A Companion to Continental Philosophy

The previous reviews of this book have focused on the uneven quality of the articles and the inaccessibility of many of the articles for beginners. One must note, however, that any compilation of articles by different authors will be of uneven quality and accessibility: this is a necessary if unfortunate characteristic of all "companion" series--Cambridge as well as Blackwell. I would not regard the book as a whole as an introduction to Continental philosophy. Its value lies elsewhere. First of all, Simon Critchley's introduction alone is worth the price of the volume. Here he provides one of the ablest discussion I've read of the distinction between Analytic and Continental philosophy, and he challenges many common understandings of this distinction. Second, the mere listing of Continental philosophers--as well as their groupings into various schools--is very helpful. Although this seems elementary, I know of no other work with a "who's who" listing as comprehensive as this one. Third, the bibliographical material at the end of each article points the reader both to the major works in the corpus of each author and to further secondary reading. It is true that some of the bibliographies are more helpful than others, but this is an unavoidable limitation of a text of this kind. Finally, even if the articles themselves are not always introductory, most of them are worth reading either because the author is a renowned scholar of that particular philosopher or because the author provides a provocative view of the philosopher. For instance, if I had never read Marx I would not go to Michel Henry's essay in this volume for an introduction. But Michel Henry's thought on Marx is of incredible interest in itself; Henry, who lately passed away, is a rising star of the phenomenological world and will surely be remembered as one of the greatest French philosophers of the twentieth century.