another approach to the rankings

This is very much a work in progress, but at some point I do want to find the right point of approach to the question “Who are the greatest philosphers of all time?”

Obviously no set of people would ever come up with the same list in the same order. But that’s not the same as saying “it’s all just a matter of opinion”. What it means, instead, is that people might have a legitimate argument about what the principles of ranking should be.

Let me re-focus for a moment on the very top of the list. The last one I posted went: Aristotle, Plato, Kant, Leibniz, Hegel. I’d like to make one change to that top five today on the basis of a question I will now introduce.

Obviously, for someone to be a candidate for the greatest philosopher of all time, one should be able to nominate them without people bursting into laughter. If you heard a rumor that someone said “Richard Rorty is the greatest philosopher of all time,” how do you imagine that person in your mind? I imagine an undergraduate taking his or her first philosophy course, excitedly agreeing with everything Rorty says, and being unable to imagine that anyone could ever be better. But quite obviously, no one who has read and reflected widely could ever seriously maintain that Rorty is the greatest ever. It doesn’t pass the straight face test.

Now, let’s try it with the top of my list, and see what happens.

And keep in mind, Socrates is excluded from all the rankings in principle. It’s simply too hard to triangulate from the works of Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes (and a few second-hand scraps from Aristotle) and get a good sense of who Socrates really was and what he taught

But let’s try the other statements and see what happens.

“Aristotle is the greatest philosopher who ever lived.” Obviously not a ridiculous statement, even if it turns out to be wrong. No one deserves to be a laughingstock for holding that Aristotle is the greatest of them all.

“Plato is the greatest philosopher who ever lived.” Same as Aristotle. The case can be made. I and you would listen respectfully to anyone who rated Plato at #1.

“Kant is the greatest philosopher who ever lived.” Zizek has more or less said this on several occasions, and though I think it’s grievously wrong, I lose no respect for Zizek when he says so. It’s plausible to hold that Kant is the greatest ever. I can see why someone would say so.

But now things get a bit tricky at #4…

“Leibniz is the greatest philosopher who ever lived.” Even though Leibniz is my personal favorite philosopher who ever lived, I don’t think you can call him the greatest of all time with a straight face.

But…

“Hegel is the greatest philosopher who ever lived.” Even though I disagree, this is an inherently much more plausible statement that saying that Leibniz was the greatest ever.

Why? I think it has something to do with comprehensiveness. Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel all touched systematically on almost every important area of human life, and with a good deal of thoroughness. By contrast, Leibniz is an author of ingenious scraps and drafts of philosophy.

For those who know baseball, Leibniz is like the Sandy Koufax of metaphysics. For those who don’t know baseball, Koufax was a left-handed pitcher for the Dodgers. His first six seasons, from ages 19-24, were mediocre or bad. At age 25 he was suddenly OK. But then from ages 26-30, he had six of hte most dominant seasons by a pitcher in baseball history. And then– he suddenly retired! Star pitchers can often go into their early 40’s at a high level of performance, but Koufax quit in his prime.

Now, Leibniz didn’t quit in his prime, but kept working up to the end. But still, just as Koufax’s claims to greatness are based on just six seasons, Leibniz’s are based on not so many pages. You can still read most of Leibniz’s major philosophical work in a couple of hours in a café.

If we had something like a 500-page Monadology (the Theodicy doesn’t quite do it) then Leibniz’s claims to “greatest ever” would be more plausible. That’s my take, anyway.

And, it’s enough to make me flip my #4 and #5 rankings around and put Hegel on top of Leibniz. For now, let’s lock in Aristotle, Plato, Kant, and Hegel as the top four simply because they are the only ones who can pass the “Greatest Ever” straight face test in any group extending beyond their fans.

Just to finish out my Top 12…

“Descartes is the greatest philosopher who ever lived.” Not the most ridiculous sentence I ever heard, but still pretty hard to swallow when you look at the other names that came before.

“Heidegger is the greatest philosopher who ever lived.” Not absolutely and completely ridiculous, but only a Heideggerian would ever think of saying it. He’s just too narrow, no matter how deep.

“Aquinas is the greatest philosopher who ever lived.” Only a hardcore Catholic would ever say this. And if your entire base of support for being the greatest comes from one demographic group, it’s not a promising sign for your candidacy. If the Danish populace voted Kierkegaard the greatest philosopher ever, we’d be similarly suspicious. If Obama had only won the African-American vote, he would not be President today. And so forth.

“Plotinus is the greatest philosopher who ever lived.” This sounds like a quirky affectation. My picture of the person saying this is of a grad student writing on Neoplatonism, trying to get attention at a party by being provocative. I don’t see how you could legitimately call Plotinus the greatest ever.

“Nietzsche is the greatest philosopher who ever lived.” The person saying this is probably either 17 years old, or has not yet outgrown being 17 years old. I’m happy to take a bit of heat for putting him in my top ten. And I do think he’s quite the greatest literary stylist in the history of philosophy (and keep in mind, I think literary style is a damn big part of a philosophy, and greatly more important than people realize in purely intellectual terms). But the greatest philosopher ever? Doesn’t pass the straight face test.

“Spinoza is the greatest philosopher who ever lived.” Only a Spinoza fan would ever dream of saying this. He’s not the greatest ever, or even close. Sorry.

“Bergson is the greatest philosopher who ever lived.” *laughing* I doubt anyone would go quite this far. However, it’s somehow a bit less ridiculous than the others. I can imagine a near future history of philosophy in which Bergson would rise much higher on the list. He’s so original that he remains a kind of stand-alone figure for the moment, despite the emergence of Deleuze.

One of the continuing lessons of this exercise is that having the respect of those who agree with you is not all that impressive. If people agree with you, then your work is a useful tool for them. It is “intellectual ammunition” in their fights with others. But I don’t have a high regard for intellectual ammunition, because I don’t see why beating other people in arguments is all that impressive; no one is likely to remember for very long. (And what is more boring than hearing someone talk about how they beat somebody else in an argument? Every time I get cornered into listening to such a speech, I wish I had a suicide pill on hand.)