Rating: 
Summary: A good resource for both layperson & academic
Review:
Speaking as a layperson I found this book gave an extremely wide coverage of recent, & past, philosophy. The varied entries are easy enough for an intelligent layperson to understand, yet they had the depth that would be useful for undergrad philosophy students.
As well as covering the greats, and different branches of philosophy, there was good coverage of contemporary philosophers - something lacking other encyclopaedias/Dictionaries. Also, an eye-opener, was the coverage of some [possibly] curious problems [e.g. death] which, again, are not found in many other works of reference.
In contrast to another recent popular tome [the Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy] this book is definitely NOT dry and boring. This is important, as it combats the image of the philosopher as a dull academic with nothing of interest to say about life.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent thumbnail sketches of most philosophers
Review: I would recommend this book for the reader who wants to have a ready source of information available to him about topics in philosophy and particular philosophers that he may encounter in his general reading of books dealing with history ,social science and biography.Some of the thumbnail sketches are too brief and a few contain incorrect information.For instance,the discussion of the principle of indifference(POI) references chapter 9 of J M Keynes's A Treatise on Probability.This chapter includes a brief summary of the POI.However,the main discussion of the POI occurs in chapter 4,not chapter 9(See p.410).The discussion of John Maynard Keynes contains an error.Nowhere in the General Theory(1936) does Keynes suggest or recommend a countercyclical fiscal policy based on deficit finance.In the period 1942-1944,Keynes did analyse and support the concept of a capital account ,separated from the rest of the government budget,that would deal with the financing of long lived infrastructure( public sector) projects that would pay for themselves over the life time of the project.Only these types of projects would be initially funded by government borrowing.(See p.442).
Rating:
Summary: a good introduction, but be wary of the assumptions
Review: Although I agree that there is much valuable information in this work, it should also be noted that this reference work is an artifact and an outgrowth of the context from which it arose. Specifically, this work is the result of the type of philosophical inquiry promulgated by those who contributed to it (see partial list above), and thus, many of the entries found in this work can be traced to the now receding tradition of Oxford philosopy that rested on the foundations of logical positivism and linguistic analysis. As a result definitions such as the one for "synthetic a priori judgements" traced back to Kant is treated from a perspective endemic to analytic philosophy in which the idea is treated as if it were put forth as a proposition when, in reality, Kant made no such appeal to propositional values in and of themselves, but was concerned with the nature of human knowledge and reality itself. Being cognizant of the analytic bent of this reference source reveals that the source of this error lies in the fundamental misunderstanding of philosophers enamored by linguistic analysis who imposed this interpretation on the work of Kant to support their own (philosophers such as J.L Austin, Wittgenstein, Gilbert Ryle and Geoffrey Warnock) common point of view.
Another telling example of the inherent philosophical bias presented in this work can be found in the definition of philosophy itself. In the opening paragraph of this entry philosophy is defined as "thinking about thinking," which follows that way that Oxford philosophers had attempted to define it, despite a tradition of over 2,000 years in which understanding the nature of reality--in all of its variated and complex ways--was viewed as the underlying philosophical problem pursued by the pre-Socratics, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant and the British Empiricists to Hegel, Heidegger, Nietzsche and Sartre, representing an unbroken tradition of thought to this day.
Being aware of the subjective nature of a text such as this illustrates the truism that all texts are inherently and necessarily products of the minds that create them, and even texts that purport to be merely informational and introductory carry within them certain prescribed ways of presenting knowledge, which can have serious ramifications on the understanding of knowledge itself. Thus as it is with this work, like all philosophical texts, one should not merely accept the statements presented within this work as objectiviely true, but use them as fertile points of departure for critical thinking, meditation and further investigation; that is where the true value of this work lies.
Rating:
Summary: Comprehensive companion book in the realm of Philosophy!
Review: Having studied Nietzsche, Descartes and Kant to name a few, when I attained my undergraduate degree; I found this book, i.e., The Oxford Companion to Philosophy by Ted Honderich(Editor) to be indespenseable. The book is divided very cleverly; First it has a preface, after that a table of centents, a list of portraits, a list of contributors and finally a guide called "On using this book". The articles are written by contributing experts so the quality varies quite a bit. Articles such as Soviet Philosophy , seems at first to be an oxymoron since Communists do not like critical or free thinking, but offers an interesting insight into the world of controlled philosophy that walks according to the close party line. The index is very well developed and it is in fact a treat to use. Being originally from Sweden it was interesting to see what other people wrote about the Swedish philosophy. My two favorite philosophers, i.e., Nietsche and Plato have very well written articles that definetely do justice to their contributions as far as the art and study of philosophy.
Rating:
Summary: The most useful one volume guide to Western philosophy
Review: I have found Oxford's Companion to Philosophy to be the most useful one volume guide to Western philosophy. I own and use the Routledge Concise Encyclopedia, the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, and Macmillan's eight volume Encyclopedia of Philosophy. However, the Oxford Companion to Philosophy is the book I now turn to first when I have a question regarding Western philosophy. Simply put: outstanding.
Rating: 
Summary: One big ol' book of philosohy....
Review: I purchased this to have on-hand as a reference for my self-directed study of philosophy and am I glad I did. It's a great resource for comprehensive information on most of the major schools, thoughts, and practictioners in the science. As good as it is, there are some odd fluctuations in the quality of the individual essays; some are too obfuscatory for their own good (and for mine). Still, it is my #1 resource for additional information when I'm reading other philosophy books and I highly recommend this for the serious student of philosophy.
Rating:
Summary: indispensable!
Review: I've had this book since high school and I still use it in college. I am a phil major and i constantly use it for reference and to prepare exams. I am always surprised to find entries like "the test paradox." It is a fun read and eveytime I pick it up I find myself spending more time on interesting entries than I expected.
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Summary: The Thinker's best friend
Review: If there's one volume on philosophy to own, it is this one. Its entries on the canonical philosophers are in-depth and first-rate distillations. All the most famous thought experiments are summarized, and many of the more esoteric philosophical concepts explained. It is heavy on logical concepts; indeed, there's a decided Anglo-American Analytic bent.
Which leads to my problem. One thing for which the volume can be criticized is the lack of strong representation of contemporary Continental (post-structuralist or deconstructionist) thought. When it does appear, it is sometimes given a dressing-down of sorts. Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Chomsky, Irigaray, Foucault etc. are given short shrift--and I myself am rather partisan to the analytic-pragmatic tradition, but I see no reason to virtually ignore these very important developments in critical fields. Otherwise, this is the best.
Rating:
Summary: Indispensible reference
Review: This book is a treasure trove of information no one interested in philosophy can afford to do without. It is filled to the point of bursting with concise yet informative articles on every significant philosophical topic conceivable, and some most people wouldn't have thought about at all. It is well worth the cost of purchase and will vastly repay use. Particularly wonderful are the conceptual diagrams in the back showing the interrelations of the various branches and sub branches of philosophy. Most Highly Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: "A Philosophers Second Best Friend"
Review: This book is invaluable in its entirety. It covers with an intricate simplicity the problematic. It is shrouded by a synthesis of sheer genius. From the preface to the index, my mouth watered as I turned from page to page. This edition expounds with granduer the extent of human thought throughout antiquity. To put to in a nutshell the 'Oxfords Companion to Philosophy' is the "magnum opus" of reference materials.
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