Table of Contents

Introduction
Preface
Acknowledgements
The Players

Chapter One: Death of the Grasshopper
Chapter Two: Disciples
Chapter Three: Construction of a definition
Chapter Four: Triflers, cheats, and spoilsports
Chapter Five: Taking the long way home
Chapter Six: Ivan and Abdul
Chapter Seven: Games and paradox
Chapter Eight: Mountain climbing
Chapter Nine: Reverse English
Chapter Ten: The remarkable career of Porphyryo Sneak
Chapter Eleven: The case history of Bartholomew Drag
Chapter Twelve: Open games
Chapter Thirteen: Amateurs, professionals, and Games People Play
Chapter Fourteen: Resurrection
Chapter Fifteen: Resolution

Appendix One: The fool on the hill
Appendix Two: Wittgenstein in the meadow
Appendix Three: Words on play

Permissions Acknowledgments

About the Author

The late Bernard Suits was Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Waterloo.

Reviews

“Like Erasmus’s Praise of Folly and Diderot’s Rameau’s Nephew, Suits’s The Grasshopper sparkles with wit and fun; and outranks those wonderful works in clear, firm philosophical conclusions. Defying certain discouragements, Suits constructs an illuminating definition of games, which he defends in lively dialogues, amusing parables, and cascades of subtle analytical distinctions. That is achievement enough to make a new classic in the history of philosophy. Suits offers more: an application of his definition in a discussion of how much we may have to rely on games—deliberately using relatively inefficient means to reach freely stipulated goals—if life is to continue to have meaning. We may be able to regain thereby the meaning lost as advances in technology enable us to escape one by one the tasks that necessity used to impose on humankind.” — David Braybrooke, Dalhousie University / The University of Texas at Austin “The Grasshopper is an amazing book. Philosophically profound, yet genuinely funny. While primarily an articulation and defense of a highly plausible definition of games (and we all know what Wittgenstein said about that), it also manages to raise some of the deepest and most challenging questions about the meaning of life. All in the form of dialogues between an insect and his disciples! There is simply nothing else like it.” — Shelly Kagan, Yale University “Philosophers are not generally known for fine writing, but once in a generation or two a book appears out of nowhere, unclassifiable, inspired, amazing, mesmerizing, wonderful, classic … ” — Philosophy and Literature