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Underappreciated philosophers active in the U.S. from roughly 1900 through mid-century?

Brian Leiter

So with 260 votes, here are the results:

1. Clarence Irving Lewis  (Condorcet winner: wins contests with all other choices)
2. Alfred North Whitehead  loses to Clarence Irving Lewis by 99–80
3. George Santayana  loses to Clarence Irving Lewis by 111–53, loses to Alfred North Whitehead by 97–51
4. George Herbert Mead  loses to Clarence Irving Lewis by 106–46, loses to George Santayana by 66–62
5. Susanne Langer  loses to Clarence Irving Lewis by 104–40, loses to George Herbert Mead by 54–52
6. Tied:
Brand Blanshard  loses to Clarence Irving Lewis by 109–33, loses to Susanne Langer by 57–51
Roy Wood Sellars  loses to Clarence Irving Lewis by 109–23, loses to Susanne Langer by 50–44
8. John N. Findlay  loses to Clarence Irving Lewis by 111–31, loses to Brand Blanshard by 50–47
9. Charles Hartshorne  loses to Clarence Irving Lewis by 109–31, loses to John N. Findlay by 46–41
10. O.K. Bouwsma  loses to Clarence Irving Lewis by 111–26, loses to Charles Hartshorne by 54–39
11. C.J. Ducasse  loses to Clarence Irving Lewis by 107–17, loses to O.K. Bouwsma by 47–34
12. Monroe Beardsley  loses to Clarence Irving Lewis by 117–27, loses to C.J. Ducasse by 44–42
13. Maurice Mandelbaum  loses to Clarence Irving Lewis by 111–24, loses to Monroe Beardsley by 44–38
14. Ralph Barton Perry  loses to Clarence Irving Lewis by 114–16, loses to Maurice Mandelbaum by 41–34

15. Tied:
Alain Locke  loses to Clarence Irving Lewis by 111–18, loses to Ralph Barton Perry by 35–30
Walter Stace  loses to Clarence Irving Lewis by 117–11, loses to Ralph Barton Perry by 37–25
Paul Weiss  loses to Clarence Irving Lewis by 110–18, loses to Ralph Barton Perry by 38–29

A couple of readers pointed out a significant omission from the survey, Morris R. Cohen.  Feel free to list other omissions in the comments, but take a moment to say why they were significant and should be appreciated today.  More generally, I'd be keen to hear from readers what they think of the philosophers on this list, why they are significant and still worth reading.  That will surely be more interesting than the mere ordinaly listing.   

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12 responses to “Underappreciated philosophers active in the U.S. from roughly 1900 through mid-century?”

  1. Liam

    One thing I wondered while tracking the votes on this: does the fact that C.I. Lewis won fairly convincingly constitute evidence that he didn't deserve to win? I feel like something that is widely agreed to be under-appreciated is probably appreciated quite enough.

    BL COMMENT: Perhaps, but let us not get hung up on the correct interpretation of "under-appreciated" and "appreciated"!

    Reply
  2. David Auerbach

    Well, this would put us well on the way to a proof that there are no under-appreciated philosophers (cf. the proof that there are no uninteresting numbers).

    To make this slightly more relevant: CCNY, my undergraduate alma mater, had the wisdom to name its library after Morris R Cohen.

    Reply
  3. Brad Rickelman

    Do the results point to the relative underappreciation of Pragmatism (of various kinds)?

    Reply
  4. Matt Lister

    I was sorry, but not really surprised, to see Alain Locke come in as low as he did. I'm not close to an expert on his thought, but what I know of it makes it seem like a useful resource for thinking about cultural pluralism and the role of minority cultures (of all sort) in society, a problem that gets a pretty fair amount of attention these days, but which mostly ignores Locke's thought. As far as I can tell, this isn't a judgment based on the merits after considering his work. Perhaps in the end it wouldn't be of great use to the problems people are most interested in today, but his work on these subjects was pioneering, and probably deserves to be re-considered.

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  5. Kent Bach

    I've long appreciated C.I. Lewis, ever since, as a teenager in 1961, I called on him at his home on Yale Road (despite decades at Harvard) in Menlo Park, CA. He and his wife Mabel were gracious and hospitable. He enjoyed reminiscing about, among many other things, his famous (or notorious) Kant course and having to trudge up to Radcliffe to repeat the lectures. I didn't ask him about his over-appreciated colleague.

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  6. Anon Grad Student

    Response to Brad Rickelman: …and also process philosophy?

    Mead is under-appreciated even amongst pragmatists.

    On the other hand, Langer is appreciated amongst those in aesthetics, no?

    Wouldn't a more interesting list be of over-appreciated philosophers with no restrictions: Hegel!

    Reply
  7. Brian Schimpf

    I study contemporary analytic philosophy, but I've always been a fan of Brand Blandshard. Is anyone else surprised to see him so high up on the list?

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  8. V. Alan White

    In keeping with Brian's request, I have to go to bat for Whitehead. (Disclosure: I did my MA and PhD on Whitehead; although I did early career pubs on him I subsequently abandoned that for other interests. I do confess shock that Whitehead did so well on this survey!)

    While he's best known for his process work while at Harvard, one should not forget his 19teens and early 20s work in the philosophy of science (Enquiry/Concept of Nature; his alternative-to-Einsteinian Principle of Relativity in 1922 was ignored and quickly forgotten and probably soured him on close work in philosophy of science). It was this work however that led to his hire at Harvard in the mid-20s in his mid-60s, although he then quickly moved to the more familiar metaphysical work through his transitional Science and the Modern World. His posit of a temporal ontology voiced in event language, begun in his phi/sci work and expanded for more broad metaphysical use in the famous process books, paved a philosophical path for Davidson, et al, who appreciated the usefulness of such a language for describing the fundamental properties of reality that involve time(causation, identity, etc.).

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  9. Daniel Robert Siakel

    Whitehead is worth reading not only because of his astonishing synthesis of radical insight with rigorous formulation, but also because of the historical acumen with which he articulates his vision. His esoteric terminology notwithstanding, Whitehead prefigures many now-fashionable areas of research in contemporary metaphysics, including the nature of time and temporal reality, trans-temporal identity, and ontological dependence. I'd wager that philosophers will (re)discover Whitehead before long, only to regret having previously overlooked the contributions of such a powerful thinker.

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  10. Anon

    Any reason why we wouldn't include Gustav Bergmann? My impression is that he was appreciated in his time. But he doesn't seem to be read anymore, unlike many of his contemporaries.

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  11. Tom Carson

    My Thoughts

    Lewis was a very great philosopher and deserved to be ranked #1. Every philosopher should read his book An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation.

    Blanchard deserved to be ranked as high as he was. I especially recommend his book Reason and Analysis which gives powerful criticisms of positivism. Although he may not have regarded himself as an analytic philosopher, Blanchard was an extraordinarily clear and rigorous philosopher.

    DuCasse deserved to be ranked considerably higher than #11 on this list. He left of a large body of work in many different areas of philosophy. His work on causation is still read and discussed. But other things he wrote are unduly neglected. His book Philosophy as a Science is one of the best things ever written on philosophical method and gives a very clear and early statement of what we now call reflective equilibrium. He is also notable for his work on aesthetics and the philosophical implications of parapsychology. He was a great philosopher and deserves to be more widely read today.

    Tom Carson

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  12. walto

    Everett Hall! I'm regularly distressed when I mention his name to philosophers and am greeted with blank stares. They may know his collegues (Bergmann, Sellars, Adams) and his student (Clark), and, of course, they know several of his disputants (Strawson, Hartshorne, and Hare), but they don't know Hall. And that's a shame, not only because his work is so good, but because it anticipates quite a bit of more recent work in perception, representationalism, value theory. I recommend his last two books _Philosophical Systems_, (which was reviewed favorably by the young Richard Rorty) and _Our Knowledge of Fact and Value_ (which was discussed in detail by Sellars) very highly. It really saddens me that his name was not included in this poll, and I hope my recent Wikipedia entry and a couple of new papers will help remedy this.

    Reply

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