The Grasshopper’s Error: Or, On How Life is a Game

Abstract

I here defend the thesis that the best life is the life that one plays as a game—specifically, a ‘Suitsian’ game that meets the definition proposed inThe Grasshopperby Bernard Suits. Even more specifically, it is a nested, open, role-playing game where the life’s quality as a game partly depends on there being no more people than players. To defend this thesis I refute two powerful challenges to it, one from Thomas Hurka (2006) and another from withinThe Grasshopperitself. In the process, I offer a new interpretation of that enigmatic and challenging book.