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aerhardttoday at 12:22 PM1 replyview on HN

The fact that Hegel is not there is ridiculous. Perhaps the most influential philosopher since Aristotle.

Not only did he influence the young hegelians and Marx, he continues to influence many philosophers across all kinds of schools and ideologies.

Marx not being there is an implicit moral judgement - if “great” means good in some ethical sense subjective, then OK. But if “great” means impactful or influential, that’s a problem.

Then no Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, Tocqueville, Watt, Ramón y Cajal, Ford, Schumpeter, Cervantes…

On the latter, not a single mention of literature. Not even Homer. I find this list problematic in an innumerable amount of ways.


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finghintoday at 12:41 PM

I also agree that Marx is a thinker who altered the course of the world and I see where you are coming from regarding the moral judgement on his absence.

As a counterpoint, what would Marx’s great intellectual achievement be, and could it stand up to the early capitalists like Smith?

What comes to mind is the Labour Theory of Value, and I would say it is a strong candidate for sure. Whether it figures as a key human intellectual achievement is definitely at best borderline compared to the other exemplars on this list.

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