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An Anecdote about Dilettantism

This happened perhaps back in 1999 or 2000, at an Italian restaurant in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. Once while he was having lunch with us, a group of his Ph.D. students, many of whom have gone on to very distinguished careers, our teacher Hans Dieter Betz ? gave us an unshakable definition of the dilettante.

This approximates his discourse:

You watch a scholar after he or she completes his or her degree, and you see. If they write two or more books by the time they reach the age of 40, then they are a scholar who will be with us for some time. Anyone else is a dilettante.

This presented us all with a challenge, to remain active as scholars, and to make names for ourselves, forging bodies of work which could not be ignored. But it is a challenge I recently failed.

Now, at 40, I have a two year old daughter. Her demands on my attention are much more tangible than any demands which an abstract company of scholars could issue. And the rewards that flow from my relationship with her are more satisfying and lasting than the rewards that come from writing.

So I embrace my dilettantism, and point to the underlying Italian origins of the word, in dilettare, "to delight" (in something). We dilettantes continue to study from a sense of delight. Let the scholars scorn us and forget our names. They also labor under the storm clouds of Oblivion.