Who was the greatest philosopher that ever lived?
In ダメ口、interrogative sentences that end in か are often interpreted with a rhetorical mood, right? As in, “Who even was the greatest philosopher that ever lived?”
@ericaw
What do you mean by ダメ口（Damero or Dameguchi）? Do you mean タメ口（Tameguchi）? If so, this Japanese sentence is not written in タメ口 (casual tone among friends). The overall tone, due to ～であった, is like a preacher or historian making a public presentation in order to enlighten ordinary people. You can also find the similar expression with ～であったか often in demagogic politicians’ speeches.
か merely converts a descriptive sentence into an interrogative sentence (question), but か per se doesn’t have a rhetorical connotation.
The original Japanese translation:
これまでの哲学者で最も偉大な人は誰であったか。
sounds very wordy and unnatural to my ears, though… We don’t say これまでの + 哲学者. And 哲学者 and 人 are both people, so omitting 人 is better. My alternative translation is:
史上最も偉大な哲学者は誰でしたか？（しじょうもっともいだいなてつがくしゃはだれでしたか）
史上 means “throughout the history”. 史上最も～な is a frequent set phrase that is often found in historical rankings.
You can also replace 誰でしたか (neutral tone) with 誰であったか (the abovementioned tone) in this sentence.
The English sentence uses the past tense “WAS”, which suggests that historians have recently changed their views on philosophers. So, this English sentence may be followed by a recent update ranking. If you interpret the English sentence like this, you may want to insert これまで between 哲学者は and 誰 to make the context clearer.
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