Moral Thinkers and Philosophers

What the official syllabus says

Main Written Examination, Paper VI: General Studies-IV (Ethics, Integrity and Aptitude). The following broad areas will be covered:

• Contributions of moral thinkers and philosophers from India and world.

Topics in detail

The syllabus names no thinker. The list below covers the standard figures whose ideas are commonly applied to ethics and public life.

Indian traditions and texts

• Vedic and Upanishadic ideas: rta (cosmic order), dharma, satya, rina (debts), the purusharthas (dharma, artha, kama, moksha)
• Bhagavad Gita: nishkama karma (action without attachment to results), svadharma, sthitaprajna, lokasangraha (welfare of the world)
• Gautama Buddha: Four Noble Truths, Eightfold Path, the Middle Way, five precepts, compassion (karuna) and loving-kindness (maitri)
• Mahavira and Jainism: five vows (ahimsa, satya, asteya, brahmacharya, aparigraha); anekantavada
• Kautilya’s Arthashastra: duties of the king, welfare of the subjects as the king’s welfare, control of corruption among officials
• Thiruvalluvar’s Tirukkural: virtue (aram), wealth (porul), love (inbam); ethics of rulers
• Ashoka’s Dhamma: tolerance, non-violence, welfare of subjects

Medieval saints and reformers

• Basavanna: dignity of labour (Kayakave Kailasa), social equality
• Kabir: unity of God, critique of ritual and caste
• Guru Nanak: honest work (kirat karo), sharing (vand chhako), remembrance of God (naam japo); equality and langar

Modern Indian thinkers

• Raja Ram Mohan Roy: reason, women’s rights
• Swami Dayanand Saraswati: return to the Vedas, social reform, education
• Swami Vivekananda: service of man as service of God, strength and self-reliance, practical Vedanta
• Rabindranath Tagore: universal humanism, freedom of the mind
• Mahatma Gandhi: truth and non-violence, purity of means and ends, trusteeship, sarvodaya, swaraj, seven social sins, the talisman
• Dr B. R. Ambedkar: social justice, constitutional morality, dignity and equality, annihilation of caste
• Sri Aurobindo: integral yoga and the evolution of consciousness
• Sri Narayana Guru: one caste, one religion, one God for humankind
• Jawaharlal Nehru: scientific temper, secularism

Western and world thinkers: ancient to Renaissance

• Socrates: virtue is knowledge; the examined life
• Plato: the four virtues (wisdom, courage, temperance, justice); the philosopher-king
• Aristotle: virtue ethics, the golden mean, eudaimonia (flourishing)
• Confucius: ren (humaneness), li (propriety), the junzi (exemplary person), rule by virtue
• Stoics: duty, self-control, acceptance of what is outside one’s control
• Niccolò Machiavelli: The Prince and the separation of politics from morality

Western and world thinkers: modern

• Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau: social contract and legitimacy of the State
• Immanuel Kant: duty, the categorical imperative, treating persons as ends and never merely as means
• Jeremy Bentham: utilitarianism, the greatest happiness of the greatest number
• John Stuart Mill: higher and lower pleasures, liberty and the harm principle
• Friedrich Nietzsche: critique of conventional morality
• Jean-Paul Sartre: existentialism, freedom and responsibility
• John Rawls: justice as fairness, the veil of ignorance, the difference principle
• Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela: non-violent resistance, reconciliation

Applying the thinkers

• Matching a thinker to a dilemma: duty (Kant) versus consequences (Bentham, Mill) versus character (Aristotle)
• Using Gandhi’s means and ends, Kautilya on corruption or Rawls on fairness in a public policy answer
• Quoting accurately and briefly, and explaining how the idea applies

Overlaps

Indian thinkers and reformers also appear in General Studies I (modern Indian history and its personalities, the freedom struggle, and political philosophies such as communism, capitalism and socialism); the branches of ethics are introduced under Ethics and Human Interface.