Top 10 Philosophers of All Time

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Top 10 Philosophers of All Time

Written by Zeromage 88 Comments
Last Updated:: May 7, 2008

When making the list for the top 10 philosophers of all time, much dismay came over us when we realized how many great philosophers were not being included. More than any of them, Wittgenstein was the most difficult to omit. Aristotle was not so much of a problem because he was not as much of a “pure” philosopher as the ones on our list. If we were to make a top 10 scientists of all time, certainly Aristotle would be in the top 3 for creating the idea of experiential science in the first place. Augustine, Spinoza, Locke, and Schopenhauer were other figures that were difficult to omit. We feel that Wittgenstein more than any of the omissions, could be placed anywhere in our top 10, for having the same groundbreaking effect on philosophy that Hume had in absolutely challenging its truth claims and limiting its job to making language and thought less muddy from the philosophers who muddied it up in the first place. We share these thoughts with you before releasing our list in hopes of circumscribing the debate and argument to substantial content rather than defamatory gestures. When creating a list for the top 10 philosophers of all time, you have to expect an inordinate amount of passion and alacrity with others addressing where they think each philosopher should be in their placements. Philosophy, as the love of wisdom, hits at the core of all human beings. It defines them as a specific self in the face of everything else. When people discuss philosophy in a serious, rigorous manner, not only is there a conversation happening between a group of interlocutors, but a feeling of their own lives being on the line in defining the best way for the human being to live and the best way for the human being to describe his world. We welcome an endless and eternal dialogue. Let the games begin.

10. Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Rousseau acted as a romantic counter-weight to the often convoluted nature of Kantian enlightenment. His political and social theories influenced not only his own generation but much of the 20th century French social theory. Here we had a man who was not afraid to be other than what it was to be a human being. Here we had a man who would even privilege the life of animals and “prior-man” in his “Discourse on Inequality” where he traces the genealogy of man solely to the nexus of private property, where man sees other men building huts from the sediments and eventually asks himself “Why can’t I have one of those?”, or “I wonder if I can use the structure that he has made.”. In his famous political treatise “The Social Contract”, Rousseau states his more enduring maxim; “Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains” referring to his own political situation and reflection on instituted law. It is there where we have one of the more strong insistences on human freedom in distinction to the competition that makes man dependent on other men. Rousseau serves as a sign of the individual in the face of a possible myth created by those wealthier that there is a certain defined social hierarchy. While government must implement its laws as long as we are human beings in need of security, we as human beings must recognize that this counter-influence to the “state of nature” may not be the whole truth to our whole happiness.

9. David Hume

David Hume is the primer empiricist and skeptical philosopher of the 18th century. A simple and often jolly man, no one would have thought that his ideas would serve as the benchmark for skeptical thought centuries after. His influence not only traversed the myriad of 20th century social Darwinists, but also the counter-influence of German enlightenment, especially Kant. What Hume advocated was nothing other than philosophical destruction. By negating the fact that we can know anything about the external world, we were led to believe that our scientific audacity was nothing other than exaggerated hubris. All we have for Hume are recognized patterns from external phenomena. That something should happen twice, there is no necessity for this in the external world. That we should form mental patterns from the external world, this is simply limited to itself, in other words, we should be quite foolish to think our mental patterns can tell us anything about the world “in itself”. All we can understand is our own subjective experience of the world. We can’t know total truths, we can state aggrandized maxims, and we can only know what we experience. With this fact in mind, Hume stands as the “Bulldozer of Metaphysics”, as the ever-consummate challenger to the value of abstract thought.

8. Friedrich Hegel

After Kant had rescued abstract philosophical thought from Hume, Hegel took it upon himself to describe the entire existence of the totality of the world in his magnum opus appropriately titled “The Phenomenology of Spirit”. The task was so big, some say it drove him to madness. Carl Jung has been quoted as saying that “If Hegel lived in the 20th century, he would have been diagnosed with a mania”. 20th century pedestrian psychological thinking aside, Hegel would prove to be the foremost thinker in romantic philosophy for his large leaps of logic that covered all that could be known in the human world. In the “Phenomenology of Spirit”, Hegel traces the human being from his purely conscious state to his self-conscious state and then his fall back into non-consciousness. This would be referred to later as the Hegelian Dialectic. For Hegel, with the recent accomplishments of enlightenment reason and science, we have become self-aware of ourselves in a grandiose historical narrative, where we realize we had a large past and possible future where we no longer recognized ourselves like we do now. We see ourselves in a time with ancestors before us. For Hegel, because we see ourselves, there is no more left for the human-being to accomplish, making the goal of human existence the realization of the self. Francis Fukuyama would echo this sentiment in his book “The End of History and The Last Man”, where he foresees democracy and world-wide communication ending history as we know it, because we have fulfilled what we have needed to fulfill. Hegel swayed by the trust in reason of the enlightenment created the greatest and most sweeping of systematic philosophies, one that wanted to exemplify everything in one text.

7. Martin Heidegger

In the early part of the 20th century 2 world wars devastated the morale and spirit of both the west and the east. During this time, there were massive vacuums for spirited leaders to find the “groundings” of all existence in hopes of gaining clarity on their situations. Heidegger was the foremost thinker of this period who insisted that we reestablish what it is we mean by “being”. We all use the word, but none of us really understand what it means. In Heidegger’s most famous work “Being and Time”, Heidegger sets out to reestablish what “Being” is concretely. Through his existential analytic, we are brought to the most insightful, basic, understandings of the Dasein (Being-There, Human Being). We are simply “Looking-around-for-things-to-do” circumspectively. We are influenced by the “They-Self”. We are always calculating for future purposes, what Heidegger denominates as “Running-ahead-of-itself” when referring to the futural Dasein. It’s in this explanation, this subtle criticism of what he found man to become, that he demands a look back to the pre-socratic thought of greek antiquity, a time where thinkers were more in awe of the world than in trying to calculate an infinite amount of sediments that ostensibly make it up. Heidegger would become a Nazi, a move that he tacitly apologized for, a move that would repudiate him of the legacy as a philosopher he deserves. The task when reading Heidegger is trying to understand how one could be such a brilliant philosopher while at the same time being a nefarious Nazi. It’s in Heidegger that we learn more than anywhere, how deep the divisions are between politics and philosophy.

6. Soren Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard is undeniably the father of existentialism. It’s Kierkegaard’s reaction to Hegelian idealism that places him as the founder of personal subjective philosophy in contra-distinction to “systematic” philosophy. A thinker who thought more with his body than mind at times, Kierkegaard was known for making decisions based on sometimes ostensibly absurd reasons. As a thinker deeply influenced by the tradition of Christianity, especially the life of Jesus Christ, Kierkegaard would go on to give deep polemics against his own native church of Denmark, in hopes of restoring the passion of the actual life of Jesus Christ. In one of his more famous books “Either/Or” Kierkegaard speaks of a “Rotation Method” which is nothing other than limiting yourself as a human being to the most focused passionate existence that often defies modernity’s discursive social logic of “Being everything to everyone” ubiquitously. In his somber “Sickness unto Death” Kierkegaard would trace a genealogy of despair from the unconscious despairer to the conscious despairer, to the despairer-no-more (the man of pure faith). In all his works, he encounters the cumbersome division between faith and reason that the modern catholic church often likes to package up in a nice present, as if they may never come into conflict, a point that Kierkegaard absolutely negates. Kierkegaard places philosophy solely into the human being who has to make these difficult choices. It’s with Kierkegaard that philosophy starts to become distinctly human.

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88 Comments

#1 Delta says:
February 9th, 2010 at 4:27 am

Geoff, if you hate the site so much, why do you even bother? Your rants aren’t even contributing. If you’re going to say how they’re wrong, at least give a fucking reason instead of just saying they suck and don’t know jack shit.

#2 Avi says:
February 9th, 2010 at 10:51 am

Husserl #2?

#3 Justin says:
February 9th, 2010 at 7:30 pm

I would put Democritus somewhere in my top ten.

#4 sadiya says:
February 9th, 2010 at 6:24 pm

what about karl marx?

#5 zack says:
February 9th, 2010 at 5:30 pm

No Aristotle? Seriously?

#6 Clifton says:
February 9th, 2010 at 6:36 am

Augustine must be on this list. First modern man? Westernizing Christianity? His political thought, ontology, psychology, understanding of “self,” development of the western perspective on time and narrative, just war, etc. WAY before his time. All but one individual on this list (plato/socrates) owe their understanding of the world to augustine.

#7 Craig says:
February 9th, 2010 at 5:42 am

This list would be somewhat credible if you removed Hegel,Heidegger,Kierkegaard,Husserl,Rousseau, but that’s half the list. Arguably most of these aren’t even philosophers. Rousseau was a writer, but I don’t know if I would consider his work “philosophy”, it’s more like a type of wisdom literature. Kierkegaard is interesting and compelling, but I wouldn’t consider his writings philosophy either, maybe religious studies. I don’t know what Heidegger would be considered. There isn’t a single coherent sentence in all of Being and Time, so I don’t think it should be considered part of an academic area. Maybe for a study on the loss of capacity for coherent communication during psychosis. Or the way you start thinking and writing when you are brainwashed by Nazis. Also, all of the great 20th century philosophers of the past 200 years have been left off the list, such as, Russell, Quine, Frege, Wittgenstein, Kripke, and Lewis.

#8 Tex says:
February 9th, 2010 at 10:23 pm

This list loses all credibility for two reasons. First of all, any list of western philosophers that does not include Aristotle displays a complete ignorance of both intellectual history as well as the development of philosophical thought. Aristotle defined the scope of philosophy for near a thousand years after his death, and many basic concepts that current philosophers use today where first discovered by “The Philosopher” (e.g. potentiality versus actuality, efficient versus final causality, substance versus accident, the notion of teleology, ethics as a distinct study, metaphysics as a distinct discipline, politics as a distinct discipline, aesthetics as a distinct discipline, logic as distinct disciple as well as most of the notions associated with logic such as premises, conclusion, deductions, etc. and ad infinitum) All the philosophers on your list (except Plato and Socrates) either were influenced by Aristotle, reacted strongly to ideas Aristotle expanded on, or employed many of the conceptual discoveries Aristotle made.

Secondly, Husserl, while a very original thinker, was eclipsed by his students (Sartre, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty), and today much of his philosophy has become antiquated; the rest of his philosophy was antiquated at the time he wrote. (Husserl’s conception of phenomenology seems naïve after the critical analysis of Marx, Nietzsche and Freud, and hopelessly down the wrong path when viewed in the light of cognitive science and neurobiology.) Husserl could arguably be in the top ten for his influence on early twentieth century though, but in no way number two.

Still, thanks for the list. The debate is always enjoyable.

#9 Stephen says:
February 9th, 2010 at 2:35 am

Having no Aristotle or Karl Marx makes this list not as good as it should be. I do agree with number one though…

#10 Fedricco Rabaya says:
February 9th, 2010 at 4:04 am

Is Napoleon Bonaparte a philosopher?

#11 Jesse says:
February 9th, 2010 at 12:19 am

Hey Zeromage, have you ever read any of James Allen’s literature. Although it seems he favored to publish small pieces from time to time, I’m sure a compilation of his work has been published. Good, good stuff.

#12 tractor says:
February 9th, 2010 at 1:12 pm

its incomplete. they are all western philosophers. what about those from the east?

#13 Emerald Magus says:
February 9th, 2010 at 6:02 pm

1. Aristotle
2. Socrates/Plato
3. Wittgenstein
4. Kierkegaard
5. Kant
6. Hume
7. Nietzsche
8. Russell
9. Sartre
10. Hegel

#14 Tex says:
February 9th, 2010 at 5:02 pm

I chose the following philosophers based on three criteria: the sheer power of their minds, the influence they had on subsequent Western philosophy, and the scope of their ideas. Some great minds such as Nietzsche, Marx, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Berkeley, Rousseau, Sartre, Quine, Frege and even Socrates were truly original thinkers and geniuses, but not necessarily “universal” philosophers. The members of this list wrote profoundly concerning a wide range of philosophical issues ( metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, logic, aesthetics, political theory, etc.).
1. Aristotle – He single-handedly invented nearly every branch of philosophy.
2. Plato – He is perhaps the most original Western mind.
3. Kant – He not only synthesized two great traditions, but he obliterated the conception of a mind independent reality. Thus, much of what came after him (at least on the Continent) directly follows from his analysis.
4. Descartes – He is the Father of modern philosophy by shifting its focus from metaphysics and theology to epistemology.
5. Hume – This Scotsman is the godfather of analytical philosophy. Twentieth century philosophy of science and empiricism are both offspring of his analysis (especially his critique of causality).
6. Aquinas –The greatest scholastic father synthesized Aristotle and the Christian faith.
7. Leibniz – After Plato, Leibniz is probably the most imaginative Western philosopher, but also a powerful mind that thought deeply about philosophical issues concerning mathematics, logic, and metaphysics. He is a precursor to Einstein (relativity of space and time), Freud (the unconscious), artificial intelligence, and possible worlds logic.
8. Hegel – He was the last great system builder with an encyclopedic breadth of knowledge that may never be surpassed. He offered a brilliant critique of empiricism one hundred years before Quine and Wittgenstein’s analysis.
9. Wittgenstein – He is the most influential philosopher in the analytical tradition though his influence has waned somewhat lately. Still, he was a true genius and offered an utterly new (and unprecedented) mode of philosophical analysis.
10. Russell – About this father of modern analytical philosophy, one could say, with some qualification, that 20th century Anglo-American philosophy is merely a footnote to the philosophical endeavors of this giant.
Honorable Mention: Augustine, Hobbes, Locke, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham and those listed on top.
Based on my three criteria (power of intellect, influence, and capacity to deal with a broad range of philosophical topics), I welcome challenge to my list. Please put your personal feelings and biases aside, and be objective.

#15 Pat says:
February 9th, 2010 at 6:12 pm

You want to eliminate biases, but your list smacks of a certain bourgeoisie bias. Aristotle’s thought is deeply enmeshed in a teleological nonsense that befuddled Western thought for nearly two thousand years (perhaps this is why you include Aquinas and Hegel). Aristotle argued for slavery, classism, racism and the repression of women. Plato was a fascist. One can clearly see your bias for obscurity by your inclusion of Hegel and Kant. How can Karl Marx not be mentioned on your list? You seem to have a “right-wing” bias? 20th century thought is unimaginable without Marx’s hammer (to borrow Nietzsche’s metaphor) that showed how previous philosophers were misguided by class interests. You include two analytical philosopher (as well as many references to analytical philosophy), but analytical philosophy uncritically accepts male-oriented rationality and has a dangerous and complete indifference to class consciousness. Similarly, your list is incredibly sexist. Here is a better list that undermines your biases toward masculine rationality and an uncritical reverence for dead white men.
1. Marx
basically demolished the Western philosophical tradition by showing it to be a product of class interests.
2. Hypatia
the first great feminist philosopher, atheist, and the second philosophical martyr
3. Rousseau
challenged the Western idea of progress and laid the groundwork for revolutionary philosophy
4. Michel Foucault
Put philosophy in touch with irrationality, sexuality, and “deviant” human impulses
5. Simon de Beauvoir
defined modern feminist thought with the notion of the “second sex”
6. Jacques Derrida
de-centered Western philosophy
7. Marquis de Sade
A revolutionary thinker and “deviant” philosopher, after him nothing is taboo in philosophy
8. Richard Rorty
destroyed foundationalism as legitimate academic pursuit and refocused philosophy as edification
9. Jacques Lacan
brought Freud’s analysis to the deconstruction of Western philosophy
10. Julia Kristeva
greatest living philosopher

Any such list will include the bias of its author, but for many reasons (already indicated); this is a superior list!

#16 Pat says:
February 9th, 2010 at 6:16 pm

You want to eliminate biases, but your list smacks of a certain bourgeoisie bias. Aristotle’s thought is deeply enmeshed in a teleological nonsense that befuddled Western thought for nearly two thousand years (perhaps this is why you include Aquinas and Hegel). Aristotle argued for slavery, classism, racism and the repression of women. Plato was a fascist. One can clearly see your bias for obscurity by your inclusion of Hegel and Kant. How can Karl Marx not be mentioned on your list? You seem to have a “right-wing” bias? 20th century thought is unimaginable without Marx’s hammer (to borrow Nietzsche’s metaphor) that showed how previous philosophers were misguided by class interests. You include two analytical philosophers (as well as many references to analytical philosophy), but analytical philosophy uncritically accepts male-oriented rationality and has a dangerous and complete indifference to class consciousness. Similarly, your list is incredibly sexist. Here is a better list that undermines your biases toward masculine rationality and an uncritical reverence for dead white men.
1. Marx
basically demolished the Western philosophical tradition by showing it to be a product of class interests.
2. Hypatia
the first great feminist philosopher, atheist, and the second philosophical martyr
3. Rousseau
challenged the Western idea of progress and laid the groundwork for revolutionary philosophy
4. Michel Foucault
Put philosophy in touch with irrationality, sexuality, and “deviant” human impulses
5. Simon de Beauvoir
defined modern feminist thought with the notion of the “second sex”
6. Jacques Derrida
de-centered Western philosophy
7. Marquis de Sade
A revolutionary thinker and “deviant” philosopher, after him nothing is taboo in philosophy
8. Richard Rorty
destroyed foundationalism as legitimate academic pursuit and refocused philosophy as edification
9. Jacques Lacan
brought Freud’s analysis to the deconstruction of Western philosophy
10. Julia Kristeva
greatest living philosopher

Any such list will include the bias of its author, but for many reasons (already indicated); this is a superior list!

#17 wtf says:
February 9th, 2010 at 12:40 am

Where is Bruce Lee or Gandhi?…

#18 sakura says:
February 9th, 2010 at 4:58 am

based on my research.I read a little info. about anaximander, it’said that he is a first philosopher known to have wrttien down his studies. is it true?

#19 Tex says:
February 9th, 2010 at 11:10 pm

Pat,

I set forth objective criteria. If you want to question my criteria, fine. However, your list seems completely arbitrary—based on your own personal preferences. You should just state that the philosophers you included reflects your own likes and dislikes. In other words, your list has as much validity as someone’s list of favorite ice cream flavors. Seriously, Julia Kristeva, while arguably an important French intellectual, is not the greatest living philosopher today (that probably goes to Saul Kripke or Jürgen Habermas) and definitely not part of the top ten of all time. Please write back when you have a rational argument to offer.

#20 Pat says:
February 9th, 2010 at 7:16 pm

Tex,

You completely miss my point. Any criteria that one selects will reflect personal bias. You seem to bias your list in favor of dead white males who only championed a narrow construction of rationality. Most of the philoshers on your list only defended/justified the status quo and the powers that be. I chose philosophers who were the most critical and revolutionary in their own times. My list also includes more diversity of thinkers than your narrow conception of philosophy.

#21 Eric says:
February 9th, 2010 at 7:25 pm

Jacques Derrida has one of the ten best philosophers of all time? I guess its the same thing as when you just see a movie and you think its the best movie you’ve ever seen. Of course that feeling only lasts until you see the next movie that you really like. In 50 years Derrida will be completely forgotten.

#22 Pat says:
February 9th, 2010 at 1:13 am

Eric,

You are actually making my point. Any top-ten list will reflect the values and interests of ones own historical, cultural, economic, and social context. Why should the present be of any less value than the past or the future? Perhaps you agree with Aristotle and Aquinas when they argued that women where metaphysically inferior to women? Derrida centers that white mythology that you obviously buy into, yet he serves my own interests as non-white male, non-heterosexual, transgender dasein.

#23 Tex says:
February 9th, 2010 at 3:21 am

Pat,

You stated, “…women where metaphysically inferior …”

I suppose grammar and spelling rules are also social constructs.

#24 Fedricco Rabaya says:
February 9th, 2010 at 5:10 am

What I like about some Europeans before is that some of them were atheists. Imagine being an atheist in a time were people believe in gods and godeses. Of course there were great Eastern philosophers but are there Eastern Philosophers before that were atheists?
I just want to know.

#25 waqar arshad chingari says:
February 9th, 2010 at 11:46 am

I can’t believe that plato is no.1
I think aristotle should be on the top.

#26 Tex says:
February 9th, 2010 at 12:03 am

Fredicco,

In a very strong sense, the Buddha was an atheist.
The “gods” play no signifcant role in his cosmology as Nirvana or “nothingness” is the ultimate reality as he conceived it.

#27 Pat says:
February 9th, 2010 at 12:05 am

Tex,

Fascist! People from Texas are ignorant bushfoons.

Pat

#28 avi says:
February 9th, 2010 at 12:27 am

Feddrico, there were technically atheists before there were people.

#29 Fedricco Rabaya says:
February 9th, 2010 at 4:30 am

I can’t understand it. I’ve heard that Buddha is an atheist but how come the Buddhist Chinese before believe in spirits or an afterlife.

#30 Michael Johnson says:
February 9th, 2010 at 9:09 pm

I was with you for 10 through 6 (except for Heidegger), but when I got to the top 5, I realized you really have no idea what you’re talking about.

Ranking Kant behind Nietzsche and Husserl isn’t just wrong, it displays an appalling lack of understanding.

I will grant you the importance of Descartes, and Plato of course, but Kant is the most important modern philosopher, and should be no lower than second on your list.

Nietzsche is barely top ten, if that, and Husserl should not even be mentioned.

#31 8BitBurst says:
February 9th, 2010 at 8:13 am

No Aristotle?

#32 avi says:
February 9th, 2010 at 7:42 pm

BTW, Fedricco, I don’t have to imagine being an atheist in a time when people believe in gods… I AM one.

#33 Petros says:
February 9th, 2010 at 10:47 pm

My favorite all time philosophers: 5)Heidegger. 4) Hegel. 3) Kant. 2) Aristotle. 1) Plato.

My favorite ancient Greek: 5) Pythagoras. 4) Permenides. 3) Proclus. 2) Aristotle. 1) Plato

My favorite modern philosophers: 5) Descartes. 4) Spinoza. 3) Hume. 2) Hegel. 1) Kant.

#34 Rankin says:
February 9th, 2010 at 6:38 am

This list was made in terms of each individual’s effect upon history, particularly current history; the question which should be asked is “Which philsophers are most influential today?” The top four produced a body of thought which is inextricably linked from the modern mindset and culture. 5-10 were much more difficult to choose.

1) Plato

2) Aristotle

3) Kant

4) Hegel

5) Neitzsche

6) Rousseau

7) Descartes

St. Augustine

9) Marx

10) Kierkegaard

#35 Rankin says:
February 9th, 2010 at 6:39 am

This list was made in terms of each individual’s effect upon history, particularly current history; the question which should be asked is “Which philsophers are most influential today?” The top four produced a body of thought which is inextricably linked from the modern mindset and culture. 5-10 were much more difficult to choose.

1. Plato

2. Aristotle

3. Kant

4. Hegel

5. Neitzsche

6. Rousseau

7. Descartes

8. St. Augustine

9. Marx

10. Kierkegaard

#36 crude philosopher says:
February 9th, 2010 at 9:28 pm

i think the list should be like this,nobody knows better than me, so it is the final and everybody should agree,lol—

1. Socrates|Plato

2. Immanuel kant

3. Aristotle

4. Wittgenstein

5. Hegel

6. George Berkeley

7. Rene descarte

8. Leibniz

9. David Hume

10. Bradley

# Pls note that this list just considered the western philosophy.Muslims,Indians and Chinese philosophers are not considered in order to avoid complication. Oh another think i forgot to say the best Philosopher in the history of Human thinking is yet to publish his book but working hard for his future ground breaking Book about Metaphysics. And the name of that philosopher is — Crude Philosopher, and its me, so all stand up and give me a salute bcos u have just heard from the greatest possible philosopher of the history of mankind,lol.

#37 Spain says:
February 9th, 2010 at 8:19 pm

No Averroes or Maimonides?¿

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Top 10 Philosophers of All Time

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