Game as a world symbol

Fink does not interpret play in terms of cultural history, phenomenology, or anthropology, but as a world reference of human existence. It has a "cosmic transparency", is one of the clearest world figures of our finite existence. The approach of play as a "symbol of the world" is developed in explicit criticism of the metaphysical conception of artistic play as mimesis as well as the cultic interpretation of play in myth. In their place is a speculative concept of play that bundles the questions of being, nothingness, and appearance. "Playing, man does not remain in himself, not in the closed district of his psychic inwardness, - he rather ecstatically steps out of himself in a cosmic gesture and sensually interprets the whole of the world." Fink's reflections on play could be "of interest to pedagogues as well as to cultural diagnosticians, to anthropologists as well as to those who are interested in the phenomenon of play.