British Journal for the History of Philosophy Awards

The British Journal for the History of Philosophy has introduced the winners of three of its prizes.

The journal awarded the 2022 Rogers Prize—its annual prize for the most effective article it publishes—to Michael Kremer (College of Chicago) for his paper “Margaret MacDonald and Gilbert Ryle: a philosophical friendship”. Right here’s the summary of his article:

This text considers the private and philosophical relationship between two philosophers, Margaret MacDonald and Gilbert Ryle. I present {that a} letter from MacDonald to Ryle discovered at Linacre School, Oxford, was a part of an intensive correspondence, and that the 2 have been intimate associates and philosophical interlocutors, and I discover the connection between their respective philosophies. MacDonald, who studied with Wittgenstein earlier than coming to Oxford in 1937, deployed and developed Wittgensteinian themes in her personal subsequent work. I present that this work was an vital supply of concepts in Ryle’s philosophy. I look at two episodes: (1) a 1937 symposium by which MacDonald gave the lead paper, and Ryle was a respondent—I argue that Ryle derived his well-known distinction between knowledge-how and knowledge-that from her paper; and (2) Ryle’s rejection in Dilemmas (1953/4) of the central significance of the thought of a ‘class mistake’—I argue that this will have been in response to MacDonald’s vital evaluate of The Idea of Thoughts. Alongside the way in which I contemplate the event of MacDonald’s metaphilosophical views, and I shed new mild on MacDonald’s exceptional biography.

This text and the subject of underappreciated philosophical friendships have been mentioned beforehand at Day by day Nous here.

The winner of the Rogers Prize receives £1,000. The prize was established in 2012 in honor of John Rogers, the founding editor of the journal.

The journal awarded its Beaney Prize—its annual prize for the most effective contribution to widening the canon it publishes—to Lea Cantor (College of Oxford) for her paper “Thales – the ‘first philosopher’? A troubled chapter in the historiography of philosophy”. Right here’s the summary of her article:

It’s broadly believed that the traditional Greeks thought that Thales was the primary thinker, and that they due to this fact maintained that philosophy had a Greek origin. This paper challenges these assumptions, arguing that almost all historical Greek thinkers who expressed views in regards to the historical past and improvement of philosophy rejected each positions. I argue that not even Aristotle offered Thales as the primary thinker, and that doing so would have undermined his philosophical commitments and pursuits. Past Aristotle, the view that Thales was the primary thinker is attested virtually nowhere in antiquity. Within the classical, Hellenistic, and post-Hellenistic durations, we witness a marked tendency to find the start of philosophy in a time going again additional than Thales. Remarkably, historical Greek thinkers most frequently traced the origins of philosophy to earlier non-Greek peoples. Opposite to the obtained view, then, I argue that (1) vanishingly few Greek writers pronounced Thales the primary thinker; and (2) most Greek thinkers didn’t even advocate a Greek origin of philosophy. Lastly, I present that the view that philosophy originated with Thales (together with its deceptive attribution to the Greeks typically) has roots in problematic, and in some instances manifestly racist, eighteenth-century historiography of philosophy.

The winner of the Beaney Prize receives £1,000. The prize was established in 2021 in honour of Mike Beaney, Editor of the journal from 2011 to 2021.

Lastly, the journal awarded its Greatest Graduate Essay Prize for 2022 to Claudia Dumitru (Princeton College) for her paper “Hobbes on Kids and Parental Dominion”. The runner-up for this prize was Michael Morgan (College of Chicago) for his paper “Climacus on Sensible Motive”.

The Graduate Essay Prize is £1000, and is awarded yearly to the author of an essay that makes a major contribution to the historical past of philosophy. The competitors is open to all graduate college students, wherever on the earth, learning any topic.