If he had made the range the last 100 years, I would have said Being and Time by Martin Heidegger, with a close second held by the works of Carl Gustav Jung, particularly Memories, Dreams and Reflections, even though he is considered to be a psychologist.
But since it is the last 50 years under consideration, I need to go with Richard Rorty's Contingency, Irony and Solidarity. In a stroke of genius comparable to Einstein's realization that he needed to undo the very foundations of the science of his time, Rorty deconstructs our notions of "truth."
First, he shows that language is contingent rather than absolute, even though we hold it to be absolute when we ask one another whether something said is "true." He contends that within a limited framework such as mathematics statements can be determined to be true or false; but that this does not extend to assertions about reality. He shows further how certain philosophical inquiries create mischief by creating scales on which we can weigh others and determine them to be less valid than ourselves.
Second, he defines what it is to be an ironist:
Finally he examines Solidarity which is the term he uses to describe Us vs Them thinking as a justification for cruelty.(1) She has radical and continuing doubts about the final vocabulary she currently uses, because she has been impressed by other vocabularies, vocabularies taken as final by people or books she has encountered; (2) she realizes that argument phrased in her present vocabulary can neither underwrite nor dissolve these doubts; (3) insofar as she philosophizes about her situation, she does not think that her vocabulary is closer to reality than others, that it is in touch with a power not herself.
– Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, p.73
It's just my opinion, but there you are. the best book on philosophy written in the last 50 years.
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