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Susan Andrews parallels Taylor Swift with Aristotle and Socrates.
Is Taylor Swift a thinker for our instances? Might she assist us perceive ourselves and the world we reside in? In her music ‘So Excessive College’ on her most up-to-date album The Tortured Poets Division, Swift sings, “You know the way to ball, I do know Aristotle.” Taylor Swift could appear an unlikely Aristotelian however there are notable parallels. The traditional Greek thinker Aristotle explored the aim of artwork in his work Poetics (c.335 BCE). On the time in Greece, tragedies had been all the fashion. He argued that the performs had been a type of katharsis – a cleaning of our feelings from the dangerous stuff in life. Aristotle additional recognised that to be able to evoke emotion in an viewers by drama or poetry, and so create a cathartic expertise, sure options had been important. By making use of key components reminiscent of plot, character, model, music, spectacle, and thought-provoking concepts, artists can create highly effective tales to maneuver and encourage audiences. This rings true of Swift’s lyrical storytelling, too.
That is simply the beginning of the story. Who am I? What’s the genuine self? What’s love? Am I free? What’s the which means of life? Philosophical questions are so huge they’ll appear irritating. Nevertheless, a scarcity of self-knowledge can result in bother. Swift clearly explores this in her songs, when she considers how a scarcity of self-knowledge can get us into dangerous relationships, select dangerous leaders, make dangerous decisions, and lack good values. Socrates famously summed up philosophy as ‘Know Thyself’. In response to Plato, Socrates concluded that knowledge lay in understanding the bounds of his data. Swift in the meantime divides up the invention of the self into relatable chunks for her followers to dissect: Who am I as a good friend? Who am I as an artist? Who am I as a lover? In ‘Willow’, Swift performs round with a paradox of data, saying that “The extra that you just say, the much less I do know.” In the meantime, in ‘Dorothea’, she sings, “And if you happen to’re ever bored with being identified for who you already know, you already know that you’ll at all times know me.”
If philosophy holds up a mirror to the human expertise, then Swift might be thought of not solely a tortured poet however a thinker of our instances. In ‘Champagne Issues’, for instance, she has a sudden burst of self-awareness when she’s confronted with making powerful decisions: “I couldn’t give a cause” she first sings, however then has a second of readability: “Generally you don’t know the reply til somebody on their knees asks you.” In ‘Anti-Hero’ Swift explores her notion of self additional: “I’ll stare straight on the solar however by no means within the mirror” – expressing how straightforward it’s to keep away from trying internally by specializing in truths exterior your self as a substitute.
Swift 2023 MTV Video Music Awards © iHeartRadioCA Artistic Commons
Philosophers, poets, songwriters, lecturers, theologians, scientists and psychologists have lengthy been puzzled by what the true self is. One problem issues the persistence of id: Which you is you: the individual you’re immediately, or the considered one of ten years in the past? And who you may be in one other ten years? Which period of self are you in? A folklore one? A fame one? Fearless? Lover? In ‘Happiness’, Swift sings, “I haven’t met the brand new me but”; and in ‘Mirrorball’, she sings that our sense of self is strategic – a social assemble: “I’m a mirrorball, I’ll present you each model of your self”, and “I can change all the pieces about me to slot in.” It is a battle of id her younger viewers can relate to. Then she takes a essential have a look at her motives in ‘Anti-Hero’: “Did you hear my covert narcism I disguise as altruism?”
In her newest album, The Tortured Poets Division, Swift once more mirrors Aristotle’s philosophy, this time regarding advantage ethics. Aristotle thought that to flourish and reside a contented life you have to be virtuous, and to realize this, you have to follow the behavior of doing the proper factor. We’re all doubtlessly good in response to Aristotle, and we will excellent our goodness by forming proper habits. Our ethical character is outlined by our actions, such that ‘we’re what we repeatedly do’. Nevertheless, being doubtlessly good by nature, we’re additionally doubtlessly dangerous, and in ‘The Smallest Man That Ever Lived’, Swift damningly sings, ‘You’re what you probably did’.
Self-knowledge and consciousness of our reasoned decisions and values is a prerequisite for Aristotelian advantage of character. Many people don’t take the time to replicate on who we’re and what we would like out of life; but as Aristotle put it, ‘Realizing your self is the start of all knowledge’. Swift is aware of this too. What appears to attach Swift to her viewers in such a robust manner is that they consider she reveals them her genuine self in her artwork. Authenticity entails self-knowledge, self-acceptance, and braveness to specific your self truthfully, as is remarked on by Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics. So insofar as Taylor Swift evokes her followers to look at who their true selves are and reside in alignment with that, then she absolutely might be known as a thinker for our instances.
© Susan Andrews 2024
Susan Andrews teaches philosophy at Temple Carrig College, Greystones, Eire, and is the co-writer of the Junior Cycle Philosophy curriculum: oide.ie/post-primary/home/short-courses/philosophy-junior-cycle/.
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