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Do you not know that in a race all the
runners run, but only one gets the prize?
Run in such a way as to get the prize.
Everyone who competes in the games goes
into strict training. They do it to get a crown
that will not last, but we do it to get a crown
that will last forever. Therefore I do not run
like someone running aimlessly; I do not
fight like a boxer beating the air. No, I strike
a blow to my body and make it my slave so
that after I have preached to others, I myself
will not be disqualified for the prize. (I
Corinthians 9:24-27)
Just as the inaugural lecture and its overall genre of praise-one thinks of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Éloge de la philosophie and, in its footsteps, Pierre Hadot's Éloge de la philosophie antique, but other examples abound-the lecture format of the laudatio and oratio that frames and stages the awarding and receiving of major scholarly and literary prizes, often sponsored and under the auspices of national committees and cities, might rightfully be seen as a public spiritual exercise. It exemplifies and raises the very stakes and tasks of critical thinking and the discerning judgment with which it must come. That this judgment is, in the end, not guided by strict or demonstrable intellectual criteria and, hence, has a certain ineliminable touch of arbitrariness in everyone's eye does not diminish the passionate interest that prizes generate or the deeper and wider impact on the larger culture that they will have. As an at once deeply personal and often overtly political affair, it has all the necessary and sufficient features, if not of an excruciating academic or artistic test, then at the very least of a near-spiritual examination. Prize lectures fit the bill of this age-old and far from obsolete genre and should be seen and analyzed, indeed, tolerated and appreciated in that very light. They aim to capture the spirit and signs of the times and do so with an apodicticity that, henceforth, serves as a certain axiomatics dictating what will count and be read or seen, sold and enter the archive or canon. One should not underestimate the importance of such election of certain authors...