A message from Tim Crane
The Fall/Winter 2018 update of the REP contains some fantastic new material. Thanks to our superb Subject Editors, we continue to enhance the range and depth of REP’s coverage of the subject. As well as adding pieces on the very latest areas of research activity (e.g. early modern women philosophers: see Marguerite Deslauriers on Marie de Gournay), we are also commissioning entries on areas that have become quite established in the last decade or so (Emily Caddick Bourne on Fictionalism in metaphysics, Tuomas Tahko on meta-metaphysics, Rebecca Mason on Social metaphysics). And we are regularly updating the classic topics and historical figures, either with revisions of old entries (Peter Fenves on Jean-Luc Nancy) or with replacement entries (Anna Mahtani on Vagueness, Natalja Deng on the Metaphysics of time). Where we have commissioned replacement articles, the original will still be available — indeed they will often make excellent companion pieces. A particular favourite of mine among the new entries is Substance by Jiri Benovsky, which reads particularly well together with Michael Ayers’s original entry on Substance from the very first (print) edition of REP.
REP is constantly evolving, as indeed it has to if it is to maintain its role as giving students and other readers a clear and concise guide through the perpetually changing landscape of philosophy. There are many online resources in philosophy these days, many of them excellent, but REP aims to provide properly encyclopaedic coverage — not just in being as exhaustive as possible, but also in being concise, an important function of an encyclopaedia. This is why the role of our Subject Editors and our copy editors is so important.
I myself will be stepping down as General Editor of REP because of the pressure of other commitments. I will be continuing as a Consultant Editor, and Routledge will shortly announce its plans for the General Editorship. It has been a pleasure to continue the great work started by Routledge and Edward Craig in the 1990s, and I look forward to following REP’s progress.
Tim Crane
December 2018