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Rank intellectuals

A NEW LIST OF the world’s top public intellectuals

contains a good few philosophers, along with other academics and intellectuals who have a foot if not a

whole leg in the philosophical camp. The list compiled by the magazines Foreign Policyand

Prospectcontains the philosophers Kwame Anthony Appiah, Daniel Dennett, Alain Finkielkraut, Jüürgen

Habermas, Martha Nussbaum, Fernando Savater, Peter Singer, and Charles Taylor; along with Noam

Chomsky, Michael Ignatieff, Amartya Sen, Michael Walzer and Slavoj ŽŽižžek who work in other

disciplines, but with a strong philosophical bent. The first and thus far only Foreign Policy/Prospect

list, published in 2005, was a little different. Chomsky, Habermas, Sen, Dennett, ŽŽižžek, Singer,

Ignatieff, Nussbaum, Walzer and Finkielkraut were there, but Appiah, Savater and Taylor were not. The

now deceased Jean Baudrillard and Richard Rorty were there, along with the still very much alive Julia

Kristeva and Peter Sloterdijk. The top five by reader ballot were Noam Chomsky, Umberto Eco, Richard

Dawkins, Vááclav Havel, and Christopher Hitchens; Habermas was at seven and Sen at eight.

The results of this year's poll will be published

soon after we go to press. See www.prospectmagazine.co.uk.

Martha Nussbaum

Michael Ignatieff

tpm3RD QUARTER 2008

Peter Singer