The latest honor bestowed on Thomas Nagel (NYU) is the Balzan Prize, which I had not heard of previously (there are more details here), but which has been awarded since 1961: past winners include Quentin Skinner, Eric Hobsbawm, Paul Ricoeur, John Maynard Smith, Emmanuel Levinas, amd Jean Piaget, among many others. Anglophone philosophers have not been recognized previously, it appears. The statement recognizing Nagel's work is here. The prize amount is $885,000, half of which must be devoted to research purposes.
UPDATE: As one reader points out, the prize would have been awarded prior to Professor Nagel having "jumped the shark"! The surprising thing about that article is that it is essentially devoid of citations and scholarly apparatus, which allows Nagel essentially to make up the positions of everyone: the proponents of Intelligent Design, the opponents, the Court's opinion in Dover and on and on. Very strange.
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