TY - CHAP

T1 - Weltentzug und Weltzerfall (world-withdrawal and world-decay)

T2 - Heidegger’s notions of withdrawal from the world and the decays of worlds in the times of computer games

AU - Fuchs, Mathias

N1 - Papers based on an April 2013 conference

PY - 2016/1/1

Y1 - 2016/1/1

N2 - This bookchapter investigates whether concepts of “world-withdrawal” and “world-decay” that German philosopher Martin Heidegger elaborated for traditional works of art in the 1930ies have any mileage for contemporary cultural artefacts like computer games. Heidegger’s terminology is so tempting to be applied to the player-game-world triangle as it seems to describe in a very literate way, and very close to “the things” a situation that we can observe today when a gamer puts a computer monitor on a table, watches a world in front of his eyes and notices that the world he or she is watching, has withdrawn. The world has decayed. Albert Hofstadter calls Heidegger’s method “the most concrete thinking and speaking about Being.” (Heidegger 1971: translator’s introduction on page xi) A statement such as “the work puts up a world (stellt eine Welt auf) sounds as if a simpe object - that we call world - is about to be put on its feet, or a monitor upon the table. For a gamer a world is in most cases first of all the entity of game levels in a video game and not a philosophical concept. The language of the phenomenological thinker works on two levels at the same time. It actually talks about palpable things and it talks about ideas as well.

AB - This bookchapter investigates whether concepts of “world-withdrawal” and “world-decay” that German philosopher Martin Heidegger elaborated for traditional works of art in the 1930ies have any mileage for contemporary cultural artefacts like computer games. Heidegger’s terminology is so tempting to be applied to the player-game-world triangle as it seems to describe in a very literate way, and very close to “the things” a situation that we can observe today when a gamer puts a computer monitor on a table, watches a world in front of his eyes and notices that the world he or she is watching, has withdrawn. The world has decayed. Albert Hofstadter calls Heidegger’s method “the most concrete thinking and speaking about Being.” (Heidegger 1971: translator’s introduction on page xi) A statement such as “the work puts up a world (stellt eine Welt auf) sounds as if a simpe object - that we call world - is about to be put on its feet, or a monitor upon the table. For a gamer a world is in most cases first of all the entity of game levels in a video game and not a philosophical concept. The language of the phenomenological thinker works on two levels at the same time. It actually talks about palpable things and it talks about ideas as well.

KW - Digital media

KW - video games

KW - computer games

KW - Cultural studies

KW - Philosophy

KW - Play

KW - Games

KW - Heidegger

KW - Weltentzug

KW - Weltzerfall

KW - Play Studies

UR - https://www.routledge.com/products/9781138841437

U2 - 10.4324/9781315732213

DO - 10.4324/9781315732213

M3 - Contributions to collected editions/anthologies

SN - 978-1-138-84143-7

SP - 152

EP - 165

BT - Philosophical Perspectives on Play

A2 - Maclean, Malcolm

A2 - Russell, Wendy

A2 - Ryall, Emily

PB - Routledge Taylor & Francis Group

CY - London

ER -