This collection by the distinguished Dutch historian Johan Huizinga reflects the theme of its key essay, The Task of Cultural History," throughout its pages. Huizinga's conception of cultural history informs both his essays on historiographic questions and those on such figures as John of Salisbury, Abelard, Joan of Arc, Erasmus, and Grotius. Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton (...) University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Johan Huizinga had a special sympathy for the complex, withdrawn personality of Erasmus and for his advocacy of intellectual and spiritual balance in a quarrelsome age. This biography is a classic work on the sixteenth-century scholar/humanist. Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable (...) paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Geschiedtheoretische opstellen over de aard van de geschiedwetenschap en haar plaats in de cultuur.

ABSTRACT This article offers a new interpretation of the historical relation between two foundational works in cultural history: Johan Huizinga’s ‘The Autumntide of the Middle Ages’ (1919) and Jacob Burckhardt’s ‘The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy’ (1860). The tension between these works has commonly been understood as a scholarly dispute over the proper historical periodization of European fifteenth-century cultural practices: whilst Burckhardt reconstructed his material in terms of its technical novelty, its ability to ‘create’ (schöpfen) a post-medieval (...) world, Huizinga emphasized how fifteenth-century culture continued to ‘re-create’ (her-scheppen) culture according to medieval symbolic codes. The present article suggests understanding this tension not as a product of a trans-historical scholarly dispute over the character of a given period of time, but as a consequence of Huizinga’s experience of loss and nostalgia, his ‘heimwee’ for past times. Between 1903 and 1905, Huizinga witnessed a large-scale destruction of early-seventeenth-century architecture in Amsterdam so as to make way for ‘the spirit of entrepreneurship,’ and it was first in this context that Huizinga grew interested in the importance of historical recreations to European culture. This article shows how Huizinga’s experience of urban modernization and ‘the inhabited ruin’ mediated his critique of Burckhardt’s book on Renaissance Italy. (shrink)

This article explores the transformation of play in the sport field by combining Johan Huizinga’s historical observations of play with Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of field, capital and habitus, using Australian football in the AFL as a case study. By developing this theory, this analysis provides a means of understating how the economic and media fields have transformed play, which has ultimately weakened the community. Furthermore, by interpreting Huizinga’s observations using Bourdieu’s concepts, I have provided Huizinga’s observations (...) with a theoretical framework and structure that ensures his observations can be applied to today’s society to understand how and why the play element has changed and what the consequences of such change are for the community. (shrink)

Historical studies may become classics for the wrong reasons, as did Henry Thode's Francis of Assisi or Michelet's Joan of Arc, which we now regard as cultural icons in their own right, emblems of specific elements of the cultures of the era in which they were written. We do not, however, read them for the insight they provide into their declared subjects, nor are their conclusions those of current scholarship. Other studies become classics for the right reasons. The year 1999 (...) marks the eightieth anniversary of the publication of Johan Huizinga's Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen: Studie over levens- en gedachtenvormen der veertiende en vijftiende eeuw in Frankrijk en de Nederlanden, “The Autumn [or Harvest, or Waning, or Decline, or Evening] of the Middle Ages: A Study of the Forms of Life and Thought in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries in France and the Netherlands [or the Low Countries, or the Burgundian Low Countries].”. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that the work of the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga is an important resource for contemporary democratic theory because his employment of the concept of play illustrates both the strengths and weaknesses of agonistic thought. I employ a reading of Huizinga to explore three central problems of contemporary agonism: the distinction between antagonism and agonism; the representative or expressive character of the agon; and the shaping and limiting of the space of the agon (...) by the materials with which we play democratic games. Reading Huizinga reveals the importance of a consideration of the social relations and material conditions that shape the playful features of democratic contestation. But it also warns against the idealization of democratic contestation and the contesting subject that occurs in contemporary agonistic thought as a result of privileging the autonomy and priority of play and extruding it from the wider economy of agonism. (shrink)

El presente estudio investiga la influencia de José Ortega y Gasset sobre la teoría del juego de Johan Huizinga. Analiza especialmente la distinción entre el juego auténtico y el pueril, el deporte y el pasatiempo y el concepto de club en ambos autores. El club es una comunidad originaria por la cual el espíritu lúdico entra e interviene en el mundo cotidiano. Según ambos autores, el espíritu lúdico deportivo crea el Estado y todas las instituciones culturales políticas a (...) través de este extraño tipo de comunidad. (shrink)

ABSTRACTVirtual games are played by millions of people today. Almost everyone has the means to access virtual worlds in most places in the world. Virtual games are new worlds for the players waiting to be discovered. Video games in this new world are considered to be sports activities by some people, while some oppose to this conception. In this regard, philosophical approaches set out and the current state of whether video games are considered as sports activities is presented. In addition (...) to this classificatory issue an ethical one concerning the level of addiction for the players who immerse into the virtual worlds is also discussed, since the level of immersion is sometimes so high that some people die while playing video games on the computer. The answer to the question of how these video games can be so addictive is considered in relation to Johan Huizinga’s Homo ludens, and the notion of phantasm by Gilles Deleuze. It is argued that the fantasy aspect of video games is more dominant their being the... (shrink)