Mercè Rius awarded the UV's Blasco Chair Essay Prize

Senior lecturer of the UAB Department of Philosophy Mercè Rius was recently awarded the Fifth Chair Josep Lluís Blasco Essay Prize of the University of Valencia for her work Matèria. El grau zero de la filosofia. The UV awards this prize every two years to unpublished texts on sociology, politics and philosophy written in either Catalan, Spanish or English.

The prize-winning essay aims to become an original contribution to philosophical discourses to the degree that modern reflection is strongly critical of traditional idealism, but nevertheless continues to be guided by this idealism when understanding and assessing the concept of “matter”, whether that be for good or for bad. From this theoretical dependency comes a false interpretation of what is known as “materialism”, both in the philosophical and sociological realms.

Mercè Rius is author of a dozen books, with one of her books translated into French: Quatre essais sur Sartre (2010). Her latest publications include El pont de la Girada. Reflexions vora mar (2010), Eugenio d’Ors, filósofo (2014) and Contra filósofos. O ¿en qué se diferencia una mujer de un gato? (2014).