North American Kant Society Announcements

Open Position: NAKS Website and Social Media Coordinator

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 13:29:44 GMT

We would like to add another person to the NAKS team to maintain the NAKS website and social media communications. We are looking for someone who is comfortable working on websites and posting to Facebook, Instagram, and X. The job is not onerous or time-consuming. It comes with the same compensation package provided to the President, Vice President, and Treasurer: the honor of serving the community of Kant scholars! Please email sutherla@uic.edu with “NAKS position” somewhere in the header if you would be willing to join the NAKS team and would like to discuss it further. It’s a great way to get involved and get to know other Kant scholars. And we would appreciate the help!

Marcus Herz Student Essay Prize - Winner Announcement

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 13:12:59 GMT

We are pleased to announce the winner of the 2025 Marcus Herz Student Essay Prize: Eileen Luo (Stanford) for her paper “Sense and Sensibility: Kant on Berkeley on Spatial Representation.” Congratulations! All the eligible papers were very strong this year; we are excited to see so much emerging talent in Kant scholarship and look forward to future work from all of them.

NAKS President and Vice President Election

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 13:30:24 GMT

Dear NAKS Members,

It is time to elect a new President and Vice-President for a three-year term starting July 1st.

Thank you for all your nominations! From that pool, we have found three people willing to run for election to take on the duties of running NAKS: Melissa Zinkin for President, and Tim Jankoviak and Lara Ostaric for Vice President.

Each of them have posted a short CV and candidate statement. Please take a few minutes right now to view their CVs and statements:

For President We will have one candidate, Melissa Zinkin (Suny Binghampton) [CV] [Statement]
For Vice President (in alphabetical order):

Tim Jankowiak (Towson University) [CV] [Statement]
Lara Ostaric (Temple) [CV] [Statement]

Cast your vote here: https://northamericankantsociety.org/Sys/Poll/70961

The deadline for voting is April 3rd.

Wilfrid Sellars Junior Scholar Prize - Winner Annoucement

Tue, 16 Dec 2025 17:48:53 GMT

We are also very pleased to announce that the Sellars Junior Scholar Prize for 2025 has been awarded to Bas Tönissen (Princeton) for the paper “Kant’s Concept of the Heart: A Developmental Account”. We congratulate Bas! Kantian Review is generously contributing a $300 monetary award with this prize, and will also consider it for publication. For more information about the prize, see: https://northamericankantsociety.org/sellarsprize/

Henry Allison Senior Scholar Prize - Winner Annoucement

Tue, 16 Dec 2025 17:47:34 GMT

We are very pleased to announce that the Senior Scholar Prize for an outstanding book published in 2023 or 2024 has been awarded to Daniel Smyth (Wesleyan University) for his Intuition in Kant: The Boundlessness of Sense (Cambridge University Press, 2024). Congratulations to Daniel for a terrific contribution to Kant scholarship! An accompanying award of $300 is generously underwritten by Kantian Review.

NAKS Kant & Disability Reading Group Winter 2026

Mon, 15 Dec 2025 15:48:31 GMT

Disability is understood broadly here as encompassing sensory impairments such as blindness/low vision and deafness, as well as physical differences in mobility, and mental health issues such as anxiety and depression. We will analyze Kantian attitudes toward disability in his Anthropology and other texts, learning to be attentive to ableism in philosophy.

Schedule:

Thursday (01/15) 11am EST
Saturday (01/24) 1pm EST
Wednesday (02/4) 4pm EST
Friday (02/13) 1pm EST
Saturday (02/21) 1pm EST

Zoom link and reading list will be emailed upon registration. Please register here: https://forms.gle/oodbpHLQYbU4X4UX6

Please contact Dr. Babyak at tbb8@cornell.edu with questions about the group or if you need a disability accommodation to enable your participation.

Kant and Race Reading Group Fall 2025

Mon, 13 Oct 2025 17:56:30 GMT

The NAKS Plurality and Community Committee is excited to announce the Kant and Race Reading Group Fall 2025 Schedule:

David Baumeister, October 29

''In the migration and transplanting of animals and plants': Tracking Race, Migration, and the Non-Human in the Kanthropocene"

Daniel J. Smith, November 19

"Race and Radical Evil"

Patrick R. Frierson & Emiliano Salomon,

November 21

"From Kant to Vasconcelos and Back Again"

Helga Varden, December 5

Title TBA

Elvira Basevich, December 12

"Resistance and Racism: On the Racialized Moral Psychology of Oppressors and the Oppressed"

The call for NAKS's Sellars Prize is out!

Sat, 13 Sep 2025 13:44:55 GMT

The North American Kant Society is pleased to announce the 14th annual Wilfrid Sellars Essay Prize competition, generously sponsored by Kantian Review. This prize will be awarded for the best essay on any topic that demonstrates the continuing relevance of Kant’s philosophy. Essays must be single-authored, previously unpublished (work under review or forthcoming will be considered), and cannot exceed 8,000 words in length (including notes and works cited/bibliography). Submissions not within this word limit may not be considered.

The intention behind the Sellars Prize is to help promote original Kantian or Kant-inspired philosophical work of scholars in the early stages of their careers. Submissions will be blind-reviewed and judged by members of a review committee drawn from the NAKS Executive Committee and Board of Trustees.

The deadline for submission is October 8th, 2025. You may submit your article in this form.

Eligibility rules:

Please read the Eligibility Rules carefully. Violating them will result in disqualification.

1) The essay must be written in English, single-authored, unpublished, and not have been previously submitted for the Sellars Prize. First appearing online in 2024 is sufficient to qualify.

2) Only one submission per author is allowed.

3) You may not submit the same paper for both the NAKS Wilfred Sellars Prize and the UK Kant Society Young Scholars Prize. (Submitting different papers is allowed.) Kantian Review sponsors both prizes, and they and we would like to avoid both awards going to the same person for the same paper in order to extend the impact of the prizes.

4) ‘Junior’ is defined here as having been officially awarded the PhD by the prize submission deadline and being 5 years or fewer from receipt of the Ph.D. on the prize submission deadline.

5) Authors must be members of NAKS at the time of submission and during the period when the submissions are under review.

6) Authors cannot be past recipients of the Wilfrid Sellars Essay Prize.

7) Current members of the Board of Trustees, NAKS Executive Committee, and sub-committees are ineligible.

Please ensure that you are eligible before submitting an essay!

The Wilfrid Sellars Junior Essay prize winner we will awarded $300. The prize is generously funded by Kantian Review. Additionally, the prize winner will have the presumptive offer of publication in Kantian Review (assuming approval by the editors). The committee reserves the right not to award a prize, if in its judgment none is warranted.

Decision Process: Submissions will be blind-reviewed and judged by members of a review committee drawn from the NAKS Executive Committee, members of the Board of Trustees, and previous Sellars Prize winners. The essays are assigned to judges based, to the extent possible, on their expertise. Each essay is initially reviewed by at least two judges. The submissions will be judged on originality of its thesis, impact or significance within its subfield, strength of the argument, textual evidence in support of its thesis, and its clarity. The award committee reserves the right not to award a prize winner if in its judgment no prize is warranted and does not provide feedback on submissions.

Announcing the 2025 NAKS Biennial Program

Mon, 21 Jul 2025 18:09:35 GMT

We are thrilled to announce the program for the 2025 North American Kant Society Biennial set to take place at McGill University, Montreal, on October 17-19.

Keynote speakers: Rachel Zuckert (Northwestern), Antoine Grandjean (Université de Lille), and Nicholas Stang (University of Toronto).

Click here to view the complete program

In Memoriam: Karl Ameriks (1947-2025)

Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:31:32 GMT

In April, we shared the devastating news of Karl Ameriks' passing. Today we want to honor his memory with a memorial written by Eric Watkins that celebrates Karl's extraordinary contributions to Kant scholarship and community over his distinguished career.

________________________________________________

I am deeply saddened to announce that Karl Ameriks passed away in Mishawaka, Indiana on Monday April 28, 2025, after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a week earlier.

Karl was born on November 5, 1947 in Munich, Germany and immigrated with his family to the United States shortly thereafter. After growing up in the Midwest, he attended Yale University, where he received both his bachelor (1969) and doctoral (1973) degrees. On December 26, 1970, he was married to Geraldine Anne Benjamin, who survives him, along with one brother, John, and two sons, Michael and Kevin, and their families. In 1973, Karl joined the Department of Philosophy at Notre Dame, where he remained until his retirement in 2016, though as professor emeritus he was as active as ever.

Karl’s scholarship was extensive, deep, and extraordinarily influential, consisting of seven monographs and over 150 articles, commentaries, critical interventions, and book reviews. His first book, Kant’s Theory of Mind, published by Clarendon Press in 1982 (with an expanded edition in 2001), presented a highly detailed contextual and philosophical analysis of the Paralogisms of Pure Reason, which remains indispensable reading for anyone interested in understanding the Paralogisms. In 2000, he published Kant and the Fate of Autonomy with Cambridge University Press, an incisive defense of Kant against Reinhold’s, Fichte’s, and Hegel’s attempted appropriations of Kant’s philosophy. Interpreting Kant’s Critiques, published in 2003, collected together a number of classic papers that Karl had written on each of Kant’s three Critiques, including “Kant’s Transcendental Deduction as a Regressive Argument”, “Kantian Idealism Today”, and “Kant’s Deduction of Freedom and Morality”. Kant and the Historical Turn, published in 2006, is an extended study of Reinhold’s philosophy and how in attempting to secure the foundation of Kant’s philosophy, Reinhold radically changed philosophy and how it was practiced thereafter. Kant’s Elliptical Path, published in 2012, argues for an overarching interpretation of Kant that emphasizes historical, moral, and religious themes, while drawing contrasts with a wide range of important 19th and 20th century thinkers such as Hölderlin, Novalis, Schlegel, Nietzsche, MacIntyre, Cavell, Taylor, and Frank. In 2019, Karl published Kantian Subjects, which focuses on Kant’s highly complex conception of self-determination and its positive connections to (but also differences with) post-Kantian philosophical viewpoints. His final monograph, Kantian Dignity and its Difficulties, published last year by Oxford University Press, presents an extended discussion of Kant’s conception of duty and of how elements of it have survived both in philosophy and in the wider intellectual world, with an intriguing emphasis on Thomas Mann and his conversion to democracy. In addition, Karl’s publications include a number of important edited volumes (e.g., The Modern Subject and The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism) as well as several influential translations (especially Kant’s Lectures on Metaphysics).

Though Karl was never one to draw attention to himself, he was an extraordinary leader in the profession. In the Department of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, he served as Director of Graduate Studies (1981-4) and as Acting Chair (1988-9). He was the chair (or co-chair) of over two dozen PhD students. In 1999, he was named McMahon-Hank Professor of Philosophy. He organized a number of highly influential conferences, including one on Kant (featuring Onora O’Neill) and one on German Idealism (featuring Manfred Frank). He served as one of two general editors of Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy Series (with approximately 70 volumes) and was a co-founding editor of the Internationales Jahrbuch des Deutschen Idealismus. He was a Fulbright Fellow as well as a Fellow at Notre Dame’s Institute for Advanced Study, and he received multiple fellowships from both the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. He was elected President of the Central Division American Philosophical Association (2004-5) and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009. Karl was an especially important member of NAKS from its earliest days, serving as its President (acting 1990-1, 1991-4), and as General Editor of the NAKS Studies in Philosophy publication series. He served as a highly valued member of NAKS’ Board of Trustees for almost four decades (1994-2022).

Karl’s legacy in the profession is immense. In his publications he advanced uncountably many influential interpretive theses by offering a “moderate” view of Transcendental Idealism, interpreting the Transcendental Deduction as a “regressive argument”, diagnosing a “great reversal” in Kant’s position on freedom, identifying and revealing the inadequacies of various “short arguments” to idealism, interpreting Kant as proposing a “modest system” of philosophy, advancing the importance of “elliptical paths”, and so on. Methodologically, he combined extraordinarily subtle interpretations of Kant’s texts with rich philosophical insights, based an outstanding grasp of Kant’s immediate historical context. He was instrumental in forging much closer connections between the North American and European (especially German) philosophical communities. His extraordinary mentoring of students helped them realize their full potential and achieve professional success, and through his invariably incisive and constructive comments, he helped scholars both young and old.

As those who interacted with him will attest, Karl was not only a consummate scholar, but a truly exceptional person. He was both brilliant and wise, incredibly generous with his time and insights (e.g., offering perceptive comments at talks and highly detailed feedback on drafts of papers), fundamentally optimistic (while mindful of humanity’s darker impulses), full of unexpected references and anecdotes, and, to top it all off, hilariously funny. He will be sorely missed by all those who have benefitted from the immeasurable contributions he made to the community of Kant scholars who are the North American Kant Society.

__________________________________________

NAKS thanks Eric Watkins for writing this memorial

Kantian Review Funding Annoucement

Mon, 16 Jun 2025 14:59:57 GMT

We are very pleased to announce that Kantian Review, which has been funding the NAKS Wilfrid Sellars Junior Scholar’s Prize for some time now, has significantly expanded its support of NAKS. Kantian Review will now also fund the Henry Allison Senior Scholar Prize in the amount of $300.

In addition, Kantian Review will fund three additional graduate student travel stipends for travel to Kant conferences, with priority given to graduate students travelling to NAKS meetings or meetings of the UK Kant Society, and among those, priority given to those presenting a paper, commenting. If there are less than three applicants meeting these conditions, graduate students who wish to attend a conference will also be considered. Applicants must be NAKS members in good standing. See https://northamericankantsociety.org/Graduate-Student-Travel-Stipends for more information.

We heartily thank Kantian Review for their continuing and increased support of the North American Kant Society!

In Memoriam: Michael L. Friedman (1947-2025)

Fri, 23 May 2025 18:22:02 GMT

This notice mourns the passing of the prominent philosopher Michael L. Friedman, who died at Stanford Hospital on March 24, 2025 after a long illness. He was 77. Friedman was the Suppes Professor of Philosophy of Science at Stanford University until his retirement in 2024.

Friedman (Ph.D. Princeton, 1973) had been a member of the Stanford Philosophy Department since 2000. He taught previously at Harvard (1972-75), the University of Pennsylvania (1975-82), the University of Illinois at Chicago (1982-94), and Indiana University (1994-2000), where he served as Chair of History and Philosophy of Science. He also held visiting positions at Harvard, UC Berkeley, Western Ontario, Konstanz, Oxford, and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. He was made Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001, and was President of the Philosophy of Science Association in 2000. He was awarded the 1987 Lakatos Prize (for Foundations of Space-Time Theories), the 1985 Matchette Prize (for the same work), and the 2015 Fernando Gil International Prize in Philosophy of Science (for Kant’s Construction of Nature).

Michael Friedman was among the most incisive philosophical intelligences of our era, and his work left an indelible mark on the philosophy of science, on Kant studies, and on philosophy more broadly. His early work on space-time theories and on unification-based theories of scientific explanation was broadly influential. Noteworthy highlights include the Lakatos prize-winning Foundations of Space-Time Theories (1983) and the widely cited paper “Explanation and Scientific Understanding” (J Phil, 1974). Over time, his interests and his contributions steadily moved in the direction of greater historical depth. “Kant’s Theory of Geometry” (Phil Rev, 1985) initiated Friedman’s field-shaping intervention into Kant scholarship, and sparked a series of penetrating studies that found an early culmination in the landmark book Kant and the Exact Sciences (1992), which decisively reoriented Kant studies by restoring the systematic Kantian account of the foundations of exact scientific knowledge to its rightful central place in our understanding of the overall Kantian philosophy.

That project kicked off three decades of probing scholarship on Kant and Newton, which included a new translation of Kant’s Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (2004) and literally dozens of influential papers. The culmination of this historical work was Friedman’s monumentally detailed, Gil-prize-winning Kant’s Construction of Nature (2013), which probes the deepest and most technical details of Kant’s reconstruction of Newtonian science.

Through this research trajectory, Friedman remade himself into a scholarly historian of philosophy and science, with sensitivity to the historical actors’ own categories and the full strangeness of the past. But he never relinquished the aim of also deploying that historical depth in the service of his own novel explanations of scientific knowledge. Indeed, his historical work fed directly into his distinctive, neo-Kantian theory of the progress of science, which combined Kuhnian insights into the nature of revolutionary scientific change with Kantian ones about how a priori constitutive principles permit the formulation of well-framed scientific questions that can stand in exact relation to evidence. These ideas received initial expression in Dynamics of Reason (2001), work which began life as the 1999 Kant Lectures at Stanford. The ideas continued to preoccupy Friedman, and a fuller and more detailed working out of the Friedman neo-Kantian conception of science was the subject of his 2012 Spinoza Lectures and his 2015 Isaiah Berlin Lectures at Oxford, as well as late papers and manuscripts on which he continued working until his health gave out.

Friedman was also one of our major scholarly interpreters of the development of analytic philosophy and its connections to philosophy of science, with particular expertise on Carnap and logical positivism (Reconsidering Logical Positivism, 1999). In addition, he was a leading voice on the emergence of the split between “analytic” and “continental” philosophy. A Parting of the Ways (2000) shed decisive light on the previously under- or even unappreciated role played in that split by differing reactions to certain difficulties that arose in the research program of orthodox neo-Kantianism generally, and within Ernst Cassirer’s work, in particular.

Friedman’s major lecture series on the material about Cassirer, Carnap, and Heidegger, like the ones on the Dynamics of Reason material, were experiences of impressive rigor, remarkable erudition, and unforgettable intellectual excitement for those who were able to attend.

Friedman’s training touched literally dozens of students and postdocs, decisively shaping the intellectual trajectories of an exceptional group of younger scholars across the history of philosophy, the history and philosophy of the exact sciences, and contemporary philosophy of science alike. Many others of us who were never his students likewise benefitted as colleagues from his penetrating pressure and critique, and from studying his careful work. Readers can gain a sense of the depth and power of these intellectual connections from the remarkable 850 pp. volume Discourse on a New Method (2010), which brought together an impressive collection of students and colleagues to engage with themes from Friedman’s work. His own response to the contributors runs to over 200 pp., and should be considered another Friedman book in its own right.

Michael was preceded in death by his beloved wife and philosophical collaborator, Graciela de Pierris (1950-2024). He is survived by his mother, his sister, her two children, and his three grand nieces, as well as a wide circle of students, colleagues, and admirers worldwide.

Michael was a philosopher’s philosopher. He was immensely serious about our subject, and he was relentlessly demanding—both in the excellence he expected from his interlocutors (and himself), and in his recognition that knowledge and philosophical understanding are a never ending journey demanding continual improvement. As Kant rightly saw, the sort of systematic knowledge to which philosophy aspires is a regulative ideal, not an achieved fact. When one talked with Michael, philosophy was never far from the surface, whatever the ostensible topic.

His death is an enormous loss for the world of philosophy.

[NAKS thanks Lanier Anderson for sharing this memorial]

NAKS Board Election Results

Thu, 08 May 2025 16:03:44 GMT

The North American Kant Society is pleased to announce the results of our recent Board elections. Congratulations to our newly elected members:

Béatrice Longuenesse (term until 2034)
Andrew Chignell (term until 2034)
Andrews Reath (term until 2028, completing Jane Kneller's term)

We thank all candidates for their willingness to serve, and we extend our gratitude to our outgoing board members for their dedicated service.

In Memoriam: Robert Paul Woff (1933-2025)

Sat, 22 Feb 2025 21:22:13 GMT

It is with sadness that we mark the passing of Robert Paul Wolff on January 6 of this year in Durham, North Carolina. Professor Wolff is best known in the Kant world for two influential books, Kant’s Theory of Mental Activity (1963) and The Autonomy of Reason (1974). He also wrote a great deal on political philosophy from a Marxist perspective, critiquing political liberalism in The Poverty of Liberalism (1968), arguing in favor of anarchism in In Defense of Anarchism (1969), taking particular aim at Rawl’s Theory of Justice in his Understanding Rawls (1977), and commenting on the works of Karl Marx in Marx: A Reconstruction and Critique of Capital (1984) and Moneybags Must Be So Lucky: On the Structure of Capitol (1988).

Professor Wolff also wrote a book arguing for the self-governance of universities and, quite presciently, against the marketization and external interference of universities in The Ideal of the University (1969). In a reflection of his deep political convictions, Professor Wolff left the University of Massachusetts-Amherst Philosophy Department for that universities Department of Afro-American Studies, and wrote about it in Autobiography of an Ex-White Man: Learning a New Master Narrative for America (2005). He also founded USSAS, University Scholarships for South African Students, in 1990, which has helped more than 1,200 disadvantaged students in South Africa receive higher education in that country.

Professor Wolff earned his BA, MA and PhD in Philosophy at Harvard and taught at Harvard from 1958-1961. He was then Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago 1961-1964, Associate Professor at Columbia University 1964-1971, Professor in the Philosophy Department at UM-Amherst 1971-1992, the Department of Afro-American Studies there in 1992-2008, and then Professor Emeritus.

Professor Wolff was politically engaged his entire adult life. In addition to his transferring to the Department of Afro-American Studies at UM- Amherst and founding USSAS, he was at the forefront arguing for nuclear disarmament in the 1950s and 60s, against the war in Viet Nam in the 1960s and 70s, supporting students who occupied Low Library at Columbia University in 1968, and arguing against apartheid in South Africa in the 1980s and 90s. His commitment to living a life that reflected his beliefs and values remains an inspiration.

More information can be found at the following links:

https://professorsemeritus.columbia.edu/people/robert-p-wolff-1933-2025

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/legacyremembers/robert-wolff-obituary?id=57223118

NAKS Board of Trustees: Changing of the Guard and Call for Nominations

Thu, 23 Jan 2025 19:01:59 GMT

Profs. Pat Kitcher and Günter Zöller have finished their 10-year terms as members of the NAKS Board of Trustees, and Prof. Jane Kneller is also stepping down from the NAKS Board of Trustees. We would like to thank all three of them for all their work supporting NAKS for this last decade - reviewing papers and books for prizes, serving on program committees, and advising the Executive Committee on all manner of issues. Without their hard work and the work of the other members of the Board of Trustees, NAKS would not be able to function. Thank you, Prof. Kitcher, Prof. Zöller, and Prof. Jane Kneller!

We are now calling for nominations - including self-nominations - to stand for election to fill these three positions on the Board of Trustees. If you would like to nominate someone, perhaps yourself, please fill out the folllowing Google form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdM418YHYotmehSBcuw5UkI9BVcYcqBAHx8S3SNkcrRYcAAow/viewform?usp=sharing

Deadline for nominations: February 15

De Gruyter Discount to NAKS Members

Tue, 07 Jan 2025 16:30:35 GMT

De Gruyter Brill and NAKS both look back with pride on many years of efforts to honor and preserve Kant’s legacy. As a scholarly publisher with a wide range of titles dealing with Kant’s work and Kantian philosophy, De Gruyter Brill is offering now a 40 percent discount on all of their publications to NAKS members. – visit the link below to explore the full catalog and access your member discount.

https://cloud.newsletter.degruyter.com/NAKS

Final days for the Cheerful Philanthropist Fund Drive!

Sat, 28 Dec 2024 17:30:21 GMT

We are getting closer to our goal of $10,000 for the Cheerful Philanthropist Fund Drive!

There are only four days left! This is not an annual fund drive (we promise!), but a special effort to supplement the generous donation of the Henry Allison family. We are at $8,200 and need just $1,800 more to reach our goal, but we have a generous matching fund to encourage and measure the commitment of our members that will double your donation, so practically speaking, we only need $900 more to reach our goal. (Of course, it would be great to exceed our goal). Any size donation will be much appreciated!

Whatever you decide to donate, whether it is $10 or $20 or $30 or $100 or . . . will be doubled. Small donations add up and make a difference, so please do your part by going to our donations page at: https://northamericankantsociety.org/donate

You have four more days – please make a donation!

Daniel Sutherland

President, North American Kant Society

p.s. NAKS is a 501(c)3, and we are more than happy to provide a tax-deduction form.

Israel is awarded the 2024 Markus Herz Prize

Mon, 16 Dec 2024 15:19:50 GMT

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!

In Memoriam: Robert Stern (1962-2024)

Fri, 13 Dec 2024 19:27:26 GMT

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.

Milioni is awarded the 2024 Wilfrid Sellars Junior Scholars Prize

Thu, 21 Nov 2024 15:16:58 GMT

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!

Fahmy and Rosefeldt are awarded the 2024 Henry Allison Senior Scholar Prize

Mon, 21 Oct 2024 14:18:44 GMT

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.

The Cheerful Philanthropist Fund

Tue, 02 Jul 2024 18:48:30 GMT

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.

Kant on Race Reading Group

Mon, 10 Jun 2024 14:26:16 GMT

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.

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.

The NAKS Marcus Herz Student Essay Prize -- Winner Announcement

Fri, 12 Jan 2024 01:40:36 GMT

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!

The NAKS Senior Scholar Prize - Winner Announcement

Sat, 16 Dec 2023 16:48:25 GMT

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!

The Wilfrid Sellars Young Scholars Essay Prize - Winners Announcement

Tue, 03 Oct 2023 15:57:14 GMT

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!

New appointments to NAKS

Mon, 02 Oct 2023 15:58:47 GMT

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.

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.

Transition and Thanks

Wed, 09 Aug 2023 11:35:45 GMT

Dear Kantians,

Greetings from Daniel Sutherland and Robert Clewis, the new President-Secretary and Vice President of NAKS.

We are excited to lead this great organization for the next three years. Andrew Chignell and Huaping Lu-Adler – with the help of Anne Margaret Baxley as Treasurer and Eli Benjamin Israel as Tech Consultant, Eric Watkins as President of the Board of Trustees and the members of the Board – have done a tremendous job the previous last three years, and we want to thank them! Not only did they guide us through the pandemic – no small accomplishment – they also significantly improved NAKS activities. They began the vNAKS series in response to Covid, which also expanded its reach. They started the NAKS Women’s Network to connect persons who self-identify as women, which included fostering mentoring relationships between senior and junior women members of NAKS. They sponsored a vNAKS session on teaching Kant on race and gathered material (posted on the NAKS website) for those who might be interested in teaching this topic themselves. To further support those who are earliest in their careers, they made NAKS membership free to students. This helped them increase the NAKS membership to 630 people; at the same time, they were able to increase the overall budget. They made the criteria for the prizes and awards and submissions more transparent and secured co-sponsorship of the Sellars Young Scholars Prize from the Kantian Review. With Eli’s help, they radically transformed the NAKS website, making it far more professional and user-friendly. All this was in addition to the usual activities of NAKS (please see the NAKS June Newsletter for a fuller account). We thank them; it will be hard to fill their shoes!

Fortunately, Andrew and Huaping have not only been helping us with the transition; they have also both agreed to continue their direct involvement with NAKS along with a few other leading Kant scholars. We are pleased to report that Andrew and Katharina Kraus have agreed to serve as NAKS Kant Tercentennial Officers for the remainder of 2023 and for 2024. They will organize the NAKS Kant Tercentennial Conference in Washington, DC, a Virtual Cosmopolitan Kant Conference in 2024 involving Kant societies from around the world, as well as a joint effort with the South Korean Kant Society in 2024, and perhaps a few other activities. We thank them both!

We are also pleased to report that Huaping and Lucy Allais have agreed to serve on a newly formed NAKS Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging Committee. We are excited to work together with them in the coming years to further improve NAKS engagement with these issues.

Robert and I have taken the reins for the NAKS Sellars Young Scholars Prize (and other duties. We also have other initiatives we are planning, so look for further announcements (such as calls for proposals for NAKS sessions at future APA meetings). In the meantime, we hope you are enjoying your summer!

With best wishes,

Daniel Sutherland, NAKS President-Secretary

Robert Clewis, NAKS Vice-President

VNAKS in honor of Henry E. Allison

Mon, 03 Jul 2023 02:46:54 GMT

Join us at 1pm ET for this brief commemoration of former Board member Henry Allison's life and work. Zoom invitation below:

Topic: Henry Allison memorial VNAKS
Time: Jul 5, 2023 01:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
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Meeting ID: 933 1955 1127
Passcode: 926190

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NAKS Election Results: New Officers Announced

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 13:25:58 GMT

We're pleased to announce the results of the recently held election.

President: Daniel Sutherland.

Vice President: Robert Clewis.

Please join us in welcoming our newly elected officers to their positions (starting July 1)!

In memoriam - Henry E. Allison (1937-2023)

Sat, 10 Jun 2023 17:54:08 GMT

It is with great sadness that NAKS announces the passing away of Henry E. Allison -- a former member of the NAKS Board of Trustees, a leading scholar of Kant and early modern philosophy, and a mentor and inspiration to many in our community.

Professor Allison was born on April 25, 1937, and died on June 5, 2023. There will be no service or funeral, in accordance with his wishes. NAKS is planning a virtual memorial event featuring his students, colleagues, and friends, and will have more information about this in the days to come.

The North American Kant Society is accepting submissions to its 13th annual Wilfrid Sellars Essay Prize competition

Fri, 26 May 2023 16:08:33 GMT

The North American Kant Society, in cooperation with Kantian Review, is accepting submissions to its 13th annual Wilfrid Sellars Junior Essay Prize competition. This prize is awarded for the best essay on any topic that demonstrates the continuing relevance of Kant’s philosophy.

Essays must be single-authored, previously unpublished (work under review or forthcoming will be considered), and cannot exceed 8,000 words in length (including notes and works cited/bibliography). Submissions not within this word limit may not be considered.

The intention behind the Sellars Prize is to help promote original Kantian or Kant-inspired philosophical work of junior scholars in the early stages of their careers. Submissions will be blind-reviewed and judged by members of a review committee drawn from the NAKS Executive Committee and Board of Trustees.

Eligibility rules:

1) The essay must be written in English, single-authored, and not published (online or in print) prior to June 16, 2023.

2) ‘Junior’ is defined here as 5 years or fewer from receipt of the Ph.D. on the prize submission deadline.

3) Authors must be members of NAKS at the time of submission and during the period when the submissions are under review.

4) Authors cannot be past recipients of the Wilfrid Sellars Essay Prize.

Entries should be submitted in Word format and state the word count at the end. They should be formatted for blind review. Submissions must be accompanied by a cover letter that specifies the author’s name, email contact information, and title of the paper, and also includes a declaration stating that eligibility rules (1)-(4) above are satisfied.

Please submit your paper here: https://forms.gle/TgDXdSDNHmuPUpvA6

The first place winner will receive a prize of $600 and the presumptive offer of publication in Kantian Review (pending editorial approval). The second place winner will receive a prize of $500.

The committee reserves the right not to award a prize, if in its judgment none is warranted.

In memoriam Prof. Dieter Henrich

Mon, 19 Dec 2022 16:56:06 GMT

In memoriam Prof. Dieter Henrich – one of the greatest contemporary scholars of Kant and German Idealism, and a beloved teacher and mentor to many on both sides of the Atlantic.

Digitales Kant-Zentrum NRW

Wed, 12 Oct 2022 16:53:03 GMT

The "Digitales Kant-Zentrum NRW" has a new website which you can find under the following link: https://kant-zentrum-nrw.de/.

2021 NAKS Senior Scholar Prize

Wed, 28 Sep 2022 18:57:39 GMT

NAKS awards a Senior Scholar prize to books and articles on an alternating yearly basis. This year the prize was for the best article published in 2020 or 2021 by a senior NAKS member (10 years or more beyond the Ph.D.). The competition was close, but in the end the winner was Patrick Kain (Purdue) for “The Development of Kant’s Conception of Divine Freedom,” an article recently published in the long-awaited volume Leibniz and Kant, ed. Brandon C. Look (Oxford 2021). Congratulations Patrick!!