The Competition Competition

The philosophy magazine part of the portal depends on getting high-quality philosophy papers suited to a general audience for free; while there is much such material around, it is usually very difficult to get authors to make it available on the portal. Competition may provide an additional incentive and come with a deadline -- both may help. In the past, we have organised quite a lot of essay competitions, some of which were successful (in terms of the content they provided to the portal), while others were less so. Success or failure seemed to depend on two things: marketing/publicity and choice of theme. The competition competition is meant to help with them. 

Design a competition (portal page, poster, description for newsletter); if chosen, run it (put the poster on the portal, have it printed if you want, distribute it to your own contacts / mailing-lists / websites), choose a selection mechanism (your own judgment, rankings, something else...).

Three competitions are chosen; every chosen competition receives 100 CHF to be run and 150 CHF as prize money to be distributed; the one competition with the most entries (or, if two receive an equal amount, with the better ranked entries) in addition wins 200 CHF. Hence, if you are chosen among the first three but do not win, you get 100 CHF for you and 150 CHF for your authors; if in addition you win the competition competition, you get 300 CHF for you and 150 CHF for your authors.

You are free in choosing the format of your competition. This may be a theme (e.g. virtual reality), a question (e.g. 'what's yours?'), a problem (e.g. `soundtrack of your mind'), an epoch (e,g, medieval philosophy) or you may focus on some particular group (e.g. first generation philosophers, adolescents). You also decide on the ranking method: in the past we used refereeing and our rating-system, but you are free to devise some other method.

To partcipate in the competition competition, send an Email to info@philosophie.ch before September 15, 2025. The Email should include:

• your name
• a description of the competition, describing the topic, the public you have in mind, the way the winner or winners are chosen
• a poster announcing the competition, with a deadlline of December 15, 2025

We will then choose up to three competitions to run, and announce them by the beginning of October, Through October, November and up to December 15, you'll have the opportunity to publicise it, get people to submit.