Question How to tell bad philosophers from good ones? How to determine the "value" of a philosopher and his work? How can we tell that e.g. Plato, Descartes, Kant or Marx were great philosophers while many around them weren't so great? I'll start with analogy from different field. When we look back at history of science, we (at least in a simplified view) can say that the "good" scientists were those whose predictions about the nature of the world matched the objective reality. In science, what is true, is valuable, and vice versa. Some other criteria could be though of as well. One could say that Newton's and Einstein's theories were regarded valuable because they matched with objective reality AND explained things that weren't explained before AND could be used to build other theories and reasoning on top of them. Now, what about philosophy? One could say that a good philosopher is a philosopher whose argumentation is good, i.e. convincing. But shouldn't in this case many lawyers be regarded as great philosophers? They also often have good argumentation skills. I see a possible objection that lawyers are not concerned with abstract and "eternal" questions, the questions of philosophy, and therefore "do not qualify" to be philosophers. But then, if that true, there exists a method to create many first-class philosophers. We just take good lawyers and order (or pay) them to do philosophy. Why this wouldn't work?

Accepted:
March 11, 2010

Comments

I think there is no simple or objective way to determine this (say, by counting cites in Google Scholar) for the simple reasons, first, that what counts as a good work of philosophy depends on the exact reasons why you wish to read philosophy in the first place and, second, that there are many, many different reasons why someone might want to study philosophy in a serious way.

As an example, let's consider the value of historical texts. One way to understand the value of a particular thinker or of a particular work is to understand its historical context (was the thinker or text addressing problems that it was important to answer at that time, and in a manner that engaged other significant thinkers and texts in important ways?) and historical legacy (did the thinker or text influence significantly future work on important philosophical issues). If you, as a reader, are especially interested in the "local history" of a particular philosophical concept or question or problem as it was understood at a specific time, then you will probably value thinkers who pass the first test with respect to your areas of concern, regardless of whether or not that thinker had a significant historical legacy. If, however, you are read the history of philosophy to understand development of ideas over larger periods, then you would probably value (and count as "good" for your purposes...) philosophers who do best according to the second test. And, of course, some of the greatest philosophers do extremely well according to both tests.

Or, alternatively, you may find some historical philosophers valuable because they help you understand contemporary philosophical issues or problems or concerns. If so, those philosophers would count as good to you even if you don't care enough about historical questions to make the two tests I sketched out above germane to your interests.

So, I'm suggesting that a primary way that you should count a philosopher as good or not is by reading him or her carefully enough to see whether his or or her ideas are useful to whatever drives you to care about philosophy. Since there are lots of routes into philosophical inquiry, many different problems to investigate, and multiple pathways for exploring any one specific issue, this sort of criterion may mean that there is not a lot of agreement about exactly which philosophers are good or bad. That is fine by my lights.

I doubt that it is the case that most lawyers could create good philosophy-for-hire without them also undergoing intensive training in the discipline (otherwise they would not know enough--or care enough--to be able to produce professional work), but I do think it is the case that training in philosophy provides a good grasp of argumentation that serves law students well when they work to get specialized knowledge in that field. Even though both law and philosophy may value argumentation (and leaving aside the question of whether how similar or not is their view of what good argumentation amounts to), good work in philosophy or in law also requires attaining special knowledge within the field.