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Play is older than culture, for culture, however inadequately defined, always presupposes human society, and animals have not waited for man to teach them their playing.

Johan Huizinga

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Johan Huizinga
Age: 72 †
Born: 1872
Born: January 1
Died: 1945
Died: January 1
Cultural Historian
Historian
Linguist
Philosopher
Resistance Fighter
University Teacher
J. Huizinga
Huizinga
Men
Animal
Inadequately
Teach
Presupposes
Society
Waited
Culture
Defined
Human
Older
Humans
Animals
Play
However
Always
Playing

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Culture arises and unfolds in and as play... culture itself bears the character of play.
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The content of the ideal is a desire to return to the perfection of an imaginary past.
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Without metaphor the handling of general concepts such as culture and civilization becomes impossible, and that of disease and disorder is the obvious one for the case in point. Is not crisis itself a concept we owe to Hippocrates? In the social and cultural domain no metaphor is more apt than the pathological one.
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Culture must have its ultimate aim in the metaphysical or it will cease to be culture.
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