Helen Frowe, professor of philosophy at Stockholm University and director of the Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War and Peace, has won the 2019 Sanders Prize in Political Philosophy.

The prize is awarded by the Marc Sanders Foundation and is based on a competition of essays of “original research on central issues in political or social philosophy, such as moral issues relating to the state or the justification of force, authority, obligation, justice, freedom, rights, exploitation, oppression, etc.” It includes $5,000 and publication in Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy.

Professor Frowe won the prize for her essay, “The Duty to Save and the Duty to Minimise Harm.” Here’s the abstract:

This paper defends the Limited Use View of our duties to save. This view holds that a claim to be saved is a claim to make use of another person (and her resources) for one’s own sake. But we have only limited claims to make use of others and their resources. We are not entitled to make use of others when doing so is either unreasonably costly for them or conflicts with their duties to others. Hence, our claims to be saved are limited. By the same token, our duties to save are also limited. We need not save when doing so is unreasonably costly for us or conflicts with our duties to others, since others have no claim to make use of us when doing so is unreasonably costly for us or conflicts with our duties to others. One upshot of the Limited Use View is that it can sometimes be permissible to defensively harm for one’s own sake, or for the sake of special others, even though it would be impermissible to do so for the sake of a stranger.

There’s more information about the prize, as well as a list of previous winners, here.