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    The McMaster Department of Philosophy has now put together the following notice commemorating Barry: Barry Allen: A Philosophical Life Barry…

The 10 “Most Important” Philosophers of the Early Modern Period

Brian Leiter

With more than 700 votes cast, the results are in:

1. Immanuel Kant  (Condorcet winner: wins contests with all other choices)
2. David Hume  loses to Immanuel Kant by 421–232
3. Rene Descartes  loses to Immanuel Kant by 443–201, loses to David Hume by 335–314
4. John Locke  loses to Immanuel Kant by 576–85, loses to Rene Descartes by 508–136
5. Gottfried Leibniz  loses to Immanuel Kant by 586–76, loses to John Locke by 351–272
6. Thomas Hobbes  loses to Immanuel Kant by 596–64, loses to Gottfried Leibniz by 371–247
7. Baruch Spinoza  loses to Immanuel Kant by 589–70, loses to Thomas Hobbes by 321–292
8. George Berkeley  loses to Immanuel Kant by 625–31, loses to Baruch Spinoza by 377–230
9. Adam Smith  loses to Immanuel Kant by 612–32, loses to George Berkeley by 337–247
10. Francis Bacon  loses to Immanuel Kant by 603–39, loses to Adam Smith by 302–252

Thomas Reid was a distant 11th.  Rousseau was mistakenly left off the list–would he have out performed Reid or Bacon or Smith?  Maybe we'll find out.

I was a bit surprised by how small the gap was between Descartes and Hume.  Other thoughts from readers?  Post only once; signed comments will get strong preference.

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47 responses to “The 10 “Most Important” Philosophers of the Early Modern Period”

  1. Dale Dorsey

    I guess a list has to be limited so deserving figures are going to be left out, even some people's favorites. But I was sad that Hutcheson didn't make the survey list. I feel like he would have certainly been ranked in the top 20. I'm also a little unsure of why Shaftesbury didn't make it and some of the minor figures of the continent did. Oh well. Still fun!

    Reply
  2. Brian Leiter

    I should make clear that the reason I only mention the top 11 results is because I think the results thereafter are even less reliable, due to omissions of figures who might well have out-polled, e.g., some of the lesser Germans.

    Reply
  3. Brannon

    I was somewhat surprised that Newton was left off the list. I thought (perhaps mistakenly) that his philosophical importance was at least comparable to Boyle's (who was included).

    Reply
  4. Mike Gurtard

    Despite my personal reluctance to Kant, the poll seems fairly reasonable. These are the most IMPORTANT and not the BEST philosophers. Though, I wonder whether Kant is not already footed in the period, since he makes the break between modernity and contemporary philosophy, he breaks it all in a way. So it might be misleading to compare him to Hume, Descartes, Berkeley, Leibniz, with whom he discusses all along and whom he purports to, not outrank, but, as it were, "aufheben"… I ranked Descartes as first for his Meditations were, as Hegel put it, land of birth of the truth. Besides, I'm not sure Kant succeeded in overcoming Hume's problem(s). As for the rest of the poll, maybe Spinoza a little bit higher would have been fair. But one must acknowledge the little english-speaking bias (Locke, Smith, Bacon, Berkeley, Hume, Hobbes…) that may account for this.

    Reply
  5. doris

    If "most important" intimates something like "most influential," I'm a bit surprised to see Kant handily beating Hume. Anyone have thoughts on this?

    Reply
  6. Mike Gurtard

    "the next period" I meant

    Reply
  7. Ammon Allred

    What's really striking (if not surprising) is how much more consensus there is here than in the last two surveys. Does this support Hegel's claim (despite his apparent comparative unimportance…) is right that the wounds of spirit heal (after a 200 year period…) and leave no scars behind? Or does it vindicate Nietzsche's emphasis on the importance of forgetfulness?

    Reply
  8. Margaret Atherton

    Why are you surprised that Descartes did so well? He was a towering influence on 17th century thought and is still the man many contemporary philosophers love (perhaps mistakenly) to hate.

    Reply
  9. Richard Moore

    I was somewhat perplexed by the question on which we were asked to vote here. What is it for a philosopher to be important?

    There's no question that Kant was the best philosopher of those on this (or any) list. In addition, he certainly did more to shape the field of philosophy than any of the others. But did Kant do as much to shape the world in which we live as, say, John Locke or Adam Smith? I think the answer is that he almost certainly did not.

    This ambiguity is also present in the polls about more recent philosophers. Surely the way the world is now owes far more to the writings of Rawls, Marx and Nietzsche than it does to anything Wittgenstein, Quine or Kripke wrote.

    When voting, I voted on the basis of social influence – and so Smith and Marx took precedence over Kant and Wittgenstein. The results suggest that others did not, though.

    Reply
  10. Mike Gurtard

    Without Descartes no Spinoza and no Husserl – at the very least.

    Reply
  11. mark lance

    Of course none of this was really serious, so there is limited utility in getting too worried over the criteria. But it was surely not intended to think of influence on the culture as a whole. One would get altogether different results on those standards. The idea, at least as I took it, was importance in philosophy. But what is importance. Surely not just influence. I take it to be some sort of amalgam of influence and quality. So one doesn't score highly if one is highly influential for a while and eventually turns out to have been a complete fraud. (Don't guess who I might think belongs in this category.) However vague and ill-defined this is, I think it is quite clear that the top two of all time are Kant and Aristotle. (I mean this in something like a supervaluational way: any reasonable precisification of the quality + influence standard will yield this result.) Reasonable people can disagree on how they rank, and there will be enormous variation among reasonable philosophers on the rest of the ranking.

    I wanted to note one particular problem for the 20th c rankings. Here, the influence part is really a prediction, at least for those in the 2nd half the century. It is still an open question who among Quine, Kripke, Lewis, Sellars, etc. will be most influential. My own money is on Sellars, and that he will be so by a huge margin. I think he isn't recognized as such now simply because the writing is more imposing. But I also find that to be a surface phenomenon. Some writers, paradigmatically Sellars, are very hard to make sense of the first time, but get clearer and deeper the more often you read them. Others are just the opposite. Seems all completely clear first time through, and gets more and more obscure on subsequent readings. I think Quine is a paradigm of this, with Lewis and Kripke in between.

    Just wanted to throw that contentious view out there. I won't be following up to defend it.

    Reply
  12. Eric Schliesser

    The most (pleasant) surprising aspect of this result is Hobbes' sixth place. He is still not standardly taught in Early Modern surveys. I suspect his high ranking is due to the increasing importance of him being the favorite target of neo-Rawlsians.

    Reply
  13. Robert Gressis

    I had Descartes above Hume because he really set the agenda for modern philosophy, and I had Kant above Descartes because he took Descartes' agenda (broadly speaking) and gave us ours. Then I had Spinoza third (tied with Hume) because of Jonathan Israel's _Radical Enlightenment_, which plausibly makes the case that Spinoza is the person against whom everyone must react and about whom everyone worries.

    Reply
  14. Thomas

    Perhaps his machine-like reliability and the allure of the categorical imperative make him extra appealing in the dog-eat-dog world of the contemporary economic downturn; in a vacuum, would Smith even be on the list?

    I have to admit, suggesting that Philosopher X ‘loses’ to the person ranking above them probably best describes the history of Western Philosophy: a history of eccentric narcissism.

    Reply
  15. Curtis S.

    I took "most important" to mean "perceived quality and influence".
    I would be curious why others think that Bacon was not ranked more highly. He had a very strong influence on the empiricists, and Novum Organum seems to more or less lay out the scientific method.
    I would also have liked the inclusion of Hutcheson and Newton, though perhaps I have a "little English-speaking bias".

    Reply
  16. Jason Stanley

    Just a follow-up to Gressis's comment – Jonathan Israel's book makes a very convincing case that Spinoza had a much larger impact on politics and intellectual life than is now recognized, and that a lot of what we pre-theoretically might attribute to (say) Locke's influence on the enlightenment was dwarfed by Spinoza's. Before I read Israel's book, I would have been inclined to place him towards the bottom of the top ten on this list, but, like Gressis, after I read Israel's book I was much more inclined to place him near the top.

    Reply
  17. dankaufman!

    If you actually look at 17th and 18th century reactions/responses, you would barely know that Spinoza existed. Malebranche, for instance, was *clearly* thought to be the more important philosopher by 2 nearly centuries of philosophers. (he is also one of the few philosophers that Hume mentions by name.)

    and don't get me started on locke v. spinoza. locke's ESSAY provoked one of the quickest and largest responses (albeit mostly negative) in the history of philosophy. and the SECOND TREATISE? a wee bit influential, perhaps? THE REASONABLENESS OF CHRISTIANITY? come on!

    also, as Bruce Kuklick has noted, it wasn't really until Royce's popular study of modern philosophy (in 1892) that we cared about spinoza at all. (and why did Royce like spinoza so much? because he thought that spinoza had come up with one of Royce's favorite views!)

    i guess while i'm here i should also point out that i think that the ranking reflects a rather naive view of the development of philosophy in the 17th and 18th centuries, a view that (i thought) had been absolutely, totally demolished years ago by louis loeb. i guess it is still the 'standard view'. the view: there are (at most) 7 important philosophers in those 2 centuries (descartes, spinoza, leibniz, locke, berkeley, hume, and kant; there are 2 'schools' – the rationalists and the empiricists; and kant finally comes along and solves everyone's problems, as if a glorious divine hand were guiding philosophy toward kant for 2 centuries. the fact that we still carve 2 centuries of philosophy into 2 neat schools (i.e. rationalists and empiricists) shows that we still (mistakenly) think that epistemology reigned supreme (to the exclusion of metaphysics, natural philosophy, philosophical theology, etc.) at that time. what else would explain why we we group such radically different philosophers as descartes, spinoza, and leibniz together?

    let it be said, my friends that, on this day, we let the domination of the big-7/2-schools/kant-saves-the-day view of modern philosophy die! and let us usher in a glorious new day that includes malebranche, gassendi, hobbes, anne conway, kenelm digby, walter charleton, mary astell, boyle, henry more, and ralph cudworth! peace will guide the planets, and love will steer the stars!!

    Reply
  18. dan ornguze

    Would anyone be willing to give their reactions to Pascal coming in 12th and Montaigne 14th? I am rather surprised Pascal came in that high (not that I have a low opinion of his philosophy but was it that important)? Montaigne's placement seems sensible given that he helped renew interest in skepticism.

    Reply
  19. Martin Lin

    I'm not surprised that Kant ranks so highly but I am disappointed. He does command worship in some circles, but I don't think that Rob is right when he says that Kant sets our current agenda. Anti-realism in M&E is our agenda? He was influential to be sure, but no more so than Descartes or Hume.

    Seeing Kant at the top of this list inspires the same feelings in me as seeing Wittgenstein at the top of the other list. YMMV.

    Reply
  20. Eric Schliesser

    Malebranche was widely read to be sure, but in response to Dan Kaufman, Spinoza was extremely influential. Hume mentions Spinoza by name in the Treatise (perhaps via Bayle)–and Spinoza was discussed in Colin MacLaurin's influential commentary on Newton. Spinoza was on the rader well before Royce. (Maybe you should look at Beiser's book on the pantheismus-streit!) Israel's book is a bit superficial in some of its claims, and he attributes things to Spinoza's influence that may well derive from other (like-minded) sources: Hobbes, Mandeville, Bacon, Lucretius. But his main claim is surely on target.

    Reply
  21. Curtis S.

    In response to Dan Kaufman: Spinoza did have a rather strong affect on latter 18th century German philosophy – though perhaps indirectly. See this entry on the "Pantheism Controversy":

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheism_controversy

    Or see Beiser's article, "The Enlightenment and Idealism" in The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism.

    Reply
  22. dankaufman!

    eric – how have you been? good, i hope.

    what did bayle say about spinoza again? i can't remember exactly, but i recall the words 'monstrous' and 'chicanery' being used.

    i notice that you don't take issue with the locke v. spinoza claims. interesting.
    i'm starting to agree more and more with ed mccann's claim that locke is the first modern philosopher.

    i'll check out beiser's book; thanks for the recommendation. take care.

    Reply
  23. Christopher Gauker

    I didn't take the question to be, "Who is your favorite?" But I also did not think that influence on culture at large was the standard. I understood it more or less as Mark Lance did, but gave some weight to influence on academe beyond philosophy departments. By that measure I thought Locke should take first place (although I knew he wouldn't). Locke was not the cleverest of these philosophers, and far less has been written about him than some of the others, but I think he did more than any other to determine what, on a whole bunch of topics, is considered common sense (both by those who endorse it and by those who set themselves against it). These topics include: the relation between perception and conception (although those are not his words), the relation between thought and language, the distinction between nominal and real essences, the primary/secondary quality distinction, freedom of the will, and others.

    Reply
  24. Patrick R. Leland

    I would’ve liked to have seen Isaac Newton on the list and would’ve been tempted to count him among the twelve most influential philosophers of the period. As Andrew Janiak and others have emphasized, the disciplinary boundaries were more fluid during the 17th century. Newton understood his work to fall under that admittedly broader category of “natural philosophy,” and his reasons for doing so included his work both in metaphysics and on the relation between metaphysics and physics. I’d be interested to hear reasons for excluding Newton from the initial list which don’t also count as reasons for excluding a mathematician like Frege from the list of the most influential 20th century philosophers. (Note: I’m advocating more liberal criteria of classification, not the exclusion of Frege from the list).

    Reply
  25. Martin Lin

    Hi Dan! As far as 17th and 18th century Spinoza reception goes, I think Leibniz found Spinoza pretty interesting. That right there is a lot of influence.

    As far as your other claim goes, God help us if we start ranking Digby and Charleton along side Hume and Descartes! I can easily imagine someone finding figures like Digby and Charleton endlessly fascinating but I can't really believe that anyone thinks that they are just as good at philosophy as any one of "the big 7."

    Regarding Israel, whom many have mentioned, his interpretation of Spinoza is not very original or deep, but that's not the point of his book. He has a lot of evidence that Spinoza was the source of many ideas debated by his contemporaries and successors. Maybe, as Eric says, there were others who were saying similar things, but when your sources are referring to Spinoza by name, it's hard not to draw the inferences that Israel draws. In any event, our world looks a lot more like the one Spinoza argued for than the one Locke did.

    Reply
  26. Alejandro

    If Rousseau should have been included, and Diderot, Condillac and other Enlightenment figures were, then why not Voltaire as well? If "importance" is read as "influence", I'd have thought that Voltaire was more important than some of the minor figures listed.

    Reply
  27. Christopher Morris

    Yes, Rousseau should have been listed. But contemporary philosophers usually don't think that political and social philosophy is "core philosophy", which is presumably why he was omitted. Also, it's hard to know what to think of someone's importance if virtually all readers of his time and the next century did not really understand his thought. But he may not be unique in this regard.

    Reply
  28. Brian Leiter

    Just to be clear: I agree Rousseau should have been listed, I said so. Error of omission. He was not omitted because I think M&E is 'core philosophy.'

    Reply
  29. Stephen Puryear

    Dan Kaufman thinks that the ranking reflects a "big-7/2-schools/kant-saves-the-day" mentality. But there are other reasons why one might put Kant and Hume at the top of the list (as I did), and Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, and Berkeley among the next five (as I did), that have nothing to do with such a mentality. For my part, I prefer to divide the big 7 into those who were optimistic about our prospects for doing traditional metaphysics (Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, Berkeley) and those who weren't (Hume, Kant). And I put Kant and Hume at the top of my list precisely because I see their challenge to metaphysics as the most important development of the early modern philosophy.

    Reply
  30. Mel

    As far as Spinoza having an influence on subsequent philosophers: Both Schelling (esp. in the Ages of the World and the Freedom Essay) and Nietzsche have deep quarrels with him, as did Jacobi and even Fichte. German idealism is, in large part, a response to the challenges that Spinoza's system offers them, and oughtn't be overlooked. Furthermore, Spinoza resonates in contemporary philosophical thinking as well (though not so much in "analytic" circles), and has had a great influence on poets and essayists. As far as influence goes, I'd mark him high for sure.

    Reply
  31. Robert Zhang

    Stephen Puryear is right. What do you guys expect? Kant is like the crossroads, the center of the number 8, the transitionary guy that bridged the gap between the early modern philosophy of Descartes, Spinoza and Hume, and the 19th and 20th century philosophy of Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Wittgenstein. Kant introduced a whole new slew of problems for them to deal with.

    (P.S. Just in my personal opinion, Kant's obviously going to be number 1, because he's the one both so-called analytic and continental philosophers can agree on in terms of importance to their fields. Hume is more important for the analytics and Descartes is more important for the continentals.)

    Reply
  32. Keith DeRose

    I don't see these results as supporting that there is a "big 7" mentality. A non-big-7 philosopher beats out a couple of the supposed big-7, and there's no big drop-off after the last of the big-7. The only really big drop-off is between 3 and 4. Other than that, there's a more-or-less continuous falling from each position to the next, with the drop between Berkeley and Smith being quite unexceptional.

    Reply
  33. Tom Hurka

    I'm with Martin Lin: that Wittgenstein and Kant win is very depressing. About Kant I think Arthur Balfour (Sidgwick's brother-in-law and author of the Balfour Declaration) had it right: "Kant contrived to be technical without being precise."

    Reply
  34. Arouet

    A not-too-serious poll to find the most important philosopher of the early modern period being won by Kant seems like a perfect opportunity to have a ‘rant against Kant’. So here goes:

    For no good reason he thought the science of geometry had been completed.

    For no good reason he thought the science of logic had been completed.

    He dogmatically believed that every event has a cause.

    His moral philosophy was sterile and detached from human emotion, hence both repugnant and psychologically implausible. There is no place for compassion in Kant’s morality.

    He produced two entirely different versions of his Categorical Imperative that are about totally different things (although it’s true that there exists a vibrant industry aimed at showing that they are really equivalent).

    The first version of the Categorical Imperative–the one about only performing an act if you could will that its maxim be a universal law for everyone–only makes sense if you think of it in utilitarian terms, but Kant is not a utilitarian.

    He thought that you should always tell the truth even if someone dies as a result.

    He thought that if civil society ended then it would be a major priority to execute all the murderers, otherwise you would be left with something called ’blood guilt’.

    He indulged in pseudo-scientific false precision–in his system of Categories for example.

    He was given to the invention of irritating neologisms like ‘transcendental aesthetic’ and ‘unity of apperception’.

    ‘Kant’ sounds like ‘cant’ so even his name tells you something.

    I know that the poll’s result agrees with the usual textbook answer to the question of ‘Who was the greatest modern philosopher?’, but I just don’t get it. Can someone please enlighten me? Could they answer my scrupulously fair critique?

    Reply
  35. David

    Out of interest, I wonder how people think the results would have differed, had people voted for their 'favourites' or even those the thought were 'objectively best' (whatever that might mean. Personally, even though it said important I voted on the basis of favourites/best philosophers, and I therefore ranked Berkeley far higher than I would have done on any measure of 'importance' (especially importance for other intellectuals at the time, as supposed to long run impact on technical M and E).

    Reply
  36. Jozef Muller

    I think it's time for the mother of all rankings: the greatest philosopher of all time.

    Reply
  37. Margaret Atherton

    In support of Dan, Kant looks pivotal to us because we think once we have reached the nineteenth century, we must read German philosophy. If we kept on privileging English language philosophy, as we do for the 18th, it would take a whole lot longer for Kant to make an impact.

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  38. Alastair Norcross

    While we're ranting against Kant (always fun, but a little too easy), lets not forget the funniest of his many absurd views, his hilarious claim that masturbation ("wanton self-abuse") is worse than suicide ("self-murder"). Unlike suicide, masturbation involves "a weak surrender to animal pleasure", while at the same time degrading its practitioner "even below the beast". This one is always fun to teach.

    Reply
  39. Anja Jauernig

    Come on, guys. Don’t be bad losers. It’s not a conspiracy. Kant deservedly won the poll (hands down), and you know it. For people who doubt that he was really that important and influential, here is a quick reminder of just a few philosophical movements that are a direct response to Kant, or for the proponents of which Kant is one of the primary interlocutors (even if they do not agree with him): German Idealism (broadly conceived: this includes people like Reinhold and Schopenhauer), neo-Kantianism (Marburg school and South-West German school), phenomenology (esp. Husserl, Heidegger), critical theory (Adorno, Horkheimer…), early analytic philosophy (Frege, Carnap, early Wittgenstein, early Russell…), what one might want to call neo-neo-Kantianism in the analytic tradition (Sellars, Strawson, McDowell, Friedman, Koorsgard…), what one might want to call neo-neo-Kantianism in the continental tradition (esp. Habermas),…. I could go on and talk about Kant’s influence on other philosophers who are not part of these movements and who did well in the earlier polls, e.g., Nietzsche, but I don’t want to rub it in… Way to go, Kant. You are the best. (I had to say this…)

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  40. dankaufman!

    anja – hey. thanks for pointing out that kant influenced so much of the 19th-century philosophy, but isn't that a mark against him? (just kidding. maybe.)

    just for the record, if we put aside influence and stuff like that and think of the BEST philosophers of the period, leibniz wins in my opinion (with suarez (!) in second place). that's right, i said 'suarez'.

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  41. Eric Schliesser

    Kaufman is right that Leibniz is the best straight-up (analytic) philosopher in the poll. But if Newton had been included, he would have beat out Leibniz by a hair.
    Anja, you miss Pierce (among those influenced by Kant)…

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  42. Anja Jauernig

    Yes, Eric, of course, Peirce is another prominent 19th century Kant-influenced philosopher; in the 20th century there are many more as well, e.g., John Rawls, to mention only one. My list was not meant to be exhaustive. Indeed, as far as the 19th and early 20th century are concerned, it would be more efficient to list those philosophers who were NOT influenced by Kant instead of doing it the other way round. – I am also glad to hear that you (Dan and Eric) both think that Leibniz is the best (analytic) philosopher of the poll. (Leibniz is my second-best friend.) Of course, one of Leibniz’s major accomplishments is that he is the philosopher who most influenced Kant… (And, just between you and me, they end up saying very similar things, so there might be something to it…)

    Reply
  43. Brian Leiter

    In reply to Professor Atherton: I wasn't surprised by how much support Descartes garnered (for the reasons you note), but that he came relatively close to Hume. But I ranked Hume 1st, and Kant 2nd (since Kant was wrong about everything, though, of course, brilliantly and provocatively wrong!). I did rank Descartes 3rd. I refrain from comment on Leibniz, but agree with Professor Schliesser that he is most qualified to be hired at Rutgers or Notre Dame.

    I guess I do not share the sense that Newton is an important philosopher, though his seminal contributions to physics make his views of enormous philosophical interest. Boyle was more clearly a philosopher, or so it seems to me. I'm happy to stand corrected. (And, for the record, The Routledge Philosophers series I edit will publish a volume on Newton–by Arthur Fine and Thomas Ryckman–but does not plan a volume on Boyle!)

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  44. Eric Schliesser

    Boyle and Newton belong to closely related intellectual communities, but had (to use a Lakatosian phrase) competing research programmes within it. Boyle had an experimental-mechanistic project while Newton had a more mathematical-experimental project. Newton's method was also also the more unusual one at the time.
    It is certainly easier to discern philosophic themes in Boyle's publications than in much of Newton's publications, especially if one does not associate Newton closely with the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence. (It used to be thought that Clarke was just Newton's mouthpiece, but much of the most exciting recent philosophic work on Newton — McGuire, Stein, Smith, Harper, Friedman, Janiak, etc. — tends to down-play the L/C correspondence as an expression of Newton's philosophy.)
    In his recent collection of Newton's philosophical writings, Janiak included Newton's unpublished ms. 'De Gravitatione',' which is attracting a lot of philosophical attention (some of which to be show-cased in a volume, Interpreting Newton, forthcoming at CUP, co-edited by Janiak and I). DeGrav is (in part) directed at Cartesian metaphysics and certainly exhibits Newton's skill as a philosopher (recognizable as such for us). But certainly, it must be seen to be (among other things) a philosophic achievement to have shown that certain previously intractable questions can be transformed into mathematical-experimental method that can offer ever more precise approximate answers? (Even if it means that the character and subject-matter of philosophy gets transformed along the way.)

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  45. Barrett Pashak

    Why did the most prominent Kantians—Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, the best philosophical brains Germany has ever produced—become Spinozists? One will try in vain to find an answer to this question in our histories of philosophy, which do not even ask that legitimate and obvious question. And there is no other answer to it than this one: that it could not have been otherwise, since these truly philosophical men necessarily saw and felt how different Benedict Spinoza's stance within philosophy was from that of Kant, who—to say it in my blunt way—had nothing in common with philosophy.—Constantin Brunner / Spinoza contra Kant.

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  46. Colin Heydt

    The more I study the early modern period, the more struck I am by the influence of Bayle and by the way in which he shaped late 17th and 18th century debates about a variety of topics (skepticism, religion, toleration, the prospects for metaphysics, the meaning and importance of Spinoza [something to which Eric alludes], etc.). His Dictionary was probably the most widely read philosophical work of the period. I would certainly place him above a number of people listed in the top 20.

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  47. Eric Schliesser

    Colin, these things are tricky. Bayle is clearly extremely widely read in the period. So, are, for example, Mandeville and Fontenelle. All three of these are original and shaped philosophic debates for a century to come. Yet, I wouldn't place either of them above, say, the folks in the top ten nor in the unjustly ignored Newton or Rousseau. I think this is because the top 10 (and Newton/Rousseau) continue to resonate, whereas Bayle and Mandeville have merely historical interest, even though both can be read with pleasure. Of course, an important reason for this is Kant because post-Kant (and add a number of other later figures and developments), philosophy got so re-defined that it is very hard for non historians to take Bayle, Mandeville, and Fontenelle quite seriously.

    Reply

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