referencebooks

Encyclopedia of Modern French Thought

Edited by Christopher John Murray

Published by Fitzroy Dearborn, 2004

This is an 8.5" by 11" hardcover book running to 713 pages including the index and the notes on the contributors, plus a preface, alphabetical and thematic lists of entries, and a chronology.

The preface discusses some of the general features and themes of modern French thought. There is a paragraph on French responses to German philosophers and sociologists; there is a paragraph on French thinkers' reappraisal of Western Enlightenment values and ideas; and a paragraph on French intellectuals' responses to modernity and developments in modern history and society. The preface also makes clear that "French thought" includes the writings of Francophone intellectuals outside of France, naming some important ones.

Here are an important couple of sentences toward the end of the preface:

"Because some recent French writers are notorious for the difficulty of their style, which is usually a way of trying to avoid easy assimilation in the dominant forms of understanding, contributors were asked to pay close attention to clarity of exposition. This is not an attempt, however, to reduce complex, challenging, and far-reaching theories to simple, predigested summaries; concerns about the subtle power of dominant ideologies, and also about the limits of the sayable, are important. The aim, rather, as with any such project, is to encourage both student and lay reader to turn to the works in question and engage directly with the authors' ideas and strategies."

It's good that the editor addressed the question of writing style in that way, but I can't help thinking he's not being completely honest in saying that the aim of the book is to encourage readers to go directly to the original works. He must know that when people use reference books about intellectuals who are notoriously difficult to read, they really do want the authors' difficult ideas reduced to simple, predigested summaries, so that they can come away quickly with something they need. I think he is actually trying to apologize for the book.

The vast majority of the entries are for individual thinkers, but there are also entries for scholarly disciplines, historical subjects, time periods, themes, genres, and intellectual movements and theoretical points of view.

Entries are mostly satisfyingly long and detailed, and very interesting. The prose is definitely clear, and in my opinion doesn't do too much violence to the thinkers' ideas. Some close followers of a particular thinkers' work might find something important to quarrel with, but some other followers would most likely disagree.

This is a useful book for finding out some basic information about the ideas of modern French thinkers.

The Oxford Handbook of Epistemology

Edited by Paul Moser.

Published by Oxford University Press, 2002.

This is a 7" by 10" hardbound book running to 595 pages including the bibliography and index, plus a preface, list of contributors, and an introduction.

From the preface:

In the concept-sensitive hands of philosophers, epistemology focuses on the nature, origin, and scope of knowledge. It thus examines the defining ingredients, the sources, the limits of knowledge. Given the central role of epistemology in the history of philosophy as well as in contemporary philosophy, epistemologists will always have work to do. Debates over the analysis of knowledge, the sources of knowledge, and the status of skepticism will alone keep the discipline of epistemology active and productive. This book presents some of the best work in contemporary epistemology by leading epistemologists. Taken together, its previously unpublished essays span the whole field of epistemology. They assess prominent positions and break new theoretical ground while avoiding undue technicality.

As a handbook, the book aims to cover the territory of epistemology in broad-reaching, longish essays. There are nineteen of them in the book, written by different philosophers who have differing points of view on questions of epistemology but who make an effort to be fair to other major currents in their areas of specialization. The nineteen chapters are:

1. Conditions and Analyses of Knowing
   
2. The Sources of Knowledge
   
3. A Priori Knowledge
   
4. The Sciences and Epistemology
   
5. Conceptual Diversity in Epistemology
   
6. Theories and Justification
   
7. Internalism and Externalism
   
8. Tracking, Competence, and Knowledge
   
9. Virtues in Epistemology
   
10. Mind and Knowledge
    
11. Skepticism
    
12. Epistemological Duties
    
13. Scientific Knowledge
    
14. Explanation and Epistemology
    
15. Decision Theory and Epistemology
    
16. Embodiment and Epistemology
    
17. Epistemology and Ethics
    
18. Epistemology in Philosophy of Religion
    
19. Formal Problems about Knowledge.
    

The articles are written in the analytic mode of Anglo-American philosophy. They're quite clearly written, so long as you're someone who is comfortable with philosophical literature. (While they don't have a whole lot of technical jargon, they're highly focused in the style of a philosophical texts.)

Each article finishes with a useful set of references to the philosophical literature. The bibliography at the end is also very useful for students wanting to read more about epistemology.

This is a nice book, but readers should be aware of its firm placement in the Anglo-American philosophical tradition and the consequent lack of coverage of ideas from continental and non-Western philosophy.

Dictionary of Semiotics

By Bronwen Martin and Felizitas Ringham.

Published by Cassell, 2000. Copyright held by the authors.

This is a small paperback measuring 6" by 8.25" and running to 177 pages including the index, introduction, bibliography, and a sample semiotic analysis of Sleeping Beauty.

This book intends to be an introduction to semiotic theory in dictionary form. The introduction talks about what semiotics is, goes a bit into its history, and then talks about its use as a tool for analysis.

The dictionary itself provides definitions of terms in semiotic theory, usually a couple of short paragraphs long, but sometimes longer.

The first fifteen entries in the book are for:

• Absence
  
• Abstract
  
• Achrony
  
• Acquisition
  
• Actant
  
• Actantial narrative schema
  
• Action
  
• Actor
  
• Actorialization
  
• Actualization
  
• Adjudicator
  
• Aesthetics
  
• Agent
  
• Alethic modalities
  
• Anachronism
  

Since many of these entries represent specialized usages of common words, it wouldn't necessarily be obvious that one needed this book; it might just seem like you were dealing with writing that doesn't make sense. That there are more or less technical meanings in the way that these words are used in semiotics is one lesson of the book.

For an example of the kind of thing that is here, here is the full entry for "Spatialization," which is a brief entry:

Spatialization

The term spatialization designates the process whereby places and locations are established in discourse. Like actorialization and temporalization it is a necessary ingredient for a referential illusion or reality effect to work. In line with the temopral organization of discourse, spatial structuring serves the installation of narrative programmes and their sequence. Stages of Little Red Riding Hood's mission are thus linked to (1) her mother's house; (2) the wood; (3) her grandmother's house.

A subject dictionary is usually handy as a reference to the meaning of a specialized term. This one is really not very useful in that way, because to understand the meaning of a term in semiotic theory you have to understand semiotic theory, and will therefore find yourself reading the whole book. That means that this is really a dictionary that must be read cover to cover. As such it's a pretty interesting introduction to semiotics.

Historical Dictionary of Wittgenstein's Philosophy

By Duncan Richter.

Published by Scarecrow Press, as Number 54 in their series, "Historical Dictionaries of Religions, Philosophies, and Movements," in 2004.

This is a 5.5" by 8.5" hardbound book running to 242 pages including the bibliography, plus a preface, acknowledgments, a "Reader's Note," acronyms and abbreviations, and a chronology.

This is a modest book that aims to provide superficial coverage of Wittgenstein's life and philosophy in dictionary/encylopedia entries. Covered are people and places in Wittgentstein's life, entries on his written works, and entries on philosophical concepts that he dealt with.

The first fifteen entries in the book (not including "see" references) have the titles:

• Aesthetics and Art
  
• Agreement
  
• Ambrose, Alice (1906-2001)
  
• Analysis
  
• Anscombe, Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret (1919-2001)
  
• Anti-Semitism
  
• Apostles (Cambridge Group)
  
• Apples, Five Red (Example of)
  
• Arbitrariness of Grammar
  
• Architecture
  
• Aristotle (384-322 BC)
  
• Aspect-Seeing
  
• Atomic Bomb
  
• Augustine of Hippo, St. (354-430)
  
• Baker, Gordon Park (1938-2002)
  
• Bartley, William Warren (1934-1990)
  

The entries range in length from a paragraph to several pages. The writing is admirably clear, and unlike most philosophical writing doesn't require much background knowledge in philosophy.

In the preface the author acknoweldges what a challenge it is to produce a reference book on Wittgenstein, since the meaning of his work is so controversial among philosophers. Some philosophers would probably take issue with the author's approach to some issues, but given the challenge and the need for simplicity, I think he's done an excellent job.

This would be a very handy book for philosophy students first encountering Wittgenstein.

Dictionary of Concepts in the Philosophy of Science

By Paul T. Durbin.

Published by Greenwood Press, 1988.

This is a 6" by 9" hardbound book running to 362 pages including the bibliography and index, plus a series foreword, preface and introduction.

More of a modest encyclopedia than a dictionary, this book aims to give an introductory treatment to concepts in the philosophy of science. The focus is on concepts in the physical sciences and on philosophical issues stemming from specific scientific ideas, rather than on the various theories of epistemology as they underly science, which are disappointingly not included. The writing, though, is very non-technical and easy to understand, which is a strong point about the book, since so many people are easily turned off by technical philosophical writing and it's a subject that can potentially interest many people. The downfall of the book, however, is that its discussions are shallower than they really need to be.

The full sequence of entries from "T" through the end of the book runs:

• Technology
  
• Teleology
  
• Theory
  
• Theory Acceptance
  
• Time
  
• Transcendentalism and Science
  
• Truth
  
• Unity of Science Movement
  
• Utility
  
• Verstehen
  
• Vitalism
  

This is a fairly useful book for finding out what philosophers say about some major issues in science.

Encyclopedia of Ethics, Second Edition

Lawrence C. Becker and Charlotte B. Becker, editors.

Published by Routledge, 2001.

This is a big three volume work measuring 9" by 11" and running to a total of 1977 pages including the indexes, plus 35 pages of preferatory materials, which include an introduction, notes on use, a list of entries, and a list of contributors.

This is the definitive reference work on ethical theory as written about by English speaking philosophers. It's not about practical ethics or professional ethics but ethical theory as a branch of philosophy that answers questions about how we know right from wrong and how one should best live (in a moral or non-moral sense). While the focus is ethical theory, it does also have articles on metaethics, applied ethics, and ethical issues that are important to ethical theory, as well as biographical entries. Ethical theory, also, is considered fairly broadly, at least within the limitations of the Anglo-American philosophic tradition; the work includes some articles about approaches to ethics in other parts of the world; religious ethics; the relation of ethical theory to technology, religion, law, literature, and social, political and economic systems and theories; and the relation of philosophical ethics to other branches of philosophy. The audience for the Encyclopedia are scholars, university students and readers with a serious interest in philosophy.

For an example of what's covered, the first fifteen entries in the "D" sequence are:

• Darwin, Charles
  
• de Beauvoir, Simone
  
• De Stael, Madame: See Stael, Madame de
  
• death
  
• deceit
  
• definition: See persuasive definition
  
• deliberation and choice
  
• democracy
  
• Democritus
  
• deontology
  
• Descartes, René
  
• desert: See merit and desert
  
• desire
  
• determinism: See freedom and determinism
  
• deterrence, threats and retaliation
  

The longest of the articles listed here is the one on deontology, running almost six pages.

Each entry talks about the philosophical issues involved in the subject discussed, referring to the history of philosophical discussion throughout. The articles tend to reflect the points of view of their authors to a noticeable extent. Each entry finishes with a full complement of "See also" references and then a generous bibliography.

The Subject and Citation indexes in the last volume are very thorough, together spanning 144 pages.

This is an excellent resource with one major limitation: it pretty much confines its scope to the Anglo-American philosophic tradition, which not only represents certain writing conventions but certain approaches to thinking about philosophy as well. Points of view on ethical theory from Continental perspectives, not to mention non-European traditions, are mostly absent (with such expected exceptions as a long article on existential ethics and entries on major European philosophers). A major encyclopedia of ethics that draws contributions from beyond such a limited geographical and linguistic tradition would be very welcome.

Encyclopedia of Postmodernism

Edited by Victor E. Taylor and Charles E. Winquist

Published by Routledge, 2001.

This is a hard-bound book measuring 7" by 10" and running 466 pages including the index.

This is a difficult book to review, because its subject matter evokes strong feelings among people and is very difficult to define, and because it is difficult to know what to expect from a good encyclopedia of Postmodernism in the first place.

I'll begin by saying that it is an important work, into which Routledge, which is one of the most prestigious publishers of academic reference books, put lots of resources and years of effort. There were sixteen different people on the editorial team managing contributions from 144 scholars.

The introduction, which is only about a page long, serves mainly to avoid defining postmodernism or explaining the editorial position of the project, saying that it includes a "wide-spectrum (sic) of perspectives on postmodernism, illustrating a cohesion through the mutability and plurality of this critical concept that is so much a part of our intellectual and cultural context." It does provide a pseudo-definition, saying, "Definitions of postmodernism range from eclecticism and montage to neo-scepticism and anti-rationalism. Postmodernism, in its contradictory, sometimes misguided, and various deployments, has consistently challenged our understanding of unity, subjectivity, epistemology, aethetics, ethics, history, and politics."

A key thing to observe about this book is that part of the way it serves to explain postmodernism is by unfortunate example. What I'm referring to is the writing style of many of the contributors, which can be more than difficult, in that particular postmodern way. There are good arguments in favor of an approach to writing that challenges the reader to rethink the process of reading in approaching an idea whose depth may require thinking in a new way, but it is odd to find such unclear and difficult, almost poetic prose in an encyclopedia, which usually serves the purpose of transmitting knowledge as simply as possible. It seems that some of the contributing scholars saw fit to deploy language in a mode of resistance to the encyclopedic project itself. As an example, check out the first paragraph in the entry for "language," by Lucio Angelo Privitello:

De trop(e) language looms, raveling out representative systems. Whether as thesei (conditioned formation consensus) or physei (conceptual content), the action of language is also instrument to its chasm-made-presence, where "true" rings metonymic of peaks reached and tolled out of breath. If "the mother of language is negation" (Nietzsche), its father is articulated desire in speech (Lacan). As a secret pact (Freud) of a gifted linguistic-determined exchange (Mauss, Lévi-Strauss), exclamation (Herder) cum invocation (Augustine) reaches in time to a discourse (Heidegger) that performs the body as a "poetic logic" (Vico) where the very "words are the victims" (Bataille).

This particular entry, especially at the beginning, has the feeling of a movie trailer advertising the adventure film of Postmodernism. (The bold items are cross-references.) The logic behind this kind of writing, it seems, is that explanation takes away the purity of an idea and limits its associative meaning. There really is a kind of poetics to it, as well as perhaps a hostility toward rational discourse itself. To be fair, that entry does get somewhat clearer in its remaining page and a half, and many if not most of the other entries are perfectly comprehensible to the conventional mind, but it is still very odd and interesting to see it and others like it in an encyclopedia. It reminds me of the residents of the town of Bolinas, California, who so hate visiting tourists that they tear down all the street signs as soon as the city can put them up, preventing them from finding their way around (until they've been trapped there so long that they become locals themselves). In this entry on language it is as though Privitello is not interested in helping the reader to understand what he is saying so much as making it so difficult that any understanding the reader evinces is going to be mostly invented in his own mind, which is perhaps a kind of postmodernist argument by demonstration. In a sense, the requirement, behind many of the entries, that you swim in the waters of postmodernism in order to use the book makes it similar to other reference books that require a degree of background knowledge in the discipline, though it seems that in addition to background knowledge a certain intellectual and literary sensibility is required as well.

For an example of what's covered in the book, here's a list of the first fifteen items in the "P" sequence, with length in pages:

• pagan aethetic (just under one page)
  
• paradox (just under one page)
  
• paranoia (1.5 pages)
  
• parergon (1.25 pages)
  
• Pei, I. M. (1.5 pages)
  
• Pierce, Charles Sanders (just under one page)
  
• peregrination (1 page)
  
• phallocentrism (just under one page)
  
• pharmakon (two pages)
  
• phenomenology (1.5 pages)
  
• philosophy (6.5 pages)
  
• plane of immanence (3/4 of a page)
  
• play (just under a page)
  
• poetics (one page)
  
• poetry, postmodern (1.5 pages)
  

It's certainly a fascinating and potentially useful book for some people; I'd say that its speaking with a strongly postmodernist voice, as it does, is both a weakness and a strength, depending on who's using (or attempting to use) it.

Encyclopedia of Human Emotions

Edited by David Levinson, James J. Ponzetti, Jr., and Peter F. Jorgensen

Published by Macmillan Reference USA, 1999.

This is a two-volume hardbound set measuring 9" by 11" and totaling 768 pages including the bibliography index and subject index, plus 18 pages of preferatory material.

This Encyclopedia brings together information from psychology, psychiatry, biology, sociology, anthropology, communication studies and other fields to summarize what we know about "the nature, causes, expression, and societal role of emotions - today, in the past, and across cultures."

There are 156 articles in the set, each signed by an expert whose institutional home is listed. The "S" sequence contains articles with the following titles:

• Sadness
  
• Sartre, Jean-Paul
  
• Satisfaction
  
• Seasonal Affective Disorder
  
• Self-Esteem
  
• Sensation Seeking and Risk Taking
  
• Shame
  
• Shyness
  
• Sin
  
• Smiling
  
• Sociology of Emotions
  
• Spinoza, Baruch
  
• Sports
  
• Stress
  
• Sullivan, Harry Stack
  
• Surprise
  
• Sympathy
  

The article on satisfaction is almost seven pages in length. It begins with a paragraph defining the emotion, and then has sections with the headings, "Satisfaction as a Concept;" "Satisfaction Compared to Related Concepts" (with subheadings "Pleasure," "Happiness," and "Joy,"); "Cross-Cultural Research on Satisfaction;" and "Conculsion." It finishes with see-also references to "Achievement Motivation," "Happiness," "Hope," "Motivation," and "Pleasure," followed by a bibliography of 44 items for further reading.

The textual discussion is non-technical and very informative. Most people's knowledge of emotions is intuitive, and it is almost surprising to see how much study has gone into human emotions in different disciplines and what the contours of our knowlege of emotion are.

Articles on related emotions, such as Envy and Jealousy, Shame and Guilt, Anxiety and Fear, and Sympathy and Empathy, are all written by different experts, which allows you to get different versions of the distinctions between them.

This is a very interesting encyclopedia, useful in many types of research. The odd thing about its subject matter is the unlikelihood of someone turning to it whose research might be helped by it, because of its focus on subjective experience rather than the outward realities that are usually in focus. People doing work in theatre, film, literature, art, persuasion, psychology and some other social science disciplines seem most likely (to me) to find a good use for this encyclopedia.

Great Thinkers of the Eastern World

Edited by Ian P. McGreal

Published by HarperCollins, 1995.

This is a hard bound book of 7.5" X 9.5", running 505 pages.

The preface begins, "Great Thinkers of the Eastern World presents informative essays on over 100 of the outstanding philosophical and religious thinkers of China, India, Japan, Korea, and the world of Islam. Each article in this book summarizes and discusses the central ideas of an outstanding Eastern thinker (or, in some cases, the ideas of a classic work of great influence whose authorship is unknown). The essays are designed to serve as introductions for the general reader to the distinctive philosophical perspectives of the authors or the books discussed."

41 scholars contributed essays to the collection. Each article finishes with a bibliography for further reading.

Interesting is the inclusion of a few 20th Century thinkers, as difficult as it is to estimate the ultimate importance of people who were writing only a short time ago. For example, the Indian politician Jawaharlal Nehru is included, but not Gandhi. The Japanese philosopher Nishitani Keiji and the Chinese philosopher Fung Yu-lan are included, perhaps because they represent new engagement with the Western philosophical tradition from Eastern perspectives. This is an interesting aspect of the book.

Besides constituting a very useful reference work on individual thinkers, the book can also serve as an interesting and not insubstantial introduction to Eastern philosophy, a subject of growing importance in today's globalized world.

Philosophy of Education: An Encyclopedia

Edited by J. J. Chambliss

Published by Garland, 1996.

This is a hardbound, 7" X 10" book of 720 pages including the index, in smaller type, a substantial work.

The introduction makes the claim that the book is the only encyclopedia of the philosophy of education in existence, which, if true, certainly makes it an important book, since educational philosophy is a field of great real-world importance and much disagreement.

The introduction says:

"The encyclopedia contains 228 signed articles written by 184 authors; it is designed to show the diversity of topics that contribute to the study of the philosophy of education. The core of the encyclopedia is its coverage of philosophical points of view that have had the greatest influence on educational thinking, from ancient Greece to the present. This core consists of philosophers such as Plato, Abelard, Descartes, Locke, and Dewey, along with the topics from the field of philosophy, such as epistemology, metaphysics, rationalism, and realism. Yet the scope of the encyclopedia is much broader at its core, because many ideas and thinkers influencing education come from outside the field of philosophy. Articles are thus included from such fields as politics, religion, poetry, rhetoric, and the social sciences.
...
"With the exception of one article that is eighty-five hundred words in length, the articles vary from six hundred to five thousand words, with only fourteen articles of more than three thousand words. Each article has a bibliography and a list of "see also" references. A comprehensive name and subject index provides easy access to information on topics that do not have individual entries."

My first thought on opening the encyclopedia was to look up the critical education theorist Henri Giroux. I was initially disappointed to find him missing, but when you consider that there are only 228 articles to cover the entire field of the philosophy of education, it can only be expected that contemporary figures, whose lasting impacts are not yet known, would not be given entire articles. The Encyclopedia only aims to communicate knowledge of major intellectual threads. There is an entry on Critical Theory, and Giroux is, in fact, cited in the bibliographies of some of the articles, and given five page references in the index.

The lack of an article on Paulo Freire, however, is more difficult to excuse, and he has only five page citations in the index, which seems scant. It may be that the editors regard Freire and the like as not philosophically foundational enough to include in the book, versus thinkers (like M. K. Gandhi, who does have an article devoted to him) whose influence was clearly on the philosophical side. To me, this argument would seem to be a bit of a stretch. Nevertheless, it is a very substantial and unique reference work.