About the Philosophy Essay Prize
Each year the Royal Institute of Philosophy holds an essay prize competition. The winner will receive £2,000 and the runner-up will receive £500, and their essays will be published in Philosophy.
Previous winners include:
- 2024: ‘Overactive (and Underactive) Imagination’ by Emily Caddick Bourne and Craig Bourne
- 2023: ‘The Emptiness of Naturalism’ by Thomas Raleigh and ‘Scorekeeping in a Therapeutic Language Game’ by Stefan Rinner (joint prize winners)
- 2022: ‘Fitting Diminishment of Anger: A Permissivist Account’ by Renee Rushing and ‘Empathy and Psychopaths’ Inability to Grieve’ by Michael Cholbi (joint prize winners)
- 2021: Jonas Faria Costa’s ‘On Gregariousness’ (prize winner)
- 2020: Lucy McDonald’s ‘Please Like This Paper’ and Nikhil Venkatesh’s ‘Surveillance Capitalism: A Marx-inspired Account’ (joint prize winners).
About this year’s topic
The topic for this year’s prize is ‘Bodies’. We intend this topic to be understood broadly, to include related issues in any area of philosophy and from any philosophical tradition. In particular, we welcome submissions on questions about human and other animal bodies, bodily awareness, and embodiment; and also on the nature and roles of persisting inanimate bodies, at both macroscopic and microscopic levels.
How to enter
The submission deadline is, 30 November 2025 23:59 GMT. Entries will be considered by a panel of judges and the winner announced in spring 2026. All entries will be deemed submissions to Philosophy.
The prize(s) may be awarded jointly, in which case the financial component will be divided. The winning entry/entries will be published in the October 2026 issue of Philosophy.
In assessing entries priority will be given to originality, clarity of expression, breadth of interest, and potential for advancing discussion.
Please submit entries by email to assistant@royalinstitutephilosophy.org, with the subject line ‘Prize Essay’. The word limit for the Essay Competition is 8,000 words. Entries should be anonymised and suitable for blind review. (Please note that Essay Prize submissions should be sent to the email address above and should not submitted through the ScholarOne portal).
Instructions for contributors can be found here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/philosophy/information/author-instructions.