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The George Rebec Prize

Prior to 2012, the Department of Philosophy awarded the George Rebec Prize for the best essay by a philosophy student, both undergraduate and graduate. The George Rebec Prize was given in honor of George Rebec, a member of the University of Oregon Philosophy department from 1921 until his death in 1944. Professor Rebec studied with John Dewey, receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1895, and subsequently served as President of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association, as Dean of the Graduate School at the University of Oregon, and as Prince Lucien Campbell Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oregon.

An APA Memorial Resolution from 1944 describes Professor Rebec as “a brilliant teacher, lecturer, and conversationalist. In the classroom, on the rostrum, and in private gatherings, he had the power and the will always to rouse minds and to move feelings to fruitful thought and fresh appreciations.” (read the full memorial resolution [pdf], published in “Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association of 1944–May 1, 1945,” The Philosophical Review 54, no. 4 [July 1945]).

Past Winners of the Rebec Prize

2011

Graduate: Aaron Rodriguez
“Kant and Dewey on the Ameliorative Potential of Aesthetic Experience”

Undergraduate: Daniel B. Trujillo
“Reconstructing the Problem of Normative Foundations: Redistribution, Recognition, and Communicative Action”

Undergraduate: Nathan Pai Schmitt
“A Pragmatist Reconstruction of Race-Thinking”

2010

Graduate: Thomas Nail
“Political Affinity and the Singular-Universal: From Citizenship to the Solidarity City “

Undergraduate: Miles Raymer
“Voicing the Unspeakable: Sartre and Arendt on Anti-Semitism and Genocide Prevention ”

2009

Graduate: Derek Moyer
“Searle’s Sincerity Condition and the Role of Psychological States in Speech Act Theory”

Undergraduate: Joel Michael Reynolds
“Bodying Dasein: A Phenomenological Inquiry into the Body through Heidegger’s Being and Time”

2008

Graduate: Elizabeth Caldwell
“A Purely Spoken Monologue: The Poem and Heidegger’s Way to Language”

Undergraduate: Joel Michael Reynolds
“Genētos Kai Aphthartos — Created and Eternal: Philonic Cosmology and the Logico-Metaphysics of Divine
Poēsis”

2007

Graduate: Carolyn Culbertson
“Awakening Words: On Language in the Zen Tradition”

Undergraduate: Joel Michael Reynolds
“Kierkegaard’s Transformative Ethics”

2006

Graduate: Grant Joseph Silva
“The American Identity Crisis or Two Dogmas of Racialization”

Undergraduate: Daniel Mullen Johnson
“William James and Cornelius Van Til on the One and the Many”

2005

Graduate: Adam Charles Arola
“Under the Aspect of Eternity: Freedom in Spinoza’s Ethics”

Undergraduate: Daniel Cody Occhipinti
“Humanity’s Strained Relation to the Eternal: Suffering and Happiness in Kierkegaard’s Three Modes of Life”

2004

Graduate: Jennifer Kristin McWeeny
“Love, Theory, and Politics: Critical Trinities in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Mandarins”

Undergraduate: Kieran Anthony Aarons

2003

Graduate: Kimberly Garchar
“A Loyal Utility: Rereading Mill Through Royce”

Undergraduate: David Paulsen
“The Cognitive-evaluative Theory of Emotion and Neuroscientific Contributions”

2002

Graduate: Dana Berthold
“Woman Becoming”

Undergraduate: David Paulsen
“Lewontin, Hempel, and Carnap: Differentiation in the Biological Sciences”

1994

Graduate: Kasia Marciniak
“Susan Griffin’s Eco-Feminist Project: Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her as a Critical Deconstruction of a Male Center and a Revision of Female Voices”

Undergraduate: Christopher-Scott Pickens
“The Conquest of Joy (A Philosophical Inquiry into the Nature of Ethical Perspective)”

1992

Graduate: Steven Brence
“Locke and Leibniz — The Personal Identity Debate”

Undergraduate: Charles Reis
“Time and Free Play”

1986

Graduate: Doug Birsch
“What is Knowledge”

Graduate: Jon Dorbolo
“Before Friday”

Undergraduate: Matthew Wynia
“Honors Thesis: On Paternalism in Medicine (Chapter 2: Obligations and Choice)”

1984

Graduate: John W. Powell
“Narveson’s Pacificism: A Philosophical Analysis”

Graduate: Jody B. Rickard
“Generic Motives Or That-Which-Moves-Us”

Undergraduate: David C. Wingrove
“Natural Expressions”