Jugar: un deure sagrat. Activitat lúdica i transcendència

If there is a work to be almost obligatorily cited when dealing with play, this is Homo ludens by Johan Huizinga. With this book, first published in Leiden in 1938, Huizinga’s reflections that started in 1903 finally took shape. As the author himself established, his objective is to present play as an omnipresent element in reality. Nevertheless, not necessarily agreeing with the thesis of this book (according to which play cannot be said to be a cultural element but rather culture springs from play, that is, culture offers the character of play, rather than play being a cultural manifestation), the indisputable fact is that Huizinga continuously writes about the connections between playing and access to transcendence. This correspondence will be the thread we will follow in order to establish some of the elements that intervene in the complex relation-ships between self-knowledge and self-transcendence.