Talk:List of political philosophers

message: I confess myself mystified about Wittgenstein's inclusion here. While he is an eminent philosopher, and though he was known to be generally sympathetic to the political left, I don't know of his ever having written anything that could reasonably be called political philosophy. — Dan | talk 17:18, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wittgenstein 

message: I notice that two years after the discussion here suggested that "people who are principally philosophers" is not a good description of the article's content, neither the description nor who is included has significantly changed. Three different editors seemed to agree that it should be changed to something about people who have made significant written contributions to political philosophy. But nothing is changed. Even worse, the list itself contains a section of "people whose inclusion in the above list is being discussed", when in fact there has been no such discussion going on for years!
I would recommend two things be done:
#The inclusion criteria should be reworded to more accurately reflect the content. If you want William Blackstone, Thomas Jefferson and Friedrich Hayek on the list, you can't plausibly say it is only for those who are "principally philosophers" (emphasized, no less), unless you've got some idiosyncratic explanation of what it means to be "principally" a philosopher. If changing the wording means that Sun Yat-sen or Ayn Rand have to be taken into the main body of the list, so be it.
#The "Others" section is a non-encyclopedic intrusion of talk page issues into the article body. The entries in this section should either be incorporated into regular sections, or removed from the article entirely.
Feedback is welcome; otherwise I will be bold and start making changes. --RL0919 (talk) 20:55, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inclusion redux 

message: This would be consistent with other philosophers lists. byelf2007 | talk
No they should not. I like it as it is for it's practical value. If anything, make it a list sortable by date of birth, date of death and alphabetical order. That would add to its usefullness.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.96.93.185 (talk) 15:40, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: The names should be alphabetized (in each time period)

message: Jesus Christ did this, and so did Tupac Shakur as he is known as a social/political activist, also with http://www.amazon.com/The-White-Book-Makavelli/dp/0595424988. So I suggest both of them be mentioned in this article.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.4.163.53 (talk) 23:21, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  "To be a philosopher, one must work to attain a coherent view of the theories that the various disciplines accept." 

message: I have again reverted the addition of Jesus Christ to this page.   Things to note;
* The WP:BRD guideline suggest that if something you have added is reverted, you take it to discussion.  You don't repeatedly keep adding it back in until others get fed up.  This is disruptive editing.
* If something added is to be discussed, it stays out until consensus is reached to include it.  It doesn't work that it stays in until it is agreement is reached to remove it.
* The onus for establishing consensus is on the editor wishing to add the disputed content, not anyone else.
* This article clearly states at the top "Note, however, that the list is for people who are principally philosophers.".  If you are going to argue that Jesus Christ was  principally a philosopher, then please go ahead.  If you are equally going to argue that Tupac Shakur was principally a philosopher, then you really do have a task ahead of you.
--Escape Orbit (Talk) 16:38, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Jesus Christ & Tupac Shakur 

message: The last post recommending standards for inclusion was from 2006, and it has not received a reply. The standard proposed in 2006 was that authors born after 1900 have 25 citations on Philosophers Index in political philosophy journals, and that authors before 1900 be frequently mentioned as political philosophers. 
First, this standard has not been accepted or applied to the page. For instance, authors such as Murray Rothbard and Sayyid Qutb, who have less than 25 citations on Philosophers Index for the subject "political philosophy" (22 citations and 3 citations, respectively), are still included among the list of political philosophers born after 1900. Moreover, authors who far exceed the standard, such as Jacques Maritain (54 citations), are deleted without explanation.
Secondly, the standard proposed in 2006 is problematic for two reasons. First, it fails to give clear criteria for relevance among philosophers born before 1900. Secondly, if it were applied (which it hasn't been), it would bias the list towards philosophers discussed in academia at times at the cost of philosophers discussed more in the general public. Usually, the impact of a philosopher on the general public and on academia will be proportional, but there are important instances in which a philosopher has a disproportionate effect on one or the other. Thus, rather than looking exclusively at Philosophers Index, it would be better to balance statistics from some academic search engine (e.g., Philosophers Index, Google Scholar) with a non-academic one (e.g., Google).
Although, as the section below shows, the Catholic political philosophers recently deleted do meet the statistical popularity obtained by authors who have not been deleted, I think it is important to look at more than statistical popularity. An earlier talk section on this page discussed the addition of Indian and Muslim political philosophers specifically in order to represent an area of political philosophy outside of the mainstream Euro-American tradition that occupies the bulk of this page. Similarly, this page fails to adequately represent the leading Catholic political philosophers of the last two centuries. Thus, I think these authors should be included even if some of them fall below desired statistical popularity standards for inclusion. In any case, I have shown that the Catholic political philosophers that were recently deleted do exceed (and often far exceed) the statistical popularity standards set by the political philosophers currently included on this page.
Polsky215 (talk) 17:52, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: The 2006 post on standards (May 8, 2019)

message: The following political philosophers were recently deleted without warrant despite the fact that, on the talk page (see section below), a lengthy justification was given for their inclusion.
*Cardinal Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621)
*Pope Leo XIII (1810-1903)
*Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953)
*G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
*Jacques Maritain (1882-1973)
*Yves Simon (1903-1961)
*Charles De Koninck (1906-1965)
*Pope John Paul II (1920-2005)
If we compare Google scholar and Google search results for the authors currently included on this page with the results for those recently deleted, it is clear that inconsistent standards are being applied.
To show this, I have looked at three criteria:
*Google search: "Author name" "political" philosophy
*Google Scholar search: "Author name" "political" philosophy
*Google Scholar search: "Author name"
These three criteria capture (1) popular political impact of philosopher, (2) academic impact of philosopher within political philosophy, and (3) general academic impact of philosopher. 
Here are the list of results for the philosophers who were recently deleted.
*Robert Bellarmine (4,720; 1,940; 48,100)
*Leo XIII (592,000; 19,000; 167,000)
*Hilaire Belloc (11,500; 5,820; 142,000)
*G.K. Chesterton (33,500; 17,000; 589,000)
*Jacques Maritain (33,300; 17,500; 178,000)
*Yves Simon (3,040; 1,260; 11,900)
*Charles De Koninck (2,030; 523; 10,700)
*John Paul II (101,000; 41,500; 2,080,000)
Now let us look at a comparison to a few authors who have not been deleted, but who are included on the list. This is obviously not a complete list of those mentioned on the main page, but I have tried to pull a few examples of extremely popular political philosophers (e.g., Thomas Hobbes) and, more importantly, political philosophers who show that inconsistent standards were applied when the eight authors above were deleted. This list does not exhaustively represent all of the authors included on the main page who go below the standard of popularity reflected in the political philosophers authors recently deleted.
*Mozi  	13,000	4,250	96,600
*Hammurabi	52,400	13,700	404,000
*Mencius	38,000	23,100	221,000
*Chanakya	 9,360	2,710	246,000
*Aeschines 	16,100	6,980	56,400
*Thiruvalluvar 	3,280	373	74,800
*Han Feizi	3,020	2,080	27,800
*Pliny the Younger	14,400	7,770	167,000
*Muhammad al-Shaybani	322	213	9,750
*Al-Mawardi	8,470	2,620	21,700
*Ibn Taymiyyah	6,160	3,290	49,800
*Richard Hooker	14,400	9,420	108,000
*Ibn Khaldun	31,700	18,400	154,000
*Christine de Pizan	16,300	6,500	82,000
*Thomas Muntzer	12,600	3,150	26,200
*Thomas Hobbes	146,000	81,300	996,000
BORN AFTER 1900			
*Theodor Adorno	102,000	37,000	296,000
*Cornelius Castoriadis	20,600	6,600	74,600
*Murray Rothbard	7,640	5,040	161,000
*Judith Shklar	7,980	6,730	33,000
*Fazlur Rahman Malik	48	40	7,630
*Sayyid Qutb	17,700	11,200	161,000
*Michael Oakeshott	16,300	13,100	129,000
*Guy Debord	31,700	15,900	170,000
*Rae Langton	2,080	1,150	13,500
*Douglas Rae	2,250	1,100	6,590
*Lorenzo Peña	1,420	327	3,450
Given these results, it is wildly inconsistent not to include (minimally) Leo XIII, G.K. Chesterton, Jacques Maritain, and John Paul II. All four of these authors regularly beat philosophers currently included in all three criteria. 
Likewise, Hilaire Belloc, who comes in lower than the other four authors, beats Mozi, Chanakya, Thiruvalluvar, Han Feizi, Muhammad al-Shaybani, Al-Mawardi, Ibn Taymiyyah, Thomas Muntzer, Murray Rothbard, Rae Helen Langton, Lorenzo Peña, Douglas Rae, and Fazlur Rahman for impact on academic political philosophy. He also beats all of them (except Thomas Muntzer and Mozi) for impact on academia in general.
Robert Bellarmine and Yves Simon are obviously quite a bit less discussed on Google/Google Scholar than Leo XIII, G.K. Chesterton, Jacques Maritain, and John Paul II as well as Hilair Belloc. Nevertheless, even these two authors beat many other political philosophers who are included. Both authors beat Rae Langton, Lorenzo Peña, Douglas Rae, Fazlur Rahman, Thiruvalluvar, and Muhammad al-Shaybani in every category (except regular Google searches for Thiruvalluvar and Rae Langton). For regular Google searches, Robert Bellarmine also beats Thomas Muntzer and Han Feizi, besides those just mentioned. Even Charles De Koninck, who is the least cited author in the list of authors recently deleted, beats Fazlur Rahman and Muhammad al-Shaybani in every category. He also beats Thiruvalluvar and Lorenzo Peña in the second category—which tracks an author's influence on academic political philosophy. 
Polsky215 (talk) 17:52, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: Evidence of inconsistent standards on page (May 8, 2019)