Markus Herz Student Essay Prize
Named in honor of one of Kant's most beloved and well-known students, the Markus Herz prize is awarded to the best graduate student paper every year. The prize paper is selected by the NAKS Executive Committee and, if the Executive Committee wishes, members of the Board of Trustees. The finalist pool is made up of papers that were awarded travel stipends and presented at the regional meetings that year, as well as the Biennial NAKS Conference those years it is held. The Herz prize is worth another $200, and winners are invited to present their papers in the virtual VNAKS series.
The Markus Herz Prize started in the Fall of 2000. At that point, only the Midwest Study Group existed. Since then, NAKS experienced continuous growth: the Pacific Study Group was formed in 2002, the Eastern Study Group in 2004, and our newest addition, the Southern Study Group, in 2009.
Prize Winners
2023 Martina Favaretto, "Kantian Apathy, Revisited"
2022 No Award (Due to lingering effects of the Covid epidemic on the organization)
2021 Daniel Ranweiler, "External Action"
2020 Claudi Brink, “Spontaneity and Teleology in Kant’s Theory of the Understanding”
2019 Rosalind Chaplin, “Inderminacy and Potential Infinity in Kant's Second Antinomy"
2018 Olga Lenczewska, “From Rationality to Morality: The Collective Development of Practical Reason in Kant’s Anthropological Writings”
2017 Jessica Tizzard, “Practical Reason and the Call to Faith”
2016 Aaron Wells, “Mechanical Inexplicability and Intensive Magnitudes"
2015 Naomi Fisher, “Kant, Schelling, and the Philosophy of Nature"
2014 Bennet McNulty, “Rehabilitating the regulative Use of Reason: Kant on Empirical and Chemical Laws."
2013 Daniel Smyth, “Infinity and Giveness: Kant on the Intuitive Roots of Spatial Representation"
2012 Mohammad Reza Karim Hadisi, “Kant's Transcendental Arguments, Hegel's Dialectical Method and Pyrrhonism”
2011 Samuel Kahn, “Conscience"
2010 Ryan Kemp, “The Contingency of Evil"
2009 James Hebbeler, “Kant on Necessity"
2008 James Messina, “Spatial Relations, Different Places, and the Possibility of Co-Existence: The First Metaphysical Exposition Revisited"
2007 Clinton Tolley, “Umfang' as a Technical Term in Kant's Logic"
2006 Joshua Brown, “Spatial Infinity and the Intuition of Space"
2005 Helga Varden, “Kant and Dependency-Relations"
2004 Bradford Cokelet, “Individual and Social Dimensions of the Struggle Against Evil in Kant’s Religion"
2002-2003 Desmond Hogan, “Intelligibility and Ideality: Crusius, Kant, and a 'Neglected Alternative,
2001 Joseph Cannon, “Intention and Fine Art in the Critique of Judgment”
2000 Ernesto Garcia, “The Historical Development of Virtue in Kant’s Ethical Theory”