Category: Award

2025 Berggruen Prize Essay Competition

Consciousness

Now Accepting Submissions

The Berggruen Institute invites you to participate in the 2025 Berggruen Prize Essay Competition — a unique opportunity to contribute to global philosophical and cultural discourse while competing for a $50,000 USD prize.

This annual competition seeks to foster groundbreaking ideas and embrace diverse perspectives across cultures, disciplines, and geographies. Inspired by the pivotal role essays have played in shaping intellectual thought—such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s seminal win at the Académie de Dijon in 1750—this competition aspires to serve as a modern-day platform for intellectual innovation. 

Competition Highlights

• Prize: $50,000 USD
• Languages: Open to essays in English and Chinese.
• 2025 Theme: Consciousness. The nature of consciousness has enthralled philosophers for millennia. We seek original essays that offer fresh perspectives from all traditions and disciplines.
• Deadline: July 31, 2025

By entering the Berggruen Prize Essay Competition, you are not only competing for a prestigious award but also contributing to a global conversation on the fundamental philosophical questions that shape our contemporary life and future. Winners will be celebrated at an award ceremony. Winning essays will be published via our award-winning publication channels, offering insightful perspectives from both East and West to a worldwide audience.

How to Participate:
Read the submission guidelines, eligibility criteria and submit your essay here.

Additionally, we would be grateful if you could help us spread the word. Share this email and our social media posts with friends, colleagues, and anyone in your network who might be interested in contributing their ideas to this vibrant dialogue.

X | Instagram | LinkedIn | Facebook

Together, let’s build a community of thinkers and innovators. Your contribution is essential to enriching this exciting conversation.

Sincerely,
Berggruen Institute

The Raimon Panikkar Prize is an international award instituted by Fundació Vivarium Raimon Panikkar in the centenary of his birth, with the aim of spreading his thought and promoting its study.

Fundació Vivarium Raimon Panikkar, is a non-profit organization founded by Raimon Panikkar himself for promoting interreligious studies. It is the legacy of the Foundation to pursue the aims of its Founder by completing the publication of his writings and fostering the continuation of his studies.

This prize will be awarded to young authors of an original, unpublished study on the thought and works of Raimon Panikkar, written in one of the languages in which Raimon Panikkar’s collective works (Opera Omnia) are being published, or German (although the Opera Omnia is not being published in this language yet). There will be one prize for each of the languages. Each prize is sponsored by Fundació Vivarium Raimon Panikkar in partnership with the publishing house of the
relative Opera Omnia edition.

Each prize will consist in:
• the publication of the study
• the gift of one copy of the complete set (18 volumes) of Raimon Panikkar’s Opera Omnia
• a cash prize of 3,000 euros.

Please see the attached PDFs for more details:

Panikkar Poster 2022

Call for Applications