PLAY IN ARISTOTLE

Twice Aristotle considers the telos of human activity and twice insists that this telos cannot be "play," iratota. In the Politics, he claims that the goal of work is not play but leisure, while in the Nicomachean Ethics he claims that the activity of ... is not play but contemplation--...--which is the only truly "leisured" activity. In both passages, Aristotle is arguing against an unnamed group of people who esteem play as the telos of life, and in both passages Aristotle adamantly rejects this view. But the difference between leisure and play for Aristotle is the question. As Friedrich Solmsen argued in the last major discussion of the question, Aristotle himself explains the difference clearly enough: play is for the sake of work, while work is for the sake of leisure. That is, play provides relief from work but is not the telos of that work; instead, leisure is the telos of work. Here, Kidd examines play in Aristotle. (ProQuest: ... denotes formulae/symbols omitted.)