All of them?

Susan Sontag.

Although, at any rate, the term 'philosopher' might be a bit of a stretch in its application to her.

Plato

With all due respect but I disagree about Plato mr. Ghostmaker! Plato gives beautiful images in his books that elevates the philosophy on a different level ..

Ιn my opinion, anyone trying to philosophize with data and statistics, and not personal views on the truth .. the philosophy should make you think and not to embrace opinions without personal study ..

I would have to say that the Poststructuralist school (i.e. Derrida & associated mostly French intellectuals) is overrated in that some people seem to like it just because it's highly specialized almost to the point of being esoteric. As the twenty-first century progresses I think it's going to be looked at as something of an historical aberration. Nevertheless, I think Foucault is going to continue to be an enormous influence in the social sciences and humanities.

I'm tempted to put Hegel in here as well, but the fact remains that he has been extremely influential. Still, credible philosophers have gone on the record as brushing Hegel off as completely useless. I feel that Plato belongs to the same category, although to a lesser extent. Probably at least about half of Plato's philosophy was derived from Socrates, and it always strikes me that Plato "had" to exist in the Western canon. That is, in the scheme of classification there would inevitably be someone who had to be labeled as "the founder of Western philosophy" and that the title fell to Plato, whether it's a proper title or not.

The fact remains, though, that some "philosophers" actually are most influential and groundbreaking in fields other than philosophy. The mention of Foucault earlier is likely an example, and some would undoubtedly place Nietzsche in this category as well.

Are you guys serious?
I mean, I'm not sure I see the point of this thread altogether, but to claim that Plato or Hegel are overrated is... well... either amazingly narrow-sighted or just damn right ignorant! A philosopher's contribution might, in and of itself, fail to capture your interest, but if it's been a solid reference in the ongoing philosophical dialogue that has unfolded through history, it seems ridiculous to count it as overrated. The fact is, we still read (and get something out of) Plato's philosophy. The fact is, we still read and bring new lights (through analytic philosophy, for example) on Hegel's work. And all of it is relevant to philosophy today.

Finally... that no one has seen it fit to mention the philosophical stain that is Slavoj Zizek in any of the previous comments is beyond me! I believe that the only safe claim about a philosopher being over rated must relate to these "pop" philosophers who get so much attention but contribute so little to the advancement of philosophical thought. A few French intellectuals would certainly fit in that category.

Oh! And as for "post-structuralism"...

The "ism" itself has been wildly criticized and I believe that its importance has been drastically reviewed since its golden age in the 60s and 70s (80s too, maybe). That is, the movement is not seen as being so bloody important anymore, but the philosophical contributions of people like Barthes, Foucault, Derrida and others are still significant markers for intellectuals who want to engage in contemporary philosophy

My opinion of philosophy is best related by an anecdote.

My old Greek professor had these t-shirts printed up for one of his classes that, in ancient Greek, read "we philosophize without effort." he takes this class to Greece one summer and one of his students gets on a bus wearing this shirt. The bus starts laughing at him. Laughing! can you believe it? He asked this one lady, "why is everyone laughing? In ancient Greek, my shirt reads 'we philosophize without effort." the woman answered, "well, in modern Greek, it reads "we masturbate without effort."

With all due respect, the above comment is offensive at least..
Good is not fooling something we do not know, the only serve others to form a bad image for us, criticize and ridicule are two different things!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_WRFJwGsbY

I hope I am not being misinterpreted; I am happy to agree that there are many worse philosophers than Plato. Nevertheless, he is put on a pedestal above all other philosophers some of whom have produced substantially better work.

I sympathise as well, his work isn't very good because it was of his time, and people at that time didn't know as much about the world as we do know. A modern person is blessed with modern physics, mathematics and psychology. A man who came before Thomas Bayes has little chance in philosophy as compared to someone who understands Bayesian inference.

We don't consider Aristotelian physics in serious discourse, and we should have moved on from Platonic metaphysics and epistemology.

Hegel.
Rand (no academic reputation, but what she has is undeserved).
Popper.

I meant to contribute but ran out of time. I don't even consider Zizek a philosopher. He's just a buffoon.

My list -
Wittgenstein - did more destruction to philosophy than anyone else. Turned it into logic chopping. Wittgers grossly exaggerations the limitations placed upon us by language difficulties. In short, he grossly exaggerates the importance of language in general. The idea that stuff can only be known through language seems absurd. He's overrated because academia seems to be in love with, despite very sparse writings half of which contradict the other half.

Descartes - Most of his work seems to be warmed over Augustinism. Dualism was thoroughly destroyed by Spinoza.

Immanuel Kant - pare down his obscurantist language, and most of the time you're left with banalities. Certainly enormously influential, but I haven't the foggiest idea as to why people bother with him.

I'm not super familiar with Wittgenstein's work, Putin, but don't your criticisms apply mostly only to the first half of his output?

The whole of it. The first half is more about his reductionism and logic chopping, the second half is more of his extreme claims about how there is no reality outside of our conceptualization of reality through language. The first half contradicts the second half mainly in that initially he thought you could discover more or less objective 'facts' about reality (I'm thinking of the Tractatus here). The second half (Investigations) he comes to reject that possibility.

OK, interesting. Thanks. I was aware that he had changed his mind, but was mistaken about the exact nature of the change I guess. I still intend to read W soon, just because (a) he was / is so influential, and (b) he's so personally appealing. Not that that's ultimately relevant to philosophy, but his work seems a good place to begin learning more about a very interesting man.

Anyway I agree with you about his linguistic stuff being nonsense.