Philosopher Charles Taylor wins another award

Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor has won the first Berggruen Prize (which includes a cash award of 1 million USD). What is the Berggruen Prize? Here is the description from its website:

Berggruen Prize: For Ideas that Shape the World

The Berggruen Prize is awarded annually to 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.
[...]
Great transformations are reshaping almost every aspect of human existence today. The very idea of the human is challenged by new technologies that not only take on tasks once thought intrinsically human but also are increasingly able to change human bodies. Economic, social, and cultural changes are also profound. Established political systems confront pressure at both national and international levels.

In this context, people seek wisdom in both new ideas and renewal of old traditions. But which new ideas should be welcome and what old traditions remain important?

To answer these questions, philosophy is vital not just as an academic discipline but as a source of intellectual and moral orientation in the world. Philosophy adequate to this task depends on advancing knowledge of the world as it is and as it changes, on ideas that both grasp and shape it, and on critical reason and debate that continually interrogate those ideas. Such philosophy is strengthened by a capacity to learn from the different forms of scholarship and intellectual perspective embedded in different civilizations. It also draws widely on humanities and social science and engages natural science and technology.

The Berggruen Prize is awarded for philosophy in this broad sense – deep intellectual work and cultural creativity that can help individual human beings and humanity as a whole find direction and wisdom in a rapidly changing and constantly challenging world. 

Last year (as I mentioned here) Taylor won (with Jürgen Habermas) the John W. Kluge Prize.

The essay by Taylor that has had the greatest impact on my own work is “What’s Wrong with Negative Liberty?” Not only did it influence the way in which I understand liberty and its value, but I regularly teach it in my seminars on ‘political conceptions of freedom.’

What is 'practical philosophy'? What is 'social philosophy'?

I was charged by my department with the task of writing up some brief explanations of 'practical philosophy.' (This is for a new department website, which will become active sometime in the near future. I don't know why we need a new website -- the current one seems fine to me -- but the decision has been made by the powers-that-be, and so I must comply.)

By 'practical philosophy,' apparently, the department means: (a) ethics and moral philosophy; (b) social philosophy; and (c) political philosophy.

In writing up the explanations I faced an immediate problem: I don't know what 'social philosophy' is! More precisely, I don't know what makes 'social philosophy' distinct from moral and political philosophy.  So I ended up lumping (b) and (c) together.  But if any gentle readers have a clear idea of what makes 'social philosophy' distinct from political and moral philosophy, please let me know, as I'd be grateful for the clarification. (Indeed, my ignorance here is somewhat embarrassing, as I've published a couple of articles in the Journal of Social Philosophy. Those articles, though, seem pretty clearly to me to be essays in 'political philosophy.')

In any case, here are my blurbs:

Ethics and Moral Philosophy: Moral philosophers ask what we ought to do in various circumstances.  In doing so, they often find it necessary to ask more general questions about what is good and what is right, as well as investigate the nature and basis of ethical claims.   

Moral philosophers explore such questions as:
• What is good? What makes actions or people good?  What makes one’s life a good one?
• What is right? What makes actions right?
• What is the relation between rightness and goodness?
• What are the virtues?  How are the virtues related to other moral principles or values (like rightness or goodness)?
• How should I treat others?
• Is morality objective or subjective?  If morality is objective, how can we explain moral disagreement?
• Do we have moral duties to non-human animals?  Do we have moral duties to the natural world?  Do we have moral duties to future generations?  If so, what justifies such duties? 

Political and Social Philosophy: Political and social philosophy concerns the political and social relations and actions of people, including the nature of social practices and the organization of political institutions.  Political philosophers ask how political institutions ought to be organized, what justice is, and how power ought to be distributed and exercised. 

Questions that political and social philosophers explore include:
• What is the nature of political liberty?  What is the nature of equality?  What is the relation between liberty and equality?
• What is the most just political system for a society?  
• Are there principles of international justice?  If so, what are they? Are there any universal human rights?
• Do citizens have a duty to obey the law?  
• What is the nature of law?
• What should be done to address social attitudes and practices like racism, sexism, and heterosexism?

I hope those blurbs make sense! If readers see any problems with what I've written, or have any suggestions on how to improve my descriptions, feel free to let me know.