How philosophers are ranked

Dinu Lipatti plays the best collection of Chopin waltzes of any human who’s ever lived.

HOWEVER!!!

There’s always some person who plays one waltz better than anyone ever!

They are the best at that one waltz (usually found in the international Chopin competition)

We can learn a lot about the best philosophers, it’s never just one person.

A playlist of the best waltz players for each song, might not even include Dinu Lipatti.

I say this, because many people on these boards think there is a best philosopher. It doesn’t work that way.

No. 1: Werklempter.

Agreed.

First there are no absolute absolutes, thus there are only the relative and subjective views.

There are many ranking of philosophers all over the philosophical community and the internet.
These ranking must be taken into account together with those who votes and they group they belong to.

It is presume those who vote are familiar with the writing and theories of the various philosophers and their influence on humanity, else this point must be taken into account and qualified.

Relying on a single or a few poll can be affected by bias.
To be more reliable it would be more effective if one were to re-analyse the results from say >100 polls to establish a new ranking.

The notable philosophers who appear within top 5 in most polls of the Greatest Western Philosopher of All Times, are Plato, Kant, Aristotle, Socrates, and a few others.
Note this is with reference to Western Philosophers but not ‘the World’.
If the World, the Buddha and various Eastern philosophers will appear in the top rankings.

It does in a significant respect. When one starts thinking through the most pressing problems, we realize that there are some who have thought through them more radically and thoroughly; we are slowly led to them over the decades.

The sense in which there are great philosophers, rather than the large class of people who make innumerable picayune errors and are simply impossible, becomes generally visible.

Take a clear case, Richard Dawkins is gigantically inferior to Jürgen Habermas. Because the latter knows his stuff, and the former talks about matters he has never studied and is not competent to speak on. This doesn’t mean that Habermas is a great thinker, but that he is patently better than one who does not meet the lowest requirements of serious investigation. In the same way someone like Karl Popper or Max Weber is consciously inferior to a Bergson or a Heidegger. One can show the little errors and failures of scholarship through and through Popper, far bellow the level of those questions that touch the most momentous problems of our time, and to which we must appeal to only the most outstanding thinkers.

If someone says, between Wittgenstein and Quine, who was the greater, there can be a dispute that is unclear. Two mountains, which is higher, high clouds obscure the view. That is so. But, for the most part, it is clear which thinkers have not gone further in thinking through the most pressing questions, and which were lacking the requisite knowledge of their subjects, we are led on to the greater thinkers from discovering the nature of the vast inferior number of thinkers amidst the proffesorite at large.

One must also takes seriously that there is talent in all serious pursuits. That the few are good, and the many without sense. Therefore we don’t want to be like someone who when they see someone reading from a page with pen marks of strange kinds imagines that a self-interested perverse trick is being played. And then to go on to higgeldypigeldy mark up a page and declare that we can read, as though to mock the foolishness of the claim that there is reading rather than reciting a memorized speech and playing as if they were read out of the scribbling mess of pen marks. One must not take the concern to not be tricked as the issue of first order.

One must resist the silly and naive exaggerations concerning the “subjectivity” of the issue. That is largely not so.

1 = Spinoza
2 = Nietzsche
3 = Bruce Lee
4 = Giordano Bruno
5 = Leibniz

Best for whom? in what situation?
What are the criteria?
What if they opened wonderful doors of inquiry, but were wrong about stuff or seem to be?
What if they created a pardigmn shit, but in themselves are confused?
None of the above is meant to be binary, just saying that best could be evaluated in a number of ways.
And once we have labeled someone ‘the best’, what have we gained?

Some might be expert in their particular fields - for example Wittgenstein on language or Popper on falsification
So therefore comparing them with each other is problematic as they may be experts on entirely different things

Philosophy should be best viewed as a body of work that many have contributed to [ and still do ] throughout time
And while you can select individuals whose contribution is significant it is not the best way to utilise the discipline