a riff on Levi’s riff

Speaking of Levi’s own “overrated philosophers” post, I was interested in this point:

“Second, the philosopher must be rated by many as being one of the greatest philosophers of all time. Note, this criterion need not imply consensus. It can refer to how fan clubs rate philosophers.”

Emphasis added. I said the first part myself, and didn’t say the second part (I don’t think), but I do agree with that corollary.

But it raises an interesting question as to whether there are really two types of overrated philosophers or overrated anything else. And I suspect there are.

The usual mechanism for an overrated entity of any sort is just as Levi notes… Some “fan club” group gets carried away and backs the wrong horse. No criticism implied there– we all do it all the time. Who among us hasn’t made a foolish decision, fallen in love with an illusion, been infatuated by an author we later regard as shallow, etc.? No one’s judgment is infallible, and hence we shouldn’t pick on people too much for flubbing a judgment now and then. (I still remember my own first colossally bad prediction from childhood: I thought heavy metal music was never going to last. And the reason I made that misjudgment is that I hated heavy metal at that age –don’t mind it so much now– and my wishes contaminated my objective judgment. That’s one way, though not the only way, in which misjudgments are made.)

So, that’s the usual way it happens… Some philosopher (or restaurant, or athlete, or rock band) picks up a train of devotees and they vastly overestimate the importance of the entity to which they are devoted. Others scoff from the sidelines, and over time they look like they were right.

But a more interesting phenomenon would be collective overrating– cases were the vast majority of informed people make a big misjudgment. The phenomenon is much more interesting because this is perhaps the very engine of human history.

More on that some other time. If we limit this phenomenon to the case of intellectual figures, when perusing correspondence and biography of past centuries, I do sometimes notice everyone seeming very intimidated by and in awe of contemporary figures who we would see as not quite at their level.

A quick example comes to mind, and though the person in question has been deceased for decades, I’ll pass over the example in silence for now. But just by sifting various possible overrated figures in my mind, it seems like there is a typology of such figures. That is to say, there are different possible ways in which a philosopher can come to be overrated:

*sheer force of personality (Life of the Party)

*success in neighboring disciplines resulting in overvaluation of the strictly philosophical component of their work (Jack of All Trades)

*”right place at the right time” figures who speak to a practical need of the Zeitgeist and are discarded once their specific mission has finished (Johnny on the Spot)

*monotonous figures who make such a striking contribution on one problem that their overall stature is then blown out of proportion (One-Trick Pony)

There are probably others. But what’s the famous Tolstoy phrase about how happy families are alike but unhappy families are each unhappy in their own special way? Maybe it’s also true that overrated figures are each overrated in their own ways.

Another interesting question: is there a typical lifespan for being overrated? In the case of rock bands, it’s probably just a couple of years before people sense the hollowness inside the tree, but in philosophy it’s probably on the order of decades.

But every rule has exceptions, and thus an interesting question would be: which overrated philosopher beat the system and stayed overrated for the longest time? And why? I’m guessing maybe a century as the ceiling on that category, but maybe it’s more like 200 years. Or it could even expand to fill the limits of an entire historical era. There were people who were major players in Medieval philosophy who stopped being talked about once the landscape changes: they were “period piece” thinkers, but their period went on for quite some time.

All right, I need to get back to work. This is another of those weekends that involves nothing but catching up on what should’ve been done during the week.