This is what happens when you let the idle rich decide who and what is worth honoring. The Berggruen Prize, as originally announced, was supposed to recognize,
"a thinker whose ideas are of broad significance for shaping human self-understanding and the advancement of humanity. It seeks to recognize and encourage philosophy in the ancient sense of the love of wisdom and in the 18th Century sense of intellectual inquiry into all the basic questions of human knowledge. It rewards thinkers whose ideas are intellectually profound but also able to inform practical and public life across the range of world civilizations." The funder, Nicolas Berggruen, is quoted as observing that, "Ideas have had a greater impact on human history than anything else. We still live in a world that was shaped by Socrates, Confucius, Jesus Christ, Mohamed and Karl Marx, to name a few."
It turns out there were only three living philosophers worthy of this honor, so now it has gone to a judge, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court. As a Justice, Ginsburg's tenure is notable only because she is a moderate on a court filled with reactionaries. Her most significant contributions to the law were in the 1970s, when she pioneered arguments, in both the law reviews and the courts, for ending gender-based discrimination. This was important work, but a far, far cry from the original declared purpose of the prize. (Catharine MacKinnon would have been a more plausible choice, since she has both a more substantial theoretical corpus, and substantial practical impact as well.)
So a prize that began as a way of recognizing living philosophers has now become a confirmation of their irrelevance. I'm surprised that professional philosophers continue to be involved with this charade, but as we saw with Jeffrey Epstein, academics, I guess, like to be around money.
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