The ques­tion of who are the fif­teen most influ­en­tial philoso­phers of all time may not arise at every con­ver­sa­tion down at the pub — not out­side the cir­cle of Open Cul­ture read­ers, in any case. But even among non-spe­cial­ists, it could spark a live­li­er debate than you might imag­ine. Names like Socrates, Aris­to­tle, Descartes, and Marx are known, after all, even among the gen­er­al pub­lic who’ve nev­er read a page of philo­soph­i­cal text. All of them appear in the mil­lion-viewed video from Jay­done His­to­ry above, which takes its own crack at nam­ing a top fif­teen. Its 26 min­utes also pro­vide a brief bio­graph­i­cal sketch of each one, infor­ma­tive if lit­tered with odd mis­pro­nun­ci­a­tions, plus a cap­sulized sense of these philoso­phers’ last­ing ideas. In pur­suit of truth, Socrates cre­at­ed the ques­tion­ing method of dia­logue that bears his name. Pla­to, Socrates’ stu­dent, advo­cat­ed for rule by the enlight­ened and the pur­suit of knowl­edge through the con­tem­pla­tion of pure forms. Reject­ing Pla­to’s method, Aris­to­tle ded­i­cat­ed him­self to sys­tem­at­ic empir­i­cal obser­va­tion. On the oth­er side of the world, Con­fu­cius spread teach­ings about the cul­ti­va­tion of moral virtue to main­tain the social rela­tion­ships he saw …