Wikipedia talk:Vital people/Level/2

A few comments
I know you said we could edit this at will, but I just wanted to explain some of my thoughts to you and see what you thought first. My comments apply to both Levels 1 and 2.


 * 1) It does not make sense to put Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant on the Level 1 list but leave out John Locke. Locke is the father of liberalism and empiricism and his influence on philosophy and politics outstrips both Smith and Kant. You should replace one of them with Locke. I personally wanted to add Kant to my Level 1 list, but decided against it and made room for Freud. He should ideally be swapped with Locke.


 * 1) I'm just not sold on Franz Kafka being one of the 23 most important people in the arts. He's perfectly fine for a top 50 writers, which is why I added him to my Level 2 list, but his presence on this list is strange when we lack Goethe. I just don't know what differentiates Kafka from other titans of 20th century literature. Why not Hemingway? Tolkien? Joyce? Woolf? Orwell? In my opinion, there is a stronger case for the people I listed than there is for Kafka, and there is a stronger case for Goethe than arguably all of them. Furthermore, writers like Austen or Dickens would be much better additions than him, given that their works will be much more familiar to our audience. Zelkia1101 (talk) 12:35, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi and thanks for your feedback. I did not receive your ping. I swapped Kafka for Goethe per your suggested. If you see the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Vital_people/Level/1, it was  who suggested swapping Locke for Kant. It's very hard to pick just 50 people since that is a small number. I have no objections to adding Locke back to the level 1 list so if you want to do that, you are free to go ahead, but one person must go. Interstellarity (talk) 13:48, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
 * If we are going to remove Kant or Locke, it should definitely be Kant. Kant's influence on Western philosophy is profound, but not as great as Locke's, whose contributions to political philosophy birthed modern democracy and liberalism. That's to say little about Locke's empiricism, which influenced the development of modern science and psychology, or his influence on pedagogy through Some Thoughts Concerning Education, which is the most important text on education next to Rousseau's work. Kant is important as an ethicist, but that's already sufficiently covered by Aristotle. I'll go ahead and re-add Locke, if you don't object. Zelkia1101 (talk) 14:59, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
 * No objections from me. Interstellarity (talk) 15:02, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
 * , indeed after I did the Kant-Locke swap I later felt uncertain. Part of me thinks Descartes should be swapped out for Kant; I just can't really see this list not having Kant. It's close, but as the Stanford Encyclopedia article says, Kant is "is the central figure in modern philosophy". Aza24 (talk) 21:33, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
 * unfortunately the fact of the matter is that, with only 50 spots available, you're going to have to make cuts that you would rather not make. Kant is obviously a pillar thinker in Western philosophy, but Descartes can be said to be the founder of modern philosophy, as well as the progenitor of rationalism, which, like empiricism, would go on to profoundly influence social science. Descartes can also boast of achievements in mathematics. This puts him over Kant in my opinion.Zelkia1101 (talk) 21:59, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

1 under quota
We are one article under quota at this level. If you could add an article, that would be great. Thanks, Interstellarity (talk) 20:47, 6 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Thanks for counting. In my opinion Vincent van Gogh is the only person who was still missing from this level. --Thi (talk) 21:13, 6 August 2021 (UTC)