Essay Prize 2018-2019
This year, the Association for the Philosophy of Judaism is running a special essay prize, on the theme of the Meaning of Life.
The analytic tradition of philosophy has dedicated surprisingly little attention to the ultimate question of the Meaning of Life. Despite this lack of focus, there have been a number of important articles and books on the topic. Here are some examples:
- Thomas Nagel, “The Absurd,” Journal of Philosophy 68 (1970): 716–727.
- Susan Wolf, “Happiness and Meaning: Two Aspects of the Good Life,” Social Philosophy and Policy 14 (1997): 207–225.
- Thaddeus Metz, “Could God’s Purpose Be the Source of Life’s Meaning?” Religious Studies 36 (2000): 293–313.
- ——————, Meaning in Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
- Richard Taylor, “The Meaning of Life,” in Good and Evil (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 256–268. Reprinted in E.D Klemke and Steven M. Cahn (eds), The Meaning of Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
- John Kekes, “The Meaning of Life,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 24 (2000): 17–34
- Joshua W. Seachris et. al (eds.), Exploring the Meaning of Life: An Anthology and Guide (Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2013).
For this special Essay Prize, we invite scholars to bring this, or related, literature, into conversation with the Jewish intellectual tradition.
The winning author will receive a $1000 prize, and will be invited to present their paper at a conference on the Meaning of Life, at the University of Haifa, between the 11th and 12th of June, 2019.
Entries need to be unpublished, and should be submitted as word-documents or pdfs. Entries should be between 5,000 and 10,000 words in order to be considered.
The deadline for entry is February 28th, 2019.
Entries should be sent to samuel_lebens[at]hotmail.com