The Case for Being a Dilettante

Why chasing one career path might be overrated. And what da Vinci would say about your side projects.

Are You Just a Dilettante at Heart?

I was having dinner with my siblings when one of them said, “We’d make great dilettantes. Completely happy as dilettantes!” I laughed and asked, “Why do you say that?”

He replied:

“We love this: sitting around a table, talking about politics, philosophy, art… without actually needing to do anything about it. Who cares about jobs and responsibilities? We’d be great dilettantes.”

We both laughed, and I didn’t think much of it at the time. But later that night, the word stuck with me. Am I just a dilettante at heart, disguising myself as something else?

So I did what any curious person does: I start researching it.

The word dilettante comes from mid-18th century Italian. Originally, it meant “lover of the arts” derived from dilettare (“to delight”), which traces back to the Latin delectare. In other words, a dilettante was someone who delighted in learning for its own sake. Beautiful, right?

But somewhere along the way, the meaning soured.

Today, the Cambridge Dictionary defines a dilettante as:

“A person who is or seems to be interested in a subject, but whose understanding of it is not very deep or serious.”

Ouch.

In our productivity-obsessed world, we prize experts and specialists. We want people to fit neatly into LinkedIn job titles, not to casually wander between disciplines. The modern dilettante is often dismissed as unserious. But it wasn’t always that way.

When the word first appeared in English in 1773, it was defined as:

“An admirer of a fine art, literature, science, etc.; one who cultivates an art or literature casually and for amusement.”

That definition has charm. It celebrates curiosity.

So what changed?

Did we, as a society, really decided that the jacks-of-all-trades, the generalists, the multi-talented people are not cool? Or did we just rebranded it?

Enter: the polymath.

Here’s the Google Trends graph showing how searches for the word polymath have steadily increased since 2004, with a noticeable spike in February 2018 (likely linked to the launch of a blockchain project called the Polymath Network, but I digress).

What’s the current definition of a polymath?
According to the Cambridge Dictionary:

“A person who knows a lot about many different subjects.”

Much better, right?

Can you think of anyone who fits that mold?

Leonardo da Vinci, of course, the poster child of the polymath spirit, whose legacy spanned art, anatomy, engineering, architecture, philosophy, and more.

Or Umberto Eco: novelist, philosopher, professor, semiotician.

Or Benjamin Franklin: statesman, scientist, inventor, printer, and philosopher.

These figures didn’t just dabble. They crossed disciplines with intention. Their curiosity wasn’t a distraction, it was their superpower. And while we may not all become Renaissance icons, their lives make a compelling case for wide-ranging interests.

So why am I writing about this?

Because somewhere along the way, many of us started believing we needed to be one thing. That success meant focus, optimization, depth without breadth. We chose specialism over exploration. We carved out lanes and stayed in them.

But maybe we’re just really multifaceted. Maybe you love more than one thing. Maybe the roles that light you up don’t come with tidy job descriptions.

Looking at those names who left their mark across so many fields, why not hold ourselves to a similar ambition? Not to be remembered in history books, but to live a life that writes its own book, not just a LinkedIn title.

Maybe being a dilettante, in the original, joyful, curious sense, (or a polymath) is exactly what the world needs more of.