Review: Finite and Infinite Games
August 17, 2009
Western thinkers are fond of dividing the world in two. Though simplistic, it’s effective. The flesh vs. spirit characters in the novels of Nikos Kazantzakis are memorable. The modes of having and being in Erich Fromm are illustrative. And when James P. Carse wrote about finite and infinite games, we were given another dichotomous lens for peering into the mysteries of human being.
In Finite and Infinite Games, Carse asks us to construe human activities – working, loving, walking, cooking, reading, driving – in fact, anything you can imagine – as kinds of games, and invites us to consider whether we play these games finitely or infinitely.
Finite games are meant to come to an end. They are played for the purpose of winning, vanquishing an opponent, or bringing about some desired outcome: a student gains admission to the Ivy League, a worker receives a promotion, a country goes to war and wins or loses.
Finite games are theatrical. They require an audience to say who has won, to agree upon an end, and to confer titles upon the winners, which is all but certain for finite players:
The outcome of a finite game is the past waiting to happen. Whoever plays toward a certain outcome desires a particular past. By competing for a future prize, finite players compete for a prized past.
Infinite players, on the other hand, play with the spirit of continuing play. Such play is not theatrical but dramatic. The drama lies in choosing an undefined path that is not ultimately for oneself. Artists and visionaries, those who revel in spontaneity and laughter, who are aware of their places in society but do not take their places seriously — these are infinite players.
It soon becomes clear that finitude and infinity are not intrinsic to particular games but to the attitude of the player. The simple act of eating a meal can be either a finite or infinite game. I might be eating with a certain end in mind, to gain energy or lose weight or make a political statement. I might also eat spontaneously, for no reason other than to eat.
To read this book is to subject our attitudes to the finite-infinite paradigm, discover that we’re engaged in both modes of play, and consider to what extent we’re comfortable with this. Our conclusion may depend on our response to the book’s compelling final chapter, whose subject is myth and whose main idea is illustrated by the story of Copernicus:
Copernicus was a traveler who went with a hundred pairs of eyes, daring to look again at all that is familiar in the hope of vision. What we hear in this account is the ancient saga of the solitary wanderer, the peregrinus, who risks anything for the sake of surprise. True, at a certain point he stopped to look and may have ended his journey as a Master Player setting down bounded fact. But what resounds most deeply in the life of Copernicus is the journey that made knowledge possible and not the knowledge that made the journey successful.
