but compatible categories, Benveniste implies that
play is merely a lower order of reality: seriousness minus its rational or
empirical motivation. Consequently, he fares little better than Huizinga in
explaining whether and how the higher forms of culture can be, at one and
the same time, playful and serious.
Two of the most fruitful critiques of Homio Ludens come from Jacques
Ehrmann and Eugen Fink,102 both of whom, from different standpoints,
correctly object that play does not take place in isolation from or in opposition to the rest of reality. For them, play is neither an Urphanomen
(Huizinga), nor a structural substrate (Benveniste), nor a set of selfcontained forms (Caillois), but is, instead, a particular mode of behavior
that is coextensive with and reflective of culture as a whole. Ehrmann
observes that all of these definitions rest on the false assumption that play
is simply what remains when seriousness is subtracted. Thus, what remains

when utility and purposefulness are subtracted is sterility and gratuity.
Reality is seen as corrupted play, and play as devoid of reality.
This assumption is false, according to Ehrmann, because it is ideologi100. Ibid., 165-166.
101. Ibid., 166.
102. Jacques Ehrmann, 'Homo Ludens Revisited" in Gamne, Play, Literature, ed. Jacques
Ehrmann (Boston, 1968), 31-58. Eugen Fink, Oase des Glficks. Gedanken zil eiter Ontologie
des Spiels (Freiburg and Munich, 1957). A portion of this work has been translated by U. and
T. Saine and appears in Game, Play, Literature, 19-31. Fink's more extended study of play as
a philosophical problem is Spiel als Weltsymbol.
90
ROBERT
ANCHOR
cally slanted and methodologically unsound. It is ideologically slanted be-
cause it takes reality uncritically as given, as existing prior to its components (including play), and thus as a norm, which is external to the man-
ifestations of the culture that expresses it. It implies an invalid dichotomy

between a supposedly fixed, stable, normative reality, on the one hand, and
on the other its components, which are viewed merely as variations, commentaries on, or interpretations of this preconceived reality. Such a procedure, argues Ehrmann, obscures the fact that the problem of reality and the
problem of play are one and the same problem. The procedure must be
reversed; reality must not be the starting-point of an analysis of play (or
any other social phenomenon), but rather its termination. "In an an-
thropology of play, play cannot be defined by isolating it on the basis of its

relationship to an a priori reality and culture. To define play is at the same
time and in the same movement to define reality and to define culture. As
each term is a way to apprehend the two others, they are each elaborated,
constructed through and on the basis of the two others. None of the three
existing prior to the others, they are all simultaneously the subject and the
object of the question which they put to us and we to them."'103
Huizinga, Benveniste, and Caillois all held that play is useful to culture
precisely because it is isolated from an a priori reality, and hence is protected from "the fatalities of the real world." Ehrmann correctly observes,
however, that whatever cultural utility play may have, on this assumption
it must always remain merely an accompaniment or complement of seri-
ousness: an adornment, luxury, or relaxation - "the Sunday of life."' 04

Ehrmann grants that this assumption may be true of contemporary Western
society, in which the utilitarian and materialistic attitude toward culture
"entails the expulsion of play into the exterior of gratuitousness and futility, where it becomes the utopian complement of seriousness." 105 But this
assumption does not hold true of other cultures, where no such antithesis
between play and seriousness exists. Huizinga himself, as we have seen,

maintained that, in the earliest stages of human history, all culture was
articulated in and as play, and that play continued to be a vital culturecreating force until the end of the eighteenth century, when a breakdown of
the distinction between play and seriousness occurred that eventually
contaminated both spheres. But here the ideological implications of

Huizinga's position, which undermined his analysis, become apparent. For
his well-meaning attempt to protect play from "the fatalities of the real
world" corresponds exactly to the antithesis of work and play in the indus-
trial phase of modern Western history. And Huizinga's whole analysis of
103. "Homo Ludens Revisited," 55.

104. Ibid., 45.
105. Ibid., 47.
HUIZINGA
AND
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CRITICS
91
play, past and present, presupposes the very "ethnocentric perspective,"

as Ehrmann calls it, which consigns play to the periphery of life and assigns
to it the role of a "utopian complement of seriousness." Huizinga deplored
the decline of play in modern times. But, by his own theory, was not this
decline inevitable? If play is merely an adornment of reality, which, if
subtracted, would leave reality intact (albeit dull and ordinary), how could
Huizinga have expected play to have resisted or survived the eventual
onslaught of reality?
Ehrmann blames Huizinga's inability to answer these questions on his

failure to recognize the economic function of play. He does not mean only
that Huizinga disqualified gambling, games of chance, and commercialized
sport as play on the grounds that money necessarily corrupts play. He also
means that Huizinga's definition of play as entirely lacking in material
interest and utility does not justify the conclusion that play has nothing to
do with economics. Ehrmann grants that play may produce nothing, but it
does consume something: time, energy, and sometimes considerable
property. And where there is consumption, there must be production some-
where, which will have a great deal to do with how people play, how much
they play, and how play influences and is influenced by the social order in
which it takes place. Any valid theory, therefore, must perceive play in
relation to the external world and recognize that both participate in the
same economy. What Ehrmann calls Huizinga's "anti- or an-economic"
interpretation of play is evident, for example, in his analysis of the pot-
latch. "In the potlatch one proves one's superiority not merely by the
lavish prodigality of one's gifts but, what is even more striking, by the
wholesale destruction of one's possessions just to show that one can do
without them. . . The potlatch and everything connected with it hinges
on winning, on being superior, on glory, prestige and, last but not least,
revenge. . . . The opposed groups do not contend for wealth or power but
simply for the pleasure of parading their superiority - in a word, for
glory."'106 But what Huizinga failed to see is that the apparently gratuitous
gift is in fact an exchange; that the participants give in order to receive
(prestige, power, glory, revenge); that the potlatch really is, therefore, the
ritualization of an economic and political ethos. Much the same criticism
applies to Huizinga's interpretation of chivalry, which was, besides being a
path to the sublime, the ritualization of the economic and political practices
of feudal society in the throes of disintegration. Once the ritual character of
play is recognized. Ehrmann adds, it can no longer be viewed as an isolated
phenomenon, but must be considered, like all other cultural phenomena, as
communication, which provides vital information about the society in

which it takes place.
106. Hoino Ludens, 58-59.
92
ROBERT
ANCHOR
The relationship of play to reality is also the subject of Eugen Fink's
writings. Fink agrees with Huizinga and his critics that play is a unique
phenomenon, "an essential element of man's ontological makeup, an exis-
tential phenomenon . . . a clearly identifiable and autonomous one that

cannot be explained as deriving from any other existential phenomenon."'107 But he denies that play is the only such phenomenon, and that it
is unique because it stands apart from or in opposition to the rest of reality.
For Fink, it is the symbolic function of play that makes it unique and useful
as a tool of philosophical and historical understanding. "If we define play
in the usual manner by contrasting it with work, reality, seriousness and
authenticity, we falsely juxtapose it with other existential phenomena. Play

is a basic existential phenomenon, just as primordial and autonomous as
death, love, work, and struggle for power, but it is not bound to these other
phenomena in a common ultimate purpose. Play, so to speak, confronts
them all - it absorbs them by representing them. We play at being serious,

we play truth, we play reality, we play work, we play love and death
and we even play play itself."'108
Fink attributes the symbolic quality of play to its double character. On

the one hand, man plays in the real world and knows himself to be playing
even as he plays (unlike the schizophrenic, who cannot tell the difference).
On the other hand, play is not subordinate to the serious purposes served
by all other human activities. Seen from within, the play world is unrelated
to anything outside itself. Thus, the player consciously exists in two different spheres simultaneously, because this double existence is essential to
play (and to the higher cultural forms derived from play). The play world
possesses its own internal space and time, which set it off from the real
world, but without concealing it. This capacity to exist in two different
spheres at once is uniquely human. It enables the player to withdraw temporarily from the real world, and to assert his freedom by recreating it
imaginatively, without losing touch with reality. Thus, play is always

partly, but never wholly, the creation of fantasy. It always has to do with
real objects, which fantasy transforms into play objects. And the
plaything - the doll that becomes a child, the broom that becomes a
horse, the finger that becomes a pistol - forms the link between the pure
subjectivity of the player and the concrete world that surrounds him. The
relationship between play and reality is not antithetical, but rather symbi-
otic. "The play world is not suspended in a purely ideal world. It always
has a real setting, and yet it is never a real thing among other real things,
although it has an absolute need of real things as a point of departure."109
107. "The Oasis of Happiness. Toward an Ontology of Play" in Game, Play, Literature,
19.
108. Ibid., 22.
109. Ibid., 24.
HUIZINGA
AND
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CRITICS
93
From this double nature of the player and the plaything, Fink concludes
that the play world is a mirror of behavior in the real world. Play reflects
the real world as a mirror reflects real objects. Unlike a mirror, however,
the play world does not simply reflect passively something outside itself.
As with the player and the plaything, the play world also possesses a
double nature, because the behavior reflected in play is the behavior of the
player himself and the real world in which he lives. Thus, play is at the
same time the thing reflected and the reflection itself; and man at play is
both the subject and object of his playing. The play world, then, reflects
reality symbolically; in it man seeks the meaning of existence. "Even if it
has long since been forgotten, human play is the symbolic act of represent-
ing the meaning of the world and life." 110 The concept of the play world as
a symbolic representation and re-enactment of existence, for which Homo
Ludens laid the foundation, now reveals its methodological value. For it
can be used by the philosopher and historian to understand not only how
and why man plays, how play differs from other activities, and what it
contributes to culture, which was the fruit of Huizinga's life and labors.
But it can also be used to understand the meaning of play, the meaning of
existence as encoded in play, and the uniqueness of the play medium,
through which man creates and communicates meaning.
University of Southern California
10. Ibid., 28.

Huizinga and His Critics

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Wesleyan University

History and Play: Johan Huizinga and His Critics

HISTORY AND PLAY: JOHAN HUIZINGA AND HIS CRITICS

Fragment 52). Huizinga was especially partial to Plato's view of play.

letter of Schiller's Aesthetic Education of Man: "Man plays only when he

explaining human behavior, he was the first to attempt an exact definition

civilization renders account to itself of its past."2 This definition, he held,

an "intellectual form" of understanding the past. But he also believed that

with the intellectual and moral responsibility that Huizinga ascribed to

I. HUIZINGA'S PATH TO HOMO LUDENS

As a cultural historian, Huizinga had always been more interested in the

HUIZINGA AND HIS CRITICS 65

ena sensitized him, as it had his great predecessor, Jacob Burckhardt,4 to

study of these play-related phenomena also sensitized him to their appar-

ently irrational and illusory, unpredictable and sometimes escapist aspects.

cultural history so as virtually to deprive it of any possibility of grasping

artifacts of culture themselves (since none could be found, he thought), but

Urphiinotnen. "Only when the scholar turns to determining the patterns of

In his wry and amusing autobiographical essay, "My Path to History,"

form of a hobby, a playful preoccupation with heraldry, coats of arms, coin

to haunt me as it had in childhood" - but he did not yet regard it as "solid

Only after Huizinga became lecturer on the history of Ancient Indian

appointed professor of history at the university of his native Groningen.

long and difficult affair that bored most of my audience prodigiously,"12

humanities as held by Dilthey, Simmel, Windelband, Rickert, and other

11. Ibid., 266-267.

general classifications. "What the study of history and artistic creation

have in common is a mode of forming images." 14 "In natural science, as

but only that imagination is indispensable in interpreting the past. Although

our imagination to transcend the bounds of historical imagination and to

14. "The Aesthetic Element in Historical Thought," 226.

Church, and other characteristic medieval institutions and practices already

tokened the Renaissance? This view would be correct, Huizinga reckoned,

history of civilization every delusion or opinion of an epoch has the value

had distorted reality precisely in correcting this delusion, this incongruity

Christian teaching of the basic goodness of God's creation, which is marred

served an important purpose. For even if we accept Huizinga's theory that

28. The Waning of the Middle Ages, 39.

Only then does nature become an object of adoration and a vehicle of

unreality of nature at such times that make it susceptible to idealization and

an alternative to reality in play, or else by transforming reality through

"The fun of playing resists all analysis, all logical interpretation."31

HUIZINGA AND HIS CRITICS 71

sciousness that it is different from 'ordinary life'."32

art."34 Chivalry did create an incredible world of heroic illusions, dreams,

suggestive kind."36 Chivalric ideals were impractical and unrealizable, but

them supplying romantic and erotic needs and degenerating into an

feudalism."38 Although now less important, the chivalric ideal remained

32. Ibid., 28.

33. The Waning of the Middle Ages, 55.

37. Ibid., 89.

tion and a sense of honor as the two central characteristics of Renaissance

chivalric honor than as a result of the revival of classical studies. Not

minds of the sixteenth century."39

41. Ibid., 115-116.

HUIZINGA AND HIS CRITICS 73

civilization is on trial in America, he says here. The mechanization of life in

and remained a cultural conservative. But his hostility to modem society

Throughout the twenties and thirties, in a series of superbly crafted

Erasmus as against that of Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, Hugh of St.

44. Ibid., 314.

of the past failed to produce new ones of comparable human significance.

Historical Thought" and had continued in "A Definition of the Concept of