• Top 10 Philosophers of All Time

  

  Written by Zeromage 137 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.

  5. Immanuel Kant

  Kant’s importance is unprecedented. As Kant would claim, “Hume woke me up from my dogmatic slumber”. It was with this claim that Kant would go on to create the most celebrated and accepted idealist (privileging the mind) philosophy to ever hold sway in the western world. His influence over other philosophers is great to say the least. What Kant saw in the popularity of Hume’s empiricism was nothing other than the diminution of the human mind in being able to know its universe. It was Kant’s turn back to cartesianism that made him state “knowledge comes from experience, but doesn’t arise out of experience” signifying the mind as a co-accomplishing force with the external world that is able to give us the knowledge we have. It is with Kant, that epistemology (theory of knowledge) becomes a formal discipline. By re-appropriating the status of the mind in total nature, Kant gave relief to a plethora of philosophers who wanted to champion the romantic self in being able to create large systematic totalities (Hegel, Fitche, Schelling). In his most famous work, the “Critique of Pure Reason” Kant analyzed all the ways in which the mind worked demarcating a “judging faculty” here and discovering a “transcendental intuition” there. His hyper-analysis of the subjective intake of experience would lead to an increase want for the understanding the mind. His influence paved the way for Psychology, Cognitive Science, and Phenomenology. Kant is the philosopher the west has always been proud of.

  4. Rene Descartes

  Descartes is the father of modern philosophy. Why is he the father of modern philosophy? It is with two publications of Descartes that philosophy takes its “subjective” turn into the absolute experience of the self. It is in his “Discourse on Method” and “Mediations” that philosophy recognizes itself first and foremost as a personal experience of the world. Prior to Descartes, philosophy was guided by the metaphysics of the schoolmen in the middle-ages who were always invested in neo-aristotelian and platonic interpretations of the world. “Change”, “The Infinite”, “Movement” as objects of inquiry into first principles was substituted for the cogito sum as the first principle; “I think therefore I am” with Descartes. Before we can ask questions on the world and how it moves, we first must ask questions on how I can interpret the world in such a way in the first place. In his mediations, we gain a systematic account of a man who was applying his deduction to everything; even God, which he knew would procure himself an endless amount of punishment. It’s with this in mind, that we learn from his “Discourse on Method” that he would wait until he was dead for his work to be published. Totally devoid of any want for fame while he was alive, totally devoid of any want of acceptance of others, totally in want for the basic truth of reality as he was only able to see as one human being, this is what gives Descartes the worthy claim of “the father of modern philosophy”. The sheer amount of philosophers that were influenced by him (E.G. Kant, Husserl, Hegel) would prove to lengthen his work and name for a long time to come.

  3. Fredrick Nietzsche

  As we live in the new 21st century, there is no doubt that Nietzsche is the most influential philosopher of our time. As a late 19th century German, he predicted the social structure of the 20th century. Not only have philosophers been influenced by Nietzsche, but so have artists, musicians, social theorists, and even theologians! In his famous remark in the “The Gay Science”, Nietzsche states “God is Dead”, but what is often forgotten in the quote is “but you and I killed him”. It is here that Nietzsche introduces us into a godless world that is not bleak and lugubrious, but colorful and vivacious. It is here that Nietzsche becomes the consummate existentialist in placing total responsibility in the hands of the human being, so much responsibility that it was necessary to transcend the “mawkish” desires and emotions of the human being as we know it, and to ascend to the “Ubermensch”, the superman, who acted out of much more pure instincts that those of the self-satisfied bourgeois human being that we have come to know. Nietzsche saw that the mass-industrialization of the late 19th century would make men weak and “herd-animals” looking for the most easy, voluptuous existence possible. It’s with this in mind that Nietzsche would try to cure civilization by over-turning Christianity which he denominated as “Platonism for the masses”. Only when we could overturn our insistence on being sinful and guilty, could we return to a much more magnanimous Greek ethic of strength and vigor. When reading Nietzsche, you feel alive and not guilty about something that may have gone wrong. It is with this in mind that Nietzsche always exercises a profound influence in those younger in age.

  2. Edmund Husserl

  Nietzsche thought that man must progress forward to become better than what he is. Heidegger thought that man must dive backwards into his roots to become better than what he is. Husserl though, completely ignored the question of “How is it I can become better”, creating an absolute black hole for all proprietary existential thought. By ignoring the existential significance of philosophical themes, Husserl proved to be the true “ubermensch”. Husserl advocated a giant leap “into the things themselves”, echoing the complications of Kantian idealism, but this time, they would be figured out. Only by the most intensive radical Cartesian reduction can we hope to understand anything about the absolute grounds of experience. No philosopher before or after has ever worked on the most grounding of grounds than Edmund Husserl. As a thinker of the early 20th century, Husserl would go on to create the discipline of phenomenology, a radical new account of the workings of inner-consciousness, and how it interacted with the outside “Life-World”. It is here that we gain the fundamental insight of phenomenology, that there is a logic to the purely perceptive world, before it enters into active consciousness that is computing its raw hyletic data by “formal logic”. Husserl through his tireless reductions away from the always-relativistic motivations of existential philosophies saw philosophy as at one time having a much nobler task than what it had become in the earlier part of the 20th century. His insistence on returning philosophy to a “rigorous” discipline of pure forms and explication of pure passive phenomena, places him in the absolute outer-most reaches that philosophy has ever been. We at old-wizard believe that Husserl will be studied 1,000 years from now as much as Plato is studied now.

  1. Socrates / Plato

  While Plato and Socrates seem like the obvious choice for a #1 on a top 10 philosophers list, it doesn’t go without justification. The texts of Plato have shaped the entire roots and history of western civilization. There have never been ideas that have grabbed hold of the western world as severely as Plato’s dialogues, to the point that most people don’t even realize they are acting platonically, or at least posit platonic ideals. Of course, the catholic churches appropriating of Plato into their own thought helped established his reign as the most influential philosopher of all time, but the influence that holds sway is not because they are simply “widely accepted”.

  Within the platonic dialogues, we find every philosophical concern addressed from the more existential themes of love (Symposium) to the wildly abstract metaphysical concepts of number (Parmenides), all in the graceful, easy-to-read, format of the platonic dialogue. How easy it was to understand philosophy when you became a spectator in the interlocution itself, sometimes even participating when you put down the book and started thinking for yourself.

  It was with the idea of the Platonic “Forms” that Plato defined the west for the next 2,000 years to come. “The Forms” are never-changing ideas that ground all of our existence that are non-material and all pervading in our thoughts and actions. It was with Plato that speculative thought lost its relativistic subtleties from the pre-socratic thinkers (Heraclitus, Democritus) for an all-embracing philosophy of true forms and right conduct. Never has there been more germane ideas on ethical and civil conduct than Plato’s “Republic”. Never do we witness a more salubrious restrain than when Socrates is debating Thrasymachus of the fine points of principalities.

  The Socratic restrain, even in the face of an unjust death created the platonic ideal that all people of the west aspire to; to not be in fear in the face of death, to dialogue with others when something needs to be solved, and to exercise restraint and moderation when the body is in want of excesses. While it seems as if the immediate western world has forgotten these values, this would not be an accurate claim. That the immediate western world would agree with the platonic mentality of the good life is true, however, this does not mean that they necessarily follow them, often feeling guilty about their actions. It’s with this in mind that Platonism stands as the signature mark of western values of decency, even if we have increasingly fallen short of the ideals that have come before us. We are aware of ourselves as always falling short of something better for ourselves. That which is better for is nothing other than what the Platonic dialogues have established perennially for the Western World.

137 Comments

1. #1 YUDO says:
   March 13th, 2010 at 10:21 pm

   Ouf. Husserl #2
2. #2 gnome says:
   March 13th, 2010 at 10:33 pm

   Ok, a nice attempt, but I’m afraid you just can’t rank philosophy. It’s too naive. Sorry. And you can’t like both Plato and Nietzsche. Stick to games I’d suggest… Oh, and cheers!
3. #3 YUDO says:
   March 13th, 2010 at 11:36 pm

   You can’t like both Plato and Nietzsche? How retarded are you? How shallow is your philosophical background is the more pressing question.
4. #4 gnome says:
   March 13th, 2010 at 10:10 am

   YUDO, besides calling someone retarded, you’re arguments aren’t that convincing. Oh, and my philosophical background -the shallow one, you know- is happily aware of Nietzsche absolute disdain for Plato and the fact that idealism and materialism don’t go together. Now, look these terms up in Wikipedia and you’ll get closer to getting it. Bah!
5. #5 gnome says:
   March 13th, 2010 at 10:11 am

   And yes, I didn’t mean “you’re”. Meant “your”. Heh.
6. #6 TheMountain says:
   March 13th, 2010 at 3:21 pm

   A closer look at Nietzsche sees a profound respect for how strong of an influence Plato was for the Western World. Besides, It is possible to appreciate both thinkers even if the later had publicly repudiated Platonism turned Christianity. This you wont find though in a “Nietzsche in 90 minutes” though. Your not interested in understanding any of this on a deeper level though. You take anecdotes you overheard about philosophers disliking each other and make them into the philosophers whole lives. Your thinking is small. Don’t wear this shit on your sleeve and you will mentally grow up.
7. #7 gnome says:
   March 13th, 2010 at 3:41 pm

   It’s frankly ridiculous how you try to argue without actually using arguments. It seems that name-calling is much easier right? Whatever… As I have both read and professionally translated & edited Nietzsche I just won’t bother anymore… Let me just help you with something… saying that something has an influence on something else is not a sign of respect. “Hitler for example did influence modern history quite a bit”. Not disagreeing with this doesn’t make one a Nazi. GEDDIT? Couldn’t care less really…
8. #8 gnome says:
   March 13th, 2010 at 3:43 pm

   Oh, and Mountain… your deep philosophical thinking has already been shared (hopefully to everyone’s amusement).. Lovely stuff. Better than YUDO’s in a way. Let m guess… both Americans, eh?
9. #9 TheMountain says:
   March 13th, 2010 at 3:47 pm

   Yeah, you really sound like you translate Nietzsche professionally.
10. #10 gnome says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 3:56 pm

    How do people who translate (not in English, mind) translate sound like then, oh you great monumental lighthouse of human thought?
11. #11 the REAL zeromage says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 8:05 pm

    gnome is smelly
12. #12 Tristan says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 9:22 pm

    This Gnome person sure is ornery for someone apparently well-versed in philosophical thought.

    Personally, I’ve only read about six of these thinkers, but I think it’s totally possible to rank philosophers. In order to make any such list, you need to outline your criteria, and I think the following passage outlines the criteria for being a great philosopher:

    “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.”

    Thus, moreso than any others, the people on this list epitomize this spirit. And from here, you can include Plato and Nietzsche on the same list, even they may disagree with each other.
13. #13 gnome says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 5:02 pm

    Ornery? I didn’t start by calling anyone an uneducated retard, did I?
14. #14 gnome says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 7:01 pm

    Oh, and something else. I have to disagree with your proposed criteria for ranking philosophers, even though they do seem intriguing, for the following reasons:

    a) they still aren’t (isn’t, really) detailed enough to actually allow ranking. They can’t be applied in a way that would -say- rank Plato higher or lower than Epicurus.

    b) I feel they are already implying an acknowledgment of an already agreed upon set of rules for thinking and living. Otherwise, anyone wishing to teach people a way of living is a great philosopher.

    c) Nietzsche, obviously writing in a more literary way than any other philosopher and definitely ot going for the “serious” approach, wouldn’t make it in such a list.

    d) This is a gaming blog, so we’re missing the point

    P.S. A discussion on ranking would be interesting, though rather meaningless anyway. Still, I think we could for example measure influence, but this alone doesn’t necessarily make for great philosophy.
15. #15 Tristan says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 8:29 pm

    Regarding point (a), I didn’t write the list. I was just sharing my interpretation of what I think the list used in its ranking.

    I think a lot of people will fall into debates over subjectivity when it comes to ranking things, and they will extrapolate from the fact that opinions/experiences differ to the conclusion that ranking/listing is impossible/futile. This line of thought never sat well with me; indeed, I think it throws the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. A fews ago this same line of reasoning came up on a podcast I listen to about critical thinking and reasoning, and the show’s host said the way to avoid this trap is to set up (agreed) criteria to make the list-making project more objective.

    That idea has stuck with me ever since, as I now find myself spelling what criteria I think matter when I evaluate and rank “matters of taste,” and I find myself not resorting to the “subjectivity-sucks” tactic when I see a list that (even if minimally) outlines it’s criteria.

    Now, this rant is not a response to anything Gnome is saying, but just a larger comment on people who disapprovingly comment on this site’s lists and use the word “subjective” in their comments. But I think after reframing the discourse in these terms, we can try to have a better set of comments in response to this article. Indeed, Gnome’s latest response makes a thoughtful comment with point (b).
16. #16 gnome says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 12:59 am

    Then we sort of agree I guess, though I’ll have to admit I fail to see the point in all those list… Unfortunately, reality does tend to come up with more than 5 or 10 best of whatevers…. Anyway. Care to share the podcast? Oh, and subjectivity does kind of suck… Heh. So does solipsism…
17. #17 kwade drang says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 10:05 pm

    Is het dat, het iemand me kunnen me zeggen waar het strand is vóór verontschuldigen?
18. #18 Hunter says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 10:13 pm

    I agree with Kwade drang, perhaps sometimes we take ourselves too seriously..
19. #19 Tristan says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 2:30 am

    http://www.princetonreview.com/podcasts/lsat.asp
20. #20 gnome says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 10:45 am

    Thanks!
21. #21 Nant14 says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 3:41 pm

    Wish to see Marquis de Sade here.
22. #22 ryan says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 9:05 pm

    hey, good day. i’m not as advanced in the science as most of you guys are but i’m really interested in gaining knowledge in this feild of study. Now i’m unable to tell if the list that is posted is actually true or not.
    Could someone please enlighten me on the subject of some of the greatest philosophers, as i’ve learn’t that it is best to learn from the best than those of limited knowledge.

    Thanks in Advance
23. #23 Elfedderalies says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 3:25 pm

    first of all its all about lao tsu he is the man forget everyone else he did the most
24. #24 julien says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 10:25 pm

    Aristotle WAY beyond Socrates.
25. #25 Michael says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 4:55 pm

    Husserl at #2?

    That’s not just bad, it’s moronic.
26. #26 Alex says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 5:26 am

    Top-10 philosophers of all-time:
    Plato
    Aristotle
    Saint Agustin
    René Descartes
    Hume
    Kant
    Hegel
    Nietzsche
    Husserl
    Heidegger
27. #27 Clemens says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 12:34 am

    Wow guys, you don’t really have to get angry at one another. You can disagree but still like the way someone is thinking right? I guess that is how you love wisdom most and that is also why you can of course like Plato and Nietzsche at the same time. Come on guys open mindness!
28. #28 evan says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 9:48 am

    I argue on a blog with strangers, therefore i am.
29. #29 Tim says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 5:21 pm

    Just curious, how far down on an expanded list would I find Thomas Jefferson? I was reading through a bunch of Jefferson one-liners today, and am amazed–and rather troubled–by how relevent his thinking 200 years ago is to what Americans are witnessing today. If he were alive today, I picture him pulling at his hair with both hands, bouncing off walls in madness saying, “I told you so, I told you so…”
30. #30 Ezra says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 4:44 am

    I would argue that Ayn Rand and Samuel Johnson should be up here only because i love both of them. Mad props on Nietzsche and Soren. Maybe Vonnegut too but that’s more high brow literature then philosophy.
31. #31 Mike says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 10:41 am

    Aristotle!
32. #32 lolbroek says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 12:55 am

    LOL ROFL. Real males leave their marks on comment sections below important texts.. …how….existential……. …….. LOL ROFL…..
33. #33 Stephen C. Tuggle says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 2:26 am

    Wow. This is not really what I expected from a post such as this. Just an opinion, but I believe that one can rank philosophers by their influence. And another, you can’t like Plato and Nietzsche? I would beg to differ. I would have to say that the Republic and Thus Spoke Zarathustra are my two favorite books. Thus Spoke Zarathustra was highly influenced by Plato especially the Myth of the Cave. A philosopher’s duty being to rise up and descend again either into the cave like Plato or the valley like Zarathustra. Either way, honestly guys, is this a “Who’s Longer Debate??”
34. #34 avi says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 12:19 am

    no aristotle???
35. #35 DTNarcis says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 4:52 am

    How does Wittgenstein not get ranked? Anyone who’s read the Tractatus, or the Blue and Brown Books, or anything he’s published knows how his theories on how language and philosophy are brilliant – unless, like most people, they can’t get through 5 pages of his writing without getting a headache.
36. #36 DTNarcis says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 3:30 pm

    Also, what’s up the the complete lack of post-modern philosophers (i.e., Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Lacan), except for Foucault was more of a Historian, and Lacan was more of a Psychoanalyst.

    Still, books like Madness & Civilization, The Order of Things, Anti-Oedipus, and anything on Deconstruction or Lacan’s Critical Theory make you rethink EVERYTHING about Philosophy.

    If we’re talking about what you take from philosophy and apply to your own life, then I’d argue:

    1) Descartes should not be in the top ten, as the only thing he proved was his own existence.
    2) Kant shouldn’t be in the top ten, as Nietzsche tears down his theory of Table of Categories in Beyond Good & Evil.
    3) Hegel should be in the top 3, as his theory of Zeitgeist is arguably the one philsophical doctrine that cannot be proved wrong.
    4) So shculd Nietzsche, as he was the first to state that philosophy was useless unless it was life-preserving, and argued that “truth” was no more desirable than “untruth”, as both are conceptions created by humans.
    5) Also, I’d argue for one Eastern Philosopher to crack the top 10, probably Confucius, as his ideas were more than 1,000 years ahead of his time.
37. #37 earl says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 2:30 am

    why not mahatma ghandi?? he had a great philosopy of life.
38. #38 Avi says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 7:47 pm

    yeah, good question. what abot ghandi?
39. #39 Avi says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 7:49 pm

    and i think DTNarcus makes very good points.
40. #40 Avi says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 7:51 pm

    Tim, you bring up someone who actually I think might be on my list.
41. #41 Matt says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 7:45 pm

    I’m not sure what standards you are using, but the omission of Aristotle and the inclusion of Husserl and Kierkegaard is atrocious. If your aim is to list the top ten philosophers, just on general standards, such choices are mystifying.

    Now, if you were picking your favorite philosophers, the ones you believe have done what you judge to be the best work, then this list would be more understandable. But if the criteria is who has done the most original and powerful work and had the largest impact on the field of philosophy, omitting Aristotle for Kierkegaard is inexplicable.

    If I were to make such a list on the latter criteria, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Locke, Hume and Kant would have to be shoe-ins. The last three spots would be up for grabs and would probably require a refining of the standards. For instance, can one include Wittgenstein and not Frege? It can be argued that there is no Wittgenstein without Frege. Spinoza definitely deserves serious consideration. The twentieth century is difficult and I find it hard to consider anyone other than Wittgenstein for such a list (despite the fact that I despise him, I can’t ignore his influence).

    Ultimately, however, I have to conclude that your list is unsatisfactory.
42. #42 dan says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 12:35 am

    No Wittgenstein?

    If your list is based on the influence they had, may be you should have also included Karl Marx, he was a philosopher too.
43. #43 DTNarcis says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 10:52 pm

    Marx was undoubtably brilliant, and the only reason I’d exclude him from the top 10 was because he was more of an economist than philosopher.

    I think Matt makes legit points with Aristotle and Spinoza too, though I still think Descartes shouldn’t be in the top 10, as his mind-body dualism and “ghost in the machine” are just wrong (check out chapter 2 of Daniel Dennett’s “Consciousness Explained”).

    And yes, I’d say include Wittgenstein and not Frege. Just because Wittgenstein’s ideas and theories were influenced by Frege doesn’t make Frege a better philosopher. Wittgenstein’s exploration of “language games” (no language, no philosophy), his emphasis on being clear before being right, and both his Tractatus and Philsophical Investigations truly make him stand among the greats of philosophy.

    And lastly, I’d consider adding Sir Karl Popper. His method of empirical falsification is invaluable to determining what is science as opposed to what is not science.
44. #44 gidi says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 8:49 pm

    I think shankspear wasent so bad
45. #45 tjfostol says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 11:53 am

    nietzsche should be no 1. his books are the most interesting and by far the best written.
46. #46 Avi says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 10:28 pm

    if youare going by influence then yes Marx would make the list.
47. #47 Avi says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 11:26 pm

    Shankspeare?
48. #48 Shane says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 11:47 pm

    Suprised to see you didn’t make the Gallhager brothers #1
49. #49 Avi says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 12:05 am

    in case anyone thought that was a ”what about?”: who is shankspeare?
50. #50 Geoff says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 12:37 am

    Another fucking thing Old Wizard knows fuck all about but seems to want to try and use to lord it over people.

    Fuck you Old Wizard.