The Square is an intellectual collaboration which champions curiosity and is committed to exploring the deepest questions about human understanding. These questions are increasingly being ignored in traditional spaces of higher learning, our colleges and universities. The Square, an alternative free from disciplinary, bureaucratic and financial limitations, has been established to address this lacuna.
Our learning methods are distinct from those employed by traditional academic spaces. Traditionally, there would be a teacher – an expert in a field – and pupils who arrive at the institution to learn from this master. This traditional method, undoubtedly, has much value, and at some stage in life, one ought to learn from a master. The Square, however, is conceptualized as a community of perpetual learners, those who possess their own perspectives but are looking to improve themselves through an engagement with others. Not a lecture hall, but a meeting place for active and thriving minds.
The Square will fulfil its aims by offering book-centred seminar courses. There are a few reasons for this approach. First, one gains immensely by reading a book cover to cover. In a rapidly changing world teeming with technological distractions, a book offers the best opportunity to engage in a detailed conversation with a great mind. By laying out the intellectual path travelled by the author, a great book helps us fashion our own journey.
There are also practical reasons to focus on books. Our sessions are conducted online and we currently do not possess facilities and resources available at traditional academic institutions. Keeping a text at the centre helps bring focus to our engagements and sets a clear agenda for each session, which will deal with a specific chapter or section of the book. And finally, the most important reason. We established ‘The Square’ because we ourselves wanted to learn and read more. Isn’t it beautiful? A place where you can learn from great texts and meet others who share similar interests, free from financial or geographical limitations.
The books we choose will have one thing in common: all of them will offer insights that go beyond the boundaries of cultural and regional contexts. If daily news commentary occupies one side of the knowledge spectrum, then the books we choose belong to the other end, bringing up themes and questions that stay with us much longer. The texts may be philosophical or literary, or they could belong to other disciplinary traditions, but all of them will focus on fundamental questions about human experience. Of course, what is fundamental, and whether anything like this could ever be asserted about human understanding, is debatable, and hence, it will remain one of the core questions that we will pursue in our courses.
At the start, we may begin with familiar texts, but our plan involves gradually diversifying and expanding our repertoire of texts, matching the diversity and interests of our expanding community. So, welcome to The Square and hope to see you in a session!