Taliah L. Powers

Bernard Suits’s Return of the Grasshopper: Games, Leisure and the Good Life in the Third Millennium explores the intricacies of a Grasshopperian life guided by play. A crucial theme of the text is death and its role in the good life. Indeed, Suits addresses the subject in Return by having the Grasshopper and his disciples engage in a thanatological inquiry focused on devising ways to defeat death. This essay draws from Søren Kierkegaard’s discourse At a Graveside to shed light on the significance of death in Suits’s vision of the good life, and concludes that a central existential lesson of Suits’s work is that facing death earnestly is a necessary element in pursuing a good and meaningful life. Powers concludes that a central existential lesson of Suits’s work is that facing death earnestly is a necessary element in pursuing a good and meaningful life.

In this essay the author responds to J. S. Russell’s Suitsian critique, arguing Suits’ game-centric formula for good living is not overly, but rather sufficiently narrow. The essay’s first section outlines Suits’ vision of the good life. Next, advancing her reply, the author draws attention to passages from a range of Suits’ publications that deal with objections like those set forth by Russell. Absent meaningful engagement with these aspects of Suits’ work, Russell’s case for an idle utopia lacks strength. Notwithstanding, his examination of idleness as play and leisure unveils a road yet to be travelled within the Suitsian landscape. As such, the last section of this essay reconciles Russell’s examination of idleness with the idle life of the Grasshopper.