Sandel Wins 2025 Berggruen Prize

Michael Sandel, professor of government at Harvard University, is the 2025 winner of the $1 million Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture.

[photo by Asan Institute, via the Berggruen Institute]

The Berggruen Institute hailed Sandel as “one of the world’s leading thinkers and public intellectuals” who “has had far-reaching impact from the U.S. and Europe to Asia and Latin America through his scholarship and teachings on justice, ethics, markets, and democracy.”

News of the prize was announced by Time magazine.

In a press release about the prize, the Institute said:

The impact and reach of his exploration of morality, dignity, and the common good within society and public discourse are unrivaled. “Professor Sandel’s work has left a profound mark on the global intellectual landscape,” said Yuk Hui, Chair of the Berggruen Prize Jury. “His critiques of neoliberalism, meritocratic ideology, and populism speak to the most urgent questions of our time,” he continued.

Sandel is the author of Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (1982), What’s the Right Thing to Do? (2009), What Money Can’t Buy (2012), The Tyranny of Merit (2020), among other works. He is also known for his public philosophy, including his BBC programs The Public Philosopher and The Global Philosopher. He has participated in many public forums, and according to the Institute, “his lectures have packed such venues as St. Paul’s Cathedral (London), the Sydney Opera House (Australia), Madrid’s Plaza de España, the Delacorte Theater in New York’s Central Park, and an outdoor stadium at Yonsei University in Seoul (S. Korea), where 14,000 people came to hear him speak.”

In an interview at Time, when asked “If you were describing what you had done to win the prize, what would you say?”, Sandel said:

What I’ve tried to do is to use philosophy as an invitation to a more robust citizenship than we’ve become accustomed to, to prompt public deliberation about big questions that matter, such as what makes for a just society and how can we seek the common good.

The Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture is “given annually to honor a thinker whose body of work has led us to find wisdom, direction, and improved self-understanding in a world being rapidly transformed by profound social, technological, political, cultural, and economic change.” The jury for this year’s prize consisted of Roger Ames, Antonio Damasio, Francis Fukuyama, Yuk Hui, Siri Hustvedt, Carlo Rovelli, and Elif Shafak.

A list of previous winners of the prize can be found by scrolling down on this page.