Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from May 9, 2010

kant on boredom and gambling

“The question of whether Heaven and not been more provident in caring for us by providing us with everything so that we didn’t have to work is certainly to be answered no; from men demand activities (Geschaefte), even such that include a certain element of coercion mixed in them. Just as false is the idea that if Adam and Eve had remained in Paradise, they would have done nothing but sat together and sung arcadian songs and observed the beauty of nature. Boredom would certainly have martyred them as well as it does other men in similar positions.” - Immanuel Kant's sämmtliche Werke: Th. Metaphysic der Sitten, in zwei Theilen, 405, my translation Boredom in the Metaphysics of Ethics appears as a theme and a term (Langeweile) in the context of ‘play’ – and notably, playing cards. In a more extended consideration of the sources of playing in the lectures collected in Menschenkunde oder philosophische Anthropologie, Kant connects up the notion of Edenic contexts, work, play, and bore