The productivist logic of modern society is turned upside-down. While the grasshopper of the Greek fable, however, is a loser and dies in winter time because he has not collected food like the busy ant, Suits makes the grasshopper a player and philosopher of games who wins in wisdom over the ant. It begins with the figure of the grasshopper, which is borrowed from the classical fable of Aesop, from the sixth century BC. Suits’ book has indeed some qualities, which make it outstanding in a world of boring philosophical abstraction. This sounds impressive – or more like sales-speak? In any case, there is good reason for critical examination. While Aristotle “was wrong” in one or other idea, and Ludwig Wittgenstein has – contrary to Suits – with his arguments against definitions obtained philosophical reputation, Suits is “the real philosopher” (p. The enthusiastic introduction by Thomas Hurka, professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, labels the book as “one of the most remarkable philosophy books of the twentieth century”. The book has now been reedited into a third edition.

Suits, who was professor of philosophy at the University of Waterloo, has by his book Grasshopper from 1978 obtained a certain cult status among some American philosophers and sport theoreticians. People may call whatever they want “games” – but what the philosopher by definition has labelled as games, are games. As philosopher, one knows better, because one can construct a word class of “games” by the use of theoretical thinking and logical gedankenexperiment. Because not all things which are called “games” are really games. But are these really games? No, they are not – this is what the North American philosopher Bernard Suits argues. Children like games of rhyme and dance, jumping and clapping – such as Ring around the Rosie, German Ringel Ringel Reihen, and Danish Andersine, Anders And og Rip Rap Rup.

The grasshopper by bernard suits