Diane Collinson

A fairly decent and useful – not great, but fairly decent and useful – "dictionary" of philosophers representing Zoroastrianism (just Zoroaster), Islamic, Indian, Tibetan (just three), Chinese, Korean (just two), and Japanese philosophy. My one disappointment is the omission of Vietnam, considering the importance of the Buddhist opposition to the U.S. supported governments during the war era; but this is political, and I don't know how significant Vietnamese philosophers might have been as "thinkers" as opposed to "activists."

Some are fairly obvious – Zoroaster, Muhammad, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Ibn Rushd (Averroes), The Buddha, Gandhi, Confucius, Mencius, Lao Tzu, and interestingly Mao Zedong – though I'm personally also familiar with Patanjali of the Yoga Sutras, though I haven't yet read them. Others are completely new to me.

Each individual is given about eight to ten pages, which include five to maybe seven or eight pages of text accompanied by an additional couple pages of notes, and each "region" is given a short introduction. There's also a good deal of repetition in text entries from one individual to the next, but that's actually good because (1) it reinforces certain common themes and (2) it allows you to read up on just one or two individuals if you're using this book as a "dictionary" rather than as a "straight through" read like I did.

This is part of a series of Routledge Key Guides; and if the others are as good as this, they could be worth looking into depending on any particular topic that draws your interest. Fifty Eastern Thinkers is written at a fairly introductory level, but it's far from condescending; and I assume the other series entries are likewise.… (meer)