Can you put a price on wisdom? Or is life-altering wisdom simply priceless? Recently, one of our alumna, Cat Dossett, sent us a video describing how Shakespeare’s first folio of comedies, histories, and tragedies was estimated to be worth between four and six million dollars. Enjoy:
Beyond being a collectors item, how much is this knowledge actually worth? Would humanity as a collective be willing to pay six million dollars for the works of Shakespeare, if they had never been published and were lost to time? Is there an ethics to an antiquities/books market, let alone the art market? Does this transaction signify something greater about contemporary consumerist culture?
