According to Roger Caillois, play is "an occasion of pure waste: waste of time, energy, ingenuity, skill, and often of money." In spite of this - or because of it - play constitutes an essential element of human social and spiritual development. In this classic study, Caillois defines play as a free[...]
Throughout the world, people believe that much of what they do is accidental, ordinary, and inconsequential, while other acts can bring on divine retribution or earn eternal grace. In "Man and the Sacred", Caillois demonstrates how humanity's ambiguous attitude toward the sacred influences behaviour[...]