Candace A. Vogler

The prize citation for Dr. Vogler’s 2023 Barry Prize reads:

With plainspoken candor and penetrating insight, Candace Vogler has dared her discipline to ask what is at once the simplest and the most profound of all questions: What is good? Her pathbreaking work has placed this question back at the center of philosophy, reconnecting the field to its original mission and positioning it to make its unique contribution to the pursuit of human flourishing across all areas of life. The Academy honors Dr. Vogler’s distinguished contributions to humanity’s oldest and most fundamental quest – to identify and pursue what is truly good.

Candace Vogler grew up in the Pacific Northwest, attended public school, and did her undergraduate work at Mills College. She did doctoral work in philosophy and in cultural studies at the University of Pittsburgh, spending a year reading formal economics along the way. She works in many different areas – in practical philosophy, philosophy and literature, film studies, psychoanalysis and intellectual history – with special focus on how we live well with one another and how we inhabit difficult ultimate questions. She has been in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago since 1994.

November 2023