Short-term memory gain

Cross posted on Political Arguments.

Emily points me to a Sunday Times report that Karl Marx has taken the lead in the BBC poll of the gratest philosopher's of all time.

His influence may have waned on the global political stage, but Karl Marx seems certain to be voted the world?s greatest philosopher in a new poll.

He is racing ahead of rivals two weeks before
voting ends in the poll of listeners to the BBC Radio 4 discussion programme In Our Time.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, the British philosopher who was born in Austria, is lying second after almost a fortnight of voting. David Hume, the Scottish radical sceptic, is third, followed by Plato and Immanuel Kant.

I assumed that real philosophical merit (Kant) would not triumph over nostalgic appeal (Plato), but the salience of political influence (Marx) blindsided me. Unless it is nostalgia, on short-term memory.