2024/04/02 by Stephanie Patridge, Shelby Moser · 1 voice
Psychology · #Child Therapy and Development
paper · doi:10.1093/aesthj/ayad032
openalex publication_date 2024/04/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/16
Stephen Kidd’s Play and Aesthetics in Ancient Greece is an ambitious book. Kidd is a classicist who often works on issues in ancient Greek aesthetics that are fun, engaging, and have contemporary resonance. He has written, for example, on Herodotus and virtual worlds, on ancient Greek comedy, laughter, and nonsense, and on ancient gambling practices. In Play and Aesthetics, Kidd aims to resurrect paidia, often translated into English simply as ‘play’, and to demonstrate its significance in the history of aesthetics. Yet throughout the book, Kidd points scholars—most notably philosophers of art and game theorists—towards future research projects that bring paidia back into contemporary philosophical debates over games, aesthetics, and play. Kidd’s work throughout will be challenging for those of us who, like the reviewers, are not experts in ancient Greek. If we are willing to weather the interpretive storm, Play and Aesthetics explores interesting philosophical questions about the relationship between play and aesthetics, play and the good life, and the nature of play itself.