A fun bit of frivolity: Brian Leiter has been running various “top philosopher” polls among his blogizens. Surprise! Confucius somehow got voted into the top ten among “Most Important Philosophers of the Pre-modern Era.” I was surprised because the (very large) blogizenship of Brian’s site, which consists of mostly professional philosophers, probably knows far, far less about Confucius than any of the other philosophers on the poll list. My guess is that most were voting on reputation. There’s currently a “Most Important Philosophers of All Time” poll running, so go cast your vote if you have time to burn (if you’re blogsurfing, you at least have some time to burn… ).