Kate Manne of Cornell University and David Livingstone Smith of University of New England have won the 2024 Lebowitz Prize for Philosophical Achievement and Contribution. Given annually by Phi Beta Kappa in conjunction with the American Philosophical Association, the prize awards each winner an honorarium of $25,000.
The Lebowitz Prize was established in 2012 by a generous bequest from Eve Lewellis Lebowitz in honor of her late husband, Martin R. Lebowitz, a distinguished philosophical critic. Lebowitz Prize winners must be two philosophers who hold contrasting views on a chosen topic of current interest in philosophy.
KATE MANNE is an associate professor of philosophy at Cornell University, where she’s been teaching since 2013. Before that, she was a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. Manne did her graduate work in philosophy at MIT and works in moral, social, and feminist philosophy. She is the author of three books, Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women, and Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia, which came out earlier this year. She writes a newsletter, More to Hate, canvassing misogyny, fatphobia, their intersection, and more. Her academic papers take up questions in metaethics, moral psychology, and political philosophy.
DAVID LIVINGSTONE SMITH is Professor of Philosophy at the University of New England. He has published ten books, including Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave and Exterminate Others, which won the 2012 Anisfield-Wolf award for nonfiction. His most recent book, Making Monsters: The Uncanny Power of Dehumanization, was a finalist for the 2023 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Interdisciplinary Philosophy and was awarded the 2023 Joseph B. Gittler Award from the American Philosophical Association. Smith is an interdisciplinary scholar whose publications are cited not only by other philosophers but also by historians, legal scholars, psychologists, and anthropologists. He has been featured in several television documentaries, is often interviewed and cited in the national and international media, and was a guest at the 2012 G20 economic summit, where he spoke about dehumanization and mass violence.
Manne and Smith’s topic for the 2024 Lebowitz Prize is “Dehumanization and its Discontents.” They will present their views and engage in a dialogue at the annual Lebowitz symposium, held during an APA divisional meeting, and in an episode of the podcast Key Conversations with Phi Beta Kappa.