Browsing by Subject "play"

This is a philosophical work on the subject of play. Organized around a handful of questions, the thesis approaches inquiry by first integrating empirical lines of research and then applying the methods of philosophy. The first chapter is an introductory one that serves to motivate the project and outline its central features. Chapter 2 concerns the question of why humans play from an evolutionary and psychological perspective. The conclusions reached in this chapter form the basis of chapter 3's ethical discussion of why and how we ought to play. Chapter 4 uses an interpretation of Jean Piaget's The Moral Judgment of the Child as a stepping stone to an investigation of how play and moral development are related. Chapter 5 addresses the metaphysics of play by critiquing extant philosophical and biological accounts of what play is before advancing a novel theory based on active engagement and frivolousness. To conclude the dissertation, chapter 6 ties together themes from various chapters.

In this dissertation, I attend to historical receptions of Esther MT to illustrate problematic trends in the Christian use of the book and to identify avenues for the development of ethically responsible modern Christian approaches. The receptions under consideration—both Christian and Jewish—are principally premodern. I examine them with attention to the social locations of the communities from which they emerge and the dynamics of power and domination they reflect. An overview of Christian reception of Esther reveals a history of relatively sparse and at times openly hostile treatment of the book. It further shows that in Christian hands Esther has been viewed from an overwhelmingly serious aspect. More often than not, the book has been read from the perspective of and in overt alignment with the interests of the religiously and politically dominant. In striking contrast, the body of Jewish Esther receptions produced across the centuries is rich and abundant. While many of these works are serious in tone, there is also a prominent strand marked by humor, mirth, and play. Furthermore, many are recognizably written from the position and perspective of communities living on the underside of (usually Christian) domination. I contend such receptions reveal that Jewish communities recognized Esther MT as what James C. Scott terms a ‘hidden transcript’—literature responding to the experience of domination—and extended its work with hidden transcripts of their own. Beyond identifying and illustrating the above trends, the core contribution of this project is to read rabbinic Esther receptions through the lens of the hidden transcript. I illuminate ways in which the rabbis respond to contemporary experiences of domination through play with characters such as Haman and King Ahasuerus. I argue that such play is far from frivolous; instead, through play, the rabbis perform work of utmost ethical and theological importance, work worthy of modern attention. Given the harm they have perpetrated through both the use and neglect of this book, modern Christians reading from positions of power and seeking to develop appropriate responses to Esther must first attend to rabbinic and other Jewish voices from across history. In so doing, they will confront the discomforting fact that they often have been recognized as Haman-like villains by those whose survival Esther was written to support. They will also encounter teachers who model the ethical and theological possibilities of responding to a biblical text in what may be for them an unfamiliar mode: that of play.

Playing Incarnation recognizes that the imagination is at the center holistic learning, and seeks to present a pedagogical model that focuses on inspiring and training the imagination through models of play. The model arose from an experience based model of learning implemented at Grace Lutheran Church of River Forest, Illinois, between 2012 and 2016; and the resulting research into neurological processes of learning. The research presented here begins with understanding how Christian education literature since the 1990’s has recognized and employed the imagination in education, finding Maria Harris’ model, presented in Teaching and Religious Imagination as foundational for a pedagogy of the imagination. Then, the imagination is explored through historical Christian thought to see how the imagination has been conceived by the western tradition of the church, drawing a theological picture of the divine imagination as a foundation for human imagination. This picture is influenced by Robin Stockitt’s Imagination and the Playfulness of God, and Jurgen Moltmann’s The Crucified God. The research then turns to understanding the neurological processes that form the imagination, following David Hogue’s Remembering the Future, Imagining the Past, and using the story of John, a student, as a case study. Finally, the structures and forms of play are explored, following Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens and Courtney Goto’s The Grace of Playing, and then using the faith education model from Grace Lutheran to understand how play structure triggers and trains the imagination in Christian forms of life. The result argues that faith education trains students’ imaginations to construe reality through the gospel, continually reinforced by experiences that practice Christian forms of life, resulting in forming a person as an icon of the Incarnation.