“I think the Academy holds a very unique space at the university for re-defining what learning can be – there's very few other spaces for meaningful, community-driven inquiry into the nature of life, self, and the human experience.”
~Rohan Menon, Harman Fellow class of 2020
“To be a person is to be constantly engaged in making yourself into that person.”
~Christine Korsgaard, philosopher
γνῶθι σεαυτόν: know thyself
~Ancient Greek maxim
To know thyself, one must know what the self, in fact, is. Eastern and Western philosophers through the ages have grappled with the existence and non-existence of the self and today neuroscience scholars are in the thick of inquiry on the concept. So, what is the self? Our Harman Fellows voted, and a consensus emerged: they think this investigation a most worthy pursuit and, within the framework of polymathy, multifaceted and meaningful. Varun Soni, Dean of Religious Life, has engaged us through the years on discovering our deeper selves through sessions on belief, mindfulness, the soul, and what it means to be human. For our opening session of the 2021/2022 Polymathic Pizza Series, we are revisiting and merging these ideas together to investigate what the self means to us. All who join in conversation, every ‘self’ present, will have something significant to contribute. Carl Yung wrote that the privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are, your genuine self. Sage polymaths like Rohan, along with so many of our Harman Fellows, believe that our coming together as a polymathic community can help us get there.
