A Myth in Creation: Awais Aftab's Blog: Greatest Philosopher

Friday 3 July 2009

Greatest Philosopher

Here you can see the result of BBC's Greatest Philosopher voting. Karl Marx won the first place, receiving 27.93% votes. No surprises. And here is BBC's wonderfully succinct philosopher timeline.

5 comments:

F. said...: Welcome back. :); 3 July, 2009 11:57 PM
F. said...: Now that I've seen the list...how odd.

Are there no female philosophers of note in the history of mankind?; 3 July, 2009 11:59 PM
Awais said...: The female philosophers that are in BBC's timeline are:

Hildegaard of Bingen (1098-1179)
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97)
Simone De Beauvoir (1908-86)

Out of these 3, none made it to the short list of top 20.

There are other female philosophers, esp in the 19th century, but none has been as influential as the philosophers on the top 20 list. And i don't believe that this is a distortion of history; it is just a reflection of how females were denied opportunities and how they were discouraged and, perhaps, not taken seriously as a thinker.

Michael Hart, the author of ‘The 100: A Ranking of The Most Influential Persons in History’ has included only 2 women in his list of 100 persons [Queen Isabella I and Queen Elizabeth I] The reason he explains in the introduction: “Throughout history, women have generally been denied such opportunities, and my inclusion of only two females is simply a reflection of that regrettable truth. I see no point in trying to cover up the disagreeable fact of discrimination by adding a few token women to my list.”; 4 July, 2009 10:16 AM
Shaheryar Ali said...: Great! Viva La Marx!!; 30 July, 2009 2:42 PM
Dasein36 said...: Seems to me that Hannah Arendt should have made it, to the timeline if not to the top 20.; 31 August, 2009 9:36 PM

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A Quasi-Philosophical Outlook

"It did not seem to Plato any insult to philosophy that it should be transformed into literature, realized as drama, and beautified with style; nor any derogation to its dignity that it should apply itself, even intelligibly, to living problems of morality and the state."

Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy

After tasting the intricacies of religion and metaphysics, i have finally come to appreciate the philosophy of the more mundane aspects of life. Like Plato, it doesn't appear to me any insult to philosophy that I should apply it to the living, concrete world around me instead of abstract issues, or that I should discover and share fragments of it in literature, music, movies and TV serials. The quasi-philosophical outlook of this blog does not have anything as technical or sophisticated as Wittgenstein or Sartre, but maybe the reader can find something in it to appreciate, and use it to climb up on to higher steps of intellect.