ABSTRACT

By “recent philosophy” is here meant philosophy since roughly 1945. Some of the most significant figures of this period have already been looked at in some detail in earlier chapters. There will be no attempt here to discern the detail of trends or tendencies in recent philosophy; but it can at least be said that recent philosophy is extremely diverse in its interests and approaches. So in covering the period from 1945 to the present day in a single chapter I will cite some of the more prominent names and state briefly what they stand for. There is, no doubt, room for disagreement over which figures should be selected and which omitted; there is no question of this choice being definitive. The people mentioned are discussed in chronological order according to their date of birth, and main works by the philosophers mentioned are given in the bibliography.