Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion: Eastern and Western Thought (review)

324 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY in the thinker. Hence, genuine thinking is never merely scholarship, which is all too often the domain of the "enthusiast." To take a risk with thinking can mean to take issue with the thinker who has inspired one's own way of thought. In this fine book, Caputo takes such a risk and seems to have gone a long way down his own path. MICHAEL E. ZIMMERMAN Tulane University William L. Reese. Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion: Eastern and Western Thought. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 198o. Pp. iv + 644. $27.95. One way to characterize this outstanding book is through contrasts it bears to The ConciseEncyclopedia of Western Philosophyand Philosophers, edited by J. O. Urmson and listing forty-eight contributors. Where Urmson's introduction is prolix and doctrinaire , deriving from recent philosophic practices in Britain, the preface by Reese is spare, wtih little bias; where Urmson's articles deal chiefly with many individual thinkers and major types of philosophy, Reese has included all manner of technical terms as well--ancient, medieval, and modern, both occidental and eastern. Syllogism , for instance, turns up in Urmson not at all in the article on Aristotle, and only in a humdrum superficial way in "Logic," nor does it enjoy any separate entry. In Reese it receives six columns (some of them relating to Aristotle's conception, some not), together with a well-conceived treatment of the elaborate logical context in which Aristotle's own discussion of syllogism occurs, in the article on that thinker. Again, and as an example of relative fullness, we find that in Urmson no philosopher receives a separate listing between the entries "Heraclitus" and "Hobbes" (though some men are mentioned elsewhere), whereas Reese provides one or more paragraphs each on Herbart, Herbert of Cherbery, Herder, Hertz, Hesiod, Hilbert, Hintikka , Hippias, and some others of lesser impact on the course of philosophic thought than these. In addition, there is a summary, "History," containing highly compressed accounts of the views of thirty writers--Aristotle, Bacon, and Vico to Spengler and Toynbee----on that topic and providing (as do most other articles in the book) convenient cross-references to numbered paragraphs where further information can be gathered. There are remarkably few errors that a rough-and-ready survey of the Reese book turns up, especially in view of its scope and the staggering number of details it contains. There is, to be sure, an entry headed "Anticipations of Experience," but only those specializing in Kant or students cramming for prelims would be put off by this and wish to change the word to "perception." At any rate, the paragraph is otherwise correct. Every so often one finds a mildly jolting phrase, such as that Maimonides "ended his life in Cairo," or that "Neoplatonic motifs figure in the work" of Philo. On the other hand, these too are at a minimun. The Urmson work has a general bibliography, though a preponderance of the items refer to books from the Oxford and Cambridge university presses. Reese, for his part, lists no secondary books, but includes titles (in English translation) and dates BOOK REVIEWS 325 (where established) of the principal works of each writer taken up. Moreover, the Avesta, Bible, Koran, Bhagavad Gita, and other scriptural and quasi-scriptural writings are accorded separate treatments. After a decent interval, during which it is to be hoped that a host of readers will absorb some of the truly informative pages of Reese's Dictionary, it might be well for the publishers to bring out a new edition. In such an event, the author and his editor, Richard Huett, could consider adding a few articles, less often on individual thinkers than on general concepts, of which the following are a sampling: Crisis, Death, French Philosophy (and that of most other nations; there is already one on the Greek), Health, Hope, Journals, Neville Keynes (Maynard Keynes is already included ), Life, Medical Ethics, Mertonian School, Occult Qualities, Therapy, and some others. Certain entries, for instance "Passion," and especially "Self," could be enlarged to the size of "Will," and "Mind-Body Problem." Perhaps teachers will be a little furtive when they use this book, so helpful...