Taylor Swift album drops have turn out to be cultural moments – whether or not or not you’re a fan of her music. Every album within the Swift catalogue seeks to open up new themes, dialogue, sounds and concepts, whereas retaining a way of familiarity that doesn’t alienate followers.
Lyrically, The Tortured Poets Division is a euphoric rejection of societal expectations. It embraces all of the Taylor-isms her followers have come to know and love, from her one-note melodies to her recitative supply (sung within the rhythm of atypical speech). And it options her signature frank and open autopsies of relationships, delivered with maturity not solely within the decisions of language and obscenities (“fuck you if I can’t have us”), however in Swift’s outlook on her life and relationships.
Thats’ why, many followers say that Taylor Swift isn’t only a billionaire songwriter and performer. She’s additionally a thinker. As a Swiftie and a thinker, I’ve discovered that this declare surprises Swifties and philosophers alike. However as soon as her followers study a bit extra about philosophy – and philosophers study a bit extra about Swift’s work – each teams can recognize her songwriting in new methods.
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Wanting within the Mirror
When one of many best philosophers, Socrates, famously mentioned, “The unexamined life is just not value residing,” he was arguing that individuals can not even know whether or not they’re residing a significant life except they topic their decisions and their values to scrutiny.
Like different nice writers, Swift’s songwriting constantly entails simply the type of introspective scrutiny about decisions and values that Socrates had in thoughts. A number of songs handle the worth of self-understanding, even when it’s tough.
Amid a breakup, the narrator in “Happiness” sings, “Honey, once I’m above the bushes I see this for what it’s.” But she describes how it may be exhausting to keep up an goal perspective on a relationship whereas additionally navigating the tip of it. “And within the disbelief I can’t face reinvention / I haven’t met the brand new me but,” she sings. Her companion is on the lookout for “the inexperienced gentle of forgiveness,” when she tells them that “You haven’t met the brand new me but / And I feel she’ll offer you that.”
The Swift-like narrator in “Anti-hero” makes an identical level concerning the challenges of self-awareness. “I’ll stare instantly on the solar, however by no means within the mirror,” she sings, referencing the way it’s typically simpler to determine truths concerning the exterior world than to face details about oneself, and that her tendency towards self-deception limits her skill to turn out to be wiser with age.
Everybody inherits a set of beliefs and assumptions from their dad and mom, friends and tradition, which might inhibit our skill to actually perceive others and ourselves.
In Swift’s “Daylight,” she describes how she as soon as seen relationships as “black and white” or “burning crimson.” Letting go of these previous, reductive narratives enabled her to see her relationships – and herself – extra clearly. She’s emerged from what she describes as a “twenty-year darkish night time” to see the extra difficult, liberating fact: Daylight.
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Argue towards Fact
Socrates confirmed that one of the best ways to scrutinize one’s decisions and values is thru sustained, generally argumentative, dialog with others. To a nonphilosopher, philosophy typically appears to be like like satan’s advocacy or trolling – arguing only for the sake of it. However to philosophers, disagreeableness is a advantage that helps counteract reflexive dogmatism and conformity.
Swift, too, is argumentative in her songwriting, typically making an ethical argument to an imagined listener – steadily, a romantic companion. In different lyrics, Swift rebuts unfair critics and document executives.
Lately, her lyrics have begun to deal with extra public points, just like the promise and futility of politics. At first look, “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince,” launched in 2019, is a coming-of-age track about teenage relationship drama. Nevertheless, Swift can also be describing her personal political awakening and disillusionment when she writes, “My group is shedding, battered and bruising.” Lyrics like, “American tales burning earlier than me” and “You play silly video games, you win silly prizes” additional reinforce a parable about political despair.
On the similar time, different songs develop arguments for the promise of advocating for political change. In “Solely The Younger” she addresses somebody who sees that “The sport was rigged,” reminding them “They aren’t gonna change this / We gotta do it ourselves … Solely the younger can run.”
Swift’s nonpolitical songwriting additionally has implications for long-standing moral debates. In “Gorgias,” a dialogue written by Socrates’ scholar Plato, the thinker asks whether or not it’s higher to undergo injustice than to commit it – a theme that seems in a number of Swift songs.
Socrates argued it’s higher to undergo injustice, as a result of committing injustice is an affront to 1’s personal dignity and integrity. In her 2022 track “Karma,” Swift seemingly agrees: “Don’t you realize that money ain’t the one value?” of immorality, earlier than she warns her listener that karma’s “coming again round.”
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True − and False
For philosophers, each facet of the human expertise is truthful recreation for additional evaluation. Because the twentieth century American thinker Wilfrid Sellars wrote, the aim of philosophy needs to be “to grasp how issues within the broadest potential sense of the time period cling collectively within the broadest potential sense of the time period.”
By holding individuals’s beliefs to logical requirements of consistency and coherence, philosophical evaluation reveals contradictions in an effort to find what’s actually true.
Swift’s songwriting addresses among the trickiest paradoxes, akin to whether or not there may be even such a factor as a real, genuine self.
Tackling the query in “Mirrorball,” she appears to endorse the view that one’s sense of self is basically strategic, socially constructed to suit the state of affairs. “I’m a mirrorball, I’ll present you each model of your self,” she sings earlier than stating, “I can change the whole lot about me to slot in” and “I’ve by no means been a pure. All I do is strive, strive, strive.”
Equally, in “Mastermind,” Swift describes calculatedly making an attempt to win somebody’s affection when she sings, “I swear I’m solely cryptic and Machiavellian ‘trigger I care.” In each songs, Swift factors out how genuine shows of vulnerability may also be a type of strategic speech, prompting the listener to wonder if real authenticity is feasible.
One other tough paradox in philosophy entails the thought of supererogation, which refers to acts which are morally good however not morally required. This concept additionally permits that acts will be “suberogatory,” which means that they’re morally unhealthy however nonetheless permissible.
Songs like “Champagne Issues” and “Would’ve Might’ve Ought to’ve” discover this paradoxical area, describing instances the place somebody made a morally criticizable alternative that they have been nonetheless fully inside their rights to make.
Relatedly, Swift can also be concerned with paradoxes of ethical psychology. Songs like “This Is Me Making an attempt,” “Illicit Affairs” and “False God” mirror on the philosophical idea of akrasia: instances the place individuals seemingly know they shouldn’t do one thing however do it anyway.
Lots of the philosophical literature about akrasia asks whether or not it’s even potential: If somebody believes their resolution is incorrect or unhealthy for them, why would they do it? However via her lyrics, Swift sketches psychologically real looking vignettes that counsel real akrasia is no less than potential and doubtless occurring on a regular basis – from sabotaging a loving relationship to pursuing one which “we have been loopy to assume … may work.”
Philosophy makes use of the conventions of logic and poetry to assist individuals see the world extra clearly. A profitable philosophical dialog will contain making rational appeals – logic – which are additionally emotionally resonant – poetry.
However educational philosophers can not declare to be the one individuals who deploy logic and poetry to advance understanding of the human situation, the world round us and the character of justice. Songwriters like Taylor Swift will be philosophers too.
Jessica Flanigan, Professor of Management Research and Philosophy, Politics, Economics and Regulation, College of Richmond.
This text was first revealed on The Conversation, a world media useful resource that gives innovative concepts and individuals who know what they’re speaking about.
