2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

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A BSOLUTE( S ) SPIELEN
just the furnishing of an appropriate playspace and the taking place of play on it. Being, in
its clearing, opens up a space wherein beings can appear. Such a space must be understood
as a playspace, that is, as a space in which play may take place. It would be wrong, however,
to think that the space opened up by being becomes a terrain onto which play may take
place. This becomes clearer if we consider for a moment the meanings of “play” and
“game.” Both, and particularly the latter, can refer to the set of rules and conventions that
make possible the occurrence of the single ludic event (e.g. the game of tennis, generally
considered) or to the specific, concrete event (e.g. the 1996 final of the Wimbledon tourna-
ment). The Heideggerian text cannot adopt the second meaning of the term Spiel, because
that would entail that the appearing of beings is ruled by the institution of a game in an
“empty” space opened up by the destiny of Being. In other words, we would have to pre-
suppose a two-stage process: first the deployment of a space and then the institution of a
play/game that makes possible the disclosing of beings as objects of the game itself.
The text, instead, suggests just the opposite: the Geschick of being furnishes the space
wherein the concrete playing can take place. This means that the Geschick of being is noth-
ing else but the institution of a game, the mise en place of a game that sees beings as its
objects. To put it slightly differently: the mise en place of a game that allows, when played,
the disclosing of being within its boundaries. The principle of sufficient reason, if we fol-
low this interpretation, becomes therefore the rule of the game of the West, since it consti-
tutes the space within which beings can be properly “comprehended.” 20 The second
mentioned meaning of game/play and the Geschick of being come to coincide: the destiny
of being is a Spiel. In the very last page of Der Satz vom Grund, Heidegger goes back to
the Heraclitean fragment 52 and translates it as follows:
19. Spielraum is usually translated into English as “leeway”, or more simply as “play” in the mechanical
sense. Here, Heidegger is leveraging upon the original meaning of Spielraum as the space where play,
e.g. movement, can take place, in order to add the temporal element as well. A literal translation would
then bring something like the “spatiotemporal leeway.” However, such a translation would obliterate
the crucial reference to play and emphasize the mechanical meaning of play. Since both solutions are
unsatisfactory, in the following I will alternate between “leeway” and “playspace” when referring to
the Heideggerean uses of Spielraum and Zeit-Spielraum.
20. In the proper, literal sense of the word: beings can both be understood and confined and they are understood
because they are confined.