To Exist Is to Play
Albert Camus’ love for football
The writer and philosopher Albert Camus was known for his existentialist essays, novels, and love of football. Every intellectually curious football fan is probably grateful for this. I know I am. In this essay, I argue that Camus’s love for football corresponds to his existentialist love for living joyfully and free.
In his unfinished autobiographical novel The First Man, Camus writes about how the protagonist overcame his shame of wearing old clothes in the classroom and “on the playground, where football was his kingdom. But that kingdom was prohibited because the playground was made of cement, and soles would be worn out so quickly that his grandmother had forbidden Jacques to play football.”
Of course, Camus played – even if the punishment meted out by his grandmother’s ox whip was harsh. He was driven by a hungry love of life; as the protagonist says: “I’ve loved life, I’m hungry for it. At the same time, life seems horrible to me; it seems inaccessible. That is why I am a believer, out of skepticism. Yes, I want to believe; I want to live forever.”
Camus’s hunger for life was based primarily on his love for his mother, but also on the simpler joys of life, such as football. It is natural to ask: What is the relationship between the game of football, love for life, and philosophy? Camus himself pointed out – in an article dealing with his younger years as a goalkeeper for the club Racing Universitaire d’Alger (RUA) – that “what I know most surely in the long run about morality and obligations, I owe to football.”
To some, this may sound too romantic, even blasphemous, as it may seem that linking sports – in this case, football – and philosophy is like mixing oil and water. For example, the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges commented, “Football is popular because stupidity is popular.” If this statement is compared with Camus’s, it is tempting to ask whether football is both educational and stupid. My answer is no, although I agree with Borges that stupidity is widespread. Stupidity can be found everywhere, including in football, but football is also much more than a game. For example, football might be a place to learn important truths such as that freedom is a crucial element of love.
Gregory Harms: Sartre’s Existentialism
Sartre’s discourse “Existentialism is a Humanism” can be broken down into five concepts: Existence precedes essence, Freedom, Responsibility, Anguish and Bad Faith.
Finding a game worth playing
I propose considering football as a possible arena for philosophical reflection in the same way that art, literature, music, and dance are applied to illustrate philosophical arguments. I believe several aspects of football can justify this use, in addition to Camus’s reference to instruction in morality. One aspect is that of combat and its archaic undertones of victory, heroes, villains, tragedy, and death. When the game becomes a battle, it activates our sense of justice, for example, when we assess whether a victory was deserved or whether, on the contrary, we are talking about “beautiful losers” who fought in vain.
However, to understand how Camus’s love for football resembles his passion for life, it is crucial to explore the relationships inherent in playing a game as a way of exploring the limitations of freedom. There is something both constraining and liberating about playing a game. For example, we can participate in a game only if we accept its rules. Yet the rules – including our natural physical and mental limitations – are also open to creative or innovative forms of play. Such spontaneous involvement in a game exemplifies the hunger or passion for life that Camus spoke about – like the obligation to live life as fully as possible.
Furthermore, what characterizes human existence is that we are always playing a game – and often several games simultaneously: familial, political, erotic, spiritual, and so forth. In their own way, these games can be imbued with power struggles, desire, prestige, and status, which can sometimes transcend one game, with the result that life becomes a patchwork of several games that can rarely be entirely separated. This should not be understood in the sense that we deliberately multitask but rather that the boundaries of the games are fluid, with each game dissolving into another.
Although we are always playing a game, the existential challenge is not so much finding a game as being “found by” or introduced to a game worth playing. The latter requires a curiosity and openness to experiences that the individual concerned “loves life” and is “hungry for it.” The games worth playing awaken passion because there is something liberating in them, as when Camus was able to forget some of life’s troubles and become someone else on the playground.
The moral here is that to exist is to participate in games. In addition, we learn most games by playing them. But who is playing whom when we participate in a game? Was it Camus who played football, or did some of the joy come from being played by football? These questions perhaps make more sense if we relate them to literature. Did Camus enjoy reading a book, or did the joy emerge from the way reading opens up aspects of the reader that they were unaware of before?
The philosopher Michel Serres, who developed the concept of “quasi-object,” can help us answer these questions. A “quasi-object” belongs to neither the subject nor the object, but connects them in a way that makes them – the players and the game being played – almost indistinguishable. He mentions how a ball (in his case, a rugby ball) creates both the collective and the individual – the team and the player, respectively. In the same way, it is the football – the ball itself – that enables interpersonal relationships.
The circulation of the football (I am still thinking of the ball itself) is necessary: It helps to distribute the multiple life forces, whereby the different forms of life (e.g., all the individual players) create something common (e.g., a team spirit). However, it is important to stress that the common or collective “we” is not a homogenized unit. On the contrary, the life-affirming thing that I believe Camus associated with football or with literature revolves around its ability to make different forms of life connect without reducing them to one unit, instead creating space for the existence of a team (or a life) full of variety.
For instance, Camus loved both football and literature, which was probably related to his feeling of freedom when practicing both, as if reading and playing are correlated. Freedom can be understood as *"*becoming with," as when Camus is doing things with a ball or words. I am not suggesting that Camus saw a hidden or deeper meaning “behind” football; rather, football actualized a potential movement that gave the game special meaning. The joy and love Camus experienced playing football have something to do with the freedom that is part of the game.
The paradox of freedom
According to the philosopher Bernard Suits, a game contains its own obstacles. In The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia, Suits defines a game as “the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.” For example, by accepting the rules of the game, a football player must train certain skills, such as being able to jump high to head a ball, which are in no way existentially necessary.
In Man, Play and Games, the sociologist Roger Caillois describes the game as “an occasion of pure waste: waste of time, energy, ingenuity, skill, and often of money.” This understanding aligns closely with Suit’s concept of unnecessary obstacles, in that the individual must accept the hindrances inherent in every game to play the game. But is overcoming these obstacles not part of the joy of playing the game? Why else do it voluntarily? Overcoming life’s absurdities makes living like playing a game in that it involves not only accepting social rules and norms as well as natural laws, but also that we are obliged to do our best with the capacities we have. Did Camus not say that we should imagine Sisyphus as a happy person?
Sisyphus' work resembles that of the writer sitting at their desk every day for eight hours – or the activities of those who like to chase a ball around for 90 minutes to put it into a box.
Playing a game becomes a way of achieving a free mode of living; not so much in the sense of being a footballer or writer, as in the examples used here, but rather in that these games present an opportunity for the person to write their life stories themselves – if only for a brief moment on the playing field.
What connects the different definitions of games is that they all describe creating a space of opportunity for action that can, for a while, bring diverging forms of life together. Some games are necessary, depending on the person’s temperament and passions, but all games contain something unnecessary – since no one is forced to kick a ball or write, for example. However, each game also includes a necessity, since no one – or very few – can refrain from kicking the ball or participating in some kind of game to exist. Living as a hermit in a cave and meditating all day is also part of a cultural history with its own game to play to reach enlightenment.
It is as if the human being needs to play in order to exist to the fullest extent. I call this paradox the paradox of freedom. And perhaps that is precisely what all games have in common. Football, cycling, and the games of spirituality and seduction all overcome unnecessary obstacles voluntarily as if it were vital to do so. This is probably because the game makes life less lonely and less absurd by giving it a temporary meaning or purpose, no matter how trivial a game may be. This is my experience.
This need to play is, of course, more significant than a specific game itself. This is why Camus associated zest for life and joy with the game being played here and now. Clearly, some games evince a greater desire or pleasure than others, depending on an individual’s style, taste, and existential circumstances. For instance, I do not like card games because I find this type of game as enervating as others may find football.
However, my desire to play a game also depends on whether I know the game’s history, rules, and myths, who introduced me to it, what kinds of opportunities it opens up, and so forth. The point is that the joy I associate with football is an assemblage of many things: Spending time with family and friends, the general atmosphere, traveling, and so forth. For Camus, football was worth loving because he could escape the bullying by the other children, demonstrate his physical skills, give his brain a break, feel free, and become someone else for a while.
The paradox of freedom is related to playing a game because it concerns doing something unnecessary, since we can refuse to play alone, yet choosing which game to play is also necessary. Even deciding not to participate is a choice; choosing what is needed determines what is important. We might use Camus as an example and follow our hearts: Do what we love and be personally responsible for our decisions.
It was this aspect that led Camus to say he owed much to football.
Finn Janning, PhD, is a writer and philosopher whose research focuses on human existence and the nature of attention. His work often revolves around questions like “Which life is worth living?” and “How can we become worthy of what happens to us?”
His work includes books, academic papers, creative nonfiction, and fiction. It has been published in Kritike, Philosophy of Management, Ramon Llull Journal of Applied Ethics, Journal of Philosophy of Life, Philosophical Papers and Reviews, and Philosophy Now, among others. He lives in Barcelona, Spain. For more information: finnjanning.com
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Cover image: AI generated by Midjourney.
