Poll on the top ten philosophers
In Our Time over at the BBC has just wrapped up a poll picking out the top ten philosophers of all time. I'm not sure if the poll limited the results to Western philosophers, but every member of the top ten comes from the Western tradition. The top three? 1) Karl Marx; 2) David Hume; and 3) Ludwig Wittgenstein. 2) and 3) seem about right to me -- Karl Marx I've never personally read (except for the Communist Manifesto).
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This is pretty cool crazymonk. I want to take a closer look when I have more time. I would like to look more at the rock art post as well-- just been kind of busy the past few days. Will contribute some thoughts soon.
i'm sure the poll was influenced by personal political motivations. Plato was by far a more important political philosopher than Marx, but Marx has a more vociferous minority yelling "yeah! Marxism/Communism/commodity fetishism" then the rest of yes saying "yeah! democracy." Hume was also a political philosopher, which probably accounts for his high ranking. I have no idea why regular folk care about Wittgenstein. People like Nietzche because of the crazy things he said that make us feel good, but he's widely regarded as a crackhead. i'm glad to see kant up there. he's pretty important, as well as the rest (except for popper). offhand, i can think of at least one western philosopher that even the typical educated person should and do think is important but is neglected on the list: descartes.
and i completely agree that that eastern philosophers are neglected on this poll.
i know this post won't be seen, because it's many days late.
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