Good survey of contemporary philosophical issues

[marksealey]

Hello! New to the forum…

May I ask for advice, please: which single volume have you found to be the most comprehensive/reliable/thorough survey of contemporary philosophical thought and issues?

By contemporary, I mean since, say, 1945/(second half of) C20th.

Am not looking (necessarily) for a history.

Rather a discussion/guide/outline to the issues; who thinks and writes/says what; why; and the reception/development of (those) ideas.

Am currently considering these two:

The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy (ISBN-10: 0199234760 ISBN-13: 978-0199234769)

vs

Contemporary Philosophy: Philosophy in English since 1945 (ISBN-10: 0192892584 ISBN-13: 978-0192892584)

Any preferences and/or alternatives, please?

Thanks so much!

[The Voice of Time]

I think that generally there are a lot of different simultaneous movements of philosophy in the world. And then there are differences between Professional (and professional from world-region to world-region, like it means different things from Asia to Europe or Africa) and more non-academic philosophy movements.

You would need a shitty big book to get a good list, not that I know if such a list even exists. Also there are people who uses words like "contemporary" to go back all the way to the Vienna Circle and the guys of the early last century, maybe even as far back as Heidegger.

I know very little about contemporary philosophy to be honest, because I'm not quite sure if there is any such thing even. Well. Feminism is still very strong, that I know. Besides that, I really think people are just arguing the same things over and over again. I don't really think there is any such thing as "contemporary", but I think there are limited occurences of "fashion", that suddenly people talk about something a lot. However, when you look at what people discuss of stuff related to philosophy these days, it seems to just be a recap of what people discussed decades ago, or hundreds of years, or even thousands. People are still writing and "discovering" Eastern philosophy... they are still discussing how much can really be understood from the writings of people like Wittgenstein... and they are still fighting fiercely as a loosely definable collection of postmodernists and feminists...

There are however people writing about every philosopher and every epoche, so "contemporary" is hard to define. What defines our society, however, I think, is an expanding awareness of the philosophers prior to the emergence of popular culture, from existentialists to structuralists to analyticists to Nietzschians to sigmund freud and phenomenologicians. Those groups I mentioned there, are still felt throughout our society, and people who got inspired by them are carrying them further to inspire others, and we are experiencing now the after-effects of generations of people inspired by their side-mate until now we can hardly trace the ideas, but, as is the task of disciplines such as "idea history", you'll see the pattern of how things have been rolling.

[marksealey]

Thanks, The Voice of Time!

Sorry if I wasn't clear: I'm looking for advice from anyone who's read, or is familiar with, those two titles - and/or others.

Which gives a good, written comprehensive description/survey of what the main issues and research are across the board in Western philosophy in the last 50 years… the main trends, debates, areas of research etc.

Thanks!