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School · 1947 CE–present

Contemporary philosophy

Contemporary philosophy is late twentieth- and twenty-first-century debates across analytic, continental, feminist, decolonial, and other traditions.

Shared questions

  • Which inherited philosophical methods remain adequate to present social, scientific, and political problems?

Internal disagreements

  • Whether philosophy should prioritize conceptual analysis, historical critique, lived experience, public intervention, or interdisciplinary research.

Key texts

  • A Theory of Justice · 1971 — Rawls's book set the agenda that much later political philosophy in this period argues with.
  • Women and Human Development · 2000 — Nussbaum's statement of the capabilities approach in the form of a list of central capabilities.