READING ESSENTIAL TEXTS AND THE ART OF STUDY © Dr Joseph Milne
The study of key texts in small seminar groups
AFTERNOON SEMINARS
(Continuing from last term)
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Leader Dr Joseph Milne
Text the Arden edition
15 January – 19 March 2025, Wednesdays, 10 weekly meetings
Time 2.30 – 4pm Please arrive promptly
Venue The School of Philosophy and Economic Science
How can the hidden crime of fratricide set in motion the decline of the Kingdom of Denmark? And why should the noble Prince Hamlet be brought down with Denmark’s tragic fate? Such are the questions the tragedy of Hamlet poses. As always with Shakespeare, the destinies of his protagonists are bound up in the fate of kingdoms, and kingdoms themselves bound by cosmic laws. Larger forces are at play in Shakespeare’s dramas than personal destinies. As with the classical Greek tragedies, miscalculated deeds and errors of judgement call forth unseen powers governing the order of nature. Nothing can flourish in a falling kingdom. How far, then, is Hamlet responsible for his own decisions? Must he deny love to find his way? And what remedy is there for Claudius’ monstrous primal crime? This play offers no simple answers to Hamlet’s dilemmas. It sets before us both the nobility and the fallibility of human nature.
JOSEPH MILNE is the editor of Land and Liberty, the journal of the Henry George Foundation, the author of several Temenos Academy Papers, including The Lost Vision of Nature (2018), and of Natural Law and the Just Society, to be published by Shepheard-Walwyn. He is a Fellow of the Temenos Academy, a member of its Academic Board and teaches the ‘Mysticism’ module of the Foundation Course in the Perennial Philosophy.
Course cost
£100 or £75 Members of the Temenos Academy/Concessions.
Full-time students and Temenos Academy Young Scholars, £40.
Those attending must be aged 18 or over.
Advance bookings only please
T 07513 883 335
E temenosacademy@myfastmail.com
***
