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51 of 52 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Deep and wide..., July 1, 2005
This review is from: The Shorter Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Hardcover)
I've always been somewhat amused at books with the words 'shorter' or 'brief' in their title that then go on to total hundreds if not thousands of pages. This is one such text. Amounting to 1077 pages of proper text (not including the 26 pages of introductory material), it may seem at first glance that this is not a book that should have the word 'shorter' in its title - however, given a topic as broad and diverse as philosophy, one might alternately think that a mere 1000 pages or so would only begin to address the subject. This text walks the line between depth and breadth, as is explained in the introductory material. This comes out of a process of distilling the original ten-volume Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1998) into a one-volume Concise Encyclopedia, which included each of the references in the ten-volume set, only in briefer format. This succeeded, according to the editor Edward Craig, in satisfying the need from breadth, but not depth. This Shorter Encyclopedia has only half as many articles as the Concise version, but many are in greater depth - this includes over 100 entries that are in full-text version from the ten-volume parent work. It also includes all 24 Signpost entries, essays set apart in headings in light gray pull-boxes; these give in-depth treatment about key issues, schools and trends in philosophy. According to Craig, the Shorter Encyclopedia is 'unashamedly "Western" in its emphasis, being designed to suit the needs of undergraduate philosophy students and the courses they are most likely to encounter.' However, particularly with regard to the more substantial Signpost entries, there is a fair amount given to Latin American, Indian, Jewish, African, East-Asian and other philosophical traditions. Thanks to the availability of the larger, ten-volume work online, there have been continuing updates and revisions, of which this Shorter volume has taken full advantage. Admittedly very few of the entries here are substantially different from those in the previous print edition, but a critical few (such as the entry on the major figure David Hume) have been revised or completely rewritten. More than a dozen previously internet-only entries have been included in this volume as well. The suggestions for further reading have also been updated from the original ten-volume text, taking advantage of publishing in the last decade. This is a good volume for reference for those who are students of philosophy - geared toward undergraduates, graduate students will likely also appreciate the ready availability of the entries here. This is a wonderful text for students of theology, ministry or religious studies, who often have some background in philosophy, but not in the same depth as philosophy students proper. Students of history, politics and other humanities and social sciences will also find this a very useful tool. I have found the entries on art, aesthetics and value appreciation to be very useful; 'Aesthetics' is one of the major entries, and 'Painting, Aesthetics of' is one of the new entries for this volume. Among the list of contributors (which one finds in the introductory material as the list of entries and contributors) one finds a veritable who's who of contemporary philosophical scholarship. This includes the entry on 'Process philosophy' by David Ray Griffin (one of the leading voices in this field) and the entry on 'Simone Weil' by Rowan Williams (current Archbishop of Canterbury). This is a very useful, very readable, and rather comprehensive one-volume treatment of philosophy, that should have a good shelf-life for students, scholars and others with interest in philosophical disciplines.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A valuable companion to philosophical studies, but read with caution -- entries on "truth" are patently false, April 23, 2010
This review is from: The Shorter Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Hardcover)
There is a lot to like here in this compact version of the 10-volume Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. It covers an astonishingly wide range of topics and philosophers, and most of the entries are clear and illuminating, and many are written by some of the important luminaries of philosophy and philosophical scholarship from the last few decades. That doesn't guarantee that their entries will cover all the bases and meet every objection head on - there's no way to do that in a small space - but it does tend to ensure that they are up on the latest scholarship and have considered opposing views. Unfortunately, some of the entries are also written by professional philosophers whose credentials amount to having written a few books and articles on the subject from a one-sided or narrow point of view. There is also a tendency in this encyclopedia, that you didn't find as much in the older Macmillan "Encyclopedia of Philosophy" that the Routledge version has effectively replaced, to treat general topics ahistorically, which means to treat them as if the only really important arguments to be considered around them are those which have surfaced in the past 50 years or so. Obviously, that doesn't apply to topics that are intrinsically historical, as with discussions of the views of long dead philosophers. Still, it means that many of the entries here have to be read sceptically. For example, I've been teaching William James in a course on American philosophy this Spring and, just for fun, looked up the article here on the "pragmatic theory of truth." It turns out all the articles on "truth," including this one, were written by the same person. He wrote on the "coherence theory of truth" the "correspondence theory of truth," on "deflationary theories of truth," and on "the pragmatic theory of truth." It's obvious from the entries that he thinks the "pragmatic theory of truth" is silly and the "coherence theory" wrong-headed. I guess that's not a real problem per se since some philosophical theories are silly and others wrongheaded, and I don't mind a philosopher saying it like he or she sees it. The problem is that what's silly is just the account he gives of the pragmatic theory, an account that would be clearly rejected by the philosophers he ascribes it to. I brought the entry in and read it aloud and asked my undergrads what they thought of it. Immediately several pointed out that it didn't sound anything like what we'd been reading in James (or had read in Peirce for that matter), and, even more clearly is way off the mark of Dewey's views. The author of the article writes, for example, that according to Peirce, a "true proposition is one which would be endorsed unanimously by all persons who had had sufficient relevant experiences to judge it." There are all kinds of problems with that "definition" - such as the obvious fact that experts often disagree and still we assume there is a "truth of the matter" - but the most blatant is that Peirce doesn't hold that view, which the article's author calls the "consensus theory." Even a quick read of his more popular articles, such as "The Fixation of Belief" shows that Peirce knows consensus isn't good enough. He also knows that sometimes what everyone (including the "experts" with the experience to back their claims) thinks is true will turn out to be false, so that claims to "truth" are always fallible. He does articulate something that superficially resembles this "consensus view" but it is not an account of what makes things true but rather a description of a pragmatic ideal: that "truth" is what, in the long run, the community of scientific investigators will agree upon. Note that this description both accounts for the fallibility of particular claims to truth, and also does justice to our insight that what turns out to have been false wasn't, strictly speaking, ever true. In the same entry, I found it ironic that the author's caricature of the account of truth to be found in James and Dewey is almost exactly the superficial account of their views that James reports and rejects already in his 1906 pragmatism lectures, that the pragmatic theory of truth amounts to saying something is true if it is beneficial to believe it (so that "I am better, smarter, and more good looking than anyone" is true if and only if it makes me feel good to believe it, and maybe leads me to act with greater confidence, etc). But this definition only fits the pragmatists he ascribes it to if you broaden the notion of "benefit" beyond "mere utility." You'd have to say that "what is beneficial to believe" is what is consistent with my other beliefs, what coheres with the facts as they are experienced, what stands up to scrutiny and rigorous testing, and what no anticipated experience could demonstrate to be false. Note, also, that there are significant costs that come with attempting to maintain a naively optimistic view about oneself - it will likely lead others to find one insufferable, for example - so that in the long run it doesn't turn out to be such a beneficial view. A belief's "benefits" would have to include both moral and social in addition to the usual kinds of epistemic advantages that truth theorists tend to focus upon. Finally, James is perfectly happy to say that the designation of a statement as "true" is only provisional before it has received experiential confirmation. A view is true, according to James, only insofar as it proves itself. Once you've expanded the view in that way, it's not so easy to say what, if anything, could be wrong with it. It is patently, and demonstrably, false to assert, with the author of this article, that the pragmatists held, "that the facts of the matter are not relevant to the truth-value of the proposition." That is so unless, of course, the author subscribes to the view he depicts here. Is this entry just a bad apple? Perhaps. I've found several other entries that gave me pause, and that could be stated clearer and probably should have been qualified further. But there's only so much you can do in a paragraph or two, and many of the entries here are excellent. I think it's unfortunate, though, that an entry like this one was able to appear and didn't get read and edited by someone who actually has read some American philosophy and pragmatism. I can't claim to have given this a comprehensive read-through (at upwards of 1000 pages, even the "Shorter" Routledge Encyclopedia is a massive tome), but I can't give it a wholehearted endorsement either. By the way, a few other reviews appear here that refer to the Kindle version of this Encyclopedia, and complain about the lack of an index. I don't see that as a problem at least for the hardcover version that I own, since it is its own index. You turn to a topic that you are interested in and if they don't have an entry under that heading, there will usually be a pointer to where you'd need to go to find it. For example, I first looked for the entry I describe above under "Pragmatic Theory of Truth" and found a reference there that told me to look for it under "Truth, Pragmatic Theory of." At least for the hardcover version I think an index would be redundant.
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4 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
no way to search for an article., December 11, 2009
this is a car without wheels. one cannot get to where one wants without scrolling ad infinitum or guessing as there is no index or search.
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