The Smrt List

26 thoughts on The Smrt List

1. Well they got it right with my imaginary bff Paul Krugman – and Richard Dawkins did well. Pope Benedict is a big of a tough swallow (cough)…

2. I have no problem with the pope being on this list. Niall Ferguson is a bit of a stretch, especially at the same rank as Coetzee. DId I miss it, or did they leave off Andrew Sullivan?

3. Oh, it’s a poll based on whether the readership had ever heard of the person in question. I was about to say something, but that’s like being upset at Oasis being named the best band ever in a 1997 Q Magazine poll or something.

4. Jill, I was surprised they did not include Ronny Dworkin also, but I can see the thinking. Sure, he’s brilliant, but there’s a huge hole in his philosophy that he simply tries to ignore. He says there’s no furniture in the universe, but he insists that his moral absolutes are binding on everyone. He does it by bad slight of hand: implied “surely.” He says that when we say genocide is wrong, we mean it in an absolute and not a relative way. Then he implies that everyone agrees that genocide is wrong. “surely,” he seems to say, “you’re not in favor of genocide?”

   But his whole theory crumbles in the face of anyone who disagrees. If a Nazi (or a revanchist Tutsi, or Ian Paisley, or an eco-radical who wanted all humans exterminated to save the planet, or whatever pro-genocide boogieman you like) attended his lecture, stood and said, “actually, professor, I’m in favor of genocide,” Dworkin is in a hole. If he says, “well, we all disagree with you,” then his moral theory is just cultural relativism. If he says, “you’re objectively wrong,” he has to demonstrate the hardpoint in the universe that he can tie that to, which he has conceded doesn’t exist.

   When folks challenge him on this, he just says, “I’m not interested in that question.” He’s interested in the way we use the word, “moral,” but he doesn’t have a coherent theory of how it is binding on anyone. He’s trying to derive imperatives from mere descriptive statements.

5. I hear ya, Thomas. But Dworkin’s theories are surely still better than Friedman’s, aren’t they?

6. Richard Posner would make my shortlist, as would James Q. Wilson. They should both be considerably higher than #32 and #76, respectively. Richard Epstein should be up there too. And for crying out loud, Paul Krugman in the top 10? The guy used to be a competent economist, but for the last few years all he’s done is throw temper tantrums on the NYT op-ed page, whining about a horrendous economic Doomsday that never seems to materialize.

7. This illustrates why I don’t particularly like these kinds of lists; well, they’re fun in the sense that I get to learn about various thinkers, some of whom I’ve heard little to nothing about, but invariably there’s argument as to who should have been included, who shouldn’t have, and where people should be ranked.

   Now, such arguments can be fun and interesting, but that seems to undermine the purpose of the list in the first place.

8. This illustrates why I don’t particularly like these kinds of lists; well, they’re fun in the sense that I get to learn about various thinkers, some of whom I’ve heard little to nothing about, but invariably there’s argument as to who should have been included, who shouldn’t have, and where people should be ranked.

   See, that’s why I do like lists. It’s possibly because I’m a Jew, and arguing is the only sport we’re good at. (Well, that and figure skating.) But I also think that those arguments get people to articulate what they think makes someone good or important. And that’s probably a worthy exercise.

   On second thought, I just like to argue.

9. Sally,

   Okay, that’s fair. I tried to give some merit to the idea that the arguments that these lists engender are good, but I may have underestimated that.

   But then that means the value of these lists isn’t what it’s often purported to be. That’s all I’m saying.

10. Ugh. Jill, what exactly do you find brilliant about Christopher Hitchens? I think he’s arrogant, pretentious, dishonest, and a terrible writer. Oh well.

    The list is silly, but I think Chomsky is a well-deserved first place.

11. I haven’t read much HItchens since he went wingnut, but my take on him has always been that he’s a good writer and a brilliant polemicist but that he sacrifices a lot of subtlety for clarity of argument. He may be capable of brilliant thinking, but he’s too busy hammering home his point to bother with nuance, and it’s hard to be brilliant without nuance. Also, he’s a little too hung up on the idea that he’s the second coming of George Orwell. I think he’d be better off if he’d stayed in Britain, where nobody would have fallen for the Orwell schtick. In the U.S., people assign you about fifty extra IQ points and think you’re totally deep just because you talk with an English accent, and I think he coasts on that a bit too much.

12. I’m proud to have read at least one book or a substantial number of articles from a great number of these people, and at least know who some of the rest are, but I must admit that overall (for a variety of ‘this guy on the list compared to that guy on the list), this list came out…(drumroll please)… Weird!

    If you didn’t bother to click this analysis link, you should: http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=7078

    He makes some good and interesting points, though certainly not all of the ones that could or should be made (for obvious reasons). It’s a quick read.

13. So why does the list include … Paul Wolfowitz

    Because, irrespective of the political and ideological judgment of the Iraq venture, Paul Wolfowitz is a fucking genius that predicted two huge geopolitical shifts (that few others anticipated) in the past 30 years. Just guessing.

14. Also, yes, a lot of people have noticed the dearth of women intellectuals here and elsewhere, but remember that feminism didn’t simply flip a switch when suffrage came about. Things are better than they used to be, but still have a long way to go, and while progress is necessary, overzealous affirmative action can be equally damaging (ie, mandating a 50/50 list and ending up with some less than stellar figures on one side).
    African Americans still face the transitional difficulties of in many cases (and geographic areas) being predisposed to, for example, not find a way to go to college. While it’s easy for a white upper-middle class man to take the advantages of social, psychological, economic, and traditional spillover from his parents’ and grandparents’ generations for granted, they make a big difference in landing him in college (money, expectations, planning, what your parents read or said at your childhood bedside, your friends and neighbours, etc.)

    The same factors play into the paths that lead young daughters, just learning how to read, to the status of great (and _well-known_) intellectual. These paths begin before the child is even conceived, in the nature and circumstances of the generations that preceded it. For this reason, the resolution of the revolution (be it gunpowder, civil rights, or feminism) takes a lot more time than just getting much or most of the population to accept the premise. It should be expected that from Susan B. Anthony to a 51/49 list of this sort (there are more women, aren’t there?) will take a number of generations. Accepted? Perhaps not, but expected. If only because for many of the greatest thinkers (male or female), their _parents_ could very well have made the list, or if not so prominent (as, say, Freeman Dyson – whose son writes about his father’s work), at least were well-educated, and often in the same field as the son or daughter’s. Also, take note of the reason that Friedman was not allowed on the longlist. Think of how many of the great women thinkers in the past two centuries this applies to. Admittedly, whether or not Freeman Dyson should have been part of this list was in debate, so this might not have been as big an issue for the women as possible, but it’s yet another reason that these things take time.

    Another reason, you ask? Well, okay. The people chosen are OLD. The analysis link above points this out. Guess what, though? So are the readers! The age-factor of recognition is doubly applicable. Der Generation des Laurens is just plain too young to have produced screaming hoards of prolific writers _and_ of prospect/fp subscribers.

    Give it time, and just make sure to write as many books as possible, and have your friends do the same. As long as the wingnuts don’t succeed in setting back feminism by 100 years, progress is inevitable. There are a lot of women, and a lot of very smart ones, and comparatively very few misogynists, in Academia.

15. I can maybe buy Wolfowitz and Paglia, even if I don’t think much of them, but Thomas Friedman!?! I tried to read through all of ‘Latitudes and Attitudes’, and I just couldn’t do it. The man only has three columns, and changes the words around: “America Has A Duty To Fight Evil”, “It’s A Shame Israelis and Palestinians Can’t Get Along”, and “There’s A Lot of International Trade These Days”.

    I wish I could become one of the world’s foremost intellectuals by smothering dull platitudes in incoherent metaphors.

16. As for exclusions from the list, I think John Ralston Saul, Mark Kingwell, David Suzuki and Brian Greene should all have been included

17. David Byrne. Oof, wrong list.

18. And as someone who spends a fair amount of time in the evangelical world, I won’t mention the overwhelmingly secular nature of the list (the Pope alone is not enough) — you could easily put on Rich Mouw or Mark Noll…

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20. Christopher Hitchens (disagree with him all you want, the man is still brilliant)

    This is just objectively false, and possibly a bit offensive as well. (Was Goebbels ‘brilliant’ too?)

    Name a single original or important idea Hitchens has ever had. Name a single contribution he’s made to any discipline. Name a single significant book that he’s written.

    He is an apologist for US terrorism, nothing more, nothing less. Just because he speaks with a British accent and name-drops like it’s going out of style doesn’t make him brilliant. It makes him a pompous, British version of John Hinderaker.

21. David Byrne: born in Scotland. Also, three members of AC/DC. And the Proclaimers (brothers named Reid) and the Jesus and Mary Chain (also brothers named Reid, not related to the Proclaimers).

22. *FLAME ON*

    Oh that is a joke. Thomas Friedbrains? The man who waves off his failure to see the impending quagmire in Iraq by saying that he was “duped” even though the evidence against WMDs was right in front of him all the fucking time?

    I was surprised to see Clifford Geertz on the list. This means that at least some people are pondering the question of communicating across cultures and how much can we understand of one another.

    Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate) and Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene) were both ranked a little high IMHO. When Pinker slashes at “feminist biology” he does a very sloppy job of representing what the studies in question actually represent. Yet we call him “one of us”.

    Dawkins’ “meme” hypothesis has caught on with some intellectuals who have no clue about science. How do you quantify the concept and call it Science? He’s just stolen the idea of “culture” from anthropology and pretended that it was something new. And his “Blind Watchmaker” is not all that far from ID. Dawkins just throws out God. He and Pinker just don’t get that the only thing evolution cares about is that you live to breed. Therefore some pretty clumsy traits can live on and on.

    Oh and look: Pope Rat is there, too.

    John Ralson Saul didn’t make the list nor did Kay Jamison. Both of them, in my opinion, offer a great deal more to society than these pundits. Including Hitchens.

    It comes down to this: most people wouldn’t know an intellectual if one bit them in the collective butt. Sometimes the arrogant ignorance is obvious, other times it just slips on by like a cunningly wielded enema.

    *FLAME OF LIST OFF*

23. While I think I might like Feldman even more than you do, which genuinely terrifies me, I’m not sure he qualifies for “World’s Top 100” just yet. There are a lot of smart people in the world.

    However, any such list that doesn’t include Dworkin is prima facie ridiculous. He is quite simply one of the most important legal thinkers in the last hundred years; he sets out a position on the law that is deeply important and, in my opinion, deeply wrong; and he is going to be taught to students in a hundred years, two hundred years, three hundred years. “Law’s Empire” alone qualifies him for Top 100 status.

24. Thomas, LONG LIVE THE SCOTS!

25. Ditto Lauren–we do have strong Scottish ties!!

26. Heh. I thought about mentioning The Proclaimers and refrained – glad I didn’t have to (-:

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