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A poll back in 2009, with more than a thousand votes. The top five:
1. Ludwig Wittgenstein (17%)
2. Bertrand Russell (16%)
3. David K. Lewis (12%)
4. Martin Heidegger (10%)
5. W.V.O. Quine (8%)
5. John Rawls (8%)
The Lewis result says more about who was reading the blog in 2009, I suspect. I'd pick Quine, but let's face it: the 20th-century didn't have as many greats as the 19th-century!
Feel free to discuss, but post comments only once, as they may take awhile to appear.
Michel Henry, who revolutionized phenomenology in France with The Essence of Manifestation, and went on to write a number of works that addressed the defining theoretical and practical problems of multiple areas of philosophy more ably than those areas' specialists themselves did, e.g. personal identity, phenomenal consciousness, color theory, technology, economics, politics, and of course religion. He was also an award-winning novelist. As time goes on, his influence will only continue to grow, until it finally eclipses the other twentieth-century phenomenologists who are better known.
I have always thought that along with wittgenstein and heidegger one should place Whitehead at the top of the list. ANd while heidegger has too much baggage, and wittgenstein seemed to be insightful but a dead end, whitehead still stands. As time has passed I have come to place levinas at the top as well
Given Trump, I'd suspect that Hannah Arendt, if you consider her to be a philosopher, certainly an important thinker, would get more votes than Rawls today.
I'm enjoying the fantasized spectacle of 80+ academics lined up to vote and solemnly depositing ballots that read 'David Lewis' or 'John Rawls'. It wouldn't have occurred to me to put either in the top 50, but that's just, like, my opinion, man.–One way of thinking about this question would be by analogy with Roberto Bolaño's remark that of course poetry is a greater art than the novel, and the greatest poetry of the 20th century was the novels of Joyce, Proust, and (if memory serves) Faulkner. So of course philosophy is a greater medium of linguistic reflection and analysis aiming at understanding (as Sellars said) “how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term” than the novel, and the greatest philosophy of the 20th century was the novels of Joyce, Proust, Faulkner, and Beckett.–Another noteworthy point might be that, starting with Aquinas in the 13th century, for most centuries the presumptively greatest philosopher also had an incalculably vast effect on the arts and culture generally. If that point were taken into account, wouldn't Bergson be on the list?
My personal favorites are J.L. Mackie and Stanley Rosen. Heidegger is the most overrated philosopher in history!
I always find it interesting that Wittgenstein tops lists such as this, considering so few philosophers since (perhaps O.K. Bouwsma and Frank Ebersole notwithstanding) actually do philosophy as Wittgenstein set out in PI (i.e., describing language-games, eschewing theoretical explanations, etc.). Perhaps this disconnect is one of the reasons why many analytic philosophers think him influential but, as you note, something like a dead end (although I disagree with that). Of course, there are some contemporary 'Wittgensteinian' philosophers, but often they are focussed on exegesis or still try to produce philosophical theories. The other reason, I suppose, is that philosophers just find his early work influential, but that in itself is interesting as Wittgenstein ultimately thought that approach was a dead end.
I think Bertrand Russell is still under-appreciated. He should be the clear #1. Along with Frege and Moore, he is one of the founders of the analytic tradition. And within that tradition, he is one of the first philosophers to do both metaphysics and epistemology in a scientifically-informed way. At the same time, Russell was very open minded, as evidenced by his embrace of neutral monism. Finally, he brought philosophy to a much larger, popular audience. He was doing public philosophy when few other philosophers were doing it. If you add all that up, I think he should be at the top.
I wonder how this list would change if you were to run it again. I expect Lewis, Quine, and Rawls would remain solidly in the top 5. I don't know about Wittgenstein, although he would be my #1.
I am not an expert on Wittgenstein (just a fan), but I was an analytic philosopher for, oh, a decade or so. But I think the explanation for why analytic philosophers nowadays think Wittgenstein was a dead end is simple: if he's right, they're wasting their time.
My impression, as a non-philosopher, is that Quine's contributions were important but mostly technical and hence likely to be appreciated most by professional philosophers. By contrast, Russell and Rawls both speak to non-philosophers, Russell because he did public philosophy (as noted by Gordon Barnes above) and Rawls because, while _A Theory of Justice_ is not an easy read, it doesn't presuppose any special knowledge, as the publisher's summary on the back of the paperback first edition accurately noted, and it addresses questions that non-philosophers are more likely to be interested in than, say, the analytic-synthetic distinction.
And when it comes to cultural impact on the 20th century, which admittedly is a different question than who was the greatest philosopher, I think Sartre would have to be right up there.
When I was a beginning graduate student, about 1970, I talked to a slightly older philosopher (who has since become eminent) about "Who is the greatest living philosopher?"
Russell was still alive, but I said I would leave him out of consideration as no longer being an active philosopher, and so I nominated Quine. My friend matched my exclusion by saying Heidegger no longer counted, and nominated Wilfrid Sellars. Discussing the pros and cons of our choices he asked me what I conceded was a winning question: what has Quine ever said about ethics?
The 20th Century was long enough that some of its great philosophers' greatest work was in response to earlier 20th C philosophers. Which makes this kind of ranking difficult: does a brilliant work by A replying to the earlier brilliant work of B count toward A's "eminence" or toward B's? For example, suppose I thought, on the basis of "Naming and Necessity," that Kripke was a contender: couldn't it be objected that "Naming and Necessity" should be taken as illustrating the importance of Russell and Quine?
The trouble with Wittgenstein was that he didn't take the time to make himself clear. Hence the exegetical industry centred around him.
I would have a very different list. I think that Frank Ramsey beats Wittgenstein on clarity, depth and lasting contributions. In social and political philosophy I would put John Harsanyi above Rawls on the same criteria.
Once in a while, the early deaths of certain people robs the world of their genius. I agree with Professor Skyrms that Frank Ramsey was a really good philosopher/logician and a very sound economist on top of that! Such a brilliant mind would have been unstoppable generating structures of thoughts of various layers. We had such peeps in math as well- Niels Henrik Abel and Évariste Galois and perhaps Ramanujan.
However, I continue to wonder why David Lewis continues to get a not-so-good rap. Even BL thinks WVO was greater than DL. DL is so so underrated in the profession and dude was exceptional to the core! From General Semantics to Adverbs of Quantification to Scorekeeping in a Language Game, every essay was a hit- back to back! Dude was an able analytic philosopher and I dare to argue that he was the greatest philosopher of the 20th Century! I am comforted by the fact that he is well regarded amongst linguists- Irene Heim's seminal PhD dissertation (for example) was a fleshing out of ideas developed by DL. DL was one of the forerunners (in addition to Richard Montague, and perhaps, Bertie Russell before them) of formal semantics and a worthy torchbearer for analytic philosophy in general!
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