Martha Nussbaum Wins $1 Million Berggruen Prize
Martha Nussbaum, Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Philosophy and Law at the University of Chicago, is the winner of the 2018 Berggruen Prize.
The Berggruen Prize is a $1 million award “that recognizes humanistic thinkers whose ideas have helped us find direction, wisdom and improved self-understanding in a world being rapidly transformed by social, technological, political, cultural and economic change.”
The prize announcement praises Nussbaum for her participation in public debates about important philosophical and political questions, her work on emotions, her contributions to the development of the capability approach to understanding human welfare, and commitment to feminism.
Previous winners of the Berggruen Prize were Charles Taylor (2016) and Onora O’Neill (2017). You can find out more about the Berggruen Institute here.
Nussbaum has been the recipient of numerous other significant honors in recent years, including the Kyoto Prize (2016), the American Philosophical Association’s Quinn Prize (2015), and being selected to deliver the National Endowment for the Humanities Jefferson Lecture (2017).
Related: “One of the World’s Most Successful — and Different — Philosophers”
Congratulations to Nussbaum. I have always found her work refreshing and insightful.
It worries me, though, that such a large sum of money would be awarded to a single philosopher while our discipline is crumbling across academia due to lack of funding and support. I hope she uses her award well.