The Oxford companion to philosophy

The brave, large aim of this book is to bring philosophy together between two covers better than ever before. The philosophy brought together includes, first of all, the work of the great philosophers. As that term is commonly used, there are perhaps twenty of them. Philosophy as this book conceives it, secondly, includes all of its history in the English language, a history mainly of British and American thinkers. In this history there are many figures not so monumental as Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Thirdly, the book does attend to histories of philosophy in other languages than English. A fourth part of the book, not an insignificant one, consists in about 150 entries on contemporary philsophers, the largest groups being American and British. - Preface.