Chess and life: an essay prompted by David Linh ===============-------------------------------- [See also the quote bank, especially chess and life.] Chess has appealed to philosophers over the decades. It was a favourite analogy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and has also been used by Ryle and others. Given the depth and colourful symbolism of the game, it is probably not surprising that people have used and abused the name and image of chess in pursuit of various claims. David Linh tells me that the philosopher Schopenhauer claimed, "Chess is like life," and Spanish playwright Arrabal replied, "Chess is not LIKE life... Chess IS life. Like the theatre." [I am reminded of Niels Bohr's teasing observation that "The opposite of a great truth is also a great truth", although it is also possible to observe "It is possible to prove anything through selective quotation".] It seems to me that Schopenhauer and Arrabal emphasise different sides of the same coin: the formal game of chess, which may lend itself to analogy, and its practical play by real people, where we would speak of chess as an arena in which many strands of life's rich tapestry can be seen. Let us review some of the major outposts of chess philosophy. Chess is life (common sense version) ------------------------------------ Chess is not an entirely separate part of life. However special the game, it is played by large numbers of ordinary and not-so-ordinary people, and so the events and experiences of play at chess are probably similar to other areas of life which involve competition, struggle, analysis, confusion, error, success, failure, laziness or other aspects of human endeavour. If I understand him right, this is Arrabal's point. Chess may even provide unusually clear examples of these various aspects of life, because chess is an arena in which the tasks are entirely mental, where complete information is available to both players, and their moves can be recorded accurately. In this sense, chess may even illuminate aspects of life. EM Forster's amusing essay dwells on this feature of chess: because all moves are up to you, you soon find out your own limitations, and maybe not just your chess limitations. See also below: Chess illuminates life (strong version) Chess is life (strong version) ------------------------------ There is an element of obsessiveness in many top players, and many of them (Alekhine, Fischer, Karpov, Korchnoi) have stated in various ways the equation: "chess is life". This need not detain the student for long: a passionate claim without any evidence or argument can never support more than a statement of faith, but if too insistent may betray a doubt about the real value of the game. Chess is like life (moral educational version) ---------------------------------------------- Chess has a rich symbolism which the imaginative may develop, and it has often been turned to the purpose of authors of improving essays. Chess moralities of this sort were abundant in the medieval era, but one feels that people are by and large reading into chess the values they already possess. There's a nice ironic verse by Breton on the quotes page. These days I expect that capitalists see in chess a parable of competitive entrepreneurship, communists may see chess as a model of co-operative activity. Benjamin Franklin once wrote an essay on the morals of chess; he said that chess is especially suitable for teaching a person the benefits of various virtues, like foresight, circumspection, caution and resilience (appended). More recently, various educational claims have been made for chess, which of course can provide an arena to experience and learn about various aspects of competitive mental endeavour, social behaviour and so on. Chess is like life (high-minded version) ---------------------------------------- A slightly stronger claim is to say that chess is not just another part of life, but is a particularly worthy, rewarding or exemplary part. All chess players know its rewards, and its best players are more enthusiastic for them - like Tarrasch's famous quote: "Chess is a form of intellectual productiveness, and intellectual productiveness is one of the greatest joys of human existence." -- Siegbert Tarrasch. Reti saw chess as an arena in which the principal cultural and intellectual trends and conflicts of the day were reflected ('Americanism in Chess'). Lasker once famously described Steinitz' theory as a sublime intellectual achievement, a theory applicable even for a game greater than chess. Lasker himself took this further [or at least more explicitly] than Steinitz, developing a philosophy of chess which became a philosophy of life, and who saw chess as a test of his philosophy of life as a struggle. Life is like chess (=Chess illuminates life) (strong version) ------------------------------------------------------------- Becuase chess presents complex but unambiguous problems, psychological researchers have been very interested in chess. Chess is a key field for research in psychology, although chessplayers have not yet felt the benefit of many insights. See my essay on psychology and chess. Psychoanalysts may claim that chess reveals more than any player would guess... Life is chess ------------- Lastly, and more simply than Lasker's view of chess as an arena for philosophical research, we may learn from chess in another way. Look at chess, and you may find there truths about life. This is chess as analogous to life, and I guess is what was exercising Schopenhauer, although what a gloomy old sod like Schopenhauer saw in such an exciting and life-affirming game like chess I don't know. The usefulness of chess as an analogy has been apparent to many writers. Huxley described Science as a chess game, and in the most famous of all chess analogies, Omar Khayyam describes not just Science, but life as a game. A less dignified collection is being amassed by James and Fox, of the use of chess as a metaphor by sports commentators, under the heading IAGOCOT (It's A Game Of Chess Out There). The only one I remember is the unlikely description of snooker as "chess with balls". Appendix: sources =========-------- -------------------------------------------------------------------- "O life, what art thou? Life seldom answers this question. But her silence is of little consequence, for schoolmasters and other men of good will are well-qualified to answer for her. She is, they inform us, a game. Which game? (...) "Let is therefore turn to games of skill, and in the first place to Chess." (...) "Oh, what have I been doing? The usual thing. My character has come out. If I go down to the depths of the sea it is there, if I seek the heart of the hills it is there also. Chess, which severely eliminates accident, is a forcing house where the fruits of character can ripen more fully than in life. In Life we can always blame the unknowable for our failures, wave the hand to some horizon, shake the fist at some star. But surely when we make the same mistakes in the Evans, Old Stodge, the choice of a tie, a row in the office and a love affair, the same defect must be to blame -- character; for which, the men of goodwill hasten to remind us, we are entirely and eternally responsible." -- E.M.FORSTER, Abinger Harvest, a collection of essays. --------------------------------------------------------------------- The game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement. Several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired or strengthened by it, so as to become habits, ready on all occasions. 1. Foresight, which looks a little into futurity, and considers the consequences that may attend an action; for it is continually occuring to the player, 'If I move this piece, what will be the advantages or disadvantages of my new situation? What use can my adversary make of it to annoy me? What other moves can I make to support it, and to defend myself from his attacks? 2. Circumspection, which surveys the whole chessboard, or scene of action; the relations of the several pieces and situations, the dangers they are respectively exposed to, the several possibilities of their aiding each other, the probabilities that the adversary may make this or that move, and attack this or the other piece, and what different means can be used to avoid his stroke, or turn its consequences against him. 3. Caution, not to make our moves too hastily. This habit is best acquired, by observing strictly the laws of the game; such as, If you touch a piece, you must move it somewhere; if you set it down, you must let it stand. And it is therefore best that these rules should be observed, as the game becomes thereby more the image of human life, and particularly of war . . . And lastly, we learn by Chess the habit of not being discouraged by present appearances in the state of our affairs, the habit of hoping for a favourable change, and that of persevering in the search of resources. The game is so full of events, there is such a variety of turns in it, the fortune of it is so subject to sudden vicissitudes, and one so frequently, after long contemplation, discovers the means of extricating one's self from a supposed insurmountable difficulty, that one is encouraged to continue the contest to the last, in hopes of victory from our own skill, or at least of getting a stalemate from the negligence of our adversary... If your adversary is long in playing, you ought not to hurry him, or express any uneasiness at his delay. You should not sing, nor whistle, nor look at your watch, not take up a book to read, nor make a tapping with your feet on the floor, or with your fingers on the table, nor do anything that may disturb his attention. For all these things displease; and they do not show your skill in playing, but your craftiness or your rudeness. You ought not to endeavour to amuse and deceive your adversary, by pretending to have made bad moves, and saying that you have now lost the game, in order to make him secure and careless, and inattentive to your schemes: for this is fraud and deceit, not skill in the game. You must not, when you have gained a victory, use any triumphing or insulting expression, nor show too much pleasure; but endeavour to console your adversary, and make him less dissatisfied with himself, by every kind of civil expression that may be used with truth, such as 'you understand the game better than I, but you are a little inattentive;' or, 'you play too fast;' or, 'you had the best of the game, but something happened to divert your thoughts, and that turned it in my favour.' If you are a spectator while others play, observe the most perfect silence. For, if you give advice, you offend both parties, him against whom you give it, because it may cause the loss of his game, him in whose favour you give it, because, though it be good, and he follows it, he loses the pleasure he might have had, if you had permitted him to think until it had occurred to himself. Even after a move or moves, you must not, by replacing the pieces, show how they might have been placed better; for that displeases, and may occasion disputes and doubts about their true situation. All talking to the players lessens or diverts their attention, and is therefore unpleasing. Lastly, if the game is not to be played rigorously, according to the rules above mentioned, then moderate your desire of victory over your adversary, and be pleased with one over yourself. Snatch not eagerly at every advantage offered by his unskilfulness or inattention; but point out to him kindly, that by such a move he places or leaves a piece in danger and unsupported; that by another he will put his king in a perilous situation, etc. By this generous civility (so opposite to the unfairness above forbidden) you may, indeed, happen to lose the game to your opponent; but you will win what is better, his esteem, his respect, and his affection, together with the silent approbation and goodwill of impartial spectators." -- Benjamin Franklin, ON THE MORALS OF CHESS ----------------------------------------------------------------- Americanism in Chess "Today we see in chess the fight of aspiring Americanism against the old European intellectual life: a struggle between the technique of Capablanca, a virtuoso in whose play one can find nothing tangible to object to, and between great European masters, all of them artists, who have the qualities as well as the faults of artists in the treatment of the subject they devote themselves to: they experimentalise and in striving after what is deep down. they overlook what is near to hand. "...If Americanism is victorious in chess, it will also be so in life. For the idea of chess and the development of the chess mind we have a picture of the intellectual struggle of mankind." -- Reti, Masters of the Chessboard ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "What is true of Chess must hold by analogy for other game. and games being, at least in intent, modelled on Life - simplified to be sure, but still resembling it in essential - there must be some analogy between them. Every activity, then, directed by rules and having a meaning and purpose, such as, for instance, a dispute between persons taking different sides of a question and applying logical rules in an argument, every such activity, without exception, has to follow the very same fundamental principle which Steinitz discovered as governing the game of chess. And if this principle can simplify our search for combinations, though their number be millions, it must have the power also of guiding our search for suitable and efficient action. "This fundamental and universl principle may be briefly expressed as follows: The basis of a masterly plan is always a valuation." -- Lasker, Manual of Chess. [Fourth book: Position Play: The Theory of Steinitz. See also the sections: Steinitz Advances his Theory beyond the Needs of Practical Chess and thus Enters the Domain of Science and Philosophy, and An Enquiry into the Logical Origin and the Domain of Application of Steinitz' Theory.] ------------------------------------------------------------------ "The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the Universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature, The player on the other side is hidden from us." -- Thomas HUXLEY (1825-1895). -------------------------------------------------------------------- XLVIX. "'Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays: Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays, And one by one back in the Closet lays. " [The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Rendered into English Verse by Edward Fitzgerald, First Edition] [In fact, the specific mention of chess is not Khayyam's but his translator's. The original Arabic quatrain insists that it is meant as no metaphor or parable, but as really the case.] ------------------------------------------------------------------- Ronald Tagra also collects chess quotes (http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/4278/quotes.html)