Isabelle Ranger
The Department of Philosophy is pleased to announce that Isabelle Ranger, pursuing a BA Major in Political Science and Major in Philosophy, is the winner of the 2025-26 Annual Prize for Best Undergraduate Paper for her essay titled "Historicizing Disposition: A Non-Naturalistic Reading of Hegel on Marriage."
The nominating professor Dr. Katharina Nieswandt writes:
Ms. Ranger, in the first pages of her paper, provides a succinct, well-organized and careful exegesis of Hegel’s account of the bourgeois family in Book III of his Philosophy of Right. The second part of her paper then presses him on a point that, she shows, is assumed rather than argued for, viz. that care work must be carried out by the woman, the paid work by the man. Her writing is sharp and scholarly: Not only does Hegel’s gendered assignment of tasks seem to be an ad hoc assumption at some point in the text, but this assumption actually sits ill with much of the rest of his highly constructivist theory. Hegel, she points out, describes character and skills as socially formed, rather than biologically determined. Ms. Ranger’s paper is a valuable philosophical contribution and a truly impressive achievement at her career stage.
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, Isabelle!