checking in

All right, that was pretty exhausting. I’ve never run a conference before, and that one lasted three days at a time when I was fighting off a throat infection. (I always get them right before or after trips to Europe. Better when it happens while I’m still in Egypt, where antibiotics cost about as much as bubble gum and the pharmacist will sell them to you with no prescription– a disaster for public health, perhaps, but a godsend for responsible consumers like me who know to take them all and not leave baby drug-resistant superbugs behind.)

So here I am, too exhausted to do anything productive, but it’s also still just a bit too early to sleep.

So what I did instead was extend my previous cautious “5 Greatest Philosophers Ever” List to 25. I’m not going to post it yet, because it needs refinement. But just looking at it reveals some interesting facts. The top 10 would be relatively uncontroversial, with the one exception that I think Nietzsche belongs low in the Top Ten. Many consider him a sort of juvenile pastime that one has to move beyond, and this attitude is understandable, but just think of how your brain is on fire after reading Nietzsche. There aren’t many philosophers who can do that.

I also have Spinoza at #11, and many these days would like to see him much higher. I happen to think that’s about where he belongs. If that seems too low, Bergson at #12 might seem too high, but I think Bergson is a really great philosopher.

Heidegger ended up at #7 on my draft list, just behind Descartes and just ahead of Aquinas.

Well, I’ve already more less given away my Top Twelve, so let me just formalize it. Remember, this is a draft list that I will check again every week or so to see if my views change over time…

1. Aristotle
2. Plato
3. Kant
4. Leibniz
5. Hegel

6. Descartes
7. Heidegger
8. Aquinas
9. Plotinus
10. Nietzsche

11. Spinoza
12. Bergson

If someone wanted to flip 1/2 and 4/5, I’d be perfectly happy with that. #3 is where Kant belongs, I think. And yes, Plotinus does belong in the top ten as far as I’m concerned.

Remember, this is a “greatest” list not a “most influential”. If it were most influential, both Averroes and Hume would be threats to crack the top five. I do have them both in my top 25, but I rank Avicenna higher than Averroes and Locke higher than Hume.

As I’ve said before, I think it’s a simple mistake to call Islamic philosophy “non-Western”. Islamic philosophy is Western, period. It has the same roots in Plato, Aristotle, and monotheism that all the more obviously Western stuff has. Adding Indian philosophy, etc., to the list would be a much trickier proposition, and one that I don’t currently feel qualified to attempt. I do know my way around Islamic philosophy, though, but without being an expert. For one thing, Arabic is a really hard language, and much of the best material is untranslated.

The baseball fans among you may remember the Bill James “100 Greatest Baseball Players Ever” list. I’d like to write a similar book on the top 25 someday. In philosophy we don’t have the advantage of statistical data, which James analyzes in such crafty fashion. But there are other ways to tackle the problem, I think.