25+1 Most Influential Thinkers - Introduction
Several years ago I watched a special on, I believe, A & E, documenting who they believed to be the 100 most influential people of the millennium. Lists like those are always controversial - are Spielberg (#91) and Jane Austen (#63) really worthy to be one of the top 100? - and their methods are questionable at best - how can one really say that Machiavelli (#46) is more influential than Magellan (#55)? Despite these shortcomings, I continued to watch the show with keen interest to find out that Gutenberg, Newton, and Luther rounded out the top 3. I continue to keep my eye out for these sort of lists: a guilty pleasure that I justify by saying I am more interested in the erratic methodologies than the list themselves. Lately, however, I have wondered whom, apart of the obvious parental and academic authority figures, I could list to be as the most influential people in my life - so I began a list, if only to satisfy the uber-nerd in me.
For the next while I will post the top 26 thinkers that have been the most influential to me, a 24.5 year-old white male from Canada who is on the cusp of defeating the endless spell of undergraduate studies. I do this mainly in order to crush my recent writer’s block and to invigorate my recent mental sloppiness.
First, a couple foreword notes. I stated my age, sex, and geographical position for a reason. This is my list of influential people. It is of no use to others other than to be used as sparks of curiousity. It is not meant to be my view of who are the most influential people that have ever lived for everyone, but who are the most influential to me. That said, you will regrettably not find many women or thinkers outside of the western intellectual traditions. The majority of my studies have been in religious traditions and western philosophy, both of which have been notoriously patriarchal (although I do love Virginia Woolf’s quote, “For most of history, Anonymous was a woman”).
Although it seems somewhat frivolous, I must insist on mentioning that just because someone has deeply influenced you, it does not mean that you agree with everything, or even most things. In my posts, I will outline why said person is influential to me and will not debate aspects of any particular thinker that may be specifically problematic.
So, in order to keep some sense of suspense, I will not list my top 26 - I will merely post my blogs from the 26th most influential to the most influential. However, I will list here some honourable mentions that will not be on my top 26:
Aristotle, Baruch de Spinoza, Bertrand Russell, Charles Darwin, Constantine the Great, Isaac Newton, Martin Luther, Thomas Aquinas, David Hume, Paul Tillich, Murray Bookchin, Peter Kropotkin, Robert Nozick, and Jacques Derrida. Some of these people will be the philosophical parents of the people on my list, but I could not justify some of the great thinkers due to either my vehement disagreement or my simple ignorance of their works.
