I know that people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, but this needs to be said: Stop the Handbooks already! OUP, CUP, Routledge, Blackwell, and Continuum are flooding the philosophy market with Handbooks, Companions, etc. No doubt there is a commercial logic here. (Libraries are still buying them.) And, as such, this may well cross-subsidize commercially less viable projects. Let's put this on the benefit side. Moreover, let's grant -- for the sake of argument -- that high quality is maintained. (This is not so obvious if we think about the places where Martin Stone published his plagiarized work.) In addition to the fact that these publications are dominated in various ways by (nearly entirely) boys-only, there are two other significant drawbacks:
- There are huge opportunity costs in research time and energy. This is especially a problem for smaller fields that are a part of the core (Anglo) philosophy curriculum. Just to stick to my own neck of the woods in early modern philosophy: we are reaching the point where original, foundational research is being displaced by work devoted to handbooks (etc.). (Yes, I know these are increasingly places where *some* original research is appearing) While not so problematic for over-the-hill types who would be recycling their work anyway, it is not good for...ahum...mid-career types to be engaged in routine recycling (or for senior types who owe us one or two more brilliant monographs).
- These Handbooks/Companions reinforce the pernicious idea that philosophy is a normal science with a body of accepted knowledge that folk can master and share with folk entering the profession.
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