Who Are the Most Pernicious Thinkers? A List of Five Bad Western Philosophers: Name Your Own

Over at his blog Leit­er Reports, UC Chica­go pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy Bri­an Leit­er is cur­rent­ly con­duct­ing a very inter­est­ing poll, ask­ing his read­ers to rank the 25 philoso­phers of “the mod­ern era” (the last 200 years) who “have had the most per­ni­cious influ­ence on phi­los­o­phy.” The pool of can­di­dates comes from an ear­li­er sur­vey of influ­en­tial philoso­phers, and Leit­er has imposed some con­di­tions on his respon­dents, ask­ing that they only rank philoso­phers they have read, and only include “seri­ous philosophers”–“no char­la­tans like Der­ri­da or ama­teurs like Rand.” While I per­son­al­ly wince at Leit­er’s Der­ri­da jab (and cheer his exclu­sion of Rand), I think his ques­tion may be a lit­tle too aca­d­e­m­ic, his field per­haps too nar­row.

But the polem­i­cal idea is so com­pelling that I felt it worth adopt­ing for a broad­er infor­mal sur­vey: con­tra Leit­er, I’ve ranked five philoso­phers who I think have had a most per­ni­cious influ­ence on the world at large. I’m lim­it­ing my own choic­es to West­ern philoso­phers, with which I’m most famil­iar, though obvi­ous­ly by my first choice, you can tell I’ve expand­ed the tem­po­ral para­me­ters. And in sport­ing lis­ti­cle fash­ion, I’ve not only made a rank­ing, but I’ve blurbed each of my choic­es, inspired by this fun Neatora­ma post, “9 Bad Boys of Phi­los­o­phy.”

While that list uses “bad” in the Michael Jack­son sense, I mean it in the sense of Leit­er’s “per­ni­cious.” And though I would also include the pro­vi­so that only “seri­ous” thinkers war­rant inclu­sion, I don’t think this nec­es­sar­i­ly rules out any­one on the basis of aca­d­e­m­ic canons of taste. One might as well include C.S. Lewis as Jean Bau­drillard, both of whom tend to get dis­missed in most phi­los­o­phy depart­ments. My own list sure­ly reveals my anti-author­i­tar­i­an bias­es, just as some oth­ers may rail at fuzzy think­ing with a list of post­mod­ernists, or social­ism with a list of Marx­ists. This is as it should be. Defin­ing the “bad,” after all, is bound to be a high­ly sub­jec­tive exer­cise, and one about which we can and should dis­agree, civil­ly but vig­or­ous­ly. So with no more ado, here are my five choic­es for “Most Per­ni­cious West­ern Philoso­phers.” I invite—nay urge you—to make your own lists in the com­ments, with expla­na­tions terse or pro­lix as you see fit.

1. Thomas Aquinas

The Domini­can fri­ar and author of the near-unread­ably dense Sum­ma The­o­log­i­ca made it his life’s work to har­mo­nize log­i­cal Aris­totelian thought and mys­ti­cal Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy, to the detri­ment of both. While for Aquinas and his medieval con­tem­po­raries, nat­ur­al the­ol­o­gy rep­re­sents an ear­ly attempt at empiri­cism, the empha­sis on the “the­ol­o­gy” meant that the West has endured cen­turies of spu­ri­ous “proofs” of God’s exis­tence and com­plete­ly incom­pre­hen­si­ble ratio­nal­iza­tions of the Trin­i­ty, the vir­gin birth, and oth­er mirac­u­lous tales that have no ana­logue in observ­able phe­nom­e­na.

Like many church fathers before him, Thomas’s employ­ment as a kind of Grand Inquisi­tor of heretics and a cod­i­fi­er of dog­ma makes me all the more averse to his thought, though much of it is admit­ted­ly of great his­tor­i­cal import.

2. Carl Schmitt

Schmitt was a Nazi, which—as in the case of Mar­tin Heidegger—strangely hasn’t dis­qual­i­fied his thought from seri­ous appraisal across the polit­i­cal spec­trum. But some of Schmitt’s ideas—or at least their application—are par­tic­u­lar­ly trou­bling even when ful­ly divorced from his per­son­al pol­i­tics. Schmitt the­o­rized that sov­er­eign rulers, or dic­ta­tors, emerge in a “state of exception”—a secu­ri­ty cri­sis with which a demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety can­not seem to cope, but which is ripe for exploita­tion by dom­i­neer­ing indi­vid­u­als. These “states” can legit­i­mate­ly appear at any time, or can be ginned up by unscrupu­lous rulers. The cru­cial insight has inspired such left­ist thinkers as Wal­ter Ben­jamin and the­o­rists on the right like Leo Strauss. Its polit­i­cal effects are some­thing alto­geth­er dif­fer­ent. Writes Scott Hor­ton in Harper’s:

It was Schmitt who, as the crown jurist of the new Nazi regime, pro­vid­ed the essen­tial road map for Gle­ich­schal­tung – the lev­el­ing of oppo­si­tion with­in Germany’s vast bureau­cra­cy – and it was he who pro­vid­ed the legal tools used to trans­form the Weimar democ­ra­cy into the Nazi night­mare that fol­lowed it.

This same road map—many have alleged—guided the uni­lat­er­al sus­pen­sions of con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions and human rights pro­to­cols machi­nat­ed by Bush and Cheney’s Neo­con­ser­v­a­tive legal advi­sors after 9/11, who read Schmitt thor­ough­ly. (I intend here no direct com­par­i­son what­ev­er between these two regimes, God­win will­ing.)

3. John Locke

Though he wrote copi­ous­ly on epis­te­mol­o­gy, reli­gious tol­er­a­tion, edu­ca­tion, and all sorts of oth­er impor­tant top­ics, Locke is often remem­bered as everyone’s favorite lib­er­al polit­i­cal philoso­pher. His anony­mous­ly pub­lished Two Trea­tis­es of Gov­ern­ment has had an out­sized influ­ence on most mod­ern demo­c­ra­t­ic con­sti­tu­tions, and giv­en his pri­ma­ry antag­o­nist in the first part of that work—Sir Robert Filmer, staunch defend­er of the divine right of kings and nat­ur­al hierarchies—Locke seems pos­i­tive­ly pro­gres­sive, what with his defense of a civ­il soci­ety based on respect for labor and pri­vate prop­er­ty against the unwar­rant­ed pow­er and abuse of the aris­toc­ra­cy.

But Locke’s Filmer works as some­thing of a straw man. Exam­ined crit­i­cal­ly, Locke is no demo­c­ra­t­ic cham­pi­on but an apol­o­gist for the pet­ty tyran­ny of landown­ers who grad­u­al­ly erod­ed the com­mons, dis­placed the com­mon­ers, and seized greater and greater tracts of land in Eng­land and the colonies under the Lock­ean jus­ti­fi­ca­tion that a man is enti­tled to as much prop­er­ty as he can make use of. Of course, in Locke’s time, and in our own, pro­pri­etors and landown­ers seize and “make use of” the resources and labor of others—slaves, indige­nous peo­ple, and exploit­ed, land­less workers—in order to make their extrav­a­gant claims to pri­vate prop­er­ty. This kind of appro­pri­a­tion is also enabled by Locke’s thought, since prop­er­ty only just­ly belongs to the “indus­tri­ous and the ratio­nal”— char­ac­ter­is­tics that tend to get defined against their oppo­sites (“lazy and stu­pid”) in any way that suits those in pow­er.

4. Rene Descartes

Anoth­er dar­ling of Enlight­en­ment tra­di­tion, Descartes gets all the cred­it for found­ing a phi­los­o­phy on rad­i­cal doubt, and there­by doing away with the pre­sup­po­si­tion­al the­o­log­i­cal bag­gage imposed on thought by scholas­tics like Aquinas. And yet, like Locke, Descartes gets too easy a pass for reduc­ing his method to terms that are by no means unequiv­o­cal or uni­ver­sal­ly mean­ing­ful, though he pre­tends that they are.

Descartes explains his method as a means of elim­i­nat­ing from his mind all con­cep­tu­al clut­ter but those ideas that seem to him “clear and dis­tinct.” Odd­ly the two bedrock con­cepts he’s left with are an unshake­able faith in his own indi­vid­ual ego—or soul—and the exis­tence of a monothe­is­tic cre­ator-God. Thus, Descartes’ method of rad­i­cal doubt leads him to reaf­firm the two most core con­cepts of clas­si­cal West­ern phi­los­o­phy, con­cepts he more or less assumes on the basis of intuition—or per­haps unex­am­ined ide­o­log­i­cal com­mit­ments.

5. Søren Kierkegaard

This is a tough one, because I actu­al­ly adore Kierkegaard, but I love him as a writer, not as a philoso­pher. His cri­tiques of Hegel are scathing and hilar­i­ous, his take­downs of the self-sat­is­fied Dan­ish petit-bour­geoisie are epic, and the tonal range and iron­ic deft­ness of his numer­ous lit­er­ary voices—personae as diverse as desert saints and schem­ing seducers—are unequalled.

But I recoil from the eth­i­cal phi­los­o­phy of Søren Kierkegaard, as so many peo­ple recoil from Nietzsche’s brinks­man­ship with tra­di­tion­al Chris­t­ian moral­i­ty. Kierkegaard’s reduc­tion of the human expe­ri­ence to a false choice paradigm—“Either/Or”—, his ethics of blind irra­tional­ism couched as a jus­ti­fi­able leap of faith, exem­pli­fied by his glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of Abraham’s will­ing­ness to kill his son Isaac… these things I can’t help but find abhor­rent, and if I’ve ever been tempt­ed to read them as iron­ic expres­sions of the author’s many masks, fur­ther study has robbed me of this balm. Kierkegaard the writer offers us a great deal; Kierkegaard the moral philoso­pher, not so much.

So there you have my list—riddled, to be sure, with inac­cu­ra­cies, prej­u­dice, and super­fi­cial mis­read­ings, but an hon­est attempt nonethe­less, giv­en my inad­e­quate philo­soph­i­cal train­ing. Again I’ll say that the inclu­sion of any of these five names in a list of philoso­phers, per­ni­cious or no, means that I believe they are all thinkers worth read­ing and tak­ing seri­ous­ly to some degree, even if one vio­lent­ly dis­agrees with them or finds glar­ing and griev­ous error in the midst of seas of bril­liance.

Now that you’ve read my “Five Most Per­ni­cious Philoso­phers,” please tell us read­ers, who are yours, and why? Your grip­ing expla­na­tions can be as short or long as you see fit, and feel free to vio­lent­ly dis­agree with my hasty judg­ments above. Ad hominem attacks aside, it’s all with­in the spir­it of the enter­prise.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy, from 600 B.C.E. to 1935, Visu­al­ized in Two Mas­sive, 44-Foot High Dia­grams

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

Down­load 90 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.