4. PSYCHOLOGY OF THE GAME

Those theories that hope to clarify the nature of art, reducing it to the function of the game, belong to a completely different type. Proponents of these theories cannot be reproached for not having noticed or underestimated free human activity. The game is an active function; it is not limited to the limits of the empirically given. On the other hand, the pleasure received in the game is completely devoid of self-interest. Game activity, therefore, has all those specific qualities and conditions as a work of art. Most representatives of the game theory of art, indeed, convinced us of the complete inability to detect any difference between these two functions. They proclaimed that there is not a single feature of art that would not be found in the game of illusions, and there is not a single feature of such a game that would not appear in art. However, all these arguments in defense of this thesis are purely negative. From a psychological point of view, the game and art are very similar to each other. They are non-utilitarian and are not associated with any practical purpose. In the game, as in art, we forget about our immediate needs in order to give the world a new form. But this analogy is by no means sufficient to prove their real identity. Artistic imagination always remains distinctly different from the kind of imagination that is inherent in our gaming activities. The game deals with imaginary images that can become as lively and impressive as they can be taken as reality. To define art as a simple sum of such imaginary images is to offer a very poor understanding of its character and tasks. What is called "aesthetic visibility" is not the same as what we experience in the game of illusions. The game gives us illusory images, art gives a new kind of truth - truths are not empirical things, but pure forms.
A distinction can be made between three different types of imagination: the power of invention, the power of personification and the power of generating pure sensory forms. In the children's game there are two first types, but not the third. The child plays with things, the artist plays with forms - with lines and patterns, rhythms and melody. We admire the simplicity and ease of transformation in a child's game. Ambitious tasks are performed with minimal resources. Any piece of wood can be turned into a living being. Nevertheless, this transformation means the metamorphosis of the objects themselves; it does not mean the transformation of these objects into forms. In the game we only otherwise dispose and redistribute the material given in sensory perception. Art is constructive and creative in a different and much deeper sense. A playing child does not live at all in that same world of solid empirical facts in which an adult lives. The world of the child is much more mobile and changeable. However, childish play, however, is merely a replacement for the real things surrounding the child with other possible things. Such a replacement is not characteristic of a genuinely artistic activity. Requirements for it are much more strict. For the artist dissolves the solid matter in the “millstones” of his imagination, and the result of this process is the discovery of a new world of poetic, musical, or plastic forms. Of course, a great many undoubted works of art are very far from meeting these requirements. The task of aesthetic judgment or artistic taste is to distinguish genuine works of art from other spiritual products, which are, in essence, only toys or, at least, “the answer to the need for entertainment.”
Careful analysis of the psychological source and the psychological consequences of the game and art leads to the same conclusions. The game gives entertainment and recreation, but also serves another purpose. The game has a common biological significance as an anticipation of various types of future activities. It is often emphasized that children's play has a propaedeutic value. A boy's game of war, a girl's game of dolls is education, preparation for solving other, more serious tasks, the function of fine art cannot be interpreted in this way. There is no entertainment, no preparation. Some modern aesthetics consider it necessary on this basis to make a strict distinction between two types of beauty: one is the beauty of “big” art, the other is characterized as “light” beauty. But, strictly speaking, the beauty of a work of art is never “light”. Pleasure from art is not rooted in processes of calm or relaxation, but, on the contrary, in the intensification of all our energy. Entertainment in the game is exactly the opposite of the setting that acts as a necessary prerequisite for aesthetic contemplation and judgment. Art requires complete concentration. As soon as concentration is insufficient and we indulge in a game of pleasant feelings and associations, the work of art as such is lost sight of.
The game theory of art developed in two radically opposite directions. In the history of aesthetics, Schiller, Darwin and Spencer are usually considered outstanding representatives of this theory. It is difficult, however, to find points of contact between the views of Schiller and modern biologizing theories of art. In terms of their main focus, these points of view are not only different, but also incompatible in a certain sense. In Schiller, the term "game" is understood and explained in a completely different sense than in all subsequent theories. Schiller's theory is transcendental and idealistic; Darwin and Spencer’s theory is biological and naturalistic. Darwin and Spencer view game and beauty as common natural phenomena, while Schiller connects them with the world of freedom, and according to his Kantian dualism, his freedom is not at all that of nature: on the contrary, they are polar opposites. Both freedom and beauty belong to the intelligible, not the phenomenal world. In all naturalistic versions of the game theory of art, the game of animals was studied in parallel with the games of man. For Schiller, this point of view is unacceptable: his game is not a common organic, but specifically human activity. "A man plays only when he is in the full sense of the word man, and he is quite a man only when he plays." Talking about analogy and, moreover, about the identity of the game in humans and animals or in the human sphere itself about playing in art and the so-called game of illusions - all this is completely alien to Schiller's theory. In his eyes, such an analogy is only a deep misunderstanding.
Schiller's point of view is easy to understand, if we take into account the historical foundations of his theory. He does not hesitate to connect the ideal world of art with a child's play because, in his thought, the world of the child is the result of the process of idealization and sublimation. After all, Schiller argued as a student and fan of Rousseau, seeing the child’s life in a new light, just as the French philosopher impressed upon him. “There is a deep meaning in the child’s play,” says Schiller. But even accepting this thesis, it should be noted that the “value” of the game is different from the “value” of beauty. Schiller himself defines beauty as a “living form.” For him, the knowledge of living forms is the first and necessary step to the experience of freedom. Aesthetic contemplation or reflection, according to Schiller, is the first free state of man in relation to the universe. “If lust directly embraces an object, then reflection separates its object and makes it real and inherent in its property precisely by what protects it from passion.” It is precisely this “freeness” of the conscious and reflexive state that is absent in the children's game, which draws the line between play and art.
On the other hand, this “creation of a distance”, described here as one of the necessary and most characteristic features of a work of art, always turned out to be a stumbling block of aesthetic theory. One can argue: if this is so, then art is no longer something truly human, since it loses all connection with human life. Supporters of the principle “art for art”, however, are not afraid of this objection, moreover - they openly neglect them. They see the highest merit and privilege of art just in that it has burned all the bridges to ordinary reality. Art must remain a secret, inaccessible profanum vul-gus. “The poem,” stated Stefan Mallarme, “must be a riddle for the plebeians and chamber music for the initiated.” Ortega y Gasset wrote a book in which he predicted and defended the “dehumanization” of art. He believed that in this process a point would be reached at which the human element would almost disappear from art. Other critics held the exact opposite position. “When we contemplate a picture, read a poem or listen to music,” said A.A. Richards - we do not do anything fundamentally different from what we would do on the way to the gallery or dressing in the morning. In the perception of art, the way our experience is produced is different, and the experience itself is usually more complex and, if successful, more holistic. But at the same time our activity itself is basically the same. ” But this theoretical antagonism is not at all a genuine antinomy. If beauty, according to Schiller's definition, is a “living form,” then it combines both these opposite elements in themselves, in their nature and essence. Of course, not at all the same thing - to live in the field of pure forms, and to live in the field of things - the empirical objects of our environment. However, art forms are not completely empty: they perform a specific task in building and organizing human experience. Living in the field of forms does not mean avoiding the affairs of life itself — on the contrary, it means realizing one of the highest energetic possibilities of life itself. One cannot speak of art as an “extrahuman”, “supernatural”, without considering its fundamental features, its constructive ability within the framework of our human universe.
TEST 4
1. Is it true that in the game we forget about our needs?
? the real game is always disinterested
? the real game is always self-serving
? money is important too
? you can play and not for money
2. Why do girls play dolls?
? because they are just kids
? because they master the world of adults
? because they have free time
? because they are not yet trained in adult games
3. Who in the European philosophy and psychology developed the theory of the game?
? Rousseau
? Schiller
? Herder
? Lomonosov
4. Who defined beauty as a “living form”?
? Socrates
? Muller
? Aristotle
? Schiller
5. Who owns the words "The poem must be a riddle for the plebeians"?
? Goethe
? Spartacus
? Stefan Mallarme
? Chaikovsky