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I want to preface this by saying I doubt a list can be well done, but I’m also sure there’s ways that are more correct than others. There’s a list at the bottom of the most influential living philosophers that has been floating around for at least a few years. I grant that it may have lapsed a bit since some on the list are now deceased. There are also some questionable picks like J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, who are popular apologetics with limited influence outside of that. Perhaps my measure of them is wrong, but Leiter said there was an agenda to legitimize them here, which is for experts to decide, definitely not someone like myself with limited understanding outside of a very small academic sphere.
Here’s a version of the list alphabetized.
Kwame Anthony Appiah Alain Badiou Simon Blackburn Robert Brandom Tyler Burge Judith Butler Nancy Cartwright David Chalmers Noam Chomsky Andy Clark William Lane Craig Daniel Dennet Hubert Dreyfus Edmund Gettier Allan Gibbard Susan Haack Jurgen Habermas John Haldane Graham Harman John Hawthorne John Heil Ingvar Johansson Jaegwon Kim Christine Korsgaard Saul Kripke Alasdair MacIntyre John McDermott John McDowell Mary Midgley J.P. Moreland Timothy Morton Thomas Nagel Jean-Luc Nancy Martha Nussbaum David Oderberg Derek Parfit Graham Priest John Searle Peter Simons Peter Singer Barry Smith Ernest Sosa Helen Steward Charles Taylor Amie Thomasson Judith Jarvis Thomson Peter Unger Peter van Inwagen Cornel West Crispin Wright
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This list seems to be trying to name the most influential philosophers within the academic discipline, rather than the most influential among people in general, as most of these people work in pretty niche and arcane areas of analytic philosophy. If that is the case, then the inclusion of popular apologists seems to be incorrect (and I suspect that Leiter is right to say that it is political), as they have little influence among professional philosophers. So Craig and Moreland should probably be excluded, and Haldane is questionable. Chomsky is also a questionable inclusion because, though he is a very relevant figure in analytic philosophy because of his contributions to linguistics and cognitive science, his philosophical work is not nearly as influential. Besides them, Dennett, Dreyfus, Gettier, Kim, Kripke, McDermott, Midgley, Nancy, Parfit, and Thomson have all passed. Some philosophers who should perhaps be included are Elizabeth Barnes (UVA), Ned Block (NYU), David O. Brink (UCSD), John Martin Fischer (UCR), Miranda Fricker (NYU), Sally Haslanger (MIT), Alvin Plantinga (Calvin), Peter Railton (Michigan), T.M. Scanlon (Harvard), Michael Smith (Princeton), Robert Stalnaker (MIT), Stephen Stich (Rutgers), and Susan Wolf (UNC). The exclusions that seem most egregious to me are Plantinga and Stalnaker, given how influential they are; Plantinga is especially perplexing since the author would seem to have been biased towards including him.
imo + Ted Sider (Rutgers) for analytic metaphysics
What about Schaffer?
Great list, and your point about Plantinga is spot on. Some pointed this is a critique that I found, but it’s definitely odd to put WLC ahead of him.
Why is that insane? William lane Craig has amazing work in philosophy of religion, and revolutionized arguments for A-theory of time.
Ok that makes the point that point that he’s good, but Plantiga seems to be more engaged with by most metrics. Why is Plantinga less deserving?
I agree Plantinga is super influential, and is probably deserving to be on the list if William Lane Craig is. But, your statement seemed like WLC was leagues behind Plantinga. I was just bringing in the point that while most people focus in WLC work in philosophy of religion that isn't the only field he revolutionized. He completely changed the game for much of philosophy of time. Earning his spot here strongly.
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To my knowledge, she is probably the most influential living philosopher of disability. I feel like pretty much everyone working on a topic even tangentially related to disability ends up citing The Minority Body.
Can his activism be considered an extension of his philosophical work? His analysis was always accompanied by his philosophical observations, if I recall correctly.
Although it is difficult to strictly delineate between political analysis/criticism and political philosophy, I would hesitate to call activism philosophy. Activism, including Chomsky’s activism, is typically about advocating for certain policies or pointing to specific things that need to be changed. Meanwhile, political philosophy is more concerned with the basis and fundamental nature of ideas like rights, justice, freedom, and authority. Though activism can be informed by philosophy, that does not make them identical. While Chomsky has certainly ventured into political philosophy (like in Manufacturing Consent), I’m not convinced that his specifically philosophical work is influential enough to call him one of the 50 greatest living philosophers.
Chomsky has about 3 volumes of philosopher and their critics dedicated to attacking him. See for instance the volume edited by Alexander George and newer one by Hornstein. Look through the contributors names and you can discern for yourself the influence of his philosophical work.
If the 20th century philosophy is philosophy of language then Chomsky's theories of language has helped understood the actual thing more than anything written by Kripke, Putnam, Quine and Wittgenstein combined. For all their philosophical sophistication none of these gentlemen could ever identify the core property of language: the infinite use of finite means.
It just so happens Chomsky is a naturalist therefore people influenced by him have been half philosopher and half scientist. Jerry Fodor, Ray Jackendoff, Robert May, Sylvian Bromberger, Norbert Hornstein and James Higginbotham have far more important and correct things to say than the average Wittgensteinian Or Michael Devitt. Thing is, as Chomsky likes to say, reading their work requires you to know something about Language, the biological object rather than do arm chair philosophy. Not that philosophers bother with Linguisitc inquiry or Linguistics and Philosophy; journals which publish philosopher and linguists.
You are egregious enough to pass of the opinion that Ned Block and Stephen Stich should be included but not Chomsky. These two people would like to disagree.
are you willing to update your list. I know that you've actually said that some of the people over there are dead. But the further I go into the list the bigger percent it turns out to be. I don't think list of 50 living philosophers is a good title for your list. I would think that list of contemporary philosophers would be better name since not all of us are familiar with whom is alive and not and it can be confusing.
Yeah it’s due for an update, but was it ever legitimate? Some entries are no brainers, yet others are pretty controversial.
Here is a good example of what I was trying to get at that I stumbled across. https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/s/X7UQw4u2ur
I would add Agamben, Jameson, Zizek, Zerzan, Sadler, Putnam, Hoppe, Heller. There are plenty of philosophers alive and every list containing only 50 of them is going to be very subjective. Now I don't have too much time but when I finish working I can look for some more examples of
Unfortunately, if you mean Hilary Putnam and Agnes Heller - they’re no longer living either
I was talking about Michał Heller - polish priest
I would personally add Susan Wolf to this list. (And Tom Hurka.)
Parfit is gone. I might replace him with Larry Temkin.
More than Parfit, unfortunately as many were quite good.
Dennet has passed
Right, this a fairly older list. DD only departed very recently, still shocked honestly.
Saul Kripke too.
I don’t think this is a feasible endeavor and it would need to be done by people who have a breadth of understanding in philosophy, which takes a while to get
Correct, but some are transparently flawed, I tried to indicate this with my preface.
Have you actually read work from all of these philosophers?
No, but I’ve read many of them. The implication that I would need to read them to get a feel for how influential is odd, usually an academic footprint can be seen by engagement with philosophers work or their citations. The purest from down the thread would be that it would difficult to argue that William Lane Craig goes in before Alvin Plantinga. This isn’t subjective, Plantinga is cited and engaged with much more frequently, possibly even outside of academic as well.
Even then. You’d need to have a pretty good breadth of understanding/knowledge across quite a few fields of philosophy. It takes a good amount of time to get acquainted with even a single field of philosophy. And to get acquainted with a field you’re going to have to read its works i.e the works of the impactful philosophers who you’re citing and even more than that
How about Nick Land?