这个话题值得理性地讨论一下。我有淘书的习惯，经常在Garage sale，花个一元钱，搬回几本旧书。我就在我的书架上，看看能不能找到老毛在西方哲学中的影响。如果老毛的东西出现在西方哲学的书里，也算是老毛是不是哲学家的某种证据。
首先去找的是一本我以前曾翻读过的，法国结构主义哲学家Jean-Marie Benoist写的“The Structural Revolution”，这本书首版于法国，那是1975年，英文版则是1978年由St Martin’s Press在纽约出版的。这本书的第二章的题目是：New Adventures of the Dialectic. 讲的是辩证法的新进展，以及如何过渡到结构主义的。这本书中，引用了许多老毛的“矛盾论”的观点。这本书的35，36，47，48，55－58，97，103和143页，都提到了老毛的观点。其中36页的段话值得引用一下。
这节的标题是The cost of enrichment, 作者总结讨论了四个方面，而第四点时，讲到了老毛：
Finally, the hierarchy between principle contradiction and secondary contradiction, plus diverse aspects connected with this. It is to the essay “On Contradiction” by Mao Tse-tung that we own the introduction of this fertile conceptuality, as Philippe Sollers has pointed out in an article that has also become famous.
这段话里可以看到，结构主义中的一个重要的命题是老毛在矛盾论中首次提出来的。
我淘到的另一本老书，是A.K. Bierman和James A. Gould编的“Philosophy for a new generation”, 这本书的首版于1970年，纽约的Macmillan Company （注意这是个有名的出版商）. 我的这本则是1973年的第二版。这本689页厚的书里，分十个部分。收集了柏拉图，康德，马克思到萨特等几十位哲学家的著作。重要的是，这书中收集的Mao Tse-tung的四篇文章： Let a Hundred Flowers Blossom(百花齐放); Combat Liberalism（反对自由主义）; In Memory of Norman Bethune （纪念白求恩）和On Contradiction (矛盾论)。
再看看，Penguin在1997年出的Dictionary of Philosophy, 在这本哲学词典中有Maoism一项。这个词典中说老毛 has no independent philosophical merit. 并说some extreme-left political groupings in France, Peru, Cambodia,etc. have continued to profess allegiance to this ideology.
重要的是，最近一年Maoism在美国知识界又引发了争议，美国的金融危机让人重新反省资本主义与Maoism, 特别是奥巴马的医疗保险的改革有带有Maoism的影子。比如1998年诺贝尔经济奖得主Amartya Sen，现在在哈佛教经济与哲学的，在2009年3月26日The New York Review of Books发表了一篇文章反省资本主义和自由市场，其中有一段关于中国的讨论：
The failure of the market mechanism to provide health care for all has been flagrant, most noticeably in the United States, but also in the sharp halt in the progress of health and longevity in China following its abolition of universal health coverage in 1979. Before the economic reforms of that year, every Chinese citizen had guaranteed health care provided by the state or the cooperatives, even if at a rather basic level. When China removed its counterproductive system of agricultural collectives and communes and industrial units managed by bureaucracies, it thereby made the rate of growth of gross domestic product go up faster than anywhere else in the world. But at the same time, led by its new faith in the market economy, China also abolished the system of universal health care; and, after the reforms of 1979, health insurance had to be bought by individuals (except in some relatively rare cases in which the state or some big firms provide them to their employees and dependents). With this change, China's rapid progress in longevity sharply slowed down.
This was problem enough when China's aggregate income was growing extremely fast, but it is bound to become a much bigger problem when the Chinese economy decelerates sharply, as it is currently doing. The Chinese government is now trying hard to gradually reintroduce health insurance for all, and the US government under Obama is also committed to making health coverage universal. In both China and the US, the rectifications have far to go, but they should be central elements in tackling the economic crisis, as well as in achieving long-term transformation of the two societies.
这段话，没有提到老毛，但是明确指出了邓小平的改革放弃了老毛的公费医疗与合作医疗是一种历史的退步，而且已经带来了人均寿命的降低。正是这段话引发了其他老美的争议，认为Sen是为Maoism唱赞歌。见Amartya Sen on Moralism, Maoism, and Capitalism （http://blogs.nyu.edu/fas/dri/aidwatch/2009/03/amartya_sen_on_moralism_maoism.html）
综上所述，我认为老毛不但是一流的思想家，也应该算是一流的哲学家。因为我认为一流的思想家往往具有哲学上的远见与洞彻。这也是为什么哲学词典要将Maoism列为一项，我个人认为，Maoism在人类历史的影响将会越来越重要。
