The e-mail gods recently delivered this interesting query from a reader named Derek Wilhelm:
I go to the University of Richmond, which requires [us] to take a class called Core, where we read famous historical books. (Gandhi, Marx, Plato, Augustine, just to name a few). Anyway, my question for you is: Who do you think is the greatest modern-day thinker?
I love this question. It first requires you to define what a “thinker” is, and also raises the question of what incentives exist in the modern world to be a thinker. Also, is someone a great thinker if they’re never able to communicate their thoughts to a broad audience?
On a related note: The Times recently ran a piece about a rise in college philosophy majors; interestingly, the Wall Street Journal published a piece shortly thereafter (sorry, can’t find a link, but here’s a reprint of the pertinent info) ranking the first-year salaries for 16 selected college majors: engineers were first (at $48,707) and philosophers were dead last (at $28,234).
Once you’ve thought about what it means to be a thinker, then comes the hard part of thinking about who best fits the description.
So who are your nominees, and why?
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Ayn Rand — for her impassioned advocacy of reason, capitalism, and the pursuit of happiness on this earh.
We won’t know for another 200 years or so.
Derek Parfit – his writings on the philosophy of self and actions are the most intriguing ones written in the last half-century. You may be skeptical of his claims or reasoning, but you’ll think about them for years.
Richard Feynman; like Dirac with a sense of humor (I cannot take credit for this comment, I have forgotten to whom to attribute the quote).
Richard Dawkins, for his humor and his science
Yogi Berra.
It doesn’t get better than: “When you come to afork in the road, take it.”
Homer Simpson
Gandhi is a modern thinker. He was assassinated in 1947. In fact he was kicked out of South Africa to India for his radical ideas of “satyagraha” non-violent resistance. The same ideas freed India and then SA a few decades later.