Done with the second stage of EUVOLIA study course! For a number of weeks, our students led by Kateryna Vasylyna were discovering the Renaissance values system. The magic of fiction had let them look at the world just the way the Renaissance people did, mixing science with ignorance.
Two teams of time-travellers journeyed through several utopian states (Utopia, Civitas Solis, New Atlantic) to study the local concepts of general good and personal happiness and to assess the utopian social constructs’ adaptability to our own age. It turned out to be really hard to imagine happy life in a world without private property designed by Thomas More, Tommaso Campanella or Francis Bacon. Looks like Renaissance Utopia, along with other presumably ideal societies, is a bad choice for those seeking happiness in a modern sense of the word!
Another unit of the module was devoted to the ideal ruler’s image in William Shakespeare’s drama. Based on Niccolo Machiavelli’s renowned concept, students considered several candidates – Hamlet, King Lear and Macbeth – for the best sovereign award (spoiler: they all failed). No reasonable excuse for Macbeth’s tyranny had been accepted, while Hamlet’s initial consistency and morality goes well with Ling Lear’s charisma and political experience.
Along the way, the students marked their reflections, discoveries and the brightest moments of their time-space journey on a self-designed map.