Erasmus of Rotterdam, of course - "Numero uno", on both political and mental levels; Machiavelli (same era...) a close second, but on political only.

@Pantalone - I have to admit I don't know too much about Erasmus - what is it about his philosophy that you admire so much?

DrOct, yeah, his writing has an eastern feel to it (he was in modern day Turkey) because he expounds his philosophy in pithy phrases that are often difficult to decipher. If I remember correctly, he held some pretty anti-humanistic views and was extremely critical of human character. Of the Pre-Socratic philosophers, I prefer Democritus, the laughing philosopher, to Heraclitus, the weeping philosopher. Check him out.

His theories are some of the accurate with regards to currently held scientific doctrine from Antiquity. He came up with the idea of the atom, and he strongly held ideas of determinism, materialism, and a mechanistic explanation to all things, which greatly contributed to the scientific method as well. He pre-dates Aristotle, and where Aristotle tried to correct or refute Democritus' theories, modern science has often backed up Democritus. His views on Epistemology are strikingly similar to Kant's later famous distinction between the noumenal and the phenomenal, and his views on human anthropology were surprisingly prescient.

As for Chinese philosophers, I mentioned the four major schools during the Warring States period, of which Confucianism sort of won out (though with heavy tinges of Legalism) in the end. The four are Confucianism, Daoism, Legalism, and Mohism. Wiki can teach you a lot about them, and it's a nice complement to Western philosophy. It seems more alien in nature, and not as concerned with the overwhelming power of logic, but more practical in a sense.

Erasmus was a major figure in the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation (though he was Catholic). He was a humanist and contributed to the overarching humanistic spirit of the Renaissance.

"His theories are some of the **most** accurate"

Correction.

I must agree that confucious is a great thinker but his Authoritarian veiws lower my admiration

for him that is or his philosiphies

I can't believe that Socrates isn't considered the top. He - if he existed - made all of these other punters possible. Ok, Confucious was around his time. Not the same. Socrates was the beginning of Western philosophy and of the scientific theory. Everyone else was just in his slipstream, beautifully - but without him? Where would we be? Everything built from that one person, philosophically and scientifically.

well i go back to my original post Maoism is the most influencial philosophy of ourtime next to Marxism becuase if you look at most anything you own and look were its made CHINA and without maoism CHINA would be the fragile unstable pile of shit it was Pre-Mao

Socrates' dialectic method set the base for modern scientific method (hypothesis elimination), pedagogy and political philosophy and ethics. He was also a great influence for Cynicism and Stoicism. He can be considered a true philosopher in the sense that he possessed awareness of his ignorance combined with love of wisdom (Socratic paradox).
Nevertheless he didn't contribute any written works...

denis, that's just speculation. You can't really know what China would have been like had it not been for Mao.

Congo, Socrates was certainly great, though it's sometime unclear which are his contributions and which are Plato's. However, he was not THE philosopher, there were plenty of philosophers that preceded him that certainly influenced him in the Western world. Anaximander, Anaxagoras, Thales, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Democritus, Leucippus, Zeno, Parmenides, Protagoras, Diogenes, and many others. I think his ideas are given extra oomph because he actually died for his ideas. It makes people think that he must have really had something if he was willing to give up his own life, and I think that definitely influenced his position now as the sort of Jesus of philosophy, in that everyone before him is called a Pre-Socratic, as though he started a new timeline.

well i making an educated guess due to China's record before the revolution
It would be one of the following:
1 fragile Corrupt with constant political turmoil to due debt and a weak goverment
2 would not be the economic and polpular giant it is today without the Population explosion after the revolution
3 extremly in debt and 100% reliant on forein countries

I am not sure if I agree with your assessment denis. Mao may have ruled china with an iron fist but he did a lot of harm. China has come ahead in leaps and bounces since the first generation of revolutionary leaders have been replaced a by a new generation of forward thinking technocrats who espouse a philosophy that would have been a total anathema to Mao.

typo... leaps and *bounds

that is true but would these new leaders be ruling china on this day without Maoism....NO
my point is that without Mao China today would be very different and probably would not be the China of today, the fastest growing Economy and the country were the primary resource is people

I do not praise Maoism as the best philosophy ever but since it allowed for the sprouting of China today i give it a respectable, andy roddick. haha

Well take a look at Taiwan, that's where the deposed Chinese Government went to. Taiwan has done quite well, especially considering the lack of international recognition.

To be honest I don't really know. It is quite interesting to ponder alternative histories though.

@denis - I might be willing to buy that Mao made the china of today possible, but I'm not really sure I think it was due to anything particularly innovative or inherent to his philosophy, I think more likely it was simply having a strong man in power, willing to rule with an iron fist that allowed China to assert itself enough to become what it is today. I might agree that Mao himself was necessary (though the counterexample of Taiwan is an interesting one, it's hard to say what China would be like now without Mao), I'm not so sure that that means that "Maoism" was as important. So where this a list of influential people I'd be a lot more supportive of Mao, but since it's a list of philosophers I'm not so sure I agree with you.

@Chrispminis - thanks for the info. I do in fact know a bit about Democritus, but somehow he's never quite appealed to me all that much (not that I don't respect what he did! just that it's never jumped out at me as being particularly useful in my life and view of the world, but perhaps I should look more deeply into him).

As for Chinese philosophies, I do know a little bit about Daoism (and find it very interesting), though don't know of any particular philosophers associated with it, which is more what I meant.

I have to admit I know more or less nothing about Mohism and Legalism, I'll definitely be reading up on those, thanks! (Probably Daoism too just because it is pretty interesting).

Also re: Erasmus - I am aware of the gist of what he was about, I was hoping we could get some more elucidation on what, specifically, it was that made Pantalone to be sooo supportive of him being on the list (to the point that he didn't really name anyone else in the "mental" category, and named him in both).

I will say one thing I'm really enjoying about this discussion is that it is giving me things and people to look up and learn more about!

Here is a sample list of important philosophers in alphabetical order to choose from:
Adler, Anaxagoras, Antisthenes, Aristotle, Aurelius, Bacon, Camus, Castaneda, Chomsky, Confucius, Darwin, Democritus, Descartes, Diderot, Diogenes, Durkheim, Engels, Epicurus, Erasmus, Foucault, Gandhi, Hegel, Heidegger, Hobbes, Ionesco, Kant, Kierkegaard, Lenin, Levi-Strauss, Machiavelli, Marx, Nietzsche, Plato, Rousseau, Sartre, Schopenhauer, Socrates, Spinoza, Trotsky, Voltaire, Weber, Wittgenstein, Xenophon

Have to admit, Xenophon was the only one there I'd never heard of, but I may just have to look into such an interesting name.

+1 Descartes, Locke

oh i forgot locke

denis, I don't know. China might have done just as well, or possibly better (though it's impossible to say for sure, only speculate) with the exiled government that is now in Taiwan. I mean, you cite instability, but it was incited by Mao's call for a proletariat revolution... It's impossible to say that the population boom would not have happened unless Mao took over, and the greatest leaps China has taken in recent times have been due to adopting a less leftist economic policy. If they had had this policy through the time of Mao, perhaps they'd already be in economic pole position by now.

Here's an interesting tidbit from the Wiki article on the Cultural Revolution:

"On June 27, 1981, the Central Committee adopted the "Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People's Republic of China", a document pertaining to the official historical assessment of a series of political movements since 1949. In this document, it is stated that the "Chief responsibility for the grave 'Left' error of the 'Cultural Revolution,' an error comprehensive in magnitude and protracted in duration, does indeed lie with Comrade Mao Zedong". It is stated that the Cultural Revolution was carried out "under the mistaken leadership of Mao Zedong, which was manipulated by the counterrevolutionary groups of Lin Biao and Jiang Qing, and brought serious disaster and turmoil to the Communist Party and the Chinese people.""

"As for Chinese philosophies, I do know a little bit about Daoism (and find it very interesting), though don't know of any particular philosophers associated with it, which is more what I meant.

I have to admit I know more or less nothing about Mohism and Legalism, I'll definitely be reading up on those, thanks! (Probably Daoism too just because it is pretty interesting)."

Ah, well if you find Daoism more interesting than Legalism and Mohism, that probably also explains our differences in interest between Democritus and Heraclitus because I think Daoism is the more mystical and spiritual of the four major Warring States philosophies. It's much more optimistic than Heraclitus though, and in that sense Heraclitus was probably closer to Confucianism in that he was highly critical of humanity, though I think he was even more pessimistic because he didn't offer a solution to this problem, unlike Confucianism. Legalism and Mohism are definitely the more practical.

Check out the Three Vinegar Tasters. It's one of my favourite allegories.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinegar_tasters

Lucretius. He invented the atom and quantum physics and classical Greece. I figure that just about wins it for me.

well isnt aristotle credited with the atom

@Chrispminis I'll let you know how I feel after I've done some more reading on Mohism and Legalism! I do have to admit to enjoying more mystical and spiritual philosophies in general but that doesn't necessarily mean that I don't or won't find a lot of value in other more "practical" philosophies. I'll definitely check out the vinegar tasters as well!

@Denis
No Aristotle did not come up with the idea of the atom. That was Leucippus of Miletus .
Aristolte believed that everything was made a combination of five elements: fire, earth, water, air, ether.