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Best Anglophone political philosophers since 1945: the results

Brian Leiter

With not quite 320 votes cast in our latest poll, here's the top 20:

1. John Rawls  (Condorcet winner: wins contests with all other choices)
2. G.A. Cohen  loses to John Rawls by 214–26
3. Robert Nozick  loses to John Rawls by 217–17, loses to G.A. Cohen by 122–93
4. Ronald Dworkin  loses to John Rawls by 227–8, loses to Robert Nozick by 103–97
5. Joseph Raz  loses to John Rawls by 217–13, loses to Ronald Dworkin by 103–80
6. Amartya Sen  loses to John Rawls by 228–17, loses to Joseph Raz by 111–89
7. Martha Nussbaum  loses to John Rawls by 225–38, loses to Amartya Sen by 111–107
8. H.L.A. Hart  loses to John Rawls by 221–16, loses to Martha Nussbaum by 112–110
9. Isaiah Berlin  loses to John Rawls by 223–21, loses to H.L.A. Hart by 107–88
10. T.M. Scanlon  loses to John Rawls by 229–6, loses to Isaiah Berlin by 112–84
11. Thomas Nagel  loses to John Rawls by 229–5, loses to T.M. Scanlon by 95–82
12. Jeremy Waldron  loses to John Rawls by 229–12, loses to Thomas Nagel by 98–81
13. Philip Pettit  loses to John Rawls by 233–10, loses to Jeremy Waldron by 84–79
14. Charles Taylor  loses to John Rawls by 225–13, loses to Philip Pettit by 101–79
15. Brian Barry  loses to John Rawls by 231–7, loses to Charles Taylor by 91–80
16. Joel Feinberg  loses to John Rawls by 230–8, loses to Brian Barry by 87–70
17. Michael Walzer  loses to John Rawls by 226–10, loses to Joel Feinberg by 83–80
18. Joshua Cohen  loses to John Rawls by 233–5, loses to Michael Walzer by 94–69
19. A. John Simmons  loses to John Rawls by 232–6, loses to Joshua Cohen by 69–67
20. Charles Beitz  loses to John Rawls by 235–2, loses to A. John Simmons by 70–59

Runners-up for the top 20 include Susan Okin, Samuel Scheffler, Iris Young, and Gerald Gaus.  There appears to have been a late surge of some strategic voting for Nussbaum, who was in the top ten even before that (one indication is that 38 people ranked her ahead of Rawls, compared to, say, 17 who ranked Nozick or Sen ahead, or the 8 who ranked Dworkin ahead–though that she came out behind Sen is, to my mind, surprising).  But as with all these polls, the precise ordinal rank is less revealing than the broader picture (the top 5, the top 10, the top 20).  In that regard, the results seem, yet again, fairly reasonable.  There were, alas, some unfortunate omissions from the poll, including David Miller, Jean Hampton, and Gregory Kavka.  And recall that among living political philosophers, only those over age 60 were included.  (Some that did poorly in earlier iterations of these polls were not included.)

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12 responses to “Best Anglophone political philosophers since 1945: the results”

  1. political theorist

    It would be interesting to see a poll of journals that disaggregated moral and political philosophy. The previous ones combined the two but many of the listed journals do not publish political philosophy.

    Reply
  2. Matt

    A few thoughts: I'm sorry and a bit surprised to see Berlin do so well. His work, both normative and historical, is pretty superficial compared to most of the others on the list (as well as more recent people.) He has an industry behind him, and some people like his prose, but he should be ranked much lower.

    I ranked both Hart and Feinberg much lower than they ended up, as it seems to me that their most important contributions are to legal philosophy proper, and that their contributions to political philosophy, while certainly important, don't rate such a high ranking. (Some might think the same of Raz and Dworkin, and maybe Waldron, but for them, their contributions to political philosophy proper seem important and robust enough to warrant rankings such as they got.)

    I was somewhat surprised to see A. John Simmons not rank higher. His work on authority and political obligation seems like the best and clearest of the important philosophical work on that topic (even though I don't agree with his conclusions), and his work on Locke has also been very important. His recent work on ideal theory has also been very important.

    Nagel seems over-ranked to me, if we are judging based on his work in political philosophy. Whatever we may think of his larger contributions, I don't think his work in political philosophy in particular is distinctive, important, or robust enough to warrant such a high ranking. (I'd probably say the same thing about Nozick, whose work, while influential, doesn't really seem to stand up to pressure, nor to be the best example of work in his general line of thought.)

    I was slightly surprised to see the main "global justice" scholars do as poorly as they did, with only Beitz coming up in the top 20. I'm not sure if people just think more of the younger group, or if the area is starting to fade in importance.

    In addition to David Miller (whom I would have certainly put in the top 20), I would have given high votes to Jan Elster and Philippe van Parijs, (certainly top 20 for both), and would have liked to see John Roemer included as well, though he's a harder case to make for inclusion. I'm also surprised not to see Raymond Geuss included. I'm not sure how I would have ranked him – some of his work is obviously excellent and other parts of it seem to me to be too idiosyncratic and even self-indulgent, though of course others my disagree – but I certainly would have ranked him higher than many people included in the poll.

    BL COMMENT: Geuss was in an earlier iteration, but fared quite poorly–unsurprisingly, of course, given who did well!

    Reply
  3. John Rapko

    BL: Thanks for the information about Geuss faring poorly in an earlier iteration; I'm sure he would be quite pleased to learn this. As for his (proleptic) comments on this poll, here's a passage from his new book Reality and Its Dreams, p. 14: "I have special interest in the views of medicine men, warlocks, archimandrites, faith healers, and shamans of this [contemporary "liberal"] tribe, among them the "analytic philosophers." These philosophers, however, are both an object of study and also, to some extent, a pool of informants–for who would know better than they how the natives think? So if one can avoid being deafened by the rattling of their bottles of different kinds of snake oils, one can learn something from Rawls, Nozick, Dworkin, Nagel, Gautheir, Waldron and all the other more minor doctores miraculosi."

    Reply
  4. s. wallerstein

    Professor Leiter,

    As you know, I wrote you after the poll had opened, suggesting the names of Herbert Marcuse and Hannah Arendt as political philosophers.

    You answered me that it was too late to add them and that they were on the border between political philosophy and political theory.

    I realize that neither of them belong to the analytic tradition, but both wrote most of their works in English and taught in U.S. universities, lecturing in English: thus, they were anglophone.

    I see that both have individual articles in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

    I wonder what other readers have to say about Marcuse and Arendt.

    Reply
  5. Daniel Kaufman

    I agree that both should be on the list and that Arendt, at least, should be ranked quite highly.

    Reply
  6. Mike Otsuka

    Jerry Cohen would have been touched and pleased to see how well he did in this poll but would have insisted that Ronald Dworkin, rather than he, merited the place just below Rawls.

    Reply
  7. Christopher Morris

    A note about Hart. If one thinks of political philosophy as focusing, among other things, on political institutions and on "forms of political organization", then The Concept of Law is one of the two or three most important books of political philosophy since 1945 (or so I think).

    Reply
  8. political theory grad student

    I'd second this comment. The border between political philosophy and theory is often quite blurry, so I'm not convinced that the disciplinary distinction is sufficiently strong to exclude folks like Arendt and Marcuse from the poll. Arendt, to be sure, rejected the label of 'philosopher,' but for somewhat idiosyncratic reasons. Her influence on professional philosophers seems significant enough to make the case for her inclusion.

    And anyway, there are a good number of scholars that were included on the list that were undoubtedly working at the 'border' between political philosophy and theory (with most of them working primarily in political science departments): Walzer, Shklar, Flathman, Benhabib, Berlin, Iris Young, Goodin, MacPherson, Oakeshott, Dennis Thompson, Pettit, J. Cohen, Beitz, and so on.

    Reply
  9. a phd student

    I believe Michael Sandel and Charles Larmore should have been included, along with Arendt and, probably, Marcuse.

    Reply
  10. Lako

    I'm confused by this distinction between political philosophy and political theory. Could someone who endorses it explain what it amounts to in terms other than departmental affiliation? (I would agree that the kind of political philosophy that goes on in departments of political science (US) and politics (UK) has a different tendency than the kind that goes on in philosophy departments (more focused on institutions and on specific issues, more 'realist' in outlook, less integrated with other areas of philosophy, and so on), but I don't see this as the basis for a distinction between two disciplines.)

    Reply
  11. D. C. Matthew

    I want to second Matt's surprise that A. John Simmons would be ranked so low. This result, more than any other, discredits the poll. I believe that a serious case can be made that Simmons is the best living political philosopher.

    Reply
  12. Mathieu Carpentier

    I agree that boundaries between legal and political philosophy are fuzzy, as they should be (see my point on Raz below). However, given who else was listed, it is fair to assume that the poll was meant to be about normative political philosophy. And, no offence to Hart, his contributions to that field are not very substantial, his well-known critique of Rawls notwithstanding. In fact I think his contributions to moral philosophy and metaethics rank much higher (with much fewer pages, "the Ascription of Responsibility and Rights" is at least as good as The Language of Morals, whatever P. Geach may have – confusingly – thought of it). That is not to say implications cannot be drawn from the Concept of Law for normative political philosophy, naturally. But to my knowledge Hart never drew them explicitely. Compare with Raz's theory of authority, which is instrumental for both his jurisprudential (legal-philosophical) doctrine of exclusive positivism AND his political-philosophical moderate perfectionist project, even though the two are unrelated. So I am afraid I have to agree with Matt above, even though there is no stauncher admirer of Hart than me. Really. I have a portrait of him next to my wife's on my bed table.

    Of course, one can lament the fact that political philosophy, as practiced today, is mainly post-rawlsian normative work, at the expense of a more traditional conception of the discipline as the explanation of what political institutions and power are, an explanation which is now left to political science. But this is beyond the point.

    PS I did not vote in the poll, because I am both too intellectually incompetent and too lazy to rank people beyond the top ten. I must say I am pleased Cohen fared so well, and puzzled that Berlin was even included.

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