Philosophy: Specialized Encyclopedias

Every discipline and many fields have specialized encyclopedias. Unlike Wikipedia, these encyclopedias are written, reviewed, and edited by academic experts. Consulting an encyclopedia in the early stages of your research can help you define your key terms, situate your topic in its wider scholarly context, find related fields of inquiry, and even locate seminal works of research that may be contained in the bibliographies at the end of each entry. Below is a selection of some of the key encyclopedias and dictionaries available for the study of philosophy.