Greatest Philosopher of the 20th-Century?
March 2, 2009You can find out here.
But seriously: Lewis came second to Wittgenstein? (I could understand how LW might rank top in a poll involving the general public, but the first ranking was supposedly based mostly on the Leiter readership!)
Update: some interesting thoughts on Russell’s ranking here and here.
Actually, Lewis came in third behind Wittgenstein and Russell!
Sorry – I should have said: I was going by the first poll!
(The second one was supposed to have been be skewed by non philosophers voting.)
Well, Wittgenstein was the only philosopher explicitly mentioned by name in the original post. It’s true that Leiter mentioned him only to suggest that he shouldn’t come out on top, but there’s definitely some percentage of the Leiter readership that would vote specifically against Leiter’s recommendations.
I hadn’t thought of that.
Other things I found surprising: how low Kripke ranked and how high Heidegger ranked. I guess I just don’t have as good an idea of what professional philosophers consider important work as I thought I did…
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I suspect that Kripke ranks low only because anyone who would be inclined to vote for him would likely vote for either Quine or Lewis instead. If the votes were for the top two most important philosophers of the century, or top three, he would almost certainly come out much higher.
Its all so provincial.
What about philosophers who worked outside of the Western tradition, or those that did not work within the dismal reductionist parameters of the academy?