Benedict XVI at the Vatican, Feb. 27, 2013. Credit: Stephen Driscoll/CNA

Madrid, Spain, Jul 9, 2021 / 17:29 pm (CNA).

The winners of the fifth edition of the Expanded Reason Awards were announced this week, awarding three papers and one teaching program for their excellence in efforts to “broaden the horizons of rationality, based on the dialogue of sciences and disciplines with Philosophy and Theology.”

The Expanded Reason Awards are given by the Expanded Reason Institute, which was created by the University Francisco de Vitoria and the Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Vatican Foundation. 

The winners of this years’ awards in the research category were: Carter Snead, from the University of Notre Dame / de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture for the book “What It Means to be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics”; Jeffrey Bishop, from Saint Louis University /Albert Gnaegi Center for Health Care Ethics, Andrew Michel from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, and Therese Lysaught, from Loyola University Chicago for the book “Biopolitics After Neuroscience: Morality and the Economy of Virtue,”; and  Michael Dominic Taylor from the Edith Stein Philosophy Institute / International Laudato Si´Institute for the book “The Foundations of Nature: Metaphysics of Gift for an Integral Ecological Ethic.”

In the teaching category, John Slattery, Curtis L. Baxter, Katharine Hinman and Jennifer J. Wiseman from the American Association for the Advancement of Science were awarded for their “Science for Seminaries Program.”  

The winners each receive a prize of 25,000 euro ($29,700) and will present a paper at the V Expanded Reason Congress. 

An honorable mention was awarded in the research category to Christopher Kaczor from Loyola Marymount University, for the book “The Gospel of Happiness: How Secular Psychology Points to the Wisdom of Christian Practice.”

The purpose of the Expanded Reason Institute is to “celebrate and promote academic innovations in the spirit of the proposal of Benedict XVI to broaden the horizons of reason.” 

According to the institute, “expanded reason” is “that which is open to knowing with truth what surrounds it, escaping from the ideological and subjectivist restrictions which often permeate the sphere of knowledge.”

“It is a question of seeking a wide knowledge, not only regarding the quantity of knowledge, but also the plenitude and depth of what is known, giving each science the authority that corresponds to it in its scope and category, but without leaving aside the ultimate meaning that gives meaning and unity to the specificity of each one of them,” says the website.