Kylie Prymus
Ph.D. Candidate, Philosophy
Kylie Prymus’s bright smile and easygoing manner are a refreshing contrast to the stereotypical image of the sullen-faced philosopher. Such is fitting for a young man committed to eradicating the notion that philosophy is inaccessible to all but the very few. “It’s not as intimidating as it sounds,” he insists during our conversation. Having won three prestigious fellowships through the Duke Endowment, James B. Duke, and University Scholars programs, Kylie has already proven that he is up to the challenge.
The Visalia, California native credits his high school English teacher with sparking his interest in his chosen discipline. “I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do when one of my English teachers introduced us to philosophy,” he recalls. “I really liked it, because I tend to be a thinker.” Kylie began his undergraduate studies at Howard University in Washington, D.C., but transferred to the University of California at Santa Cruz after his sophomore year. “I like Howard, I just don’t like D.C.,” he explains with a laugh. “I’m not a city person.” As someone who prefers a more rural environment, he has had little trouble adjusting to life in North Carolina. “It hasn’t been all that big of a transition, coming from Santa Cruz. They’re both kind of similar, both kind of woodsy.” Still, he admits, there are some differences. “I miss all the animals that we have in Santa Cruz,” he says.
Kylie’s area of interest is virtue ethics, a branch of a philosophy that “deals with questions of character, trying to discover what character is, what virtue is, what establishes it, and what that means as far as one’s relationship to other people.” He points out that Duke is one of the few universities that has professors who specialize in virtue ethics. In fact, two of his favorite philosophers, Alasdair MacIntyre and Owen Flanagan, have both taught at Duke. At the present time, Kylie works most closely with his advisor, Professor David Wong.
When asked about his connections to the wider Duke community, Kylie speaks with much enthusiasm about his involvement in the University Scholars program. Designed to “stimulate an interdisciplinary, intergenerational community of scholars,” the program brings together innovative thinkers from a range of personal and intellectual backgrounds. “Most of my relationship with the Duke community has been through the University Scholars program,” Kylie remarks. “It brings together graduate and undergraduate students at all levels so that we learn about each other’s work.” For him, one of the biggest bonuses of the program lies in its interdisciplinary focus. “It’s a really good program because its whole purpose is to promote interdisciplinary discussion. I really enjoy having the opportunity to branch out into other disciplines.”
The well-rounded student describes himself as a “part-time trombonist,” lover of music (“all kinds”), and an avid reader of literature, particularly books by Dostoyevsky and other Russian authors. These outside activities provide a welcome release from the intense Ph.D. environment. Kylie explains how his first year as a doctoral student provided a crash course on the administrative ins and outs of academia: “UC Santa Cruz didn’t have a graduate philosophy program, so I’d never seen that operating. As a graduate student you see a lot more of what the professors go through as far as teaching and researching and all the committees. It’s a bit more isolating because it’s all seminars, you only meet once a week.”
When asked about his future plans, Kylie replies “I don’t really care about being in a well-known institution. I just want to be with faculty that I like and in an area that I like. I really just want to teach and open people’s eyes to philosophy.”
David Wong
Professor, Philosophy
Kylie was the only first-year graduate student to take my graduate seminar in ethical theory. He displayed an impressively mature philosophical mind: very fair and inclined to be sympathetic to any author under discussion but at the same time a cogent critic of the weaknesses or incompleteness in the author’s argument. During a good part of the semester, we focused on questions of cultural difference in values and the challenges such differences presented to the idea of a universal ethic. Kylie was especially interested in this question as it bears on the status and treatment of women in different societies, and made an excellent presentation and later wrote a terrific paper on Martha Nussbaum’s argument that a universal ethic can be constructed on the basis of common human capabilities. Kylie is representative of an exciting trend in philosophy these days. Young thinkers such as he can apply philosophical thinking with great subtlety and rigor to very live political and ethical issues concerning the status of women in non-Western cultures.
(This profile originally appeared in the Fall 2001 issue of The GRIND.)