It is an absolute joke that while Marx may win the whole thing, Hegel wasn't even nominated. Most of the ideas Marx is known for are social-scientific ideas rather than strictly philosophical ones. And yet Hegel may have been even a better student of history and society (aside from being many times the philosopher) than Marx was. The ranking only gets sensible after #2. Hume, Kant, and Plato really are top five.

As for Hobbes, as a political philosopher he may indeed be one of the greatest ever, but broke hardly any new ground at all in epistemology, metaphysics, and logic. His idea of the afterlife was that there would be a hell where God would torture the wicked for ages until he got tired of it, then he would force the damned to reproduce so that he would have new subjects for torment. Quite stupid, whatever he really meant by it.

Despite Nietzsche's being a philologist rather than philosopher, I'm surprised he's not among the top five.

I agree with dende that it is amazing that Hegel did not make the short list and I also agree that he is a much more worthy philosopher than Marx to win the poll. My guess is that Marx is leading because its a popular poll rather than a poll of experts. Marx is very popular with the youth in England. I am rather excited about Hume right now and hope he somehow pulls it out.

Thanks for the link to my latest humor, Norm.

Re Tim Robbins' Embedded, my husband and I saw it live in NYC and it was quite good. And speaking of satire by Tim Robbins, we finally saw Bob Roberts last night. What an excellent, political satire! I highly recommend it.

what i wanna know is where are the female philosophers? i rate Simone de Beauvoir and Juli Kristeva way ahead of most of the lads on that list. even Judith Butler is sharp enough to be on the list.

come to think of it how bout we recognise the few and very good non-Euro philosophers to. i am a Maori (indigenous New Zealander) and one of my g-g-grand uncles was a philosopher (altho the colonial government called him a rabid fanatic) who influenced Ghandi - bet no one out there has ever heard of Te Whiti O Rongomai, yet he has a legacy that extends from 19th century New Zealand through to Indian independence on to the the civil rights movement in the U.S.

AND ChrisJ don't be such a fucking Ivy League snob. Popular and intellectually valid aren't necessarily mutually exclusive - e.g. a clear majority of the world doesn't trust Bush.

Came across this, you might like it:

http://www.pants-of-time.com/sp/?p=127

Maybe you philosopher folks can help me understand something. I read Julian Baggini's defense of Hume and I don't get it. Here's a quote with which I struggle:

"Rather, the facts of morality are to be observed in human feeling and compassion. When we say that torture is wrong, for example, we are not identifying a feature of torture itself, but expressing something of our reaction to it. What is more, these feelings are somehow natural for human beings. Empathy is a human universal, and this is what enables people to agree about what is good and bad. Feelings may be affected by upbringing, society and reasoning, but are not simply products of any one of these."

It seems to me that empathy is NOT a human universal, as evidenced by the folks who routinely commit torture, blow up buildings, bomb neighborhoods, etc. My human reaction to 9-11 was different than that of the Palestinian women that Fox News showed ululating in the streets. What if there are no "common humane impulses that morally motivate" absolutely everyone? Or even if a few such "impulses" are agreed to, it's not at all clear that reason will be able to lead us from such basic, common feelings to complex issues like abortion, stem cell research, and Will & Grace.

Take an issue such as burning the US flag in protest. Some people will have a very different reaction to it than other people will. How then do you determine whose feelings are the "somehow natural (feelings) for human beings" and whose feelings are not?

I don't know if everything that Baggini says about Hume is accurate. Hume I think is one of the most misunderstood moral philosophers ever (though his contributions go well beyond moral philosophy). On the one hand he criticized reasoning purely from facts to normative conclusions. But on the other he reintroduced the idea of good or utility into moral philosophy, which brought empirical reasoning about human interests closer to normative questions (thus bridging the divide between facts and values which he himself allegedly created).

Finally he also has a lot to say about human nature, moral sentiments and what makes morality possible. But I think that it is a mistake to say that Hume is equating moral judgments with expressions of psychological states or reactions. I don't remember Hume saying anything like this (though I haven't read nearly everyhing by Hume, so I could be wrong), though perhaps I'm missing the gist of Baggini is saying. I seems like he's making Hume out to be an emotivist.

anon: Not trusting Bush is probably an intellectualy easier task than deciding who the world's greatest philosopher is. While I'm all for being wary of snobbery, it's probably not right to think that very many people have read enough of the history of philosophy to make a good judgment about who's the best. Popularity and accessibility also come into play (Marx and Nietzsche wrote more lively and accessible works than Heidegger, Hegel, or Kant), as does, it seems, nationalism (I doubt that Russell and Popper would be nominated in a poll in France, Germany, Italy; as an American I'd insist on putting C.S. Pierce up there for consideration if Popper and Russell are there). There is also no doubting the continued power and relevance of Nietzsche's ideas--which is why I'm surprised to see Marx and not him at the top.

anon: My comment in no way implies that popular and intellectual validity are mutually exclusive. Philosophy like any other discipline requires training and knowledge. Lay people pick from a more limited list with less knowledge. They may still make a valid pick, but one expects experts in the field to have a more informed opinion. Lets not let our egalitarian impulses get carried away here. Expertise and snobbery are not the same thing.

Mike: I am no expert on Hume's moral philosophy. In fact ethics as a whole is not something I study all that much. My interest in him has more to do with his philosophy of mind and theory of knowledge. But I would say that the examples you give are not necessarily evidence against empathy being an innate human trait. It may be that other biases are overiding the empathetic response. What to do about genuine psychopaths is an interesting question. I guess one would need an account of typical empathetic development to eliminate psychopathic impulses from consideration. I would also add that Hume does not think we rely exclusively on sentiment for our ethics. I agree with dende that Baggini is a bit misleading in his article in this regard.

I think it is interesting to note that the Golden Rule, "Do unto others..." is a basic expression of empathy. My guess would be that if you did a scientific survey, that most people from a variety of religious and non-religious backgrounds use something like the golden rule as the basis for their ethics.

LAURA: (looking out the White House window): Uh, George, there's millions of people all over the world marching this way and they're all carryin' signs that say WAR CRIMINAL!

GEORGE: Pull down the shade, Laura.