THE VITAL IMPORTANCE OF PLAY FOR HUMANITY NIETZSCHE'S FOURFOLD PHILOSOPHY OF PLAY IN THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY

This article examines the value of "play" ("Spiel") for human existence, as addressed by Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) in his book The Birth of Tragedy. Whilst "play" has a wide range of meanings in Nietzsche's philosophy, of which the ontological or cosmological sense of "world play" is the one most discussed in the Nietzsche studies, I focus on a lesser contemplated topic, i.e., Nietzsche's view of the value that play - which I define here broadly as a life-giving and joyful inner or outer activity carried out for its own sake - has for human life. I argue, first, that play is of vital importance because it has the ability to transform human life from a life experienced as worthless to a life deemed worthwhile, and, second, that this transformative capacity binds the four senses in which play comes to the fore in The Birth of Tragedy as: 1. "aesthetic play"; 2. the "play with figures" artists play whilst dreaming; 3. "theatre play"; 4. human suffering as "comical play for the Gods," which Nietzsche also presents as "aesthetic theodicy."