The American Philosophical Association is pleased to announce that Professor Gwen Bradford (Rice University) has been awarded the 2017 Book Prize for her book, Achievement (Oxford University Press).
The Book Prize, in the amount of $4,000, is awarded in odd years for the best, published book that was written by a younger scholar during the previous two years.
The selection committee has also awarded honorable mention to Berislav Marušić (Brandeis University) for his book, Evidence and Agency: Norms of Belief for Promising and Resolving (Oxford University Press).
Bradford has been assistant professor of philosophy at Rice University in Houston, TX, since 2010. She works in value theory and normative ethics. In 2013–2014, she was a faculty fellow at the Murphy Institute at Tulane University. She received her Ph.D. from Yale University in 2010. Bradford also works on perfectionism, the theory of value that holds that the excellent exercise of our characteristically human capacities is intrinsically good. Bradford’s work extends to nature of intrinsic value, organic unities, well-being, moral responsibility, philosophy of sport, and issues in epistemology.
Marušić is an associate professor in the department of philosophy at Brandeis University. His main research interests lie at the intersection of epistemology, philosophy of mind, and ethics. He is also interested in philosophy of action, the nature of reasons, the philosophy of perception, existentialism, and the history of modern philosophy. Marušić received his Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley in 2007 and his A.B. from Harvard in 2001.
The chair of the selection committee said of the winning book, “The APA Book Prize is given in recognition of a philosophical achievement, and this year’s winner offers a lucid and groundbreaking account of the nature and value of what the prize recognizes. An achievement is when someone succeeds in bringing about a goal, in the face of difficulty, as a result of knowing what they’re doing. Since difficulty calls for effort and a distinctively human exercise of the will, achievement contributes to a life lived well. Gwen Bradford’s thinking in this book represents an elegant proof of concept.”
The selection committee also added, “An honorable mention goes to Berislav Marušić’s Evidence and Agency, a book which examines the nature of our commitments to courses of future action, especially to difficult projects undertaken in the face of temptation, and despite evidence that many such projects fail. This book offers a bold and insightful treatment of an intriguing cluster of problems concerning self-knowledge, rationality, trust, and the nature of agency itself.”
