Message from Edward Craig, General Editor

Where now, and where next?

Just over four years into its life, and REP Online is about to reach one of those little landmarks: with the appearance of the next update, incorporating new African and epistemological material, there will be a hundred new entries, not counting the sixty-odd original entries that have been to a greater or lesser extent revised. The new material spans ethics, philosophy of law, ancient Greek philosophy, Russian philosophy, Renaissance philosophy, nineteenth century thinkers and themes, and aesthetics, as well as a bunch of sundry themes and individuals added when REP Online was first launched. All this new material has been tied in with the rest of the encyclopedia with links and cross-references in much the same density asthose which unified the original version of 1998.

We have also taken steps to make the content still more easily accessible, in particular by adding new Subject Guides lists. These lists enable a user to pick out at one click all those entries which pertain to a broad thematic heading or historical period,and when REP Online began they reflected a fact about the production of the Routledge Encyclopedia, being based on the division of labour amongst the Subject Editors. There was, to give an example, no Subject Guide for Feminism, because the historical and thematic spread of the relevant entries, of which there are over forty, had meant that they were assigned to several different Subject Editors rather than being collected under one. The moral was obvious, and the outcome so far is that we have added seven new Subject Guides: Feminism, Philosophy and Literature (which turns out to comprise as many as 88 entries!), Medical Ethics, Environmental Ethics, Postmodernism, Phenomenology and Existentialism, and Countries and Regions. Within the original list for Philosophy of Science the user can now find separate lists for Physics and Biology.

So what is coming next? Very shortly now there will be several new African entries and four new entries in epistemology. Just as importantly, there will be an entirely new entry on one of history's major philosophers: DAVID HUME, by Don Garrett. Later in 2005, at the end of August, therewill be a substantial clutch of a dozen new entries in metaphysics along with some additions in the philosophy of mind and psychology. Action at a distance, the Identity Theory of Truth, Dispositions, Metaphysical Nihilism ('Could there have been nothing at all?'), the Sling-shot Argument and the metaphysics of time are some of the items on the menu. And there will be new versions of the entries on Heidegger and Derrida, completely rewritten by their original authors Tom Sheehan and Andrew Cutrofello.

Beyond 2005 there are at present fewer certainties. But it can confidently be said that the main event will be a Political Philosophy update with ten or more new entries, directed once again by David Miller. (It is surprising, and pleasing, how many of our original Subject Editors are happy, or at least uncomplainingly willing, to come back for more!) If our plans come to fruition we shall have - to give a few examples - new material on International Justice, Human Rights, Secession, Humanitarian Intervention, and what one might call 'world perspectives' on political philosophy: Jewish, Islamic and Confucian. The intense politics of recent years have induced changes within political philosophy, and we hope to capture them for users of REP Online.

- Edward Craig

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