Recently, Marx was voted ‘Greatest Philosopher Ever’ by 28% of listeners to Radio Four, UK. This shows us the general public either do not value the work of most philosophers or are simply not fully aware of it.
Anyhow, I’d be interested in hearing YOUR top three. You can say why but no more than a paragraph please. For the purposes of this thread, let’s not argue about who is better than who. You can do that in another thread.
To start the ball rolling, my top three (but not my three favourite incidentally) are:
I don’t know what my top three is. I am not very much acquainted with great philosophers, but mostly with secondary 20th and 21th century thinkers.
The only one that I can name is Fernand Van Steenberghen, a thomistic philosopher with whom I share now few opinions, but who is very interesting all the same.
Edit: Grenet, another thomistic philosopher, is also interesting and thorough.
Nietzsche I only put because everyone puts him and obviously I don’t genuinely think that detrop is the 5th best philosopher of all time. 7th, perhaps, but not 5th…
there are a lot of schopenhauer votes. this surprises me… i wonder what i missed besides some well-deserved praise to kant, some sign of the times views on women and things, some glass half empty chicanery, and that minor, but major, tweak on kant by putting the Will as noumena… top three?
