Schock and Awe
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University Professor Thomas Nagel has received the 2008 Rolf Schock Prize for logic and philosophy from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The triennial award includes 500,000 Swedish kronor (at press time, roughly $82,000).
Nagel goes further than most thinkers, says Lars Bergström, a professor at Stockholm University and chair of the selection committee: “When objective and subjective perspectives conflict, it is a common move in philosophy… to subordinate or reduce one to the other. But Nagel…argues that both…perspectives must be taken seriously.”
Of Nagel’s latest honor, Ronald Dworkin, the Frank Henry Sommer Professor of Law, adds, “The Schock Prize is the hall of fame of contemporary philosophy. The past winners are the great philosophers of the age, and Tom’s election to join the list does great honor to him—and to them.”
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