The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy
The editors concede that this is not so much a companion to philosophy as to late 20th-century Anglo-American analytic philosophy. People outside that tradition will find the initial essays by John Searle and Bernard Williams bumptious. The book does contain a brief but intelligent essay on Continental philosophy by David E. Cooper and an essay on feminist philosophy by Jean Grimshaw, which gives many recent French feminists their due (though it ignores Helene Cixous). Kant, Hegel, and Marx get brief look-ins, and the ancient philosophers and the medievals get a chapter each. The early moderns-from Descartes and Hobbes to Hume-get 80 pages. This leaves 600 pages for the Anglo-American philosophers, from the pragmatists onward, of which 480 are devoted to recent analytic philosophers and their backgrounds. These essays, mostly by well-established authors, are of very high quality. A.C. Grayling on epistemology and Simon Blackburn on metaphysics are especially enlightening. Mary Tiles on the philosophy of mathematics is not only clear on a difficult subject but breaks through the philosophical parochialism of some of the other discussions. Leon Pompa's essay on the philosophy of history is an unusually good introduction to the subject. Highly recommended for academic libraries.Leslie Armour, Univ. of OttawaCopyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.