2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

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A BSOLUTE( S ) SPIELEN
scope of Western metaphysics, we would require the most metaphysical of the procedures:
a determination of the “essence” of play. The task is impossible, it seems, since a determi-
nation of the essence of play presupposes that being be thought in terms of Grund, and it
forbids, therefore, to think being as Abgrund. The apparent contradiction disturbs the sym-
metry of a question that strives to present two opposing ways of interpreting the relation-
ship between being and play. In fact, there is a third term in play: thought. The condition of
intelligibility of the question requires that thought, as soon as it deals with play, renounce
any determination of its ground without renouncing to determine its nature. Therefore, the
task of thinking “being as abyss starting from the nature of play,” as Heidegger says, be-
comes a challenge for thought itself that here seems to have reached its limit. To think play
(in the sense of Spiel, of course), and even more to think the abyss on the basis of play, can
only mean to think differently because it requires that thinking must abandon its traditional
efforts to think the nature of being as based on their ground. In other words, Heidegger’s
question requires, in order to be properly understood, a reexamination of the relationship
between play and thinking. A relationship that must be reconsidered in both its senses:
when play is the object of thinking and when thinking is the object of play. It might be pos-
sible to condense what I have been saying so far in a single question that is presupposed by
the Heideggerian interrogation: “How to think play?” This question has to be heard in its
intrinsic duplicity as a question about both play and thinking, as a combination of “how to
think play,” and “how to think play.” To put it differently, the Heideggerian text seems to
bring to light the issue of a “play’s thought” that he delivers as a task to philosophy. What
is important, to understand the radicality of the Heideggerian questioning, is to heed both
senses of the genitive in a complex unity. The issue at stake is to understand how play can
arrive to thought because thought belongs to play. And conversely.
Heidegger presents this issues as preliminary to a philosophy of being as Abgrund, as
abyss. In other words, he ties any possible overcoming of Western metaphysics to an inter-
rogation of the nature and consequences of the reciprocal interpenetration of thought and
play, of Denken and Spiel. How does the text proceeds in this task?