Meister Eckhart Prize
The Meister-Eckhart-Preis is a German science award donated by the Identity Foundation , which has been awarded since 2001, since 2007 together with the University of Cologne .
The prize, endowed with 50,000 euros, is named after the important theologian and philosopher Meister Eckhart (~ 1260–1328) and is usually awarded every two years.
The award of the Meister Eckhart Prize is intended to honor people who “deal with the contradictions of personal, social and intercultural identity in their work and who initiate a discourse in a broader public through their knowledge and work”.
Award winners
- 2001: Richard Rorty , American philosopher (laudator: Jürgen Habermas )
- 2003: Claude Lévi-Strauss , French ethnologist and anthropologist (laudator: Werner Spies )
- 2005: Ernst Tugendhat , German philosopher (laudator: Jan Philipp Reemtsma )
- 2007: Amartya Sen , Indian economist and Nobel Prize winner (laudator: Carl Christian von Weizsäcker )
- 2009: Amitai Etzioni , American-Israeli sociologist (laudator: Axel Honneth )
- 2012: Michel Serres , French philosopher (laudator: Petra Gehring )
- 2014: Seyla Benhabib , American political philosopher (laudator: Rainer Forst )
Identity Foundation
The Identity Foundation is a foundation set up in 1998 by the then married couple Margret and Paul J. Kohtes , the founders of the public relations agency Kohtes & Klewes (now Ketchum Pleon ). The foundation's board of directors is Paul J. Kohtes (chairman) and Ulrich Freiesleben. The aim of the foundation is "to research new areas of being and to try out different approaches, such as investigating the identities of opinion-forming target groups or developing topics that determine the zeitgeist in a special way."