Philosopher and architectural theorist Kojin Karatani wins the $1 million Berggruen Prize

Japanese philosopher and architectural theorist Kojin Karatani has been announced as the winner of the 2022 Berggruen Prize for Philosophy & Culture by the eponymous Institute for his six-decade body of work that has “provided wisdom and self-understanding in a rapidly changing world,” according to a write-up published yesterday in the New York Times.

The former Yale and Columbia professor is the author of 1995’s seminal Architecture as Metaphor: Language, Number, and Money and has written extensively about architecture’s connections to capitalist societies and the related “will to architecture” that is embedded within the Western worldview. The Times mentioned the Award’s citation of his work as a “clarion call for reciprocity and fairness had particular resonance at a time when war and economic crises were buffeting the world.”

As the Prize’s winner, Karatani will receive $1 million and reports that he will donate an unnamed portion of the prize money to “social causes.” He joins fellow philosopher Charles Taylor and late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as winners of the Prize, which was first handed out in 2016.

“I feel that the current world situation is heading toward the final stage of a crisis,” he said finally. Karatani also stated his intent to recommit to hiking and playing baseball in a league organized by other Tokyo-based writers and academics.