Getting to know... Dirk Baltzly
Professor Dirk Baltzly
Name: Dirk Baltzly
Title: Associate Professor
Faculty: Arts
Department: Philosophy
Campus: Clayton
How long have you worked at Monash?
18 years.
Where did you work prior to starting at the University?
I came to Monash from a two-year postdoc at King’s College London.
What do you like best about your role?
My outstanding colleagues in philosophy. I get to come to work every day and associate with people whose breadth of interests and degree of insight still manage to astound me.
Why did you choose your current career path?
Both my parents were school teachers and I was an unathletic, bookish child who didn’t fit very well in a small town in Ohio. My mother assured me that some day I’d go away to a place called ‘university’ and that I’d feel much more at home there. A little bit of research on my part revealed that there was a job called ‘being a professor’ that would allow one to stay in this magical place forever.
First job?
Sales clerk in a very low-budget department store. I worked in the sporting goods department where we had to mount the occasional ‘rat safari’ in the stockroom when the rodent population got a bit out of control.
Worst job?
Did I mention the rats?
What research/projects are you currently working on and what does it involve?
I have just completed the last of three volumes of translation of an ancient Greek commentary on Plato’s Timaeus written by one of the last heads of Plato’s school (Proclus died in 485 CE and the Christian emperor Justinian closed the school in 529 as a hot-bed of dangerous pagans). My new ARC project continues with this philosopher. I’ll produce the first English translation of Proclus’ essays on Plato’s The Republic.
What is your favourite place in the world and why?
Wherever my beautiful and talented wife is (of course, it helps if this place also has beer).
What is your favourite place to eat and why?
Beside a campfire anywhere in the bush. A sky full of stars makes even my efforts at damper quite acceptable.
What is the best piece of advice you have received?
Before I left London, my Australian friends advised me to beware of the drop bears. My vigilance has paid off so far.
Tell us something about yourself that your colleagues wouldn’t know?
A consortium of rats in south-eastern Ohio has put out a contract on me. -- (As any good first-year philosophy student will tell you, a necessary condition for someone knowing a proposition, P, is that P is true. Ergo, this is something my colleagues do not know about me.)