PHILOSOPHY

Life sucks; watch a movie 👎

Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy is a weird text. You’ll find mentions of the Greeks, opera, and goat-men (what a trio, huh!) But, don’t be scared: it’s still one of his more accessible philosophical texts. However, there’s one thing he boldly declares that causes even university students to scratch their heads in confusion, and that is that life is only justified “as an aesthetic phenomenon.” Eh? Here’s the gist: Nietzsche believed life is inherently full of suffering, but aesthetics (art and beauty) offers a surprising way to make sense of it all. Cheerful, am I right? Why don’t we break this down a little further…

💡 Things to consider

• Nietzsche’s (initial) pessimism: Imagine a world filled with suffering, a place where existence itself seems pointless. Sounds bleak, right? That's the view that Nietzsche held, heavily influenced by another philosopher called Arthur Schopenhauer. Why do you think Nietzsche (and many others) came to this conclusion?

• Logic ain’t it: Reason and logic (what Nietzsche calls ‘Socratism’) won’t help us, argues Nietzsche. This is because things like science and reason offer no solace in the face of suffering, and the pointlessness of life. Essentially, he’s saying that learning about molecular bonds (and other STEM-related things) can be great to an extent (it might keep us entertained for a little while), but it won’t help us answer the question of why there’s so much suffering in the universe, or why life might have no meaning.

• Art as the ultimate escape: Enter art, Nietzsche's answer to life's misery. Art, including great tragedies, allows us to face the darkness head-on. It doesn't sugarcoat things, but lets us experience the full range of emotions, even the painful ones. Nietzsche talks about two artistic forces: the calm and collected "Apollonian", and the wild, uninhibited "Dionysian." Imagine a beautiful statue (Apollonian) suddenly coming alive and dancing uncontrollably (Dionysian). Great art blends these two forces, giving us both order and chaos, beauty and pain, allowing us to confront the pointlessness of life head-on. This is what Nietzsche meant when he said that life is only justified “as an aesthetic phenomenon.” He’s kind of saying that embracing art in all its messy glory can help us make sense of the suffering around us. Do you think listening to music, watching movies, or visiting museums are good ways of finding meaning in all the chaos?

🔎 Find out more

• Nietzsche, Friedrich. The birth of tragedy: Out of the spirit of music.

  • Read it here for free at Project Gutenberg

• Young, Julian. Nietzsche's philosophy of art. Cambridge University Press, 1994.

• Philosophy Now: The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche

ENGLISH

Shakespeare Incarnated: The First Folio 📖

Shakespeare is, without a doubt, the most famous English author of all time. But, without The First Folio, which was compiled by Shakespeare’s friends and colleagues John Heminge and Henry Condell after he died, we might not have even heard of eighteen (!) of his plays…

The First Folio was the first published collection of Shakespeare’s dramatic works. The first recorded sale of the Folio was on 5th December 1623 by Sir Edward Dering, who kept a meticulous record of his accounts. The word ‘Folio’ refers to the format of the book: the printed sheets were folded in half, so that each sheet carried four sides of text. This format is particularly significant because it was usually devoted to religious or historical texts – never before had a Folio of plays been published.

The title page of the Folio is home to the iconic portrait of Shakespeare that we use today, with a poem entitled ‘To the Reader’ by Ben Jonson opposite. In this poem, Johnson appears to describe Shakespeare’s works as an extension of the man himself, which is particularly interesting since this Folio was published several years after Shakespeare’s death. Does Shakespeare live on in this textual form, then?

💡 Things to consider

• Textual beginnings: When describing Edward Dering’s purchase of the First Folio, Shakespeare scholar Emma Smith observes that it ‘marks, therefore, its birthday: the beginning of the book’s life and the launch of an extensive history of interactions with different owners, readers, and contexts over […] four centuries.’ Smith’s choice of ‘birthday’ here suggests that a text such as the Folio only comes to life when it enters circulation and is consumed by readers. Do you agree? How do we reckon with the notion of a textual ‘birthday’ when a lot of the plays in the Folio had already been watched by contemporary audiences?

• Slippery categorising: In the opening pages of the Folio, the texts are placed into a catalogue and labelled as Comedies, Histories, or Tragedies. However, as you’ll know if you’ve read any of Shakespeare’s plays, they often contain some aspects of both genres, or even all three! For example, Anthony and Cleopatra is placed in the Tragedies rather than the Histories category, despite being an adaptation of true historical events. Can complex plays like Shakespeare’s ever really ‘belong’ to a specific genre? How does this categorisation process influence the way we read and think about Shakespeare’s works?

  

  The Catologue in the First Folio

• Textual endings: As we’ve already seen, the First Folio was the textual debut for 18 of its 36 total plays; without it, they might have been lost forever! But the First Folio is not the definitive end of Shakespeare’s list of plays: Pericles and The Two Noble Kinsmen aren’t included in the text, and many scholars believe that Shakespeare could be a co-author on some other plays of the period. What’s more, the First Folio has been reprinted countless times, and read and handled by just as many people since Sir Edward Dering bought the first copy 400 years ago. Is Shakespeare’s work continually moulded by those who interact with it? Can a text ever be static and fixed, even if it’s as iconic as the First Folio?

🔎 Find out more

• First folio | Royal Shakespeare Company (rsc.org.uk)

• Shakespeare First Folio | Folger Shakespeare Library

• Emma Smith, Shakespeare’s First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016)

🍒 The cherry on top

• 🧅 The Stinky Science of Alliums: Ever wondered why onions make you cry? And why do other plants have such strong smells? Is there an evolutionary advantage in having this? If you are interested in Food, Biology, or Chemistry, this podcast delves into the chemical weapons that members of the genus allium group share, explaining just what goes on when we are chopping onions.

• 🌿 Making Leaves: As the risk of a global food crisis becomes ever present, scientists are searching for a solution. This article introduces one revolutionary idea: enhancing natural processes such as photosynthesis to make them more efficient. This is a fascinating read, especially if you are interested in Biology or Geography!

• 💀 Archaeology and Society: What can archaeological digs teach us about past society, and how it was structured? Can they teach us anything about the present? How reliable are they? For anyone interested in History, Anthropology, or Sociology, this article explores all these questions in great depth.

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• 8th April - St John’s College Cambridge Veterinary Medicine Masterclass

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• 12th April - Robinson College Cambridge - Making New Music Competition Deadline

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