Given how obscure this book is and the neglect of Asian philosophy in general I don't think anyone or much people will ever see this review. I guess this review might be more for me than anyone else and I like reviewing books with no to little prior reviews so here I go. Eastern or Asian philosophy is a area of study that is greatly ignored or given a small space in most books. It's a combination of scholars not getting paid well and the ignorance of most people. Two things that are highly upsetting to this reviewer. This one massive volume written by over 50 scholars attempts to remedy that problem. It's rather exhaustive because it includes Persian (Pre-Islamic and Zoroastrian), Indian, Buddhist, Chinese, Japanese and Islamic philosophy in a chronological and categorized order. Each chapter ends with a useful bibliography for further study. This is also the only place one can find extensive information on Zoroastrian philosophy from antiquty to today.
What I found lacking though was how the book was categorized. Some sections are devoted to religions while others to geographical areas. This is inconsistent and rather confusing at times. It also leads to the next flaw. Despite it's size, this book lacks so many things. Little coverage of Korean, Central Asian, Mongolian or Southeast Asian philosophies. Little to no coverage of some religions. Little to no mention of Jainism, Manichaeism, Sikhism and much more. So this leaves one with the notion that although this book is giant it actually contains little.
So I found this book to be disappointedly average or a bit better than average in both scope and consistency. It's a thick book but has a underwhelming amount of information that much thinner books cover better. The bright spots are the extensive sections on Zoroastrian and Japanese philosophy which are topics rarely detailed in other works similar to this one. I recommend this book to scholars, students and even interested general readers if they need a good one volume overview of Asian philosophy. However, I would recommend more (specialized) books to supplement this one.
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Recensioni clienti
3 su 5
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ZAI-NOX
3.5 Stars. Great and diverse coverage though what the book leaves out is not so great.
Recensito negli Stati Uniti il 29 settembre 2018