sweetiepie

Confucius. I'm not sure how right he was, but he spread one hell of a meme.

kennethamy

Not in the West.

figuer

I don't know if he was a bad philosopher, or a bad man.

I do know that my experience has taught me that a person's ouvre should never be evaluated parting from his supposed moral standing.

Daan

I change my vote from Nietzsche to Preno.

No Robots

Then I would say that you actually don't know very much about him.

My pleasure:

On demolishing scholasticism, see Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750 / Jonathan I. Israel.

On re-establishing pre-Socratic naturalism:

The authority of Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates does not carry much weight with me. I should have been astonished if you had brought forward Epicurus, Democritus, Lucretius, or any of the atomists or upholders of the atomic theory. It is no wonder that persons who have invented occult qualities, intentional species, substantial forms, and a thousand other trifles, should have also devised spectres and ghosts, and given credence to old wives' tales, in order to take away the reputation of Democritus, whom they were so jealous of that they burned all the books which he had published amid so much eulogy.—Letter to Boxel

On integrating idealism and materialism, see The Philosophy of Spinoza and Brunner by Walter Bernard:

The great controversy between materialism and idealism is thus adjusted. What, then, is true? Materialism or idealism? Both are true.—p. 230

On Establishing the rational basis for the natural sciences, including the human sciences, see Spinoza and the sciences by Marjorie Grene, Debra Nails.

Hope this helps!

Space Chef

http://denisdutton.com/heidegger.htm

Nice page on Heidegger.

As for most influential philosopher, it's not Nietzsche, not by a long shot. Plato perhaps, even Heidegger said all philosophy was a footnote to Plato. It might be argued that all philosophy stems from some presocratic and he might be the most influential. If I had to go with one solid answer, it would be Aristotle.

TNorthover

I've split Amadeo's derail off to ~E~.

J-D

I vote for Confucius too. Sure, you can say that he wasn't influential in the West, but how influential were any of the Western philosophers mentioned in the East?

Hamlet

It's Aristotle. He was king for a thousand years. He was a genius in the true sense of the word, and I consider him to be among the handful of people who could be called the smartest men who ever lived (Newton being another one). For 2,000 years the study of logic was to mean the study of Aristotle. His general philosophy, including his political and moral theory, and also his aesthetics, remain influential to this day. Before this sort of intellectual accomplishment one can only stand in awe.

Aquinas could be called a product of Aristotle, giving him (i.e., Aristotle) even more influence.

Hamlet

I thought Whitehead said that.