Here’s a compact, no-nonsense field guide you can actually use. Skim the cheat-sheet first, then pick a reading track.

The map (what counts as “modern” vs “contemporary”)

• Modern philosophy: ~1600–1900. Birth of the scientific worldview, new theories of knowledge, mind, ethics, and the state.
• Contemporary philosophy: ~1900–today. Professionalized universities, specialization, global voices, and two loose styles: analytic (clarity, logic, argument) and continental (history, culture, experience, critique). Lots of cross-pollination now.

Big questions you’ll see (repeat across eras)

• Knowledge & science: What can we know? (skepticism, evidence, induction, realism vs anti-realism)
• Mind & language: What is consciousness? How do words mean? (intentionality, reference, qualia, AI)
• Metaphysics & logic: What exists and how? (time, causation, modality, identity, truth)
• Ethics: What should we do? (consequences, duties, character, care, virtue, moral psychology)
• Politics & society: What do we owe each other? (rights, contracts, power, recognition, equality, race, gender)
• Culture & interpretation: How do history, narrative, and symbols shape experience? (phenomenology, hermeneutics, genealogy)
• Applied: Tech/AI, bioethics, environment, global justice, decolonial thought.

Modern philosophy — key arcs & figures

• Rationalism: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz (reason as primary; clear and distinct ideas; system-building).
• Empiricism: Locke, Berkeley, Hume (experience as primary; ideas, perception, skepticism about causation).
• Kant: Synthesizes the two; categories of the mind structure experience; autonomy in ethics.
• German Idealism: Fichte, Schelling, Hegel (self, freedom, and history; the social mind).
• Social contract & liberty: Hobbes (authority), Locke (rights), Rousseau (general will), Mill (harm principle).
• Utilitarianism: Bentham, Mill (maximize utility).
• Early critiques/existential roots: Kierkegaard (subjectivity, faith), Nietzsche (genealogy, will to power).
• Pragmatism (bridge to contemporary): Peirce, William James, Dewey (truth as what works in inquiry).

Contemporary philosophy — quick tour

Analytic traditions

• Logic & language: Frege, Russell, early Wittgenstein; later: ordinary-language (Austin), reference & modality (Kripke), truth/interpretation (Davidson), externalism (Putnam).
• Epistemology: The Gettier problem; reliabilism/virtue/Bayesian turns; social & formal epistemology.
• Mind: Behaviorism → identity theory → functionalism → consciousness debates (qualia, higher-order, panpsychism); philosophy of AI.
• Metaphysics: Time, causation, possible worlds (e.g., Lewis), grounding.
• Ethics: Consequentialism (e.g., Parfit), deontology (neo-Kantian), contractualism (Scanlon), virtue ethics revival (Anscombe, Foot, MacIntyre), care ethics.
• Politics: Rawls (justice as fairness), critiques & alternatives (Nozick; republicanism; capabilities: Sen, Nussbaum); race & gender (Mills, Haslanger), disability, animal ethics.
• Science: Popper (falsification), Kuhn (paradigms), Lakatos/Feyerabend; realism debates.

Continental traditions

• Phenomenology & existentialism: Husserl (structures of experience), Heidegger (being-in-the-world), Merleau-Ponty (embodiment), Sartre/Camus (freedom, absurd).
• Hermeneutics: Gadamer, Ricoeur (interpretation, tradition, narrative).
• Critical theory: Frankfurt School (Adorno, Horkheimer), Habermas (communicative reason), later critique of power/ideology.
• Structuralism & post-structuralism: Saussure, Lévi-Strauss; Foucault (power/knowledge), Derrida (deconstruction), Deleuze/Guattari (difference).
• Psychoanalytic theory: Freud, Lacan (subject, desire).
• Feminist & queer theory: de Beauvoir, Irigaray, Kristeva, Butler (gender performativity), intersectionality.

Global & decolonial currents (20th–21st c.)

• African & Afro-diasporic: Du Bois (double consciousness), Fanon (colonial subject), Wiredu, Hountondji, Achille Mbembe, Charles Mills.
• Latin American: Philosophy of liberation (Dussel), decoloniality (Quijano, Mignolo).
• South & East Asia: New Confucianism (Mou Zongsan), Kyoto School (Nishida, Nishitani), Radhakrishnan/Aurobindo; Amartya Sen.
• Islamic modernisms: Iqbal, Abduh, Arkoun.
• Indigenous philosophies: Relational ontologies, land/sovereignty, knowledge as stewardship.

Concepts you should be able to define in a sentence

• A priori / a posteriori, analytic / synthetic, foundationalism / coherentism, internalism / externalism, supervenience, realism / anti-realism, compatibilism, deontology / consequentialism / virtue ethics / care ethics, social contract, phenomenology, hermeneutics, deconstruction, speech act, reference & rigid designator, the Gettier problem, paradigm shift.

How philosophers argue (methods at a glance)

• Conceptual analysis & thought experiments: define terms, test with counterexamples (Gettier, trolley).
• Formal tools: logic, probability, decision/game theory.
• Phenomenological description: careful first-person analysis of lived experience.
• Genealogy & ideology critique: unearth historical/power conditions (Nietzsche, Foucault).
• Hermeneutics: interpret texts/contexts; fusion of horizons.
• Comparative & decolonial method: bring non-Western frameworks into equal footing.

Starter reading paths (12–15 crisp steps each)

Track A — Analytic-leaning

1. Descartes, Meditations (II, VI)
2. Hume, Enquiry (IV–V, VII)
3. Kant, Groundwork (Section I)
4. Mill, On Liberty (Ch. 2)
5. Frege, “On Sense and Reference”
6. Russell, “On Denoting”
7. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (§§1–88)
8. Gettier, “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?”
9. Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Lecture I)
10. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Sec. 1–4) & Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Ch. 7, skim)
11. Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Part I or IV)
12. Nussbaum, “Capabilities” (a survey piece)

Track B — Continental-leaning

1. Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morality (Preface & Essay I)
2. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling (Problema I)
3. Husserl, Ideas I (Intro & §27–33) or a good primer
4. Heidegger, Being and Time (Div. I, §§9–13, 29)
5. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (intro)
6. Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism
7. Gadamer, Truth and Method (intro themes)
8. Foucault, Discipline and Punish (Panopticon chapter)
9. Derrida, “Signature Event Context”
10. de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (Intro)
11. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (Ch. 5)
12. Butler, Gender Trouble (Ch. 1)

Global & critical perspectives (mix-ins)

• Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (ch. 1)
• Dussel, “The Underside of Modernity” (essay)
• Mbembe, “Necropolitics”
• Sen, “Equality of What?”
• A short Indigenous philosophy reader (e.g., Kyle Whyte on climate & kinship).

Fast-track “exam” answers (how to tackle common prompts)

• Gettier: Show JTB fails; add a fourth condition (no-defeaters, reliability) and note costs.
• Free will: Lay out hard determinism, libertarianism, compatibilism; give Frankfurt cases.
• Utilitarianism vs deontology: Conflict cases (organ transplant, trolley), talk about demandingness, side-constraints, and rule-vs-act.
• Reference: Describe descriptivism vs causal-historical; use “Gödel/Schmidt” and rigid designation.
• Kuhn vs Popper: Paradigms & incommensurability vs falsification; then note Lakatos as a mediator.
• Foucault’s power: Not just top-down; diffuse, productive; institutions produce subjects.

How to study efficiently

• Read slowly but outline arguments (premises → conclusion).
• Keep a concept notebook (1–2 sentence definitions + a canonical example).
• Pair each text with a secondary source (intro chapter or SEP article) to check your grasp.
• Use comparative questions (“What would Hume say to Kant here?”).
• Write short 1-page memos after each reading: claim, argument, objection, reply.

One-screen cheat sheet (copy this into your notes)

• Modern: Rationalism ↔ Empiricism → Kant → Idealism; liberalism/utilitarianism; early critique (Kierkegaard/Nietzsche).
• Contemporary (analytic): logic/language → Gettier → mind & modality → Rawls/Parfit → formal methods.
• Contemporary (continental): phenomenology → hermeneutics → critical theory → Foucault/Derrida → feminism/queer/postcolonial.
• Core tools: analysis, logic, phenomenology, genealogy, hermeneutics, formal methods.
• Must-know terms: a priori/a posteriori; analytic/synthetic; supervenience; rigid designation; compatibilism; deconstruction; paradigm.
• Ethics triad: outcomes (util), rules (deon), character (virtue) + care.
• Politics trio: Rawlsian justice, rights/contract, power/recognition (critical & decolonial).
• Applied frontiers: AI ethics, bioethics, climate justice, social epistemology.

If you want, I can turn this into a 6-week reading plan with page ranges and 2–3 short prompts per week.