Back in 2001, it was philosophos.com. Then, after the person who lent me the 'dotcom' address took it back, it became philosophos.org.
It is now hosted permanently on the SDF site at http://philosophos.sdf.org.
The jewel of this collection of pages is Dr Anthony Harrison-Barbet's Philosophical Connections, a unique hyperlinked history of philosophy covering over a hundred philosophers from the ancient Greeks to the 20th century.
This is what I wrote in my Foreword to the online edition:
"In 1998 , a team of philosophy graduates from Trinity College Dublin had the idea of compiling a series of Profiles of major Western philosophers. In the words of Dr Anthony Harrison-Barbet – author of Mastering Philosophy (2nd Edition Palgrave 2001) in the Pathways Book List – 'This would be a unique and new venture in that the ideas and themes of each philosopher would be colour-coded and linked so as to show the influences on their thought over the years.'
"At the suggestion of Dr Harrison-Barbet, the work was put onto CD-ROM as an e-text so that the connections could be converted into hyperlinks. There are 126 profiles, and some 20,000 links, summaries of the philosophies, individual biographies and book-lists, and a full hyperlinked bibliography at the end. In all the project adds up to nearly 900 A4 pages. The Senior Editorial Advisor is Professor J.C.A. Gaskin.
"The project was never published. The unusual format proved difficult to sell to publishers, and the group lacked the resources and marketing expertise to publish the CD-ROM themselves. I first heard about the project in September 2008, when I received an email out of the blue from Dr Harrison-Barbet offering to make the material available to students at the Pathways School of Philosophy as well as visitors to the Pathways websites.
"I was intrigued. When I started to explore the CD-ROM, however, it became clear that in terms of quality and coverage of individual philosophers this work ranks alongside the Philosophical Encyclopaedias from Stanford, Routledge, Oxford or Cambridge.
"At over 350,000 words, Philosophical Connections is not only a valuable study aid but a significant contribution to the study of the history of philosophy. This work has to my knowledge never before been attempted on such a large and intricate scale.
"A beginner's first impressions of the e-text are somewhat daunting. However, with the help of author's How to use the profiles, one soon gets the hang of the unique scheme of interconnecting links. The information is incredibly condensed. One could write a paper about each line on each of the many tables of interconnections, or spend hours searching on the internet to find the same information..."
Also on the PhiloSophos site:
- Electronic Philosopher 1,000 essay reviews written between 2001 and 2011
- Philosophy Lovers Gallery with over 50 personal profiles of our friends around the world
- Selected articles from Philosophy Pathways e-journal
- University of London International Programme for Diploma and BA (Hons) in Philosophy
Why not take a look?
