The late Bernard Suits was Distinguished Emeritus
Professor of Philosophy at the University of Waterloo.
Thomas Hurka is a Canadian philosopher who serves
as the Jackman Distinguished Chair in Philosophical Studies at the
University of Toronto.
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
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