Three years ago, you may recall, we teamed up with Foreign Policy magazine to produce a list of the world’s top 100 public intellectuals and to ask our readers to vote for their top five. This year we’re repeating the exercise, with a new list that we believe better reflects the current trends in global thought. We’ve tried to spruce up the list this time around by clearing away some of the dead wood from 2005’s list and adding new and exciting younger thinkers, particularly from outside the anglosphere. We reckon the new list feels much fresher as a result.
You can see our new list and vote here. Please take the time to vote, for your top five as well as an extra name you believe has been unjustly excluded from the list of 100. And spread the word—we’re keen to get as many people voting as possible. We’re especially interested in attracting voters from outside the English-speaking west.
And finally, please don’t be shy about letting us know how absurd/barbaric/sexist/anglocentric you find our selection, in the comments below. But be warned! The wittiest and/or most caustic responses may well find their way on to our letters page.
NB Prospect readers please note that the closing date given in the May 2008 issue of Prospect is wrong—voting closes on Thursday 15th May, not Monday 19th May.
After reviewing the list, I had to go check if Eric Hobsbwam was already dead…Surprise! He´s not. One of the most brilliant and influential historians of the 20th century has been excluded. A Marxist, incidentally.
This list is definitely more realistic and comprehensive than the previous one with the inclusion of people like Lee Kuan Yew, Nandi, Roy etc. and the exclusion of the likes of BHL. But I am afraid that in Nassim Taleb you missed one of the smartest current original thinkers.
I was surprised to see Gianni Riotta in your list, he is not an intellectual. I am Italian and Riotta is just journalist and not even a good one. He is directory of news on RAI 1 TV channel that does not resemble at all any ethical conduct of anglosazon journalism.
I agree about Eric Hobsbawm, but venture that he’ll live a little longer as a result of exclusion from a list that includes Riotta.
“This year we’re repeating the exercise, with a new list that we believe better reflects the current trends in global thought.”
Trends in global thought? It is true that all people (who have and are allowed to have internet access) can access this website freely and vote. But when you are living in a world - when, if condensed to a village of 100 people, only one would own a computer and this person would not necessarily have internet access - can you reasonably conclude from this forthcoming new list that it “reflects the current trends in global thought”? To me, it would only reflect the current trends for people who may have access to a computer and are able to access the internet freely and who can read English.
Many other public intellectuals spring to mind who are not included in this year’s list. Robert Fisk, unarguably the leading Middle East Corrpespondent with decades of experience (if writing is one of your selection criteria, his is ample). Norman Finkelstein’s absence from the list cannot be excused for his lack of fame or eminence in the US. Mahoud Darwish, the leading, towering Palestinian poet, with an international reputation for poetry and writing prose, having authored over thirty books of poety and eight books of prose, of which many have been translated into a total of twenty-two languages and a majority of his work translated into English, with numerous awards, most recently the Prince Claus Award in 2004. Azmi Bishara, the charismatic Palestinian leader of the Balad Party in Israel representing the large Arab minority whose campaign for equal rights for Palestinians has spanned since his student years and whose deep analytical articles and essays appear in newspapers and internet websites on a frequent basis.
But I have a large suspicion that many voters do not span the globe or represent the changing trends in global thought which this new list claims these intellectuals represnent.
The list is representative, of the people who live mostly in the developed world ofcourse.
There are so many others, and I hope the mentioning of these few will open the flood gates for the appearance of many other leading intellectuals on this list.
I can’t believe John Gray isn’t on here. There is no doubt that he is one of the most famous, influential and provocative intellectuals in the world today.
No room for intellectuals like Ann Coulter, Victor Davis Hansen, Thomas Sowell or charles Krauthammer, but somehow room was made for Al Gore.
Yeesh.
If your tentative list had been published by USA TODAY I would have found it praiseworthy.
Appearing on Prospect Magazine I am afraid it puts your magazine in a category you do not want to belong…
I have lived for the past few years in Italy and to see its intellectual ferment represented by UMBERTO ECO and GIANNI RIOTTA evokes only a chuckle and a tear at the same time.
I’m sorry. Your list is not subject to improvement.
Ulrich Beck is another critical lapse
And Edmund Phelps?
Scientists may be thinkers, but that in itself doesn’t qualify them to be regarded as intellectuals : they are, generally, disqualified by their (professional and arrogantly professed) reductionism and ignorance of ethical, historical, psychological, etc, dimensions (the English biologist Steven Rose, being an exception, would qualify; he is absent from the list). The problems start when, like Dawkins, Dennett, Pinker (sic!) et al, they start behaving as though they had public entitlements : handed to them on a plate by the British media. The fact that the absurd number of scentists on your list are all Anglo-American says something about the state of intellectual debate in those countries : the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity, as an Irish public intellectual once said.
…and Anies Baswedan? Indonesian people want to know what books he’s already written?
Al Gore debases the list. He does nothing more than espouse a politically correct cause on false and exaggerated grounds. He should not be on it.
My definition of a public intellectual is someone who influences the way the rest of us see the world of events not just by argument - logical or any other — or the honesty with which such a view is expressed but by re-shaping our concepts. (John Maynard Keynes even years before he wrote the General Theory would be the model.) By this measure very few on your list deserve to be there. Such a list would also necessarily be smaller than the one you have posted.
So, Chomsky who was at one time a highly innovative linguistic theorist is actually quite an unoriginal commentator on our age and culture. One admires his forthrightness but that is hardly enough.
Journalists, of course, should not be included. Columnists like Paul Krugman, Tom Friedman and Martin Wolf have their weekly or twice-a-week soapbox and it is this (combined with their hectoring tone) that gives them any influence.
George Monbiot has been making Al Gore’s case better than him for some years now. He has also written in depth books and articles on the subject of climate change (and many other subjects), the likes of which Gore doesn’t come close to. He also knows the science a good deal better than Bjorn Lomborg, who is an economist not an ‘environmental statistician’.
I found surprisingly that Kishore Mahbubani is not on the poll. (He used to be on the list in 2005 poll!). His essays are amazingly thoughtful. However, I think those essays seem to be excessively challenging for western minds.
And I hardly believe that Joseph E. Stiglitz, one of most prominent economist is excluded from the list. Probably, his outspoken argue on the very dark side of globalization have diminished him.
I would say that this list misses out a lot of critical thinkers. Monbiot is one example, Stiglitz another, if writers make the list why not Arundhati Roi, if public communicators get in there, why not Morgan Spurlock.
Zizeck makes the list, but not his old buddy Ernesto Laclau, who is a giant within academia. This suggests that the public aspect is paramount in this list.
Again the list is fairly arbitrary, and English Speaking. What about Chinese intellectuals, what about Japanese ones for that matter? Not that many French or Italian ones here. Not much from South America of Africa.
Paolo Friere has been seriously influential, liberation theology was a big deal in South America. There are so many not included here. Perhaps their should be a ” the world’s top 20 intellectuals from each continent” list. Arbitrary, yes, but no more so than the current list.
super
thank you Prospect.number one FETHULLAH GÜLEN and ORHAN PAMUK.
my favorite number one FETHULLAH GULEN.
Thanks all..
A list like this is to be expected in …a tabloid paper. So it makes me somewhat curious… On which grounds are we to compare and choose our favourites? Nationality, number of published books, links with Prospect? Are you sure this is not a Celebrity contest?
Al Gore?
Anyone who makes it a condition of his speech-making that no he takes no questions from the floor is hardly an intellectual.
Ones I miss –
Freeman Dyson.
Colin James
and surely Hernando de Soto is worth ten of most of the other development economists.
I suppose Theodore Dalrymple is just too tough.
my favorite is FETHULLAH GÜLEN too
One: you really need to read carefully the comments of Nabil Muhareb and Peter Labanyi etc; it really is not clear that you fully understand what the term “intellectual” means and their comments should nudge you in the right direction.
Two: many of those in your list (and I am acquainted with the overwhelming majority of them) are simply people doing a job with limited (if any) influence outwith their own circle.
Three: just because an “intellectual” has reached the third age is no reason to refuse to consider them; George Steiner and Mary Midgley are still intellectual giants whereas many of your list are dwarves running around patting themselves and each other on the back whilst appearing to be unaware of the giants around them.
Four: don’t tell me who I can vote for!
I couldn’t see fethullah gülen in the list what happened?Please say something
FETHULLAH GÜLEN
thank you Prospect.my favorite is FETHULLAH GÜLEN too
You have made a grave omission.
We will soon rectify this situation.
Yes, why isn’t Rain included in your top 100? He’s a very infuential person - more so that that guy who used to work on the Daily show and now has a show of his own (I think his name is Stephen Colgate or some such)