Today I’ll be reviewing my favorite book from my time doing philosophy. That is the absolute classic of the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (ODP) by Simon Blackburn. I’m going to talk about why it’s so good, why you should get one, even if you aren’t currently doing a philosophy degree and how I used it while doing philosophy and how I use it while not doing philosophy.
I bought my copy at a 2nd-hand bookstore called paper moon, in Observatory, Cape Town. This was actually my 2nd attempt buying it, my previous attempt the seller cancelled my copy. I was super excited when I found it on the shelf because I’ve always wanted to own a copy of it.
The book is uniquely cool because it lists, in one, place what I want to say is just all of the most important philosophical debates and concepts. Being able to flip through this as a physical book is genuinely so fun. So it’s a perfect coffee table book for one. This is just one of the ways of using it though, you can also (of course) use it as an actual dictionary.
When I was studying philosophy I exclusively used it in the serious dictionary sense, where I would look up words through the online interface. Specifically when I needed to use a concept in an essay and didn't feel like defining it myself. Even more specifically I would use the dictionary for quotes, if the concept I needed to define was only tangentially related to the essay I was writing. By that I mean, If I was writing an essay about consciousness I wouldn’t open with the ODP to quote their definition of consciousness or anything, but rather if I referenced something like, eudaemonia which is a really weird and complex topic, in the essay about consciousness, then the ODP is the perfect book to get a somewhat authoritative grounding for a concept you need to reference in passing, without having to define every term and concept in the essay yourself. I think one of the things about being good at writing philosophy is knowing which concepts are central to your essay and should be defined and redefined as you go by you, and which concepts can be outsourced to something like ODP. I also often used the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy for this outsourcing-of-definitions purpose.
The nice thing about the dictionary format compared to the encyclopedia format is that the dictionary doesn’t delve too deeply into each concept rather it arrives at a conclusion with relatively firm answers to complex questions, fast. Firm answers on things like consciousness or free will are hard to come by in philosophy and this book is full of them. It’s written by Simon Blackburn and you can feel that the dictionary is written by a person like Webster’s 1913 dictionary. It’s written with care, many entries are quite witty and plain funny to read. And they all have a tactile feel to them, like you read the book cover to cover and be happy.
So that’s all me using the dictionary as an actual dictionary, but another use for the dictionary is the mode in which you’re flipping through it casually and seeing different words and concepts randomly or semi-randomly. This is a mode I would have never expected myself to enjoy back when I was writing ethics papers at 3am. In fact a project I did during university was scraping the dictionary because it took so long to load, and putting the results in Algolia. Despite that, I do now find it extremely fun to flip through the pages and just get a sense for stuff. If you’re even slightly interested in philosophy it will be hard to find a page with an entry you’re not interested in.
Nowadays I like flipping through while Claude is running and doing something I don’t need to be involved in. Perfect time to get a sense of what the deal with functionalism is. And noo I'm not procrastinating, I swear.
This book is for anyone that’s writing essays with concepts or themes adjacent to philosophical ones, you may actually end up using it like a serious dictionary. Or if you’re just vaguely interested in philosophy and Earth you might flick through it and find some interesting entries.
Today I’ll be reviewing my favorite book from my time doing philosophy. That is the absolute classic of the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (ODP) by Simon Blackburn. I’m going to talk about why it’s so good, why you should get one, even if you aren’t currently doing a philosophy degree and how I used it while doing philosophy and how I use it while not doing philosophy.
I bought my copy at a 2nd-hand bookstore called paper moon, in Observatory, Cape Town. This was actually my 2nd attempt buying it, my previous attempt the seller cancelled my copy. I was super excited when I found it on the shelf because I’ve always wanted to own a copy of it.
The book is uniquely cool because it lists, in one, place what I want to say is just all of the most important philosophical debates and concepts. Being able to flip through this as a physical book is genuinely so fun. So it’s a perfect coffee table book for one. This is just one of the ways of using it though, you can also (of course) use it as an actual dictionary.
When I was studying philosophy I exclusively used it in the serious dictionary sense, where I would look up words through the online interface. Specifically when I needed to use a concept in an essay and didn't feel like defining it myself. Even more specifically I would use the dictionary for quotes, if the concept I needed to define was only tangentially related to the essay I was writing. By that I mean, If I was writing an essay about consciousness I wouldn’t open with the ODP to quote their definition of consciousness or anything, but rather if I referenced something like, eudaemonia which is a really weird and complex topic, in the essay about consciousness, then the ODP is the perfect book to get a somewhat authoritative grounding for a concept you need to reference in passing, without having to define every term and concept in the essay yourself. I think one of the things about being good at writing philosophy is knowing which concepts are central to your essay and should be defined and redefined as you go by you, and which concepts can be outsourced to something like ODP. I also often used the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy for this outsourcing-of-definitions purpose.
The nice thing about the dictionary format compared to the encyclopedia format is that the dictionary doesn’t delve too deeply into each concept rather it arrives at a conclusion with relatively firm answers to complex questions, fast. Firm answers on things like consciousness or free will are hard to come by in philosophy and this book is full of them. It’s written by Simon Blackburn and you can feel that the dictionary is written by a person like Webster’s 1913 dictionary. It’s written with care, many entries are quite witty and plain funny to read. And they all have a tactile feel to them, like you read the book cover to cover and be happy.
So that’s all me using the dictionary as an actual dictionary, but another use for the dictionary is the mode in which you’re flipping through it casually and seeing different words and concepts randomly or semi-randomly. This is a mode I would have never expected myself to enjoy back when I was writing ethics papers at 3am. In fact a project I did during university was scraping the dictionary because it took so long to load, and putting the results in Algolia. Despite that, I do now find it extremely fun to flip through the pages and just get a sense for stuff. If you’re even slightly interested in philosophy it will be hard to find a page with an entry you’re not interested in.
Nowadays I like flipping through while Claude is running and doing something I don’t need to be involved in. Perfect time to get a sense of what the deal with functionalism is. And noo I'm not procrastinating, I swear.
This book is for anyone that’s writing essays with concepts or themes adjacent to philosophical ones, you may actually end up using it like a serious dictionary. Or if you’re just vaguely interested in philosophy and Earth you might flick through it and find some interesting entries.
5/5 - a bit slow in the h’s