Pliny the elder was not the first to compile an encyclopedia-his Historia naturalis was anticipated by Speusippus in Greek and Cato and Varro in Latin. But Pliny held the field for a long time. His compilation was intended to be pure Gradgrind, but too many old wives got their tales in, rendering the work more entertaining than informative.
Since the middle ages scores of encyclopedias have been compiled, so many, indeed, that it is surprising how few of them have had an impact on the history of human intelligence. The celebrated Encyclop?die of Diderot (1751), which began as a translation of Ephraim Chamber's modest Cyclopaedia and assumed a philosophically ambitious life of its own, did so; and in a quieter way so did the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1912), for those who love good writing and refined thought. But most encyclopedias have remained in the peculiar twilight zone of their kind-largely unread, desultorily consulted, too superficial for the scholar and too compendious for the trifler. Their main use has been to entertain intellectually precocious children.
A child would need to be precocious indeed to spend his or her rainy afternoons with the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. This ten-volume juggernaut is the first comprehensive encyclopedia of philosophy since the eight-volume work of the same name, edited by Paul Edwards and published by Collier-Macmillan, in 1965. This latter was the real first of its kind. It is a lucid and pleasing affair, painfully familiar to philosophy dons through its unsourced appearances in student essays. It is a little dated now, although its publishers have just issued a supplement (repudiated by Edwards himself) to tell us about the last 30 years and to update its bibliography.
The Edwards encyclopedia's datedness is cited as the main reason for Routledge's new offering. Its general editor, Edward Craig, points out that much has happened in philosophy since 1967, and there has certainly been an explosive increase in the number of philosophical books and papers published. The question is: is this sufficient reason for a new, large and very expensive work? When the Edwards encyclopedia was published there was almost nothing else in the way of reference material in philosophy. But in recent years there has been a glut of dictionaries, one-volume encyclopedias, companions and guides to philosophy, as more and more people, needing more help because they are less capable, enter our increasingly undemanding higher education sector. I seem to have been reading these dictionaries and companions, or writing articles for them, endlessly during the last two decades; a sense of d?j? vu steals over one upon turning the Routledge encyclopedia's pages-not least because its entries share a sameness of style and theme with these many other books (not surprising, because some of its contributors are the same).
It could be said, of course, that none of these other publications has the range or ambition of the Routledge encyclopedia, which not only seeks to cover the mainstream philosophical tradition associated with its Anglophone market, but also to introduce something of other philosophical traditions. And indeed, nearly a quarter of the encyclopedia is devoted to Chinese, African, Japanese, Indian and Tibetan philosophy. If you consider this, and if you look at the sheer statistics, the Routledge encyclopedia can claim to be impressive: 1,300 contributors wrote over 2,000 entries between them, all cross-referenced and equipped with bibliographies which were updated at the last minute before publication.
The hard fact, however, is this. At a full price of nearly ?2,000 the Routledge encyclopedia is a bad buy. I could purchase all the (excellent) Blackwell Companions to philosophical subjects for a mere ?320. I could add Routledge's own Companion Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy (also excellent) for a further ?110. I am already far ahead of what the Routledge encyclopedia offers-and for less than a quarter of the money. I could add another of Routledge's excellent Companion encyclopedias, this time of Jewish philosophy, at ?99.50; and the CD-Rom version of the entire encyclopedia Britannica at ?99 (it has good entries on philosophy and logic, clearer for beginners than many of those in the Routledge encyclopedia), and I have a philosophical reference resource much more extensive, yet much cheaper than the Routledge encyclopedia: ?620 as against ?2,000, for much more in length, depth and quality.
What is there to be said in the Routledge encyclopedia's favour? Well, it brings everything under one roof, so to speak, and cross-references it. A trawl of the articles suggests that many are workmanlike and useful; that some are little gems; and that some are poor. For a gem, see Ernie LePore's summary of Donald Davidson's views. For a poor article-obscurely written, cluttered, unsuitably polemical-see the entry on "Holism and Individualism in History and Social Science," and compare it to WH Dray's balanced account under the same title in the Edwards encyclopedia. The usefulness of having everything together is especially apparent when you remember that all this is available on CD-Rom. (The CD-Rom, however, is obscenely over-priced at ?1,695.)
It is hard to find any special virtues in the Routledge encyclopedia. Its effort to be inclusive has meant that lots of minor figures and theories are given entries; and yet, arbitrarily, many no less minor ones are left out: there are no entries, for example, for Arthur Balfour, GH Lewes or William Hazlitt, while merely historical curiosities such as Abraham Tucker and Martin Knutzen get more words than Johannes Kepler or "Federalism and Confederalism." We must be grateful, however, for an introduction to the spectacularly-named Tsong kha pa Blo bzang grags pa (sic), the 14th-century founder of the dGa'-ldan-pa school of Tibetan Buddhism.
Each article is prefaced by a summary-handy, except that the summaries are printed in italics, which are irritating to read at any length. A great many of the articles are perforce short and some are so short as to be valueless-as, for example, the entry on African aesthetics, which briefly describes the aesthetic outlook of one west African tribe and is scarcely as long as the article on the "Aesthetics of Dance."
The Routledge encyclopedia is not for beginners. Rather oddly, it seems to be pitched at readers who know enough philosophy already not to need the articles in their own fields of interest. I am all for introducing philosophy in ways which respect readers' intelligence and do not pretend that philosophical problems are simple. But many of the articles begin by assuming prior knowledge; which is a fault in an encyclopedia.
I have the greatest respect for the general editor and most of the contributors, all of them colleagues and many of them friends of mine. The fact that it is hard to be enthusiastic about the Routledge Encyclopedia is not so much a reflection on them as on two other considerations. One is that the encyclopedia they have produced deals with a subject where the conflict between being authoritative and being informative requires particular skills to resolve-skills not widely possessed. The other consideration is that it comes into a world already too full of similar material. It would have been a stunning achievement if it escaped invidious comparisons on both heads: but it does not.
However, university and public libraries-both captive markets-will buy it, and soon it will begin appearing, unsourced, in my students' essays; and no doubt it will do more good than harm overall. That is a plus in anyone's book.
The routledge encyclopedia of philosophy
Edward Craig (ed.)
10 Volume boxed set; CD-Rom ?1995
