Meaning of homo ludens | Babel Free

Definitions

1. The human being viewed as primarily concerned with play, seeing it as an aim in itself.
2. Alternative letter-case form of homo ludens.
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Equivalents

Examples

“To a homo ludens, playing is an aim in itself and justifies any effort. A real homo ludens does not fuse “ordinary life” with playing. He transforms “ordinary life” into something qualitatively different.”

“The sandpit, mud, lollipop sticks, goo, plasticine, oozing clay and, later, petri dishes and test tubes: playing with such stuff, Hall argues, has clearly influenced the materialisations of contemporary art, so much of it three-dimensional, inherently transient and labile, and playful. Homo ludens has supplanted homo faber.”

“It takes a homo ludens to eat the only fruit forbidden by God, unthinkingly and playfully. The afterlife is never seriously conceived of as a workshop, a library or a laboratory.”

““Homo ludens has always had a talent for inventing jobs of the non-existential kind. The vast majority of the population is already doing luxury jobs like yours and mine,” he says, nodding towards my notepad.”

CEFR level