Grace Serfas
The Department of Philosophy is pleased to announce that Grace Serfas, pursuing a BA Major in Philosophy, is the winner of the 2024-25 Annual Prize for Best Undergraduate Paper for her essay titled "The Status of Passivity in Leibniz’s Metaphysics."
The nominating professor Dr. Nabeel Hamid writes:
Grace’s paper addresses a central question in Leibniz’s metaphysics of substance: the respective places of active and passive force in his theory of monads. Grace intervenes in an ongoing debate in the secondary literature, pitting those such as Robert Adams, who defends an attribute dualist reading of Leibnizian forces, against Daniel Garber and Julia Jorati, who reduce passive force to active force or eliminate it altogether. Grace’s paper shows a sophisticated grasp of both the subtleties of the debate and its profound implications for understanding Leibniz. She sketches an intriguing alternative to the Garber/Jorati approach, whereby passive force is conceived as a relational attribute founded on active force. The paper is excellently structured and clearly argued.
The Annual Prize for Best Undergraduate Paper is a merit based student award. It is supported by the Vladimir Zeman Award Fund, established in honour of Professor Emeritus Vladimir Zeman’s longstanding and highly regarded contributions to teaching students in the Department of Philosophy.
Congratulations, Grace!