Moral Thinkers and Philosophers: India and the World

What the official syllabus says

UPPCS Main Examination, General Studies IV:

Contributions of moral thinkers and philosophers from India and world.

Topics in detail

Ancient Indian thought

• Vedic and Upanishadic ideas: rta, satya, dharma; the unity of all beings.
• The Bhagavad Gita: nishkama karma (action without attachment to its fruits), svadharma, the sthitaprajna (person of steady wisdom).
• Buddhism: the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, the middle path; karuna (compassion) and maitri (friendliness).
• Jainism: ahimsa, satya, aparigraha, anekantavada; the three jewels (right faith, right knowledge, right conduct).
• Kautilya: rajadharma, yogakshema (welfare and security of the people), duties of officials, ways officials misappropriate revenue.
• Thiruvalluvar's Tirukkural: virtue, wealth and love; ethics of rulers and citizens.

Medieval Indian thought

• Kabir: oneness of God, equality, criticism of ritual and hypocrisy.
• Guru Nanak: naam japo, kirat karo, vand chhako (remember God, earn honestly, share with others); equality of all.
• Guru Ravidas: the vision of Begumpura, a city without sorrow or discrimination.
• Tulsidas: the ideal of Ram Rajya as just and caring rule.
• Basavanna: dignity of labour (kayaka) and social equality.

Modern Indian thought

• Swami Vivekananda: practical Vedanta, service of daridra narayana (God in the poor).
• Rabindranath Tagore: humanism, freedom, critique of narrow nationalism.
• Sri Aurobindo: integral development of the individual.
• Mahatma Gandhi: truth and non-violence, satyagraha, sarvodaya, trusteeship, swadeshi, purity of means; the seven social sins (politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice).
• Dr B. R. Ambedkar: liberty, equality and fraternity together; constitutional morality; social democracy as the base of political democracy.
• Vinoba Bhave: Bhoodan and Sarvodaya.
• Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya: integral humanism and antyodaya.
• Amartya Sen: development as freedom; the capability approach.

Ancient and classical thinkers of the world

• Confucius: ren (humaneness), li (proper conduct), the junzi (exemplary person); government by virtue.
• Laozi: simplicity, humility and harmony with the Tao.
• Socrates: virtue is knowledge; the examined life.
• Plato: the four cardinal virtues (wisdom, courage, temperance, justice); justice in the soul and the State; the philosopher-ruler.
• Aristotle: virtue ethics, eudaimonia (flourishing), the golden mean, practical wisdom.
• The Stoics: control of passions, duty, acceptance of what cannot be changed.

Modern Western thinkers

• Niccolo Machiavelli: politics and morality separated; the debate over ends and means.
• Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau: the social contract and the basis of political obligation.
• Immanuel Kant: good will, duty, the categorical imperative; treating humanity always as an end and never merely as a means.
• Jeremy Bentham: utilitarianism, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, the felicific calculus.
• John Stuart Mill: higher and lower pleasures; the harm principle and liberty of thought.
• John Rawls: justice as fairness, the original position and the veil of ignorance, the difference principle.
• Hannah Arendt: the banality of evil and the duty to think for oneself.
• Carol Gilligan: the ethics of care.
• Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela: non-violent resistance and reconciliation.

Thinkers and what they offer a public servant

Overlaps

• The normative approaches (virtue, duty, consequences) are introduced in Ethics and Human Interface.
• The lives of leaders and reformers are in Human Values.
• These thinkers are useful material for UPPCS Mains: Essay.