Many people will be glad to see the second edition of this work: the first edition (1995) looks old and has probably been worn out through constant use in reference and personal libraries where philosophy is studied. The distinctive quality of the Companion has always been that it appeals both to professionals and laity, experts and students. New issues and approaches have appeared: as Honderich (Emeritus Grote Professor of the Philosophy of Logic at University College London) says in a puff on the Oxford University Press web site – “philosophy is flourishing … it is not only an ancient subject, but a young one, growing in front of you”. The second edition, with new (over 300) entries on topics like terrorism and disability and corporate responsibility, reflect that.
The entry on Philosophy and the public suggests “the concerns of philosophers are often regarded as inscrutable, and that the capacity of philosophers for recommending courses of action even to themselves is terribly limited”. The entry on Fashion in philosophy follows that up: “the effect of fashion is very evident … it is not only styles of philosophizing that have changed, and with that current conceptions of who are the leading figures in the business, but even such things as conceptions of what constitutes a good argument”. For those interested in both philosophy and its bibliography, entries on Philosophy on the internet, Publishing philosophy, Journals in philosophy, and Dictionaries and encyclopedias in philosophy will be of particular interest. As for what constitutes a good argument, the companion reminds us constantly of what that means, not only in shrewd explanations of things like Inference to the best explanation and the Mary, black and white implicature, but the subtle (but not over‐subtle) reasoning involved if we are to understand the problems of epistemology (Dancy's article is excellent) or indexicals, self‐deception of consequentialism, or the work of Donald Davidson (1917‐2003) (another excellent article by Crane).
It will come as no surprise to people who know Honderich's interests (consider works like Three Essays on Political Violence, The Consequence of Determinism, and After the Terror) that the problems of political philosophy are given significant (but not excessive) space in the Companion. These are noted in the entry on Honderich itself (although the sententious nature of his autobiographical Philosopher: A Kind of Life is understandably ignored). Entries on Sorel and privatization, economics and morality, libertarianism and communitarianism, freedom of speech and the left demonstrate that, and will make the companion valuable for colleges where political philosophy is seriously studied.
Another strength of the Companion lies in its ability to bring topics, issues, and disciplines together, showing how philosophy can be considered on its own but how it also pervades every other walk of life and avenue of thought. Philosophy has always dealt with complex concepts, as we know from the “liar paradox” and the “mind‐body problem”, and assertions like “God is dead” (Nietzsche) and “the ghost in the machine” (Ryle). The Companion includes many more: Freedom of goodness and reason, Means of social change, Thought experiments, Markets and the public good, the Double aspect theory, and Levels of explanation. Beyond that are many constellations like Scepticism about law and Children and philosophy, Quantum theory and Philosophy and the philosophy of sex, Realism in metaphysics and the ethics of philosophical practice, the History of the philosophy of mathematics and the Feminist philosophy of science. Without an extensive 50‐page index (a masterpiece in its own right), these might well be impossible to find (however logically keywords order the entries), making, say, “many‐valued logic” quite elusive to find (in the index under “logic, formal”).
This approach differs markedly from the index‐free but cannily cross‐referenced format of entries in the Companion's major rival at the current time, The Shorter Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Craig, 2005) (also reviewed here RR 2006/11), and in a work which, by its nature, needs no index, The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy (Bunnin and Yu, 2004) (RR 2005/123) (which in any case restricts itself to Western philosophy). Longer entries in the Companion tend to follow the standard pattern of history and problems (the entry Religion does this), and readers will find all the “problem” entries (such as philosophical problems in physics, law, mind, metaphysics, and epistemology) of real substance – challenging and testing the contemporary relevance of philosophy itself, showing it stays young. Comparisons may again be drawn between such long entries and those in the Routledge, where a more internet‐friendly classification of material is used, pointing perhaps to the way ahead for all such reference works because they are as much (or more) online than print.
If a companion is to be relevant, then it should include the main people in the business. The Companion is strong on this, often succeeding in capturing the “essence” of a living philosopher, or at least enough as a starting point. Entries on Williamson, Schiffer, Smart, Thomas Nagel, Geinberg, Chomsky, Braithwaite, Sprigge, Sellars, Jeffrey, and Goldman all show this quality. It can be reductionist (Raz is known for his three theories, Rescher for what he says about idealism, fallibilism, and pragmatism), but this is the challenge of space. Entries, even of living beings, in a field where carping can take on mandarin urbanity, are objective, with only some, like that on Radcliffe Richards, Kuhn's scientific revolutions, and Lyotard, showing clear impatience. Helpful, too, are entries that show influence (Scanlon on others, Frege and Quine on Kaplan, Wittgenstein on Malcolm) and debates (Wiggins and Geach, Rorty and Sellars and Quine). Some are adulatory (“Russell was a marvellously wide‐ranging philosopher”, as of course he was, while Lovejoy was a “courageous advocate of academic freedom”). Succinctness has been well observed throughout, and bitchiness is kept within check. But, why oh why, do we need to be told that X has a doctorate or Y is a Companion of Australia?
If philosophy is sometimes seen as inscrutable, then entries in this companion (for all their conceptual complexity) make many things clear, or at least show why they are complex. It is a real credit to the editor and contributors that the entries are complex but not complicated. They do not hold back from controversy and this makes the book into a real companion (the kind of book that befriends the reader). Check through entries on Zeitgeist, Harvard philosophy, Feminism and masculism, Stich, Stevenson on ethics, let alone the political entries, to see for yourself. There is an interesting (and revealing) aporia (unexplained problem) where post‐modernism is concerned. This comes as no surprise, although the way the companion deals with it is surprising. Entries on Différance and Logocentrism take Derrida seriously, while he is included in Pseudo‐Philosophy (“There is little point in spinning elaborate textual webs to demonstrate that texts never bear any stable interpretative construction”) and attacked in Philosophy and the public (“tilting at the windmills of meaning”). Post‐modernism itself is cursorily covered (comparison should be made with the Routledge here), and entries on Lacan and Deleuze, Baudrillard and Foucault all, in terms of both output and reception, merit updating.
Updating, of course, is a central concern for anyone considering the new (second) edition of the Companion: 300 new entries and others revised, with a significant number on modern American and British philosophers. Honderich shares in the challenge of all editors of reference works in deciding what to include and how to allocate the space. Mainstream entries were strong in the first edition and many remain, some stronger, e.g. Heidegger, Nietzsche, Islamic philosophy today, Problems of the philosophy of mind. Bioethics and possible worlds, Schopenhauer and sexual morality come across well, while Roman philosophy and Quine, Frege and pragmatics and Rawls have fuller bibliographies. It is a compliment to Cambridge University Press that citations of their Companion series are numerous.
There are many practitioners working today – Sainsbury and Finnis, Gewirth and McFGinn, Glover and Kenny, Sen and McDowell, Gibbard and Kagan – while attempts have been made to put (not keep!) historical figures in their place – Ryle and Russell, Spinoza and Santayana, Berlin and Thomas Reid, Gilson and Jonathan Edwards. Some, like Quinton and Sprigge, are also contributors to the Companion. Yet updating is never consensual: as well as some tunnel‐vision about post‐modernism (and that whole wider application to and confluence with cultural studies), entries like Social philosophy (where is rational choice?) and Just war, Ethical relativism and the Political new right (where is neo‐conservatism?) cry out for updating (but perhaps it is the Machiavellian intention to get readers to do some of the work: after all, philosophy is something to be done rather than just read about).
Two further characteristics of the Companion are worth taking on board if you are considering purchase (by the way it is a bargain at the price, and no need to wait for the paperback). The first is the substantial coverage it provides on world philosophy. Even between the 1995 first edition and the present, the globalization and syncretism of philosophy, as well as its well‐known inter‐penetration with other disciplines, has grown fast. It is no longer merely New Age to suggest that Buddhist and Hindu philosophy should be studied in conjunction with “traditional Western” philosophy. For someone wanting snapshots, then, of world philosophy – from Islamic and Jewish, Japanese and Indian, to Latin American and Canadian, Norwegian and Croatian, Byzantine and Hungarian, the companion contains many succinct portals. At such points the present reviewer grows wistful for the flexibility of internet resources so that combined searches can be carried out, although entries in the Companion (such as that on Watsuji who made Heidegger and Kierkegaard better known in Japan) and the extensive index provide help.
The second characteristic is a question: when does a companion become an encyclopedia? This is another major challenge for both editor and publisher. If we argue that to be a good companion means that a reference work should also be encyclopedic, then we need to ask where do the boundaries come? While it may be logical to include the philosophy of film and the philosophy of sex, how logical is it also to include the Vedanta (the Hindu scriptural texts) and forgery, race and irony, the novelist Unamuno (by the way, the whole field of aesthetics and literature needs a sharp look) and the concept of satisficing, the tarot and Erasmus, mantra and tantra, music and mysticism, creationism and anti‐Semitism? Some entries struggle to be philosophical enough – like those trying to prove that Jefferson and Boyle (of the famous law) and Johnson (of the equally famous dictionary) are also relevant to philosophy.
This could be a token of the ever‐changing boundaries of philosophy itself (which in a sense is everyone and anywhere, like the air), but it sets up questions about whether works can and should take so much on that, for all their distinctive strengths, they converge in homogeneity. Many readers (and I am one of them) love going in and out of a specialist field, teasing out often unexpected connections, but, with library budgets ever beckoning, some discipline should be assumed about boundaries in reference works. The joy of a hypertext link is that it simply redirects but takes up minimal space: in a printed reference work, a decision to include satisficing or the Bhagavadgita or Saint‐Simon of the Encyclopédists means less space for something else. This is not a disappointment or limitation in the Companion, but merely a feature which, writ large, is a direct challenge to reference work publishers selling to library managers and the general public who are already likely to have general reference works and are looking, in a specialist field, for value‐for‐money.
This is then one of the best curate's eggs I've ever tasted, and it will be heavily used, along with the Routledge and the Blackwell, for many years to come. The price makes it irresistible and it is well printed and excellently edited. The shrewd wit of many of the entries (Quinton's comments on Harvard philosophy – “his (C.I. Lewis, probably one of the ablest of his time between the wars) abler associates were unproductive, his productive colleagues were not all that able” – merit inclusion in all Research Assessment Exercises), the political acumen, the world view, even the stuffy view of the post‐modern and some confusion about what it really is, make this Companion a highly attractive purchase. The jacket shows a ladder reaching into a blue sky: how symbolic! But a rain check for what it is like to do philosophy now in the twenty‐first century comes from, say, a quick look at the entry on the Monty Hall Problem.
