Customer Reviews

The Oxford Companion to Philosophy

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This is a tremendously helpful work. The work is written from the point of view of analytic philosophy, and thus tend to give short shrift to some thinkers in the continental stream. Still, the "fathers" of continental thought (Kant through Hegel, into Nietzche and Heidegger) are well represented and their philosophical works are amply dicussed and fairly treated. Overall, the articles are all that one might want from a "companion to philosophy" (and much of it is actually good reading) I frequently pull the beast (1000+ pages paperback) down from the shelf; that is the best thing I can say about it. You will not regret owning this book, no matter your philosophical bent. If you are a student, I cannot imagine how you have made it this far without it, one-stop encyclopedia can be great resources. Good job, Oxford Press.

Although I agree that there is much valuable information in this work, it should also be noted that this reference work is an artifact and an outgrowth of the context from which it arose. Specifically, this work is the product of the type of philosophical inquiry promulgated by those who contributed to it (see partial list of contributors above), and thus, many of the entries found in this work can be traced to the now receding tradition of Oxford philosophy that rested on the foundations of logical positivism and linguistic analysis. Consequently, definitions such as the one for "synthetic a priori judgments" traced back to Kant are treated from a perspective endemic to analytic philosophy in which the concept is treated as if it were put forth as a proposition when, in reality, Kant made no such appeal to propositional values in and of themselves, but was concerned with the nature of human knowledge and reality itself. Being cognizant of the analytic bent of this reference reveals that the source of the error cited lies in the fundamental misunderstanding of philosophers enamored by linguistic analysis who imposed this interpretation on the work of Kant to support their own (philosophers such as J.L Austin, Wittgenstein, Gilbert Ryle and Geoffrey Warnock) common point of view.
Another telling example of the inherent philosophical bias presented in this work can be found in the definition of philosophy itself. In the opening paragraph of this entry philosophy is defined as "thinking about thinking," which is congruent with the way that Oxford philosophers had attempted to define it, despite a tradition of over 2,000 years in which understanding the nature of reality--in all of its variated and complex manifestations--was viewed as the central philosophical problem pursued by the pre-Socratics, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant and the British Empiricists to Hegel, Heidegger, Nietzsche and Sartre, representing an unbroken tradition of thought to this day.
Being aware of the subjective nature of a text such as this illustrates the truism that all texts are inherently and necessarily products of the minds that create them, and even texts that purport to be merely informational and introductory carry within them certain prescribed notions and ways of presenting knowledge, which can have serious ramifications on the understanding of the information presented itself. Thus, with this work, as it is with all philosophical texts, one should not merely accept the statements presented within as objectively true or valid, but use them as fertile points of departure for critical thinking, meditation and further investigation; that is where the true value of this work lies.

This work is comparable in many ways to the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy: both are modeled on the dictionary format, both are multi-authored, both are very popular, both are in second edition. I have spent many happy hours with both. Each has its excellent and useful entries and each has its mediocre or useless entries. For many purposes they are interchangeable. However, Cambridge charges a little over half of what Oxford wants but the latter is definitely no better. In fact,the logic entries in the Cambridge are uniformly better. The Cambridge entry "Church's thesis" is written by Wilfried Sieg, an accomplished and respected expert in the field. The Oxford entry is by Stewart Shapiro an equally qualified expert. Both imply correctly that Church's thesis is not a proposition admitting of mathematical proof or disproof in the usual sense: it is a proposal to "identify" the pre-theoretic intuitive concept of "effectively calculable function" with the mathematically precise number-theoretic property "recursiveness". But, the Cambridge entry is several times as long the Oxford and it is much more informative concerning the historical and philosophical importance of Church's thesis. A somewhat different comparision applies to the entries titled "Church Alonzo". Again the Cambridge entry a much longer and much more informative than the Oxford. The Cambridge entry is by John Corcoran, one of the editors of the journal HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF LOGIC, whereas the Oxford entry is by Gregory Mellema, who does not have much of a track record in the field. Both entries are flawed. Toward the end of Corcoran's otherwise accurate piece there is a confusing typographical error: 'Church's thesis' is printed where 'Church's theorem' is clearly meant. Mellema's murky and overly elliptical piece does not make it clear that Church's thesis has not been and cannot be be proved in the usual sense; it even suggests the opposite by referring to it as a "result"--a word widely used as a synonym for 'theorem'. The Cambridge victory is far from being a shutout. Oxford deserves some points for its two appendixes: one presents a set of "Maps of Philosophy", which are well worth looking at even if you ultimately think you could have done better yourself, and a useful if somewhat subjective "Chronological Table of Philosophy". I recommend buying the Cambridge but looking at the Oxford in your library's Reference Room.

This volume is a must-own for any enthusiast of the humanities, and immensely helpful for philosophy students and instructors. The articles cover topics mostly in Western philosophy (though fair treatment is given to non-Western thought), and are clear enough for the general reader to understand. Longer articles cover major thinkers and schools, while shorter articles treat topics ranging from the arcane to the absurd. My one complaint is its bias toward the Anglo-American idiom of philosophy. Though European thought is covered sufficiently, there is an irritating tendency (depending on the contributor) to not take the Continent as seriously. But all in all, this is the best volume of its kind that I have come across.

This is the best single volume philosophy reference in the English language. Any serious student of philosophy would benefit in using it. It has plenty of in-depth articles on major philosophers and major philosophical ideas. In addition the text has some pleasant quirks: articles are written with a point of view, some topics are off the wall (but fun). Any comparison with the new Routledge Concise Encyclopedia of Philosophy leaves the Routledge in the dust. I own and use both, but I greatly prefer my Companion. The major fault of the Oxford Companion is the less than full treatment of non-Western phil. Overall a very scholarly text.

This extraordinary book is an exemplar of the "weighty tome" so beloved by lovers of knowledge; and that is certainly appropriate since it is billed as a "companion to philosophy." A "companion," as editor Ted Honderich notes in his preface, "is not only a book for diligent readers, to be studied and perhaps labored over..."; nor is it merely "a complete reference book. It is more amiable than that. It diverts. It suits a Sunday morning."

Well, maybe, but that would be a Sunday morning for logical positivists, Wittgenstein linguists, Kierkegaard intellectuals, professional logicians and perhaps child prodigies bored with their deferential calculus homework.

There are 249 contributors, contemporary philosophers, most holding academic positions at prestigious institutions of higher learning throughout the world, who wrote the 2,230 entries arranged alphabetically from "abandonment" (a term used by existential philosophers) to Zoroastrianism (the ancient Persian religion). In-between, the entries range from the whimsical to the esoteric to the downright impenetrable. An example of the whimsical might be "cat, Schrodinger's" from quantum mechanics. An example of the esoteric (as least to my mind) could be the entry on "corpuscularianism"--which I won't attempt to define. As for the downright impenetrable, how about, "logical theory," which, according to Christopher Kirwan of the University of Oxford who wrote the entry, "is best seen as a vaguely delimited and shifting group of problems." (All the entries are signed with the initials of the author who wrote the entry. These contributors are listed near the beginning of the book.) Or if that isn't enough how about the various entries entitled on the "history of the philosophy of" which includes "language, history of the philosophy of"; "law, history of the philosophy of"; "mind, history of the philosophy of," etc.

There are entries on the philosophers themselves of course. All the great Western philosophers, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Hobbes, Descartes, "the blessed Hume" (p. vii) (I agree with Honderich's exalted designation!), Kant, Hegel, etc. appear in lengthy entries. There is also a smattering of greats from the non-Western world, Buddha, Lao Tzu and others in shorter entries. Clearly the emphasis is on Western philosophy, but Eastern philosophy, I am happy to say, is not neglected. Also not neglected is religious philosophy. While there is no entry on Christian philosophy as such, many of the great Christian philosophers have entries. There are entries on "Hindu philosophy" and "Buddhist philosophy" and even an entry on Jainism. National philosophies, in so far as such a thing can be discerned or identified, are presented, including entries on "Japanese philosophy," "Russian philosophy," "American philosophy," etc.

Additionally there are entries on the ideas and problems of philosophy such as "universals"; the "problem of evil"; "scepticism" and many others. Many of the fallacies of philosophy such as the "undistributed middle" or "denying the antecedent" appear with (sometimes difficult) explanations. There are entries on the history of various ideas, such as "epistemology, history of"; "metaphysics, history of," etc. There are even black and white photos of various philosophers, or in the case of the ancients, photos of statues of the philosophers.

I have only one problem with this book. Many of the entries assume too much knowledge and understanding on the part of the general reader. This is because the book is "directed partly to general readers for whom philosophy has a fascination greater than, or at least as great as, any other part of our intellectual and cultural existence," and partly "to those who study and practise the subject, and are scrupulous about their guides." (p. viii) In other words, this is a book aimed at professionals or the nearly so. As such it is a challenging book both to read and to understand. At least it was for me.

There are three appendices, one on logical symbols; another on "Maps of Philosophy," which presents groups or categories of philosophic ideas in pictorial or schematic form; and a third, "A Chronological Table of Philosophy" lists philosophers and important philosophic events alongside other historical people and events beginning with the "First flourishing of Greek philosophy" about 2600 years ago and the birth of Zoroaster to moral philosopher T. M. Scanlon's publication of "What We Owe to Each Other" and (ironically, it would appear) the slaughter of Rwandans in the 1990s.

Bottom line: a must for the professional academic philosopher and for the dedicated amateur, but decidedly not for dilettantes.

I purchased this to have on-hand as a reference for my self-directed study of philosophy and am I glad I did. It's a great resource for comprehensive information on most of the major schools, thoughts, and practictioners in the science.

As good as it is, there are some odd fluctuations in the quality of the individual essays; some are too obfuscatory for their own good (and for mine). Still, it is my #1 resource for additional information when I'm reading other philosophy books and I highly recommend this for the serious student of philosophy.

Speaking as a layperson I found this book gave an extremely wide coverage of recent, & past, philosophy. The varied entries are easy enough for an intelligent layperson to understand, yet they had the depth that would be useful for undergrad philosophy students.

As well as covering the greats, and different branches of philosophy, there was good coverage of contemporary philosophers - something lacking other encyclopaedias/Dictionaries. Also, an eye-opener, was the coverage of some [possibly] curious problems [e.g. death] which, again, are not found in many other works of reference.

In contrast to another recent popular tome [the Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy] this book is definitely NOT dry and boring. This is important, as it combats the image of the philosopher as a dull academic with nothing of interest to say about life.

If there's one volume on philosophy to own, it is this one. Its entries on the canonical philosophers are in-depth and first-rate distillations. All the most famous thought experiments are summarized, and many of the more esoteric philosophical concepts explained. It is heavy on logical concepts; indeed, there's a decided Anglo-American Analytic bent.

Which leads to my one problem with it. One thing for which the volume can be criticized is the lack of strong representation of contemporary Continental (post-structuralist or deconstructionist) thought. When it does appear, it is sometimes given a dressing-down of sorts. Thinkers like Foucault, Derrida, Jameson, Deleuze, Chomsky, Irigaray, etc. are given short shrift--and I myself am rather partisan to the analytic-pragmatic tradition, but I see no reason to virtually ignore these very important developments in critical fields.

Having gotten tired of going to the campus library to meticulously look up concepts, idealogies, philosophers and terms, I broke down and bought the new edition of the "Oxford Companion to Philosophy." I must say that it has helped me many times to better understand concepts and ideas of many philosophers and has subsequently helped to reduce the time I spent looking things up online or in other books. The entries are very detailed and very well written to explain and elaborate on the details that a student or any person may need clarification on. Since this edition is around 40 dollars I wouldn't buy this book just to have it on your bookshelf but if you are like me and sick of going to the library at night then get this book. It will not only provide a soilid definition but is a great place to start when researching.