Philosophy Talk: Amy Berg (Rhode Island College)

Amy Berg, Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Rhode Island College, will be giving a talk titled: "How and Why to Be Well-Rounded".  For more information on Amy, please visit her website.

Abstract:

How and Why to Be Well-Rounded: In this paper, I explore what it means to live a well-rounded life and argue that well-roundedness is an ideal many of us should aspire to. While well-roundedness runs the risk of making us into dilettantes, it also has profound intrinsic and instrumental benefits. For many of us, the benefits of becoming more well-rounded are worth the costs. When we recognize the value of well-roundedness, this has further consequences for how we think about well-being; among these, valuing well-roundedness calls into question the idea that our lives go better for us if they're more narratively unified. While connections between the events of our lives can be good for us, lives that are too coherent miss out on valuable richness and diversity.