PROSE Award Winners in the Philosophy Category (Updated)
The 2019 PROSE winner in the philosophy category is Oxford University Press (OUP) for Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny by Kate Manne, assistant professor of philosophy at Cornell University. Whether the book will win OUP the PROSE Award for Excellence in Humanities, or the AAP’s R.R. Hawkins Award, which goes to the overall winner across all categories, will be announced next month.
Though the AAP has been dispensing its awards since 1976, it only recognized philosophy as a distinctive subject category for the first time in 2002 (prior to that it shared a category with religion). Here are the PROSE Award winners in the philosophy from today back to then:
| 2019 | Oxford University Press | Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny | Kate Manne |
| 2018 | MIT Press | Understanding Ignorance: The Surprising Impact of What We Don’t Know | Daniel DeNicola |
| 2017 | Princeton University Press | The Philosopher: A History in Six Types | Justin E.H. Smith |
| 2016 | Princeton University Press | How Propaganda Works | Jason Stanley |
| 2015 | Cambridge University Press | Torture, Power, and Law | David Luban |
| 2013 | Palgrave Macmillan | The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey | Michael Huemer |
| 2012 | Oxford University Press | The Geometry of Desert | Shelly Kagan |
| 2011 | Harvard University Press | The Ethical Project | Philip Kitcher |
| 2010 | Cambridge University Press | Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography | Julian Young |
| 2009 | University of Chicago Press | Plato’s Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues | Catherine Zuckert |
| 2008 | Princeton University Press | Made with Words: Hobbes on Language, Mind, & Politics | Philip Pettit |
| 2007 | Princeton University Press | Only a Promise of Happiness | Alexander Nehamas |
| 2006 | Princeton University Press | Pessimism | Joshua Foa Dienstag |
| 2005 | Princeton University Press | Ethics of Identity | Kwame Anthony Appiah |
| 2004 | Princeton University Press | The Reasons of Love | Harry G. Frankfurt |
| 2003 | Princeton University Press | Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, Volumes I & II | Scottt Soames |
| 2002 | Princeton University Press | Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy | Susan Neiman |
(Note: there is no 2014 listing because that was the year the AAP stopped identifying the awards with the years in which the books were published and began doing so using the year in which the awards were bestowed. Also, in some years “honorable mentions” were bestowed; those are not included on this list.)
How many times has a philosophy category winner advanced to win the overall Humanities award, which the AAP created in 2007? Just once, in 2009. That year, University of Chicago Press won both the Humanities award and the Hawkins Award for Plato’s Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues. The author of that book, Catherine Zuckert, is emeritus professor of political science at Notre Dame.
UPDATE: Oxford University Press, with Kate Manne’s Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, has won the 2019 PROSE Award for Excellence in Humanities. This is the first time a publisher has won the category with a book authored by someone whose primary appointment is in a philosophy department. The R.R. Hawkins Award, which goes to the overall winner across all categories, was the winner of the social sciences category: OUP, for Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President by Kathleen Hall Jamieson (University of Pennsylvania).
This is great news. Philosphy needs to get back on the map as a culturally relevent subject of study. Furthermore, it woud be great to see more public dialogues in the media between scientists and, philosophers regarding the moral and legal dilema’s we are facing today.