2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

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A BSOLUTE( S ) SPIELEN
tiny of being. Such a thinking must be equally ready to play according to the rules of the
Zeit-Spielraum that the Geschick of Being has opened up to men as well as it must be ready
to question such rules by seeing through their absolute arbitrariness.
If purposelessness is the aspect of play that Heidegger emphasizes the most, a different
characterization is given by Nietzsche. In his case as well, however, the overcoming of
metaphysics is tied to the advent of play. Play is no doubt one of the recurrent themes of
Nietzsche’s thought, and it usually point to Nietzsche’s call for an affirmation of life against
the nihilistic negation incarnated in the ascetic ideals. In his language, play—and more par-
ticularly the Heraclitean child at play—points to the age when nihilism will have been over-
come, the age in which life, instead of being continuously negated or at best tolerated and
justified for a task that does not belong to it, will eventually be affirmed in its randomness
and in its self-renewing becoming. But is it play an adequate figure to use for such an am-
biguous task? Don’t we witness an intimate contradiction, a basic incompatibility between
the affirmation of life, chance, and mortality that Nietzsche assigns to play and the mode
of being of play itself?
In fact, play seems to indicate the exact opposite of what Nietzsche wishes, at least be-
cause the actualization of play absorbs the player inside play itself and negates whatever
part of the being of the player is not playing. In other words, the mode of being of play rep-
resents, or so it seems, the ultimate and most definitive negation of the will of the player
because the player can play only by submitting his own self to the play. Play is, at least in
part, the mark of the most absolute negation because it can exist only be negating indepen-
dence of the players’ being. It is this negation that causes the now ecstatic now frantic rap-
ture that the player experiences when its participation to the game being played reached the
peak. It is this negation that causes the frantic euphoria that players—and gamblers in par-
ticular— experience so often, and that represents play’s ultimate reward. It is the experi-
ence of the negation of the will, of the identification with the dice being thrown, the
experience of the absolute communion with the roulette’s wheel, almost as if the latter were
endowed of an autonomous life. If this is the case, however, how can play be the sign of the
Nietzschean affirmation of the individual’s life against the stricture of an ascetic ideal that