First round 2020/2021

Record participation

The first round of the 2020/2021 Swiss Philosophy Olympiad was concluded on the 5th of December, when our jury got together online to determine the most convincingly argued, original and relevant essays. A special thanks to the alumni who helped grade the essays: Svenja Hammer, gold medalist of 2018, Oona Wälti, gold medalist of 2019 and Manuel Beckert, Severin Rohrer and Nadine Jabornegg, gold and bronze medalists of 2020.

We consider this first round a great success: With 146 submissions, we cracked last year's record of 122. We were also able to significantly improve our Romandie participation. Merci à tous pour participer aux Olympiades de philosophie!

Four topics

Number 4 and 2 proved particularly popular, prompting many participants to reflect about current events.

On to the semi-finals

The authors of the 45 best essays have been invited to the semi-finals at Collège de Gambach in Fribourg, Kantonsschule Zürcher Oberland in Wetzikon and Gymnasium Immensee. The semi-finals will be held on the 14th of January. While we are still hoping to meet in person, we are aware that new measures to contain the spread of Covid-19 on either a federal or a canton level may very well interfere with these plans. Therefore, we also have a plan B in place for a virtual alternative and we will communicate a decision to our semi-finalists in the first week of January.

The following participants qualified for the semi-finals (in alphabetic order):