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Amartya Sen wins German Prize

Disha UppalNovember 29, 2007

Leading Indian economist and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has been awarded Germany’s Meister Eckhart Prize. According to the organisers, Sen was given the prize for his writings on globalisation and identity.

https://p.dw.com/p/LsSK
Sen is currently the Lamont University Professor at Harvard University
Sen is currently the Lamont University Professor at Harvard UniversityImage: AP

Named after a 13th-century theologian, the Meister Eckhart Prize is one of Germany’s most important philosophy prizes. The prize is worth 50,000 euros and is awarded every two years by the Dusseldorf-based Identity Foundation. Previous winners include US-philosopher Richard Rorty and French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss.

And this time the Indian Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen has got the prize. Dr Andreas Speer, a philosophy professor and one of the jury members explains: “Professor Sen was given the Prize for his work on identity. His contribution to this subject in the international arena is vast.”

Amartya Sen won the Nobel Prize for economics in 1998. He has written extensively on welfare economics, poverty, gender inequality, globalisation and famine. Expressing his gratitude at a press conference in the western German city of Cologne, Sen said he was very honoured.

Identity and Religion

In recent years, the economist has turned his focus to the troubling questions of identity and conflict. Before the ceremony, Sen elaborated on his ideas about identity and religion in particular. He said a person possesses multiple identities, pertaining to his nationality, origin, religion, gender and profession. Reducing identity to religion could be dangerous, he said:

“Religious freedom is a very important right for people to have. But when it clouds out all other identities in spheres to which religion is not a natural approach, and then I think it can end up being a source of great tyranny. And it is the use of religion in non religious field like politics, like treatment of minorities or for that matter majority that becomes the problem then.”

Role of Freedom to alleviate Poverty

In his work, Sen also looks at globalisation and stresses that the often-criticised phenomenon can be constructive, if everybody, including the poor, has a chance to benefit.

“Poverty is about lack of choice, it is about not having freedom to lead a minimum descent life. So in order to take an adequate view of poverty, we have to see it at deprivation of basic human capability to lead a decent life and to have a life of well being and freedom and to have options and alternative. So it is very important to integrate the idea of freedom into the idea of poverty.”

Sen’s inter-disciplinary approach to questions of identity, which crosses economics, philosophy and cultural discourse, has won him a sizeable audience across the globe.

In May of this year, he was also awarded the 2007 World Economics Prize in the northern German city of Kiel.