The Game of the World

In this philosophical treatment of play Kostas Axelos traces his thinking on the world deployed as play from Heraclitus through to the culmination of metaphysical philosophy with Nietzsche, Marx and Heidegger.

---

Constitutes a great philosophical treatise on play and games



Appeals to a potentially broad audience including those interested in thinking through globalisation today
The magnum opus of an influential French-Greek intellectual whose contemporaries and influences include Derrida, Deleuze and Lefebvre
Approaches philosophy in a systematic as well as fragmentary manner
Anticipates the key term of contemporary Heideggerian scholarship (German Irre, French errance) and confronts it through play
A French reprint of Le Jeu du Monde was published by Les Belles Lettres in January 2018

Drawing on philosophies of gaming and play from Heraclitus and Plato through to Marx, Nietzsche and Heidegger, Kostas Axelos outlines an extraordinary, unique vision of our contemporary world. Originally published in 1969, The Game of the World brilliantly anticipates a 21st century in which ever-accelerating technological transformations coincide with a world at play and in play, at once fragmentary and totalised, disordered and hyper-organised. In the midst of this paradoxical and deranging becoming-planetary of the world, Axelos offers a sequence of profound meditations on play and playing, games and gaming, directing us towards new means of thinking and action that may enable us to face the world-historical challenges of our own present.