Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.

  1. Brian Leiter's avatar
  2. John Rapko's avatar
  3. Duane Long's avatar
  4. Amy Flowerree's avatar
  5. s. wallerstein's avatar
  6. Mark Taylor's avatar

    There are no good arguments, in an educational environment, for distinguishing between student submissions which are AI-generated and those which…

  7. early career scholar's avatar

The 100 “most significant” figures in history…

…as compiled by Time magazine using various data sources. Here are the philosophers who made the list (with their rank):

8. Aristotle

14. Marx

25. Plato

42. Nietzsche

59. Kant

64. Voltaire

68. Socrates

72. Augustine

79. Cicero

80. Rousseau

81. Francis Bacon

90. Aquinas

92. Descartes

100. Locke

Aristotle ahead of Plato must surely have to do with Aristotle’s affect on Aquinas and Catholicism. But the top five philosophers on this list seems right: Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Marx, Nietzsche!

,

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

7 responses to “The 100 “most significant” figures in history…”

  1. Looking at the world today, I’d eliminate Locke and Voltaire from the list and add Hobbes and Machiavelli.

  2. I understand that their methodology is inherently Anglo-centric and far from perfect, but really: Elvis was more significant than Mao, who did not even make the list?

  3. that 20th century thinkers didnt make the list is no surprise, I guess. But interesting no adam smith or j.s. mill, and also no confucius or lao tse.

    1. Adam Smith is in the list, 56!

  4. I found it interesting that Jesus and Muhammad were included but not Abraham. At first I thought that perhaps that was because no one knows if he was a real person but then I see that King Arthur is also on the list and he also has not been confirmed to have existed.

  5. I take it that such lists have two primary functions: 1. They gratify the narcissism of soi-disant educated folks who skim them and are pleased that they recognize all the names; and 2. They generate ‘clicks’ and disagreement (What?? They didn’t include X (= Mao or Walt Disney or Louis Armstrong or Ernesto Guevara or . . . ) I was pleased to see that the long-suffering Ali made the list at 89, but mystified that they didn’t include Master Kong (aka the noted social philosopher Confucius). And I really don’t want to think about metrics that rank George W. Bush well ahead of the prominent philosopher and sage of the Shakyas Siddhartha Gautama . . . Given the recent turns in politics, one might want to include de Maistre and Gobineau.

  6. 56 Adam Smith. Was he not a philosopher?

Designed with WordPress