We are pleased to announce that Eli Benjamin Israel has received the NAKS Markus Herz Prize for 2024 for his paper “Kant on Moral Trust.” We also congratulate him for having his paper accepted last month for publication by Kantian Review!

Roberts Stern, a highly respected and deeply missed Kant and Hegel scholar, passed away on August 21^st of this year of brain cancer.  

After earning his PhD at Cambridge, he spent 34 years at the University of Sheffield.  

His research covered epistemology, metaphysics, ethics and political philosophy, and in addition to Kant and Hegel, his interests included Kierkegaard, Murdoch, Levinas, Peirce and Luther, and Løgstrup.  His many publications included the following books:  Hegel, Kant and the Structure of the Object (1990), Transcendental Arguments and Scepticism: Answering the Question of Justification (2000), The Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Hegel and the Phenomenology of Spirit (2002/2013), Hegelian Metaphysics (2009), Understanding Moral Obligation: Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard. (2011) Kantian Ethics: Value, Agency, and Obligation (2015), The Radical Demand in Løgstrup's Ethics (2019).

In addition to serving as head of the University of Sheffield Philosophy Department, he served as editor of the European Journal of Philosophy, editor of the Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain, President of the Hegel Society of Great Britain and President of the British Philosophical Association, and President of the Aristotelian Society.

Robert Stern was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy in 2019.

More information can be found at University of Sheffield, DailyNous, and PhilPapers.

The 2024 prize, sponsored by Kantian Review,  has been awarded to:

Anna Milioni (Université de Montreal), for “Nomads, Territory, and the Kantian State.”

We had a healthy number of very good submissions for the prizes; we thank the judges for their hard work.  Congratulations to the award winner!

The Henry Allison Senior Scholar Prize

The prize  for an article in the 2022-2023 calendar year has been awarded to two people this year:  

Melissa Seymour Fahmy (University of Georgia),  for “Never Merely as a Means: Rethinking the Role and Relevance of Consent,” Kantian Review (2023), 28, 41–62.

-and-

Tobias Rosefeldt (Humboldt University), for “Kant on Decomposing Synthesis and the Intuition of Infinite Space,” Philosopher’s Imprint (2022), 22 (1), 1–23.

Dear NAKS Members,

As we announced in the Summer Newsletter, NAKS has received a very generous donation of $41,000 from Henry Allison’s family (his wife Nora and his daughter Renee Nash) in his memory and in honor of his contributions to Kant scholarship.  We thank them again for their beneficence!  In a sign of our appreciation, NAKS is renaming the Senior Scholar Prize the Henry Allison Senior Scholar Prize. 

The Allison family donation constitutes the core of the newly formed Cheerful Philanthropist Fund.  Being good Kantians, we know what you are thinking: acting in conformity with the duty of beneficence will lack moral worth if it is done merely from an inner satisfaction in spreading joy, rather than acting from duty.  But let us assure you that cheerfulness is not incompatible with acting from duty, and we always hope that you will be cheerful! 

The principal of The Cheerful Philanthropist Fund will be preserved and invested, and earnings will be used to fund many NAKS activities and to expand opportunities for NAKS members.  For example, we hope to increase our conference travel stipends for graduate students and junior faculty without their own research funds.

We are now starting a fundraiser to complement the Allison family donation, and we hope that you will contribute whatever you can in order to help promote Kant scholarship, in the spirit of Henry Allison’s many contributions to the field.  NAKS is kicking off the fund drive by transferring $5,000 from its modest current reserves to The Cheerful Philanthropist Fund, for a starting total of $46,000.   Although this is a terrific start, that amount in a safe and responsible investment will not yield overwhelming sums ($2,300 at 5%, for example).  This will definitely help us meet our annual budget, but we hope to raise at least as much again, which will allow us to continue our activities and to expand the support we provide to Kant scholarship and NAKS members. 

We are looking for any size donation, starting from $10, $20, or anything you can afford and feel moved to contribute – with over 500 members, smaller donations add up.  We will also have a NAKS Donor Page to acknowledge larger contributions people have made – $100 or more – noting the level of those contributions.  You can, of course, remain anonymous if you choose.  And you may also dedicate the contribution if you wish – in memory or honor of Henry Allison, or someone else.  But again, we appreciate any and all contributions at any level; all of us together can have a large impact. 

Please contribute to make NAKS stronger and help us promote Kant scholarship throughout North America and beyond! 

You can make your contribution at our donation webpage:

https://northamericankantsociety.org/donate

Please specify in the comments section that you would like it to be added to The Cheerful Philanthropist Fund; if it is $100 or more, please let us know if you would prefer it to be anonymous or if you would like to donate in someone’s honor.  If you would like to make a larger donation and would like to discuss it with us, please feel free to contact Daniel Sutherland at his personal email address: sutherla@uic.edu.

Are you curious about Immanuel Kant's theory of race? If so, then look no further! The purpose of this reading group is to critically examine Kant’s essays on race.

No prior knowledge of Kant's work on race or other works is required for this group . Each meeting will focus on one essay with the aim of understanding Kant's arguments. The first hour of each session will begin with an overview of the text followed by analysis of the arguments presented therein. Questions, comments, and thoughts about the text are highly welcome during this time. The second hour will be dedicated to open discussion about the text.

For any questions about the reading group, please email Corey Beckford at cbeckford@gradcenter.cuny.edu. Additionally, if you do not own a copy of the readings please feel free to contact Corey for the readings.

We are very pleased to announce that Martina Favaretto has won the 2023 Marcus Herz Student Essay Prize for her paper "Kantian Apathy, Revisted," delivered at the NAKS Southern Study Group Meeting.  Congratulations Martina!

We are very pleased to announce that the NAKS Senior Scholar Prize has been awarded.  There was a very strong group of submissions, from which NAKS selected Helga Varden for her book Sex, Love, and Gender: A Kantian Account (Oxford University Press, 2020).  Congratulations, Helga, for a terrific contribution to Kant scholarship! 

We are delighted to announce the winners of The Wilfrid Sellars Young Scholars Essay Prize:

First Place: John Walsh (Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg) for the essay “Kant’s Principia Diiudicationis and Executionis.”

Second Place: J. P. Messina (Purdue University) for the essay “Freedom as Independence: Kant vs. the Neo-Republicans.”

Thanks to our judges for their work, and warm congratulations to John Walsh and J.P. Messina for their exceptional essays!

First Place includes a $600 prize funded by Kantian Review and an expectation of publication by Kantian Review (subject to their approval). Second Place includes a $400 prize funded by NAKS. On this occasion, we would also like to express our sincere appreciation to Kantian Review for their generous contribution, significantly enhancing The Wilfrid Sellars Young Scholars Essay Prize.

Thank you all for your participation and support!

We are pleased to announce that Andrew Chignell and Katharina Kraus have each been appointed to the position of NAKS Tercentennial Officers to organize conferences and celebrations marking the 300th Anniversary of Kant’s birth. They have already organized two NAKS Tercentennial Events. The first is a NAKS Tercentennial Celebration and Symposium organized by Andrew and Katharina together with Lucy Allais at John Hopkins University and at the Goethe Institute in Washington, D.C. It will include two staged readings of Thomas Bernhard’s play Immanuel Kant and a symposium, “Kant and the World Today” on the implications of Kant’s philosophy for various issues confronting us today. (For details, Conferences/Workshops below). The second is a NAKS Kantian Birthday Party at the Central APA in New Orleans in 2024. (For details, see the APA NAKS Session announcements under Conferences/Workshops below.) There are also some international plans afoot, including a joint Tercentennial Conference with the South Korean Kant Society and a virtual conference with the working title “Idea for a Universal Kant Conference with Cosmopolitan Purpose.” Look for further announcements on the NAKS website!

We are also pleased to announce the formation of a NAKS Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) Committee. The Co-Chairs of the Committee are Huaping Lu-Adler and Lucy Allais, and the regular committee members include Maria Mejia and Corey Beckford and (ex officio) Robert and me. The committee will advise Robert and me on any DEIB issues that might arise and actions NAKS can take to be more inclusive. We would like to thank Huaping, Lucy, Maria, and Corey for willing to give their ideas, advice, and time.