I’m having a hard time reconciling this—”A terrible list.”—with this— “The concept of good or bad lists makes little sense”. Incoherent much?

Perhaps it is a fault that I did not list any women, but that would be more of a fault with my education than with my intentions, as I would be hard-pressed to list a handful of female philosophers that (1) I know anything about and (2) are in the league of those mentioned above. And a few of those I might mention are still alive, which, as you might have gathered from the title of this entry, would’ve violated the terms I set for myself in making the list. In any case, I don’t see myself as obligated to reach some quota for either sex. Maybe this will just prove to you (as you said elsewhere) that I “unconsciously think the world is male” (a bizarre and potentially offensive complaint that smells of smear tactics rather than thoughtful critique), but I was mostly worrying whether the philosophers I listed had noteworthy enough ideas rather than perseverating over some imaginary sexism I might display. I mean, most of the list is white, too. Should I have included non-white philosophers to appease whatever perverse gods you serve?

Despite my generally derisive tone, I would be interested in suggestions for female nominees to be added to this list, if only so that I might fill in an area of knowledge that is sorely lacking.

As for adding non-western (particularly Indian, Chinese, and Japanese) philosophers to the list, I would very much have liked to do so—in fact, I struggled to keep the constraint of Western philosophy intact. In the end, I decided to make things simpler by following the rough pattern Graham described in the post I linked to. If it were simply a list of the greatest philosophers of all time, I can assure you it would have been a much different list. Though perhaps still all male, ’cause that’s the way I manifest my repressed sexism.

Now rewite the list with 50% women, then redo it again with 50% non-western philosophers.

best steve