TheBob

Who would it be? Is it Plato or someone more recent? I'm just interested in finding out.

No Robots

I vote for Spinoza, who:

• demolished medieval scholasticism
• restored pre-Socratic naturalism
• integrated materialism and idealism
• established the rational basis for the natural sciences, including the human sciences

Everything in philosophy since Spinoza is either:

• ignorance of his thought
• rebellion against his thought
• development of his thought

kennethamy

There is no philosopher who is the most influential philosopher, although there have been a lot of very influential philosophers, certainly among them, Plato. More recent philosophers have, of course, also been very influential, but since they are more recent, it is probable that they have influenced fewer philosopher, although we also have to take into consideration that the number of philosophers to be influenced is greater now than it has been before. There are, I understand, an estimated 26,000 professional philosophers in the West at this time.

Among the most influential recent (last 100 years or so) in the West would be (IMO and in no particular order of merit or influence) Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Gottlob Frege, Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, A. J. Ayer, and Rudolf Carnap, Gilbert Ryle, J.L.Austin W.V.O Quine, Hillary Putnam, Saul Kripke, Donald Davidson, Daniel Dennett. I imagine that others have different views. But, remember, we are not talking about merit, only influence.

Chili

I actually though that Bertrand Russell was a historian. Close enough, maybe?

kennethamy

Not close. He was a logician of the first order (the co-author of Principia Mathematica which founded modern mathematical logic. His Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (Lectures at Harvard) are seminal readings in the philosophy of language. His famous "theory of descriptions" solved a number of philosophical problems, among them, the problem of negative existentials, and presented a theory of the meaning of the idea of existence which seems to me, true. His book on the philosophy of Leibniz was the standard interpretation of Leibniz up to very recently. With G.E. Moore, Russell broke the back of the accepted British philosophy at the beginning of the 20th century, objective Idealism. And much more than I can remember right now, and too much even to list. He was one of the dominant Western philosophers of the 20th century, and probably one of the 10 most dominant philosophers who ever lived.

TheBob

Spinoza sounds pretty interesting No Robots. Thanks.

Ken, yes I agree. We are talking about influence and not merit. I am actually very interested in learning about Heidegger. I picked up a biography about him at the library called, "Beyond Good and Evil". I heard that he began where Husserl left off, would that be right? I have a basic knowledge of Sartre if I remember correctly. I'll have to look up the others. Thank you.

Daan

I vote for Nietzsche.

kennethamy

You'd have to ask others about Heidegger. As for his personal relation with Husserl, who was his teacher, and to whom he owed his rise in German academia, when Heidegger became a member of the Nazi Party, and gave propaganda speeches for the Nazi's, he also made sure that Husserl was dismissed from his academic teaching job, and could never teach again. Husserl was, I believe, a Jew.

Preno

Hey, how come no one voted for me?

Amedeo

I vote for Aristotle as having been most influential -- in all the subjects he treated of, and on the largest number of intellectuals. (Here we are not talking about the merits of his philosophy, of course.)

I am familiar with Spinoza's thought, at least with his major work, and so I have the impression that every belief of yours about him which you stated is false.

As I am quite interested in the history of philosophy, I would appreciate some detailed information about the 4 things he allegedly accomplished.