In the mid twentieth century the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein famously asserted that games are indefinable; there are no common threads that link them all. “Nonsense,” said the sensible Bernard Suits: “playing a game is a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.” The short book Suits wrote demonstrating precisely that is as playful as it is insightful, as stimulating as it is delightful. Through the jocular voice of Aesop's Grasshopper, a “shiftless but thoughtful practitioner of applied entomology,” Suits not only argues that games can be meaningfully defined; he also suggests that playing games is a central part of the ideal of human existence, and so games belong at the heart of any vision of Utopia.

This new edition of The Grasshopper includes illustrations from Frank Newfeld created for the book’s original publication, as well as an introduction by Thomas Hurka and a new appendix on the meaning of ‘play.’

Bernard Suits was Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Waterloo.

Bernard Suits' profile page

Thomas Hurka is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Calgary. From 1989–92 he wrote a weekly ethics column for The Globe and Mail.

Thomas Hurka's profile page

Frank Newfeld received his art education in England, at the Brighton College of Art, and the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. Educated in England, Frank Newfeld immigrated to Canada in 1954. Once here, he founded his own design company in a studio on Spadina Avenue in Toronto.

In 1956 Newfeld, Frank Davies, Leslie (Sam) Smart and John Gibson founded the Society of Typographic Designers of Canada (TDC). Frank's Spadina Avenue studio which was often the meeting place for the Society in its formative years. He was elected President of the Society in 1959, the year that it received its Ontario charter. In 1963 Frank joined the firm of McClelland & Stewart as an art director, and within six years he was to become Vice-President, Publishing and a member of the board of directors.

Over his career Frank Newfeld has designed well over 650 books for publishers in Canada, the United Kingdom, Israel and the United States. Canadian publishers include Douglas and McIntyre, Groundwood, Longmans, MacMillan, Nelson, Oxford and UofT. Authors he has worked with include Berton, Cohen, Davies, Gottlieb, Laurence, Layton, Mowat, Newman. He has won over 167 awards, including three medals from the prestigious Leipzig Book Show, two Hans Christian Anderson awards, and two from Typomundus 20. Other awards include the Canada Centennial Medal, the Elizabeth II Jubilee Medal, and awards from the AIGA, Art Directors and Type Directors clubs of New York, Chicago, Montreal and Toronto. Frank represented Canada at the 1976 Illustration Bienale in Czechoslovakia, and his work was exhibited in Bologna in 1990. He has created two children's books, both published by Oxford University Press. He is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy.

For many years Frank Newfeld was associated with Sheridan College where he served as an educator, illustrator and publication designer.

Frank Newfeld's profile page

“Like Erasmus’s Praise of Folly and Diderot’s Rameau’s Nephew, Suits’s The Grasshopper sparkles with wit and fun; and outranks those wonderful works in clear, firm philosophical conclusions. Defying certain discouragements, Suits constructs an illuminating definition of games, which he defends in lively dialogues, amusing parables, and cascades of subtle analytical distinctions. That is achievement enough to make a new classic in the history of philosophy. Suits offers more: an application of his definition in a discussion of how much we may have to rely on games—deliberately using relatively inefficient means to reach freely stipulated goals—if life is to continue to have meaning. We may be able to regain thereby the meaning lost as advances in technology enable us to escape one by one the tasks that necessity used to impose on humankind.” — David Braybrooke, Dalhousie University / The University of Texas at Austin

“The Grasshopper is an amazing book. Philosophically profound, yet genuinely funny. While primarily an articulation and defense of a highly plausible definition of games (and we all know what Wittgenstein said about that), it also manages to raise some of the deepest and most challenging questions about the meaning of life. All in the form of dialogues between an insect and his disciples! There is simply nothing else like it.” — Shelly Kagan, Yale University

“Philosophers are not generally known for fine writing, but once in a generation or two a book appears out of nowhere, unclassifiable, inspired, amazing, mesmerizing, wonderful, classic … ” — Philosophy and Literature