Via “Gillian Russell”:http://www.logicandlanguage.net/archives/2005/07/top_ten.html I see that the “results”:http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/greatest_philosopher_vote_result.shtml of the BBC’s “Greatest Philosopher” poll are in. The winner — with 28 percent of the vote, more than twice the share of the philosopher in second-place — was Karl Marx. David Hume is next (just over 12 percent) and Wittgenstein third (6.8 percent). If you are upset that your favorite philosopher didn’t win (or angry over who did), why not listen to Randy Newman’s “The World isn’t Fair”:http://www.randynewman.com/tocdiscography/disc_bad_love/lyricsbadlove, which also has a lot of useful information about Marx.
{ 41 comments }
Jake 07.18.05 at 4:44 pm
I can live with having rooted for the silver medalist.
NeoDude 07.18.05 at 4:55 pm
The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left no other nexus between people than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned out the most heavenly ecstacies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers.
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation into a mere money relation.
———————-
Marx knew the power of consumerism, that’s for sure.
Brett Bellmore 07.18.05 at 6:01 pm
Got the magnitude right, sure, but he had a bit of trouble with the sign. ;)
junius ponds 07.18.05 at 6:03 pm
Britons, you warm my heart. I wonder who would top a greatest philosophers poll conducted by, say, PBS or NPR — I don’t think it’d be Uncle Karl.
Nevertheless, he doesn’t deserve this particular title; the title he probably deserves is “world’s greatest intellectual.”
engels 07.18.05 at 6:17 pm
What do you expect from the Pravda-esque BBC? I’m waiting for the Fox News version to restore Ayn Rand to her rightful place.
C.J.Colucci 07.18.05 at 7:15 pm
I could quibble with the selection order, but only naming Popper as the Number 10 All-Time philospher looks ridiculous.
bi 07.19.05 at 3:14 am
No, all of you got it wrong. The world’s greatest philosopher is none other than… Randy Newman.
I rest my case.
Dave F 07.19.05 at 4:44 am
Marx didn’t even make it into “Philosophical Rugby Songs”. I guess he has high recognition factor, due to good marketing in the UK.
wren 07.19.05 at 6:05 am
I listened to the program yesterday (on a podcast!). There were a few interesting points about Marxism and general absolution for all the evil that came after Marx in his name. I had wished they had talked more about the contest itself. Marx won because he has the biggest brand and the largest religious following. If they had run the same contest here in the US and slipped Jesus into the Top 20 guess who’d win? We’d get a similar bias in China (Mao, Confucius?) or in Dar-il-Islam.
BBC should take the contest global.
BTW I voted for Hume. But then I always vote for the Scot.
Kieran Healy 07.19.05 at 6:22 am
But then I always vote for the Scot.
Even when it’s Rod Stewart?
abb1 07.19.05 at 7:35 am
John Ralston Saul said that “the only true Marxists functioning today teach in the Chicago School of Economics and manage our large corporations”. If it’s true, could it explain the popularity?
Harry 07.19.05 at 8:02 am
The Economist claimed that cheating was going on — that Marx was getting multiple votes from weasels. They said this without evidence. Incredibly, they advocated tactical voting for Hume, on the grounds that the greatest of all, Smith, was a no-hoper, so we should go for his best proxy, Hume. Yes, best proxy in the sense that the Beatles would be the best proxy for Oasis. (That is a little unfair to Smith — like Marx he was a great economic thinker, but his philosophy was entirely derivative….from his mate Hume).
Popper in the top ten? It’s like counting Westlife in the great bands of all time.
Chris Williams 07.19.05 at 8:34 am
I can’t work out why the right likes Smith so: today’s corporate capitalism is as removed from his invisible hand as the USSR’s ‘system’ was. What’s not to like about the man who wrote that government can best be understood as a conspiracy of the rich against the poor?
Chris Martin 07.19.05 at 9:04 am
Re: why Marx is not the greatest philosopher, refer to this post on responsibility for consequences.
MikeN 07.19.05 at 10:40 am
Note that it’s the greatest philosopher of the last millenium.
The article I read pointed out that an earlier on-line poll found that Paul McCartney was the greatest composer of the last 1000 years, so poor Karl is in good company.
des von bladet 07.19.05 at 11:25 am
miken: This thing you wish us to note, how do you propose to reconcile it with Socrates in 8th place?
chris martin: Marx was responsible for Stalin and Mao in much the same way that Osama bin Ladin was for the Iraq war.
abb1 07.19.05 at 11:54 am
Hmm… I think a better analogy might’ve been the often made connection between Nietzsche and fascism.
It is absurd to say, of course, that Nietzsche is responsible for Hitler or Marx for Stalin, or Jesus for Mr. Bush Jr.
Chris Martin 07.19.05 at 12:34 pm
In Nietzsche’s case, no one afaik went to Nietzsche and said “Look, here’s the drawback of your philosophy–maybe you should reconsider.”
In Marx’s case, Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchy pointed out quite precisely what would go wrong with Marx’s system, and Marx’s notes in response to Bakunin indicate that Marx wasn’t smart enough to understand that. (Bakunin, as an anarchist, had his own flaws, but that’s another story.)
I’m not trying to reduce this to a simple issue of Marx is good vs. Marx is bad. I’m saying that as a philosopher Marx was grossly incorrect in some of his predictions. It’s a muddy issue, but overall, I think it’s sufficient to keep Marx out of one’s list of top philosophers.
Of course, the idea of having a top ten philosopher list is as absurd the idea of having a top ten vitamin list. You need all of them.
burritoboy 07.19.05 at 12:43 pm
In America, the answer would either be total confusion because the poll-ee has never heard of the word “philosopher”, the leading choice besides that would be “Jesus Christ” (leaving aside that Jesus was not a philosopher), and second would be “that guy who wrote The Purpose-Driven Life”.
I was pretty impressed that even the celebrities had reasonable things to say. I doubt we Americans would get anything besides “Jesus Christ” and the latest football coach to have ghost-written a “management” book.
abb1 07.19.05 at 1:00 pm
I am not a philosopher, but I find it hard to believe that no philosopher ever criticized Nietzsche when he was alive.
I seem to vaguely remember from reading The Book (or more likely from Webber’s musical), that some reputable Pharisees did criticize Jesus quite a lot – predicting various bad things that did indeed happen. He didn’t listen.
pantomimeHorse 07.19.05 at 2:29 pm
I also disagree with the choice of Marx as greatest philosopher, and Chris’s remark highlights the oddity of the choice when he complains that Marx’s predictions were off, for if there’s any definition of ‘philosophy’ that satisfies a wide consensus of thinkers, ‘prediction’ has no part in that definition. Marx had only one foot in philosophy, keeping the other in science, essentially dipping into philosophy to expand the domain of science, not the other way around. (But perhaps it’s this ‘science-first’ perspective which makes him appealing to the modern philosophical layman.)
Furthermore, even if the metric of greatness truely was just ‘impact’, you get into grey areas: Marx certainly made the biggest impact in terms of being consciously cited, but many of these citations were quite off; shouldn’t we count only those instances where the influence was ‘correct’?; and shouldn’t we consider subtler, ‘uncredited’ influence as just as important?
Maynard Handley 07.19.05 at 2:41 pm
“In America, the answer would either be total confusion because the poll-ee has never heard of the word “philosopherâ€, the leading choice besides that would be “Jesus Christ†(leaving aside that Jesus was not a philosopher), and second would be “that guy who wrote The Purpose-Driven Lifeâ€.”
You might think the above quote was too harsh on America until you remember that point, that Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was renamed Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone for the US market.
Harry 07.19.05 at 3:01 pm
I have a theory about the renaming of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. I think it would have been renamed for the UK market if, at the point of publication, it had been anticipated that they would get big sales. Remember, it had a first run of 1000 or so. The British are no more aware than the Americans what a philosopher’s stone is. The original name was a marketing mistake, corrected fro the US market when it was clear that it would be a big deal.
Still, everything burritoboy said is true nonetheless.
Brian 07.19.05 at 4:15 pm
I am not a philosopher, but I find it hard to believe that no philosopher ever criticized Nietzsche when he was alive.
I thought Nietzsche was basically unread while he was alive, or at least while he was sane. I’ll probably get corrected for this, but I thought his books only entered into the public consciousness long after his death. Admittedly there is a Nietzsche reference in _Dubliners_, but I think that’s a sign of Joyce’s idiosyncratic interests, not a sign that Nietzsche was widely read in 1905.
NeoDude 07.19.05 at 4:34 pm
What’s not to like about the man who wrote that government can best be understood as a conspiracy of the rich against the poor?
Posted by Chris Williams · July 19th, 2005 at 8:34 am
Yes!!!
Marx is the greatest political philosopher who ever lived!!!
Chris Williams 07.19.05 at 5:23 pm
That wasn’t Marx. It was Smith.
NeoDude 07.19.05 at 7:31 pm
Are you serious?
This is freakin’ rich!
Neil the Ethical Werewolf 07.19.05 at 9:48 pm
Nietzsche was, indeed, mostly unread while he was sane. In the late 1880s, a Dane named Georg Brandes was giving lectures on him, but that was about the most Nietzsche ever learned of his influence. It was only after he went insane that his popularity increased dramatically.
bi 07.20.05 at 2:23 am
pantomimeHorse: let me phrase the prediction in this way… the whole goal of Marx’s philosophy was to improve the world. But it didn’t improve the world. In other words, his philosophy was useless. So isn’t it reasonable to criticize Marx for making a wrong prediction?
Or maybe Marxism is great precisely because it helps to serve as a warning to others. Heh.
abb1 07.20.05 at 4:26 am
The goal of philosophy is to explain the world. Marx explained it is from a good, solid, logical angle; especially these days anyone who cares can clearly see it.
To improve the world is the goal of political activists. Marx was a political activist too, but that’s a different story.
bi 07.20.05 at 6:25 am
abb1: well, Marx himself specifically wanted to use philosophy as a tool to improve the world.
Also, the nice thing about reading crystal-ball predictions is that you can select which predictions to talk about. One can look at Marx’s incorrect predictions and lambast him as a total idiot; one can also look at Marx’s correct predictions and praise him for his exceptionally keen foresight. But the simple fact is that Marx was absolutely right in some things and absolutely wrong in others.
abb1 07.20.05 at 7:05 am
What are his incorrect predictions – the oncoming revolution followed by worker’s paradise? Who’s to say it’s incorrect, though; give it a few more years, will ya?
Ray 07.20.05 at 7:39 am
Have you read Marx? Do you know what his _predictions_ were, to judge which ones turned out to be right or wrong?
NeoDude 07.20.05 at 12:40 pm
Again, from the Intro to The Communist Manifesto:
The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiorsâ€, and has left no other nexus between people than naked self-interest, than callous “cash paymentâ€. It has drowned out the most heavenly ecstacies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers.
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation into a mere money relation.
Predictions are not the only part of philosophy, you idjuts!, analysis is one of philosophy’s bestest thangs!
gkurtz 07.20.05 at 12:56 pm
“the whole goal of Marx’s philosophy was to improve the world. But it didn’t improve the world. In other words, his philosophy was useless.”
That comment makes sense only if you ignore about half of Marxist history. Leninism and its descendents were unmitigated disasters (or, better, crimes), but don’t forget that social democracy has been deeply influenced by Marx as well. Are you going to argue that social democracy, as a movement, hasn’t improved the world? That would be tough to demonstrate.
It’s about time we dropped the idiotic equation of Marxism with the tradition of Lenin & Stalin. Sure, most social democrats haven’t been “Marxists” in any orthodox sense since 1914 or so–but Communists were never Marxian Marxists either! It seems that Marx is held to a higher standard than other philosophers: those who voted for, say, Hume probably do not want Hume to be judged by whether his ideas would be appealing if turned into a narrow dogma, but by whether we do or don’t have a great deal to learn from Hume. I voted for Marx in that poll because I think we have a lot to learn from him; the critics of the big Marx vote seem, by and large, to assume that Marx is to be judged only as the Communists saw him–as the source of dogma (not that the Communists actually read Marx very carefully!)– and not as one source of insights among others (which is, of course, a way of approaching Marx more common among social democrats / democratic socialists).
abb1 07.20.05 at 1:20 pm
Predictions are not the only part of philosophy, you idjuts!, analysis is one of philosophy’s bestest thangs!
Right, although he does seem to get carried away a little bit with his ‘it’s the economy, stupid’ idea.
It is true for the most part, yet quite often exploitation is still veiled by religious and political illusions, isn’t it? Feudal, patriarchal and idyllic relations still do exist, don’t they?
Well, the Communist Manifesto is not really a philosophical work, it’s more like a political pamphlet, hyperbole is understandable.
bi 07.21.05 at 6:27 am
abb1: give it a few more years? You mean, something like several centuries and thousands of massacres later? Oh, OK, count me as a convert to Marxism.
Ray: um, this? “If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class; if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.”
gkurtz: Well, that’s another way of looking at it. But if Marx is to be seen as a source of new insights, new ways of looking at things, new ways to frame old problems, etc…. then there are still some other questions: Can we (or not) get the same insights from, say, John Stuart Mill? How many of these new insights actually lead us anywhere in our efforts to understand the world? Also, I’m not sure if most democratic socialists derive their personal philosophies from Marx, or from other sources. (Then again, judging from the poll results, a sizeable number of them do. Heh.)
NeoDude: man, that’s not analysis. Blaming everything on some opaque object with an opaque name like “bourgeoisie”… what kind of darn analysis is that? ;-) It’s like how certain people blame everything on “government”, or “the liberal media”, or “The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy”, or “The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy”, or “idiotarianism”. Just invent a opaque term which sounds bad and heap all the world’s ills onto it.
NeoDude 07.21.05 at 6:41 pm
So why ain’t you geniuses blaming Capitalism and Imperialism on Adam Smith and John Locke?
NeoDude 07.21.05 at 6:45 pm
bi wrote:
Blaming everything on some opaque object with an opaque name like “bourgeoisie  what kind of darn analysis is that? ;-) It’s like how certain people blame everything on “governmentâ€, or “the liberal mediaâ€, or “The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracyâ€, or “The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracyâ€, or “idiotarianismâ€. Just invent a opaque term which sounds bad and heap all the world’s ills onto it.
Marx is not “blaming”, per se…he is actually singing the praises of the “bourgeoisie” …he seems to admire a particular aspect of that particular class.
In a consumer society, something’s monetary value is, in most instances, IS IT”S VALUE.
NeoDude 07.21.05 at 6:56 pm
Sorry, the statement should read:
So why ain’t you geniuses blaming the sins of Capitalism and Imperialism on Adam Smith and John Locke?
Or the Spanish Inquisition on Jesus and Paul?
Should the genocide of the indigenous people in the Americas the fault of Jesus and his twelve disciples?
All fascist organizations are rabidly Roman Catholic, yet the Holy See isn’t blamed for Franco, Pinochet, Mussolini, etc.
bi 07.22.05 at 10:39 am
NeoDude: because nobody explicitly blamed Marx either, as far as I know.
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