...from IHE, which seems intent on generating controversy where there is none. Many philosophers have probably seen draft entries on various philosophy blogs. I myself have done the Nietzsche entry, and (with Michael Sevel) the entry on Legal Positivism. The implication of the article that these annotated bibliographies will be so powerful as to shut out everything else is rather astonishing. As the first commenter notes:
The critics of this Oxford venture are acting as though this is the nineteenth century, where there was One Book on most things: one biographical handbook in the history of science, one Dictionary of [British] National Biogaphy, etc. Now, there are literally millions of sources on the web. Nobody's going to use the Oxford source exclusively. Let it be as good as Oxford can make it be; all that it will become is one tool in the toolbox.
This is surely right. The philosophy bibliographies, on the evidence I have seen, will be very helpful to students, as well as to scholars in other disciplines or other sub-fields of philosophy. But since invariably almost everything referenced has its own bibliographies or references, someone new to the subject will quickly be led well beyond the confines of the on-line bibliography.
Recent Comments