Intelligentsia of DL: who is America's greatest living philosopher?

Noam Chomsky

Dolly Parton

Robert Brandom.

David Ehrenstein

Judith Butler

Bonnie Mace

Martha Nussbaum or

Saul Kripke

OPRAH !

Deepak Chopra!

Helen Lawson

R5 is probably correct in the sense that Judith Butler’s work on Gender Theory has had the most influence/greatest impact on America society

Dennett I suppose

Robert Brandom or Saul Kripke

r12 Dennett died in April.

Even lightweight Peter Boghossian is included in the (trigger warning: Wikipedia) list below. He was one of the "Grievance Studies Hoax" authors. Many of the people listed are academics barely known outside their institutions. The number of *publicly known* philosophers is quite limited.

I’d have said Saul Kripke but I think he just died.

Correct, Kripke and Dennett are dead. TBH it probably is Butler.

I read Butler's recent "Who's Afraid of Gender?" with as open a mind as I could muster, but (her global influence aside) the shoddy reasoning and willful omissions in that book cannot be the work of any country's "greatest living philosopher," even bearing in mind that this is her first commercial, mass-market work. And yes, I have read several of her other writings.

Well, then it's me. I'm the only who sees that a service economiy is naturally oligopolistic because of the social conditioning of consumption. That's why m anufacturing is so important to not being trapped in a feudal state.

If we expand this to the Americas one could mention Gustavo Gutierrez. I would have said Enrique Dussel but sadly he too recently died.

Teacake

My wife.

Sharon Stone.

The answers to this questions are pretty much the same ones as the ones to the thread about who attended Diddy's "freak-offs"!

Supposedly Chamosky encountered the greatest inspiration of his life after attending a freak off.

Donald Trump.

Butt Head

Carrot Top

Susan Dey

Noam Chomsky is dead, r1.

Almost, that is.

Noam Chomsky is still alive and kicking at 95, r30.

I just realized that r32.

Kellyanne Conway

Chomsky suffered a massive stroke last year and spent a long time recuperating in Brazil, but thankfully he is still with us.

I'd think that at least some part of being any country's greatest living philosopher would be contributing to the advancement of, and awareness of, the field. That also includes demonstrating the relevance of philosophy to everyday life. Butler's ideas are hugely influential (go into any of the minefields that is a DL trans thread, and you'll see people arguing for or against Butler's ideas whether they know it or not), but Butler's style of communication is unappealing to many people who might otherwise be interested.

It's odd to think that someone who's potentially "America's greatest living philosopher" not only uses they/them pronouns but also requires personal security and was burned in effigy and physically attacked in Brazil:

We'd better put some dead American philosophers in there, just to gain some context. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau, John Dewey, John Rawls. Betty Friedan, Ayn Rand, Thomas Kuhn, David Kellogg Lewis. I don't think of Chomsky as being primarily a philosopher. His field is linguistics, and he is a public intellectual, with very strong feelings about politics. political activism, and social criticism. However, some people do regard him as a philosopher. Cornel West, Martha Nussbaum, Peter Singer, Philip Kitcher, Daniel Dennet. and yes, Judith Butler. Probably your greatest American living philosopher would probably come from that group. But they are very different and their conclusions are different, so maybe only time will tell.

Ayn Rand is neither American nor a philosopher.

Nor living, thank God

And Peter Singer is Australian (though has lived in the U.S. for decades), but good list otherwise. Ayn Rand became a naturalized U.S. citizen in her twenties, I think. We might despise her ideas and find them garbage, but technically she did develop "Objectivism" and is generally regarded as a philosopher.

[quote]I don't think of Chomsky as being primarily a philosopher. His field is linguistics, and he is a public intellectual, with very strong feelings about politics. political activism, and social criticism. However, some people do regard him as a philosopher. Cornel West, Martha Nussbaum, Peter Singer, Philip Kitcher, Daniel Dennet. and yes, Judith Butler.

If you're going to be rigorous regarding academic definitions, then Cornel West isn't really a philosopher either: his field is the study of religion.

r18 she also plagiarized parts

Melania Trump.

Marjorie Taylor Greene.

If we want to include the recently deceased then the answer is Richard Rorty.

It's Chomsky by an impossibly wide and huge margin. He won't be around much longer. He's recovering from a stroke and the public statements have been optimistic but I don't buy it. He hasn't made a public statement in over a year, I think. We've never needed him more. Tragic.

47 responses in and no

Yogi Berra ??

R46 disclaimer - i'm sickened and ashamed but admit guilt and full responsibility for using the phrase 'public statement' twice back to back. datalounge demands the highest standard of writing and i accept all legal consequences.

John Searle

Wait, Yogi Berra is dead.

My husband, who is 86, took a class with Chomsky when he was a grad student at MIT. Also one with Baba Ram Dass.

R51 my stepdad claims to have taken ted k's math class at berkeley. the years line up but he lies about everything so i don't really believe it. just like how he fucked janis joplin. what a thing to brag about.

And I took a class with Immanuel Kant!

"Ayn Rand is neither American nor a philosopher."

She was American enough to cash those social security checks from Uncle Sam, though, wasn't she?

Robert Greene. He's a brilliant writer, too.

Sam Harris.

Though I don't think he calls himself a philosopher.

R46: I miss seeing Chomsky. He was very generous with his time, granting interviews in recent years even to obscure YouTube channels with a few thousand subscribers.

R56 Sugar Don't Bite

John Rawls was far superior to all these.

r59 I'm a great admirer of John Rawls as well. His work on Fairness and justice is very fine.

Ayn Rand is most certainly a philosopher. You see this is why people do not like the left. Just because you don’t agree with that bitch does not mean she isn’t a philosopher. And I don’t agree with her either. And she also was an American citizen so you aren’t even as smart as you think.

not Butler.

She was a novelist, and not dealingon the plane of reality.

I’d add Elizabeth Grosz. Though she was born and raised in Australia (where she also taught until about the mid-1990s), the bulk of her work has been produced within the American academic world. She may even have US citizenship.

Whatever he nationality, she’s certainly one of the greatest philosophers working in the US at the moment.

Joe Rogan. Certainly the most influential. And he’s someone the country truly deserves.

Not my country.

Thanks for that insightful contribution, r66.

Susan Sontag

Andy Cohen.

Moi

Yes, this is THE place for Miami’s intelligentsia.

Judith Butler is directly responsible for Gen Z not knowing what a woman is.

Julianne Moore, seriously.

Cheryl. But unfortunately what she espouses stinks!

This remains the best takedown of Butler.

Assuming you're equating "greatest" to "influential" vs. some abstract notion of quality or degree of insight or some such, Graham Priest, Saul Kripke, Alvin Plantinga, Peter Singer, and Peter Van Inwagen would all be named in discussion on greatest living philosphers (assuming they're all still alive - I haven't really checked on that recently).

Kripke is probably the most influential living philospher when it comes to metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of language.

I missed the "living " part.

yes, Chompsky