Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy

by Edward Craig

The Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy brings together more than 2,000 entries - thematic and biographical - from the original work in a shortened, accessible format. Extensively cross-referenced and indexed so readers can easily find information on subjects ranging from Heraclitus to Chinese Marxism to Ancient Egyptian Cosmology, the Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy provides succinct, expert treatments of philosophies from all over the world, including India, Africa and Latin America, as well as Chinese, Arabic and Jewish philosophy. Medieval philosophy, philosophies of science, gender and postmodernism, and many, many more key concepts are covered by some of the most renowned thinkers of our time, including Kwame Anthony Appiah, Roderick Chisholm, Fred Dretske, Joel Feinberg, Sandra Harding, Martha Nussbaum, Richard Popkin, Richard Rorty, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Stephen Stich, Patrick Suppes and Bernard Williams.

Genres: Philosophy, Reference, Nonfiction

1030 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1999

About the author

Edward John Craig was educated at Charterhouse. He read philosophy at Trinity College, Cambridge (1960–1963), and was Reader in Philosophy at Cambridge from 1992 to 1998. He became Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy in 1998, a chair he held until his retirement in 2006. He is a Fellow of Churchill College. He edited the journal Ratio from 1988 to 1992. He is also a former cricketer at first-class level: a right-handed batsman for Cambridge University and Lancashire.

There is more than one author with this name in the Goodreads database.

Reviews

[Jacob Aitken · Rating 5 out of 5]

I suppose the one thing more difficult to write a concise summary of almost every philosophical system and philosopher is to write a review about a book on the topic. Given that it is an encyclopedia one cannot form the review around various loci. Further, no one individual is trained in every philosophical arena. I am familiar with various models of Western and Christian philosophy. However, I am not capable of evaluating and judging Eastern models.

With those caveats in mind, I can say this book succeeds because of the following reasons: the format of the articles, the presumably gifted individuals writing the articles, and the surprisingly broad scope of the articles.

1. Obviously with any encyclopedia, some articles are going to be longer than others. Men like Plato and Spinoza can expect quite a few columns or even pages. What separates this volume from others is that each article has a very small *annotated* bibliography for further review. The annotation almost makes it worth the price of the book.

2. While I haven't followed up on every contributor, I did immediately peruse the articles related to my field of study and recognized many of the names as leading philosophers. This lends credibility to the project.

3. I was surprised at just who they included. Leading authors like Dostoevsky were rightly acknowledged as key philosophers. More importantly, to continue with Dostoevsky as an example, these articles were cross-referenced to other similarities and figures (though I suppose this is quite common for encyclopedias). The net result is that fifteen minutes of careful reading can make one reasonably familiar with a certain field (say, Russian philosophy). While I am pleased with the broad scope, as is to be expected, many of the welcome additions were in fact too shallow in analysis (the article on "Byzantine Philosophy," for example). Somewhat surprisingly, though, the section on Hegel missed many key aspects of his thought.

Conclusion:

Although I am no expert in the philosophy of science or Eastern models, given that the Western contributors were experts in their fields, I can only assume this is largely the case for other branches. The cost of the book does appear prohibitive at first, and I suppose a book of this size can never sell for cheap, it does appear that used versions are popping up at affordable prices.

[Jimmy Cline]

Wow, I just discovered this the other day. I love Routledge. This is probably the most up to date encyclopedia of philosophy that I've seen so far.

[NAOMI POINDEXTER · Rating 5 out of 5]

Keep on your shelf and refer to often

[Daniel Clemence · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exceptional A to Z on philosophical concepts throughout humanity including but not limited to Aesthetics, ethics, epistemology, logic, politics, theology, psychology all to name a few. This is a reference book with useful information on philosophy, which has a Western focus but is not exclusively Western in its worldview. Exceedingly useful for philosophers and non-philosophers alike.