Corpus postgraduate student Eric Sheng has been awarded the 2022 Gilbert Ryle Prize for outstanding achievement in the BPhil Examination. The Prize was inaugurated in 2008 and is annually awarded to the student with the best overall performance in the BPhil in Philosophy.
Gilbert Ryle was a dominant figure of Oxford Philosophy in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy from 1945 to 1967, Ryle was a prolific supervisor of graduate students, and founded, with J. D. Mabbott, the BPhil in Philosophy in 1946. The BPhil was important in establishing Oxford as a global centre of postgraduate education in Philosophy
Eric says: ‘I greatly enjoyed my time at Corpus, a college that remains a community of scholars. I have valued the social life of the MCR, and appreciated Corpus Library’s remarkable collection of philosophical texts, probably the largest of any college. My philosophical interests include the history of philosophy (mainly moral philosophy and 17th- and 18th-century European philosophy), moral, social and political philosophy, and metaphysics. My BPhil thesis benefited from the supervision of Professor Michael Martin, Wilde Professor of Mental Philosophy. Starting in Michaelmas Term, I shall read for the DPhil in Philosophy as a member of Merton.”