2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

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P RELUDE
position on the chessboard is determined by an application of the rules, it follows that every
possible configurations is generated by them. The rules of the game make up an exhaustive
combinatorics, i.e. they make possible the generation of the totality of the game. The latter
term is to be understood in a broad sense: the totality of the game includes all the possible
configurations of the chessboard, which means that it includes all the possible past, present,
and future games that may be played on it. Such a number is in fact barely thinkable, but
what matters here is that it can be obtained. In short: consider the initial position of the piec-
es on the board and consider then all the possible moves (there are just 20 of them). For
each of them, consider all the possible answers, or countermoves, available to the other
player. It is enough to proceed for a while on this path and the whole game will be gener-
ated.
We begin, perhaps, to see the source of the fascination that chess—when considered
from this narrow standpoint—can engender: chess is endowed with an extremely complex
structure—a complexity difficult to imagine in fact— but a structure that can be fully given
and concretely, effectively obtained. Moreover, chess is completely self-referential: con-
trary to some knaves and queens of hearts, pawns and bishops cannot harass sweet little
girls. Chess pieces enjoy an independent existence: outside the chessboard they are only
pieces of wood or jade. On the other hand, once in play they enjoy a full and undivided ex-
istence, since what lies outside the chessboard can never touch them: the inside and the out-
side of the game are marked by impassable border, an irreparable gap.
Moreover, chess has something else beyond the outlined combinatorics which guaran-
tees its success as an explanatory paradigm: a telos that secures the internal movement by
putting the whole structure into motion, thereby assuring the perpetual dance of the pieces
on the board, a dance as precise as the movements of the pieces of a clock—an implacable,
predictable and therefore harmonious dance. The telos is nothing else than the agonistic el-
ement implicit in the game, the effort to overcome the antagonist, be it real or virtual. It is
because the agon enters inevitably in every ludic phenomenon that it is essential that chess
be a game. A discrete, closed, combinatorial structure is certainly necessary, but it is not
sufficient, by itself, to attain the desired harmony: it is also necessary to provide a principle