A few weeks ago I reported on the Journal of the History of Philosophy book prize awarded to Lodi Nauta in its 2010 installment; and now I’ve just heard that Marije Martijn, professor of ancient philosophy at the Free University in Amsterdam, is one of the three nominated authors for the 2011 prize, for her book Proclus on Nature, published by Brill. (Full disclosure: Marije was a fellow graduate student of mine in Leiden, and more importantly (for me at least), she is the godmother of one of my daughters.) Her book has received raving reviews, as it is considered to be a truly novel contribution to scholarship in neo-platonic philosophy in general and Proclus in particular – quite an accomplishment, considering that this is her first book. (In fact, a revised and improved version of her PhD dissertation.) Moreover, her nomination, following Nauta’s award last year, is a clear sign of the good health of history of philosophy scholarship in the Netherlands, following the footsteps of some great names such as de Rijk, Nuchelmans and Aertsen.
As the list of nominated authors is not publicly announced, I unfortunately do not know who the other two books/authors are. But my understanding is that this is not meant to be ‘confidential information’ at this point, so if the other two nominees would like to come forward, please do, and I’ll make sure to update this post! In any case, the JHP book prize is establishing itself as a prestigious recognition; just as JHP, it has as its main goal to promote cutting-edge investigations in the history of philosophy, and so far it seems to be very successful at that.
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