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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 20 “Most Important” Philosophers of the Pre-Modern Era

Brian Leiter

With 531 votes cast, here are the "top 20":

1. Plato  (Condorcet winner: wins contests with all other choices)
2. Aristotle  loses to Plato by 231–229
3. Socrates  loses to Plato by 366–81, loses to Aristotle by 356–122
4. Aquinas  loses to Plato by 447–37, loses to Socrates by 328–130
5. Augustine  loses to Plato by 458–22, loses to Aquinas by 279–115
6. Epicurus  loses to Plato by 458–15, loses to Augustine by 291–106
7. Parmenides  loses to Plato by 453–16, loses to Epicurus by 170–162
8. Heraclitus  loses to Plato by 447–21, loses to Paremenides by 179–114
9. Confucius  loses to Plato by 417–20, loses to Heraclitus by 152–150
10. Ockham  loses to Plato by 462–9, loses to Confucius by 158–156
11. Anselm  loses to Plato by 452–10, loses to Ockham by 162–150
12. Pythagoras  loses to Plato by 457–12, loses to Anselm by 161–152
13. Duns Scotus  loses to Plato by 436–11, loses to Pythagoras by 151–145
14. Machiavelli  loses to Plato by 459–9, loses to Duns Scotus by 156–153
15. Democritus  loses to Plato by 453–13, loses to Machiavelli by 166–151
16. Zeno of Elea  loses to Plato by 458–10, loses to Machiavelli by 172–146
17. Plotinus  loses to Plato by 441–7, loses to Zeno by 154–118
18. Avicenna  loses to Plato by 426–8, loses to Plotinus by 134–114
19. Cicero  loses to Plato by 450–6, loses to Avicenna by 140–134
20. Sextus Empiricus  loses to Plato by 437–8, loses to Cicero by 142–134

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27 responses to “The 20 “Most Important” Philosophers of the Pre-Modern Era”

  1. doris

    Very interested to see Plato and Aristotle in a near "dead heat": despite some recent pronouncements here regarding the evident superiority of Aristotle, it has always been my (very unsystematic) impression that ancient scholars fracture between "Aristotle is deep, Plato is a lunatic mysterian" and "Plato is deep, Aristotle is a flatfooted cataloger of his culture's common sense." (With some judicious souls dividing their affections between the two.)

    –jmd

    Reply
  2. Jozef Muller

    It just shows the old truth – philosophers divide into two kinds – Plato and Aristotle people…

    Reply
  3. Fritz Allhoff

    Plato 231 and Aristole 229? Wow, that's close…

    Reply
  4. Ammon Allred

    I find the presence of Confucius here a little odd — and I don't mean that in the sense that one could gripe about the inclusion or exclusion of various philosophers on lists that don't purport to be anything other than snapshots of philosophers' opinions. Granted he is a philosopher from the premodern age but — based on my memory at least, he is the only philosopher outside of the Western tradition included on any of the surveys… Am I wrong in my memory?

    Reply
  5. Brian Leiter

    There were several non-Western philosophers included in this survey, as can easily be determined by going back to the survey.

    Reply
  6. Ammon Allred

    Are you counting Islamic philosophers as non-Western? Given the fact that they preserved the Aristotelian tradition, I don't think that most people would…

    Reply
  7. Ammon Allred

    Although I had forgotten about Mencius…

    Reply
  8. Marinus Ferreira

    No space for Peter Abelard, a no-holds-barred genius who made striking contributions to every going concern in philosophy, and possibly the most important logician between Aristotle and Frege? I didn't participate because I wasn't sure I'd be able to split 'impressive' from 'important', but Abelard would have been in my top three either way.

    Reply
  9. Brian Leiter

    Abelard came in 26th. Others, I guess, did not share your opinion of his importance.

    Reply
  10. Tracey Ho

    I'm a Chinese, but I don't vote for Confucius and Mencius. I don't think that so many voters educated in western countries are familiar with Chinese philosophy. So I'm surprised that Confucius gets so many votes.I am curious about what the image of Confucius (or other eastern thinkers) in western people is and why so many vote for him.

    Besides, I think that Indian philosophy is closer to western philosophy.

    Reply
  11. Narziss

    Gorgias would have been my first if he was listed, but from what was available: Protagoras and Machiavelli.

    Reply
  12. Robert Allen

    No way is Epicurus more important than Parmenides, who created philosophy, being not only the first thinker to advance ARGUMENTS for his views but also the discover of the problem of change that so puzzled both Plato and Aristotle. Without that problem, there would have been no need to posit Forms, distinguish between essences and accidents, or draw the potentiality-actuality distinction.

    Reply
  13. Martin Lin

    Yeah, it's pretty shocking that Cicero was ranked ahead of Abelard among others.

    Reply
  14. Mike Koss

    Marinus Ferreira is certainly correct that Abelard was one of the great philosophers. Unfortunately, despite his brilliance, he has only recently been recognized as such a major figure. His trouble with charges of heresy in his own day (plus the reintroduction of Aristotle to the Latin West soon after he died) made it difficult for him to have much influence.

    I noticed that Averroes was not on the list. Without him, it's not clear that Latin-speaking medievel philosophers would have ever been able to figure out Aristotle to the extent they did.

    Reply
  15. Patrick Lee Miller

    When I voted on this survey it listed "Zeno" as one of the choices. No distinction was made then between Zeno of Elea (the 'student' of Parmenides) and Zeno of Citium (the founder of Stoicism). Apparently the ambiguity was cleared up eventually, in favor of Zeno of Elea, who finished at 16th. I have no quarrel with that; the Eleatic's paradoxes prompted Aristotle and even modern philosophers to deep reflection on space and time. But Zeno of Citium has proven to be far more important, insofar as Stoicism was arguably the most important ancient philosophical movement after Platonism. He should have been listed — perhaps along with his successors, Cleanthes and Chrysippus — although no Greek Stoic would likely have cracked the top ten, no matter how important, because their books did not survive.

    Reply
  16. Patrick Lee Miller

    I just went back to the old survey to check whether Chrysippus was listed there (now that I see him on the "All Time" list), and saw that postscripts had been added about both his original omission and the Zeno ambiguity. Feel free to ignore my above comment if you like.

    Reply
  17. Justin Vlasits

    Nice to see Sextus crack the top 20. I am definitely in favor of ranking Epicurus so high because of his later influence both on Newtonian atomism and utilitarianism. However, Machiavelli is ranked pretty low considering he is one of the founders of political science.

    Reply
  18. dankaufman!

    where the hell is suarez??

    Reply
  19. Brian Leiter

    Where he belongs: forgotten!

    Reply
  20. Eric Brown

    On some of the most obvious construals of 'most important' I would've thought that Chrysippus should have come in not far behind Plato and Aristotle. His works were the standard for Stoicism, and as such, they were the target for early skepticism and the source for much of the conceptual machinery endemic to all later ancient philosophy (and much beyond, obviously).

    If we are thinking of broader cultural influence, well, it's difficult to read Roman or Roman-influenced literature of any kind without seeing Stoic ideals.

    And if we are thinking of coloring our judgment of 'most important' with some assessment of the philosopher's ability, then we might well remind ourselves of the sophistication of Chrysippus' logic and his work on paradoxes.

    I think he is overlooked because so much of his influence, and especially on us, is indirect.

    Reply
  21. Eric Brown

    Also, two small, related points in defense of Cicero, who was not, as Martin Lin rightly suggests, a sophisticated philosopher.

    First, he did put a lot of philosophical ideas into the form in which they had their enormous influence. This is not just because his Academic books surveyed much Stoic, Epicurean, and Academic thought and more or less invented, so far as the later tradition is concerned, philosophical vocabulary for Latin.) It is also because of the singular importance of _De Legibus_ and _De Officiis_ in early modern moral and political thought. Sidgwick rightly says that _De Officiis_ had a greater influence on modern moral thinking than any other work from antiquity.

    Second, if we are more alive to the role of rhetoric in philosophy, we will find Cicero more impressive. (This helps to explain both why so many of his works survived and why they were accorded massive importance in the Italian Renaissance.)

    Reply
  22. dankaufman!

    brian – thems fightin' words, my friend.

    suarez was clearly the most important philosopher between the 14th and 17th centuries. his influence on early modern philosophy can hardly be overstated. and he was not only a very good philosopher, he was an amazing historian of philosophy as well.

    i'd pit suarez against your boy nietzsche in a philosophical cage-match any day! bring it on!

    xoxo

    Reply
  23. Daniel S. Goldberg

    Re Cicero, it is also important to distinguish between Cicero's early works, and his later, post-exile works, such as the Tusculan Disputations and On Duties. As Gary Remer as recently suggested in a marvelous essay linking Machiavelli and Cicero, the tension between the useful and the good which Cicero did not address in his early works is the central subject of his late works. Akin to Machiavelli, given the context of Cicero's late life, it is unsurprising that he could no longer leave understudied the obvious tension between the two values, values which were central to both Roman culture and Florentine culture of the late Middle Ages.

    Reply
  24. Martin Lin

    Eric is right that Cicero has had tremendous influence. We owe him a great deal. But in terms of pure philosophical firepower, the following analogy holds: Abelard is to Cicero what David Lewis is to Dear Abby.

    As far as Chrysippus goes, I believe he was a great philosopher on the same grounds that I believe that Rogers Albritton and Sidney Morgenbesser were. Their writings have not been passes down to us, but those who knew them philosophically speak very highly of them.

    Reply
  25. Jeff Mahaney

    It strikes me as odd that Parmenides wasn't a few slots higher. I mean, the guy pretty much kick-started philosophy as we know it. No matter how important one thinks Epicurus is how can his importance overshadow what Parmenides did in terms of shaping pretty much all philosophy after him?

    Reply
  26. David Hildebrand

    Anthony Kenny makes a case for the importance of Abelard. There's a nice, brief interview with him, here: http://philosophybites.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=264257

    Listen for his case about Abelard. He believes him significantly underestimated.

    Reply
  27. Stephen Krogh

    I am surprised that Avicenna ranked higher than Averroes. Though I think it is difficult to claim which was the superior philosopher, or which was the brighter, certainly Averroes was the superior Aristotelian, and the more influential in the West. I wonder if recent consideration of Avicenna's contributions to modal logic played a role?

    I agree too that Abelard is typically underestimated today. But, so are many great philosophers from late antiquity to the high middle ages (Boethius, and Pseudo-Dionysius, for example. I wouldn't expect to see them here, or voice a complaint for their absence, but the fact remains that these two were among the most authoritative philosophers through to the early modern period).

    Finally, why no love for Cicero and Suarez? Had the former been able to keep his mouth shut (it is difficult to philosophize without a head and with no hands), and the latter been born a century or two earlier, we could view them very differently and more positively than we do today.

    Cheers

    Reply

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