Kinds of Play, Contrasts, and Arts

Abstract

In this paper we address the association between playing and the arts attending to the works both in developmental psychology and philosophy. In the first part, we argue that a distinctive feature of human play is the contrast between a recreational activity and a similar non-recreational activity. Then we describe different types of children's play and we analyze the contrast that characterizes each of them. In the second part, we present the link of temporal arts to early social play and forms of vitality and the link of symbolic play to representational arts.