Quentin Meillassoux is a modern day French philosopher, born in 1967. The Meillassoux Dictionary was written to explore the main concepts of his philosophies and the issues around them. It defines major terms in his works and provides entries on key figures and how they relate to Meillassoux’s philosophies.
As Meillassoux is a contemporary philosopher, The Meillassoux Dictionary is an extremely up-to-date book. It contains information that is relevant to modern day philosophy, in an easy-to-follow manner. With a contents listing, bibliography and a list of abbreviations, navigating through the dictionary is simple. The only addition to make use of the dictionary easier would have been an index, but as the book is less than 200 pages long, finding a given entry still only takes moments.
The dictionary itself is very straightforward, although it acts more like an encyclopedia than a dictionary. It is organized alphabetically, with each entry title in bold and all in capital letters, making it stand out. Below that, the author of that entry’s name is italicized, followed by several pages discussing the subject and how it relates to Meillassoux. For example, Kant, Immanuel is by Steven Shaviro, and there are two pages discussing Kant and how his philosophies relate to those of Meillassoux.
The biggest issue with this dictionary, in my opinion, is that it is not more explicit on Meillassoux’s philosophy. If you already know who he is and you pick this book up to learn more, you are in a good place. However, if you picked this book to begin learning about him, you will find yourself confused. This is not a good book to start the learning process, but a good resource to learn further. Another issue is that the book offers no illustrations, graphics or colour – even the cover image is grey. There is nothing to break up the paragraphs of text. This is not necessarily a major impediment to its use, but it can get hard on the eyes while reading. The provision of images can be beneficial as they often help solidify concepts for many people.
One thing I particularly liked about The Meillassoux Dictionary is at the very end, in a section called Notes on Contributors, it lists each of the people who helped write entries and briefly discusses who they are. It is important to know where information comes from, and this lets the user know that the book is compiled by experts in their respective fields.
I would recommend The Meillassoux Dictionary to anyone who has a strong foundation in Meillassoux and his philosophies, and wants to take it to the next level and continue learning more. This is not a good read for those just beginning to learn about him, but the information found within these pages is ideal for those with a good understanding of philosophy.
