No, it's not a substitute - it's an aggregation, or survey if you will. At 11 volumes, it's still quite lengthy. Telling someone to read everything ever written

No, it's not a substitute - it's an aggregation, or survey if you will. At 11 volumes, it's still quite lengthy. Telling someone to read everything ever written by an author mentioned in Copleston is on the order of casually suggesting they get a Ph. D - it's an insane amount of work. And of course it ignores non-western philosophical thought: it's right in the title. You wouldn't get up in arms over a jQuery book completely ignoring C++ calling conventions.