I saw this survey somewhere, forget eggzackly, (update: was over at emdot's) and decided to take a swing at it, just to see where I fell amongst the various schools of philosophical thought.

Amazingly enough, I don't know all that much about Rand. Read The Fountainhead as a teen, and liked it well enough to include it in my list of all-time favorites, but that's it.

On the other hand, was not at all surprised to see Plato near the bottom of the list, and Augustine at the very bottom.

I bitch about those two all the damn time.

Plato invented the concept of the things of the spritual realm as being somehow more Good than those of the physical world, and Augustine shoehorned that shit into Xianity, with all the sorry consequences that has had on Western thought.

You wanna know why we get our brains bound with the idea that we're inherently evil, that life here on earth is somehow inferior compared to what some imagine comes after, that Sex is Bad, or why a philosopher is held in a higher status than, say, a good auto mechanic, here are the two men you can blame.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - gimme a time machine and a sniper rifle, and Augustine is toast.

My results:

1. Ayn Rand (100%)
2. John Stuart Mill (82%)
3. Jean-Paul Sartre (70%)
4. Aristotle (67%)
5. Thomas Hobbes (65%)
6. Epicureans (62%)
7. Kant (59%)
8. Jeremy Bentham (58%)
9. Cynics (52%)
10. David Hume (51%)
11. Prescriptivism (48%)
12. Nietzsche (45%)
13. Aquinas (45%)
14. Stoics (41%)
15. Plato (36%)
16. Ockham (34%)
17. Spinoza (34%)
18. Nel Noddings (25%)
19. St. Augustine (23%)

Try it yourself.

... Link