Archive for the 'Politics' Category

I just stumbled over the list of the alleged Top 100 Public Intellectuals, published by the foreign policy magazine. This list is very interesting and by far more accurate and diverse as the lists which are regulary featured at the Time Magazine.

Some remarkable (? really) discoveries, which can lead to a rediscovery and more intense occupation with their thoughts:

Thomas Friedman, United States

Journalist, columnist

Friedman—New York Times foreign affairs commentator, three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and author of The World Is Flatand From Beirut to Jerusalem—is one of the world’s most popular and influential syndicated columnists. He wrote “The First Law of Petropolitics” for the May/June 2006 issue of FP.

Samuel Huntington, United States

Political scientist

Through such works as Political Order in Changing Societies, Huntington’s influence on his field is profound, but his most famous book is certainly The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Currently the Albert J. Weatherhead III professor at Harvard University, Huntington cofounded Foreign Policy in 1970. He wrote his provocative article “The Hispanic Challenge” for the March/April 2004 issue of FP.

Paul Krugman, United States

Economist, columnist

A fiery political commentator for the New York Times and a respected trade theorist, Krugman is a John Bates Clark Medal-winning economist at Princeton University. His most recent book is The Conscience of a Liberal. He wrote “Europe Jobless, America Penniless?” in the Summer 1994 issue of FP.

Jürgen Habermas, Germany

Philosopher

Habermas’s diverse interests range from epistemology to the rule of law, but his most influential work is on the “public sphere”—the arena in which arguments about political matters take place. He is author of The Theory of Communicative Action and, most recently,The Dialectics of Secularization, a dialogue with Joseph Ratzinger.

Noam Chomsky, United States

Linguist, activist

A professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1955, the prolific Chomsky is a groundbreaking linguist and a prominent critic of U.S. foreign policy. He wrote “What Is the International Community: The Crimes of ‘Intcom’” for the September/October 2002 issue of FP.

Umberto Eco, Italy

Medievalist, novelist

Eco’s dense novels, such as The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum, are a dizzying blend of philosophy, biblical analysis, and arcane literary references. An expert in the burgeoning field of semiotics, he is president of the Advanced School of Humanist Studies at the University of Bologna.

Muhammad Yunus, Bangladesh

Microfinancier, activist

Recipient of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, Yunus is the founder of the Grameen Bank and a pioneer in the field of microfinance. He shared his “Epiphanies” in the January/February 2008 issue of FP.