Philosophy and the Humanities (I)

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.