Ted Honderich

This massive compendium isn't really worth reading cover to cover, though one could argue that the point of the book is to be a reference guide. It would be like reading a dictionary from cover to cover or an encyclopedia. It is an interesting time-waster sometimes but not really worth it. Rather than doing that, I merely looked up things that interested me and left it at that. It might be better to check out an online encyclopedia, but those have some flaws as well. The main pro of this book is that it is well-researched and written by a number of experts. It is controlled information. They didn't let some homeless hobo with a library card in there to talk about his opinions on Aristotle. The main weakness of the book is that it is printed material. If they find something else about Hegel for example, they will never be able to take this book and edit it unless they print an entirely new copy. The good thing is that philosophy is one of those subjects that doesn't move as fast. If it was a book on computers from the same era it would be completely obsolete by now except to a specialized collector perhaps.… (more)