Hello, I'm Dr. Anadale and I teach philosophy at Mount St. Mary's
University and Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland. Today I want to talk briefly
about resources that philosophy students should have handy whenever they are
reading or writing or thinking about philosophy. These are things that you
should have on hand in addition to the books that you will be buying for your
individual courses. Two additional books you should pick up are: first, some sort
of dictionary of philosophy. This should be something that is paperback, is
handheld, easy to pick up and consult, so that you won't have any difficulty or
reluctance to pick it up and consult it when you come across some new thinker or
theory or concept that you're not familiar with in your reading. One that I
can recommend very highly is the Harper Collins Dictionary of Philosophy. This is
the one that I keep by my desk. Entries are short so you can read them in a
matter of 30 seconds and get oriented on some theory, concept or thinker that's
new to you in some reading that you are coming across. For students of Catholic
philosophy or of neo-scholasticism or neo-Thomism, John Carlson's Words of Wisdom:
A Philosophical Dictionary for the Perennial Tradition is also
quite good though much more specialized. The second book that you should get hold
of and keep handy whenever you are reading or writing or thinking about
philosophy is a general history of philosophy. Now, the most famous is Copleston,
which comes in multiple volumes. That's good but it's also fairly long
and dense. I would recommend it; it's a little weak in the 20th century but the
rest of it is very very good. So if you can get a copy of Copleston's multi-volume
History of Philosophy, that's just fine. Another one that I would recommend would
be Anthony Kenny's Oxford History of Western Philosophy. This is, as you can
also see, fairly handy, easy to consult if you want to get a line on particular
historical period. And I'll also mention Richard Popkin's Columbia History of
Western Philosophy as a good option in that regard. So I would say in addition
to your dictionary, your style guide, and your thesaurus, keep by your desk a dictionary of
philosophy and a history of philosophy. The other
resource that philosophy students should know about and be able to consult when
needed are encyclopedias of philosophy. And of these there are two online and
two on paper. I'll just mention them briefly and I'll put information about
them and these other books in the description to this video. The two online
encyclopedias of philosophy are the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy and
the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Of these two, the Stanford Encyclopedia
tends to have entries that are longer, more detailed, perhaps more technical.
Either one of them, I think, is good to consult, but don't end with consulting
the encyclopedia entry. Don't ever write a philosophy paper and then cite
an online encyclopedia entry as one of your sources. What you do after you've
read the entry is scroll down to the bottom, take a look at the bibliography:
that is your gold mine, especially if the entry has been updated within the past
two years. You want to look at the sources that the author of that entry
has put together. Click through to those, copy the information to order them
through your library. Those are the sources that you then want to track down,
read, and cite in your paper, not the encyclopedia article body itself. That's
my advice. The two paper encyclopedias of philosophy are published by Macmillan
and by Routledge. Macmillan is easier to find in on paper, in private collections--
I have a copy behind me right here--in eight volumes. It was published in the
1960s so it's a bit dated from that perspective, but very good on older
things. The most important thing about an encyclopedia is that you're able to
consult it when you need to. The Routledge is a little bit larger, I think
it's in twelve volumes, bound in white boards last time I saw it; it's down
at the library and should be in your library at your University. I would say do not be
hesitant to go to the library to consult with these or at least browse through, on
the particular topic of concern, these physical encyclopedias of philosophy in
addition to the online encyclopedias. That's my advice for additional
resources for philosophy students. Thanks for watching today; goodbye.