In a recent issue of the Times Higher there has been reported the results of a 2007 citation count in the humanities and social sciences that was carried out by Thomson Reuters. There are a number of interesting results from this. The most cited author is Michel Foucault, followed, depressingly enough, by Pierre Bourdieu. In the top group there are 15 philosophers and philosophers seem to be cited more within the general humanities that do representatives of any other discipline though sociology is not far behind. Somewhat surprisingly, there are no historians in the list at all.
Alongside these points the next interesting one is the the only author from the 18th century included is none other than Kant who comes in 13th in the list just below Gilles Deleuze but, gratifyingly, just above Martin Heidegger! Peculiarly all of these thinkers received fewer citations than Bruno Latour. There are virtually no Anglo-American philosophers in this list, however, since only John Rawls and Thomas Kuhn figure in it whilst quite a few 20th century French philosophers figure here suggesting that European philosophy has a wider general impact on the humanities than Anglo-American philosophy does, something not that surprising.
4 comments:
I'm a big fan of your blog, but I was puzzled by your "depressingly enough" at the mention of Bourdieu. Is this tied to Bourdieu's "Distinction" and the reading of Kant there, or perhaps his general distaste for public reason? If so, I'd love to see you describe your frustrations in a future post.
Thanks for your comment and good to hear you are a big fan of this blog! The remark I made about Bourdieu did concern "Distinction" and the general impossibility, so far as I can see, of allowance for a priori considerations in the understanding of taste on his part. I don't know much about his general distaste for public reason but if you want to send me links to places where he spells this out I'd be happy to do a future posting on the topic.
I think the distaste with public reason is there in Distinction as well. He talks about bourgeois public sphere as a kind of deliberative version of the modes of production associated with early capitalist piecework and shopkeeping. Basically all of Chapter 8 "Culture and Politics" if you have it handy.
Thanks for spelling this out: I was so put off by the general view of taste being canvassed that I didn't get that far with the book: will have to look it up!
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