In the post-industrial age, the noise of the machines gives way to the noise of communication.

Rituals are characterized by repetition. Repetition differs from routine in its capacity to create intensity. What is the origin of the intensity that characterizes repetition and protects it against becoming routine? For Kierkegaard, repetition and recollection represent the same movement but in opposite directions, ‘because what is recollected

According to Malebranche, attention is the natural prayer of the soul. Today, the soul does not pray. It is permanently producing itself.

The mistrust of play intensifies in the age of the Enlightenment. Kant subordinates play to work. His aesthetics, for instance, is characterized by the primacy of work. In the face of beauty, the cognitive faculties, namely imagination and understanding, are in play mode. The subject likes what is beautiful; the beautiful creates a feeling of

God blessed and sanctified the seventh day. The rest enjoyed on the Sabbath consecrates the work of creation. It is not mere idleness. Rather, it is an essential part of creation. In his commentary on the Book of Genesis, Rashi thus remarks: ‘After the six days of creation, what was still missing from the universe? Menuchah [inoperativity, rest].

The glory of play goes along with sovereignty, where sovereignty simply means being free from necessity, from purpose and utility. Sovereignty reveals a soul ‘which stands aloof from caring about utility’.1 The compulsion of production destroys sovereignty as a form of life. Sovereignty gives way to a new kind of subordination which, however,

Because of the compulsion of work and production, we are losing the capacity to play. We only rarely make playful use of language; we only put it to work. It is obliged to communicate information or produce meaning. As a result, we have no access to forms of language that shine all by themselves. Language as a medium of information has no

Exalted time [Hoch-Zeit] is also the temporality of schools of higher education [Hoch-Schule]. In ancient Greek, ‘school’ is scholé, that is, leisure. Schools of higher education would thus be schools of higher leisure. Today, they are no longer places of high leisure. They have become places of production, factories of human capital. They pursue

Chasing new stimuli, excitement and experience, we lose the capacity for repetition.