History of Philosophy Compressed

You'd like to understand the philosophy underneath modern arguments without wading through a reading list of dead men. This skips the names and gives you the five ideas or tensions that keep resurfacing in how we argue about ethics, politics, science and meaning, each in plain language, where it shows up now, and which one matters most.

Give me the 20 percent of Western philosophy that most shapes how educated people think and argue today, even without realising it. Do not give me a list of philosophers. Give me the five ideas or tensions in philosophy that keep recurring in how we argue about ethics, politics, science, and meaning. Explain each one in plain language, say where it shows up in modern life, and tell me which of them you think is most misunderstood by non-philosophers.