The Game of Tarot

by Michael Dummett, Sylvia Mann (Collaborator)

Sir Michael Dummett, a well-known British philosopher, is the foremost scholar in the field of Tarot history, with numerous books and articles to his credit. He is a founding member of the International Playing Card Society, in whose journal "The Playing Card" he regularly publishes opinions, research, and reviews of current literature on the subject. His encyclopedic, groundbreaking, and painstakingly documented "The Game of From Ferrara to Salt Lake City," established the invention of Tarot in 15th-century Italy and laid the foundation for all subsequent research on the game of Tarot, including exhaustive accounts of the rules of all hitherto known forms of the game. An important result of Dummett's analysis of the historical evidence was to demonstrate that fortune-telling and occult interpretations were unknown prior to the 18th century. During most of their history, Tarot cards were used to play an extremely popular trick-taking game which is still enjoyed in much of Europe. Around the turn of the 16th century, Tarot became popular in France, and from there spread to Germany, Switzerland, and beyond. Also in the 16th century, Tarot was used as a literary motif for poetic parlor games, sometimes termed tarocchi appropriati. Dummett showed that the middle of the 1700s saw a great development in the game of Tarot, including a modernized deck (with French suit-signs and without the medieval allegories that occultists have found irresistible), along with a growth in Tarot's popularity. "The hundred years between about 1730 and 1830 were the heyday of the game of Tarot; it was played not only in northern Italy, eastern France, Switzerland, Germany and Austro-Hungary, but also in Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and even Russia. Not only was it, in these areas, a famous game with many it was also, during that period, more truly an international game than it had ever been before or than it has ever been since . . . ."

Genres: Tarot, Nonfiction

600 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1980

About the author

A skilled analytic mind and an ardent voice against racism, Sir Michael A. E. Dummett is considered by many to be one of twentieth-century Britain’s most influential philosophers of language. Dummett is best known for his work in the history of analytic philosophy and in his contributions to the philosophy of language and mathematics. Much of his work has taken the form of commentary on the likes of Frege, Wittgenstein, and Quine. Dummett, who considered himself a Wittgensteinian, is widely held as the English authority on the work of German logician Gottlob Frege. Though Dummett diverges from Frege, who is a realist, most of Dummett’s achievements have been pursued in connection with his enthusiasm for Frege’s thought.

Dummett was born in London in 1925 and attended prestigious boys’ schools in Wiltshire and Hampshire. Though he rejected religious belief in his youth, Dummett converted to Catholicism while serving in the armed forces during the Second World War. After his military service he went to Oxford University where he studied philosophy, politics, and economics at Christ Church College. He graduated in 1950 with first class honors and was awarded a fellowship at All Souls College. Throughout his acclaimed career Dummett remained associated with Oxford, though he has held visiting posts at several universities around the world. In 1962 he was appointed reader in the philosophy of mathematics at Oxford; in 1979 he was elected Wykeham Professor of Logic, where he served as chair until his retirement in 1992. Dummett, along with his wife, has remained active in antiracist campaigns and political reforms, even placing his philosophical career on hold for several years during the sixties to pursue these causes. He received a knighthood in 1999.

Many of Britain’s leading analytic philosophers have been significantly influenced by Dummett, including Crispin Wright, Simon Blackburn, John McDowell, and Timothy Williamson — though none would be properly classed a disciple. Dummett’s most notable contributions have come in his analysis of theories of meaning accounting for communication, reason, and representation in language. His commitment to a kind of anti-realism in debates about reference and language, though often overstated, has been a point of particular interest for his admirers and detractors alike. Dummett was not satisfied with the pessimism of Wittgenstein and the holists who denied the possibility of finally understanding a language from within language. Dummett argues that an alternative can be found if one denies the principle of bivalence. Bivalence is the notion that every meaningful proposition is either true or false; and in Dummett’s view the denial of bivalence entails anti-realism about the reference of language.

Dummett’s most influential writings are the first and second editions of Frege: Philosophy of Language (1973–1981), The Interpretation of Frege's Philosophy (1981), and the 'William James Lectures' that he delivered at Harvard in 1976 published in 1991 as The Logical Basis of Metaphysics. He also delivered a series of lectures at Bologna in 1987, published in 1988 as Origins of Analytical Philosophy. In 1991 he published a collections of papers on Frege; and in 1993 a collection entitled The Seas of Language.

Reviews

[Philebus · Rating 5 out of 5]

First of all, contrary to the listing here, this book was not published by US Game Systems but by the academic publisher Duckworth.

This was the first book published in English that mades a comprehensive study of the history of Tarot cards. The conclusions were contrary to the popular beliefs about tarot in the English speaking world and are, only now and probably thanks to the internet, becoming recognised. But it is a slow process. Essentially, Dummett traces the cards' history from the invention in the mid 15th century for the Milanese court as a card game. Tarot cards were known only for card games for nearly 400 years until French occultists invented an occult history form them at the end of the 18th century. The games are still played throughout Europe and the largest part of the book is concerned with giving accounts of these games and the history of their development. These accounts have since been updated and expanded in a two volume collaboration between Dummett and John McLeod: A History of Games Played With the Tarot Pack (Edwin Mellen Press 2004).

There has also been an expanded account of the history of occult associations published in two other collaborations A Wicked Pack of Cards and A History of the Occult Tarot.

However, this text remains the only detailed account published of development of the cards themselves, the trumps and their themes. As such and because it only saw a single printing, this book is now much in demand and can fetch very high prices.

[Nell Grey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Monumental work on the history of tarot and the multitude of variations of the game.