CRISPP Essay Prize
The CRISPP Essay Prize is awarded every year for the best article to appear in the previous year’s volume. Special issues, review articles and contributions to symposiums or debate pieces are not considered. We only look at articles that have been submitted as stand alone pieces, and have gone through the normal review process. The committee standardly consists of one of the editors and two members of the editorial board. The winner receives a cash prize, and their article is made free access for a year.
The winner of the 2023 CRISPP Essay Prize, for the best essay in a normal issue published in Vol 25 (2022), goes to Benjamin L. McKean (2022) 'Kant, coercion, and the legitimation of inequality' Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 25:4, 528-550, DOI: 10.1080/13698230.2019.1658481
The Prize Jury consisted of Elizabeth Cohen and Chandran Kukathas.
The jury wrote:
McKean's work makes an important contribution to our understanding of inequality. By challenging the claim that Kant's view of inequality categorizes inequality as an injustice, McKean encourages skepticism about whether political freedom's reliance on formal equality leaves intact inequalities in influence. He argues that Kant's doctrine of right therefore lacks unequivocal support for the social welfare state. On McKean's account, neoliberalism is a source of pernicious inequality that can be justified with reference to Kant's view of political freedom and external freedom. To unequivocally classify these inequalities as unjust requires a conception of political freedom that insists on more than preventing coercion and addresses itself to the effect of inequalities for political freedom.
The jury particularly appreciates that McKean's interpretations are marshaled toward addressing a pervasive dilemma that touches nearly all of us: widening economic inequality that is legitimated by some of the very reasoning that philosophers turn to when grounding arguments about social justice.
They also singled out for a special mention Baldwin Wong (2022) ‘Accessibility, pluralism, and honesty: a defense of the accessibility requirement in public justification’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 25:2, 235-259, DOI: 10.1080/13698230.2019.1658480
Read the award winning paper below.