Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century British Philosophers (review)

In the last few decades English-speaking philosophers have shown a new kind of interest in the history of their subject. They have been producing studies of previous thinkers and periods that are more concerned with the pastness of the past than the critical analytic commentaries that are still the most prevalent kind of writing about earlier philosophical thought. The new turn in philosophers' historiography shows itself in several ways. Arguments currently of interest in the work of past philosophers are now increasingly read in the light of the whole of a thinker's position, not isolated and treated as if they stood alone. The philosophers themselves are recognized to have been influenced by or responding to a number of their contemporaries or predecessors who are now largely ignored or forgotten. The work of philosophers is seen as itself embedded in various contexts which need to be known if we are to recover the authors' own sense of what they meant to do in developing and publishing their writings.

The series of histories of philosophy published by the Cambridge University Press beginning in 1982 puts the newer kind of historiography on prominent display. As Daniel Garber and Michael Ayers say in their introduction to the Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (1998), their two volumes treat the subject in terms of themes and topics, not chronologically or by individual thinker. An opening chapter presents the institutional background of philosophy: the use of Latin, the universities and the lower educational system, the role of the churches and of private patronage. Another portrays the many living intellectual traditions amidst which philosophers worked. Attention is given to attempts to understand Chinese thought. The medieval, occultist, scientific, and religious backgrounds are presented in detail. The arguments and positions of the philosophers are presented with great care and are also discussed in terms of the many ways in which they relate to thought in all of these areas. Beyond this volume these histories (not yet all published) are to cover later medieval, renaissance, eighteenth century, nineteenth century, and the origins of contemporary philosophy. Cambridge is also issuing a series of histories of political thought, which richly supplements these volumes. All are collaborative efforts. But many of the contributors have published monographs and larger-scale works, and the number of such works increases steadily. The cumulative effect is to make available a far richer, more detailed, and more historically sensitive understanding of philosophy's past than we have ever had.

The Thoemmes Press's series of dictionaries of philosophers makes a contribution to this kind of work. The two volumes under review are edited by W. J. Mander and Alan P. F. Sell, though their names are not singled out on the title page from among the other fifteen or so "supervising and consulting" editors. Some 600 entries, contributed by about 160 scholars, give us many of the stones—from pebble to boulder in size—which may be used to assemble the British contribution to nineteenth-century philosophy. And although we get no cement—the materials are merely heaped up—Victorianists will find information about a great many writers that is not readily available anywhere else. Those wanting to know the basic facts about the authors covered will find this a useful compilation. But it is flawed in a number of ways.

First, we get little information about how the particular writers were chosen. Certain names are inevitable: F. H. Bradley, J. S. Mill, William Whewell, Henry Sidgwick. But we get no idea as to why among the many possible lesser candidates some were selected and others not. Was everyone who taught philosophy at the universities included, or even considered? How carefully were the journals searched? Was every writer of philosophical articles in the great Victorian general-interest periodicals canvassed? Is there an entry for every British writer who...