A recent poll of popular philosophers on UK radio revealed that Marx came out top, with Wittgenstein in second place. I would have placed Locke and Hume much higher, but there it is, and, whoever comes top, it certainly indicates a widespread – if idiosyncratic – popular interest in philosophy. Such an interest is confirmed, and will be stimulated, by the publication of works like the one under review.
The Shorter Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy is an offshoot of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy or REP (Craig, 1998), the online version (Craig, 2004) of which (version 2.0) was reviewed earlier in these columns (RR 2004/06). It immediately differentiates itself from a very recent rival The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, second edition (Honderich, 2005), also reviewed here (RR 2006/10). The Shorter Routledge is concerned with philosophical issues and only incidentally with philosophers, while the Companion gives more attention to the personnel in (and once in) the trade of philosophy.
It will come as no surprise to readers familiar with REP that there is a high level of scholarship and analytical flair in its shorter cousin. Like a football league, first division clubs are given most attention and space. Entries on Hume and Hobbes, Spinoza and Wittgenstein, Descartes and Frege, Hegel and Heidegger, Plato and Leibniz are extended to their work and critical significance. Drawing on the work involved in translating hardcopy to web‐delivered entries, such long articles follow a logical easy to follow structure of sections, making them user‐friendly. It is easy, for example, to draw the utility principle out of Mill, the indeterminacy of reference out of Quine, and substance‐monism out of Spinoza. Other long entries include knowledge, medieval philosophy, practical reason and ethics, the philosophy of mind, epistemology and free will, moral relativism and feminism.
A strong “second division” of mid‐length entries follows on belief and consequentialism, descriptions and equality, explanation and human nature, identity and Islamic philosophy, Kantian ethics and logical positivism, ontology and Popper, Rawls and rights, teleology and transcendental arguments. The growing convergence of religion with philosophy is reflected in entries like miracles and law and morality. The “third division” consists of short entries of the kind you would expect to find in such an encyclopedia – Arendt and cloning, Dilthey and Fichte, Gadamer and hermeneutics, Lacan and Lyotard, pragmatics and Putnam and Weber. These editorial and scholarly priorities throw up some interesting issues. One is where a specialist encyclopedia becomes a general one. Boundaries are critical here, as we see from entries like Holocaust and vitalism, Lessing and Erasmus, and the aesthetics of painting, which have been coaxed in the direction of philosophy, and further entries like Dodgson and Goethe, Montaigne and Pelagianism, Shinto and thermodynamics, Wyclif and Zoroastrianism, which are included for flavour but which could be found anywhere.
The metaphor of divisions seems crude until we consider its historiographic implications. Any reference work in its way reflects contemporary states of mind, and, in highlighting philosophical ideas and method (rather than mapping out a traditional pantheon of practitioners), the Shorter Routledge rightly captures an impatience with philosophy (like history) as being about “chaps and chapesses”. In its setting of priorities, the extended entries show the permanent importance of Wittgenstein and Descartes, but also the increasing recognition of Aquinas and Berkeley, Frege and Leibniz, Kierkegaard and Husserl, and the paradigm‐changing role of Quine. It also reflects a growing interest in moral philosophy, identity, rights and property, and the person – in entries like free will and justice, applied ethics and personal identity, other minds and proper names, pragmatism, reproduction and ethics, and rights.
It also reflects the higher status of knowledge‐related, epistemological and hermeneutic, phenomenological and explanation‐related issues, many of which demonstrate crossovers between areas of logic, description, and explanation. Any test, too, of a new reference work will be the ways in which, and the extent to which, current issues and updated developments are represented: cloning, business ethics, affirmative action, egoism and altruism, and democracy. Cross‐culturalism is also competently acknowledged, not only in entries on Hindu and Japanese, Russian and Confucian philosophy, but also on African political philosophy, sense perception and testimony in Indian philosophy, and an integration of the cognitive dualism of Sankhya in metaphysics.
At a deeper level, discussions of knowledge or Wittgenstein, Nietzsche and Plato reflect recent thinking about these long‐established topics. Of the 957 entries, there are 119 extended articles, “substantial essays on all the major figures of the Western philosophical tradition, likewise on all major topics and those we judged to be of most help to a student readership” (editor's introduction). It is “unashamedly Western in its emphasis” but tries to be inclusive where it can (same).
The readership is mainly those studying and teaching philosophy, and the interested and informed general reader. Bibliographical support throughout reflects this, with many works intended directly for student use and likely to appear in any academic or reference collection supporting such studies – Gillies on probability, Sokolowski on Husserl, Swift on political philosophy, Stokes on Popper, and Lowe on Locke. Recommended reading, say on Plato and Locke, shows that empathy, pointing out good things rather than necessarily recent things, indicating where works are advanced (Williams's Problems of the Self is difficult for transcendental arguments, Shaw is balanced on utilitarianism). There is an emphasis, too, on English‐language materials (say, for topics like Rousseau and Hegel, Indian and Tibetan philosophy, Sartre, and yin‐yang).
Another strength of the Shorter Routledge is that is shows how philosophy is “done”. “Doing philosophy”, on a degree course or beyond (and the work successfully provides food for thought for a life‐time's study), is not just discussed – it is demonstrated, as entries like free will and God, Hume and Hobbes, objectivity and scepticism, universals and epistemic justification show. Reasoning and examples, analysis and explanation take the researcher through the process of an aspect of philosophy, often (as when ontology and epistemology are applied to realism) bringing constellations of philosophical concepts together.
The Shorter Routledge, unlike the Oxford Companion and more like The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy (Bunnin and Yu, 2004) (RR 2005/123), does not utilise an index, integrating terms in entries that then have to be followed up. Such constellations are particularly strong where a series of entries occurs, as under “moral” (judgement, justification, motivation, psychology, realism, relativism, and ethics, and law) and “science” (philosophy of, scientific method, realism), making for coherence. Many concepts in philosophy are complex – situational ethics, propositional attitudes, knowledge and justification, epistemic issues in phenomenology, private states and language, deontic logic – and many are abstract – belief and legitimacy, the sublime and truthfulness, depiction and akrasia – and the Shorter Routledge comes out well on these.
Another criterion for any reference work is authority, not just of the publisher (in this case a doyen in its field) but also of editor and the contributory team. Contributor quality and relevance becomes clear when we note names like Guyer (entry on Kant), the editor of the Cambridge Edition of Kant and of the Cambridge Companion, O'Neill (entry on practical reason and ethics), Janaway (entry on Schopenhauer), Skorupski (entry on John Stuart Mill), and Orenstein (entry on Quine). Edward Craig, the general editor, is known also for works like The Mind of God and the Works of Man (Craig, 1987) and Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (Craig, 2002, highly recommended as a gift to the right student). But the authority lies in the quality of the entries themselves, for even Homer nods.
The critical perspectives maintain a very high level throughout – notably the critique of Kantian ethics, objections to justified knowledge, the debate about realism, the problems for utilitarianism, Rorty's typically plain‐speaking comments on post‐structuralism, for and against scepticism, and a critique of Quine's critique of analytical philosophy like that of Carnap, and the advocacy of a Thomistic interpretation of virtue ethics. Inevitably (since this is a matter of preference), some entries merit updating (like rational choice theory without Amartya Sen, and the fast‐moving field of international relations), and others (like Dworkin and Kripke, Kuhn and Nozick and Tarski) could get more (particularly Kripke, who disports himself more fully in the entry on proper names), but, as Honderich says, at the end of his autobiography, “There is more philosophy to be started, once again, very early tomorrow morning”.
To sum up the Shorter Routledge, then, it comes out well in front of its competitors for what it is at the present time, and is remarkable value for money. Ideal for the library and personal collections, thoughtful, perceptive, challenging, topical, admittedly Western, meticulously edited, printed on good paper, using conceptually sympathetic cross‐references, and breaking down long entries into intelligible parts good for an internet generation. It reflects how philosophy itself is changing in the modern world (for good or bad, less logic and more epistemology, less metaphysics but more religion, more attention to identity and person‐hood, a determination to get to grips with “hard” people and ideas, an impatience at not understanding Wittgenstein and Nietzsche, and a pragmatism that philosophy loses nothing for being “relevant”). In a philosophical utopia, in library terms, a student will own the Shorter and have access to full online sources too. Since philosophers are said to mature in the fifties, this is a book for all seasons.
