Rating the Great Thinkers

From the news – a story in the (London) Times online about the BBC poll to find the greatest philosopher of all time. Marx has surged to the top of the list. He was the BBC’s Great Thinker of the Millenium in 1999. The old Left has not lost its will to live after all.
The BBC poll site has its explanation for this exercise, and some resources including noted ideas, and expert appraisals. Useful, actually, but not as much fun as the song in Monty Python’s Australian Philosophy department sketch. “Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar, he’d drink you under the table, Rene Descartes was a drunken fart, I drink therefore I am.”