Kirchin: To Specialize or to Flourish?

I suppose it is something many of us say to grad students: as well as focusing on your grad studies, make sure you are interested in many things. There are a whole host of reasons for this. Some are instrumental: you look a more interesting prospect on the academic job market (and on the non-academic job market, perhaps), and you never know when something you learn might feed into your grad work unexpectedly. But, frankly, the most important reason is that it just makes you a more interesting person and thinker. One has a better chance of flourishing, and being a better philosopher, if one exposes oneself to a number of different questions and ways of looking at the world.

Interview with Professor Simon Kirchin, Reader in Philosophy and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at University of Kent, May 25, 2018