Weltentzug und Weltzerfall (world-withdrawal and world-decay): Heidegger’s notions of withdrawal from the world and the decays of worlds in the times of computer games

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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computer monitor on a table, watches a world in front of his eyes and notices that the world he or she is watching, has withdrawn.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.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationPhilosophical Perspectives on Play
EditorsMalcolm Maclean, Wendy Russell, Emily Ryall
Number of pages14
Place of PublicationLondon
PublisherRoutledge Taylor & Francis Group
Publication date01.01.2016
Pages152-165
ISBN (print)978-1-138-84143-7
ISBN (electronic)978-1-315-73221-3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01.01.2016

Bibliographical note

Papers based on an April 2013 conference

    Research areas

  • Digital media - video games, computer games
  • Cultural studies - Philosophy, Play, Games, Heidegger, Weltentzug, Weltzerfall, Play Studies