Return of the Grasshopper

Bernard Suits is a foundational figure in the philosophy of sports and games. A philosophy professor at the University of Waterloo, Canada, for most of his life, he is best known for his seminal book The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia. Bernard Suits died in 2007. Christopher C. Yorke is Philosophy Instructor at Langara College and Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Canada. He has written his doctoral dissertation and several academic journal articles on the subject of Bernard Suits’ utopia of gameplay. Francisco Javier López Frías is Associate Professor in the Department of Kinesiology, Penn State University, USA, and a Senior Research Associate in the Rock Ethics Institute, with a courtesy appointment in the Philosophy Department.

Introduction - Bernard Suits’ Return of the Grasshopper: A Philosophical Context and Novel Directions for Future Research, 1. Return of the Grasshopper, 2. Utopia Lost or Mislaid, 3. Three Ways to Play a Game Without Knowing It, 4. Three More Ways to Play a Game Without Knowing It, 5. Life’s a Game and All the Men and Women Merely Players, 6. At Death’s Door, 7. The Smoking Gun, 8. Utopia Found, 9. Utopian Doctors and Lawyers, 10. Lusory Luddites, 11. The Scarcity Machine, 12. The End of the Future, 13. Aesop Revisited, Appendix 1: An Introduction to Grasshopper Soup, Appendix 2: Deconstructionist Digression, Appendix 3: A Perfectly Played Game