Prizes of the Canadian Philosophical Association
A number of prizes are awarded by the Association:
Faculty essay prizes (annual)
Student essay prizes (annual)
The CPA Book prize (triennial)
Essay Prizes
Prizes are awarded by the Association for essays submitted for the annual conference of the CPA: two faculty essay prizes (one tenured, one non-tenured) and up to three student essay prizes. One student prize is reserved for each official language.
General eligibility conditions: Only current members of the CPA may submit papers to the annual conference. Members of the Executive, members of the Board of Directors, members of the Administrative Committee and members of the Programme Committee (including the Program Chair) are not eligible for these awards.
Faculty Essay Prizes
The CPA offers two essay prizes for faculty papers submitted to our annual conference: Non-tenured Professor, Lecturer, Sessional Essay Prize; and Tenured Professor Essay Prize.
The two faculty essay prize winners will appear on the main program.
2026
Non-tenured Professor, Lecturer, Sessional Essay Prize
Holly Longair, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, "Theorizing Rural Identity"
Tenured Professor Prize
Susan Dieleman, University of Lethbridge, "A (More) Naturalist View of Trust"
2025
Non-tenured Professor, Lecturer, Sessional Essay Prize
Tiina Rosenqvist, "Engineering the Concept of Pain for Clinical Practice"
Tenured Professor Prize
Christopher Lowry, "A General Conception of Justice"
2023
Non-tenured Professor, Lecturer, Sessional Essay Prize
Kevin Lande, "Pictorial Syntax"
Tenured Professor Prize
Matthias Fritsch, "Why Democrats Should be Committed to Future Generations"
2022
Non-tenured Professor, Lecturer, Sessional Essay Prize
Manish Oza, "Fictions in Legal Reasoning"
Tenured Professor Prize
John Mackay, "Counterparts of times"
2021
Non-tenured Professor, Lecturer, Sessional Essay Prize (tied)
Landon D. C. Elkind, “Principia's logic as conceptual engineering”
Hasko von Kriegstein, “Perfectionism, Knowledge, and Achievement”
Tenured Professor Prize
John Hacker-Wright, “Phronesis and Contemplation”
2020
Non-tenured Professor, Lecturer, Sessional Essay Prize
Devlin Russell (York University), “The Myth of a State of Intending”
Tenured Professor Essay Prizes
Christopher Byrne ( St. Francis Xavier University), “Aristotle and Scientific Experiments”
Georges Moyal (York University), « La disparition des formes aristotéliciennes - à propos d’une démarche clandestine dans les Méditations »
2019
Non-tenured Professor, Lecturer, Sessional Essay Prize
Simona Vucu (Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies, University of Toronto),"Causal Powers as Accidents: Thomas Aquinas’s view"
Tenured Professor Essay Prize
Tim Kenyon (Brock University), "Peer idealization, internal examples, and the meta-philosophy of genius in the epistemology of disagreement"
Past winners of the CPA Faculty Essay Prizes
Dialogue, the bilingual journal of the Canadian Philosophical Association, awards up to three prizes each year to papers submitted by students for the Annual Congress of the CPA. Papers submitted by students are double-blind refereed together with papers submitted by faculty and others. One prize is reserved for each official language.
2026
Guillaume Soucy (UQAM), Arrêtons de présumer : un pas vers un meilleur dialogue entre réalistes et anti-réalistes
Raphaelle Dupont (University of Toronto), Spinoza on Identity, Distinctions of Reason, and Ontological Pluralism
Nathan Malcomson (York University), Intention and Convention in Locutionary Acts
2025
Cameron Yetman, "Text as a Source of Perceptual Signal"
Alexander Drusda, "The Moral Standing of Non-Human Animals in the Early Marx"
Nicolas Lacroix, "Démocratie insurgeante et mouvements sociaux. Pour une conception active et structurelle de la conflictualité politique"
2024
Yiran Hua, Do Friendships Require the Fulfilment of Friendship Duties
Nathan Malcomson, New Solutions, Old Problems: Agreement and Novelty in Dynamic Conventions
Marie Laplante-Anfossi, Quelle place pour les connaissances des sciences humaines et sociales dans la diffusion de la recherche au grand public ?
2023
Ashton Black, "What Third-Party Forgiveness Has to Offer"
Lisa Doerksen, "Sceptical Hypotheses and Subjective Indistinguishability"
2022
Guillaume St-Laurent, "Plaidoyer pour un évidentialisme minimal"
Andrew Molas, "The Limits of Simulation for Understanding Mental Illness: Defending a Steinian Theory of Empathy"
A.G. Holdier, "On Useless Wights: An Aristotelian Critique of Fake News"
2021
Daniel Rodrigues, “Civility, Trust, and Responding to Echo Chambers”
Soohyun Ahn, “A Contextual Analysis of Values in Theory Appraisal”
Jean-François Rioux, “Le pouvoir des anonymes (Hegel, Ricœur, Havel)"
2020
Scott Metzger (McMaster University) , “Understanding the Welby-Russell Correspondence”
Jan Swiderski (Syracuse University), “Understanding and Metaphysical Coherentism”
Jean-François Rioux, "« Trois idées directrices de la philosophie de Dilthey »
2019
Marie-Kerguelen Le Blevennec (Boston University) "Les droits culturels comme droits individuels”
Robert Matyasi and Damian Melamedoff (University of Toronto) "Moore on the Unreality of Agent-Relative Value"
Past winners of the CPA Student Essay Prizes
The CPA Book Prize
In philosophy, books are one of the most important means for communicating the results of research; quite often, they represent the culmination of a significant achievement in the course of a philosophical investigation. The Canadian philosophical community is an important contributor, in both English and French, of high-quality philosophical research with an international reputation that shows the remarkable dynamism of philosophical life in Canada.
The Canadian Philosophical Association wishes to have these contributions better known and, to this end, has instituted a book prize
The Canadian Philosophical Association will award a maximum of three prizes for the best books in philosophy published by members of the Association. The amount of the prizes is determined by available resources.
Eligibility
For a book to be eligible for a prize, it must make a significant contribution to philosophical research.
Textbooks, collections of articles by several authors, conference proceedings, and translations, except if they are critical editions, are not eligible for a prize. If there is a question about the eligibility of a book, the Selection Committee will have the final say in the matter.
The book must be published in English or French between October 1, 2025 and October 1, 2028.
Digital editions are preferred, but both print and digital editions are acceptedd, but both print and digital editions are accepted .
The author of the book must be a member of the Canadian Philosophical Association for 2028 before the deadline of 15 October 2028.
Date of Submission
Electronic .pdf copies of the book must be submitted to the Executive Director of the Canadian Philosophical Association before
15 October 2028. A pdf copy of any information that can help the committee in reaching its decision, such as book reviews, critical notices, etc. should be included. The Selection Committee might require up to 6 print copies of the book if the need for this arises.
The material should be sent by email to the Executive Director of the Canadian Philosophical Association to administration@acpcpa.ca. Print submissions can be mailed to The Canadian Philosophical Association, 555 Rue Chabanel Ouest, Suite 1541, PO Box 794, Montreal QC H2N 2J2 Canada
The CPA thanks the Book Prize Committee, the referees, and everybody who submitted a nomination.
2026
Winners
Pierre-Alexandre Fradet, Le désir du reel dans la philosophie Québécoise (Editions Nota Bene) 2022
Jonathan Ichikawa, Epistemic Courage (Oxford University Press) 2024
William Paris, Race, Time and Utopia (Oxford University Press) 2025
Honorable mentions
Tarek Dika, Descartes’s Method: the formulation of the subject of science (Oxford University Press) 2023
James Young, A History of Western Philosophy of Music (Cambridge University Press) 2023
