Sobre la eutrapelia, o la virtud del juego. Moralidad, historia y educación

Abstract

In this paper, the authors analyse the genesis and evolution of eutrapelia, understood as the virtue of play. It is a concept that first appears in Aristotelian philosophy and was subsequently Christianised by Saint Thomas of Aquinas. This process softened the rigorism of the Fathers of the Church, who condemned games, theatre, amusement, etc., as part of the pompa diaboli. Thus, the virtue of play was accepted —not without some misgiving— with the advent of scholasticism, but was later combated —following the model of primitive Christianity— by the Puritanism of the Lutheran reform, which rejected amusement and games in general. Consequently, we are faced with two very distinct cultural realities —one Catholic and the other Lutheran— that will adopt opposing attitudes to play during the Modern Era. While the former will accept play provided that it abides by the virtue of eutrapelia, the latter will have a more radical posture aligned with a rigorist ethics, which will even influence authors such as Rousseau, who objected to the presence of a playhouse in his home city of Geneva. Thus, under the conceptual shelter of eutrapelia, play is present in a large part of the pedagogical treatises written from the Late Middle Ages to the Modern Era and including Renaissance Humanism. Also through eutrapelia, play will enter the contemporary world, being accepted by Catholic theologians such as Hugo Rahner and Protestant theologians such as Jurgen Moltmann, who will lay down the foundations for a theology of play based on a Deus ludens who, in turn, justifies the existence of a homo ludens .