The Quaternary Institute was inaugurated by Roger Peters in July 2000. The Institute is based in the countryside near Stratford, Taranaki, New Zealand.
The function of the Institute is to develop a level of education commensurate with the previously unrecognised coherent and comprehensive philosophy evident in William Shakespeare's Sonnets and other works.
The Institute has been called quaternary to align its interests with the quaternary period, or the period of the evolution of the human sensibility over the last two million years. Only Shakespeare's works offer a level of understanding and expression in keeping with the full potential of humankind as quaternary beings.
The website for the Quaternary Institute is currently being established to provide an advanced educational forum to present the philosophy of Shakespeare. Because Shakespeare's philosophy has not been recognised in 400 years of tertiary level scholarship it seems appropriate to move beyond the level of learning currently available in tertiary institutions and begin to formulate the conditions for a quaternary level of learning. The site heralds the need to establish a Quaternary Institute to provide tuition in the quaternary sensibility.
The quaternary does not replace tertiary. The tertiary level of education is a natural precursor to the quaternary. It will be necessary to graduate from tertiary, and/or to demonstrate a post-tertiary proficiency in understanding and an equivalent maturity of vision, to participate in the learning program of the quaternary. As with students who get to the end of secondary education and are ready to move to the next level, the quaternary provides the natural step up for those, particularly doctoral graduates and professors, who realise they have reached the limit of tertiary methodology.
The basic text for the quaternary is the 1609 edition of the Sonnets. A facsimile of the original edition should be consulted as it was arranged systematically by Shakespeare to present the complete philosophy.
The launching of the website for the Quaternary Institute preceded the publication of William Shakespeare's Sonnet Philosophy in four volumes, by Roger Peters. Now that William Shakespeare's Sonnet Philosophy is published, the website will continue to provide a sampling of the evidence and arguments presented in detail in the four volumes.
The works of Shakespeare are the basic text for the quaternary because only his works, and particularly the Sonnets, are capable of providing a consistent and comprehensive expression at a quaternary level of understanding. Other thinkers have made specific contributions toward such a sensibility but the philosophical dimension of their work has been limited to one or other aspect of the complete philosophy available in Shakespeare's Sonnets and plays.
The goal of the Quaternary Institute is to provide the basic philosophic principles necessary for any person to exercise their potential consistently at a mature level of comprehension and expression. While Shakespeare's Sonnets, in conjunction with his plays and poems, is currently the only text adequate for a full quaternary course of learning it is to be expected that when students assimilate the basic understanding and put the logical principles into practice there will be a number who regularly achieve beyond the basic level established by Shakespeare 400 years ago.
To begin the process of familiarisation with quaternary expectations the website offers a number of pages that introduce the various aspects of quaternary thought. A brief description of the contents of each page is provided in the boxes alongside with a fuller outline given at the beginning of each page.
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