Richard Bett is Professor of Philosophy, with a secondary appointment in Classics, at Johns Hopkins College, the place he has labored since 1991. His scholarly work has principally been in historic Greek philosophy, with a specific give attention to the skeptics. He has translated a number of works of the Pyrrhonian skeptic Sextus Empiricus.
What do you do on the APA?
I’ve served since 2013 as Vice Chair of the APA Board of Officers. Moreover participating within the conferences of the Board, this entails often representing the Chair in things like awarding prizes, and serving as Chair of the Committee on Divisional Coordination, which goals to facilitate cooperation among the many three Divisions and between the divisions and the executive workplace. I’ve additionally served as Performing Government Director (2000–2001) and Japanese Division Secretary-Treasurer (2003–2013).
What’s your favourite a part of your job?
Talking of my APA function fairly than my “day job” as a professor, what I like most about it’s the alternative, given the annual turnover on the Board, to get to know a number of philosophers yearly who’re achieved, attention-grabbing, and devoted to the way forward for the occupation.
How did you come to be part of the workers/management?
In 1999 the place of APA Government Director wanted filling at brief discover. Jerry Schneewind, then a senior colleague in my division and likewise Chair of the APA Board, appointed me as Performing Government Director; I served within the place from January 2000 to June 2001. I discovered it fascinating; it gave me a breadth of perspective on philosophy that you could possibly by no means get in anybody division or subfield. After that, I used to be simple pickings for different APA positions.
What are you most pleased with in your skilled life?
Taking over appreciable administrative roles, each within the APA and at Johns Hopkins, with out this obliterating my scholarly tasks.
What do you love to do exterior work?
Working, often in native 5Ks; studying quite a lot of issues moreover philosophy (novels, usually from Australia—my sister lives there and we often ship one another books for birthday presents—information sources, and so forth.); listening to music (I’m a Mahler devotee and I like numerous classical music, but in addition some nation); and sampling beers at craft breweries.
In the event you may have a one-hour dialog with any thinker from any time, who would you choose and what subject would you select?
I’m in all probability in a minority of 1 right here. The thinker could be Aenesidemus of Cnossos, the founding father of a convention of Pyrrhonist skepticism (interesting to the sooner determine Pyrrho), in all probability within the early first century BCE. The subject could be the concepts he expressed in his misplaced work Pyrrhonist Discourses, which we find out about solely from a short and far later abstract. For my part, this work is the essential lacking hyperlink within the lengthy and discontinuous historical past of Pyrrhonism.
