Streams

Each student will choose a stream with 4 courses each in a discipline outside philosophy. This serves three key purposes:

  1. Students will learn to apply their philosophical capabilities to an area outside philosophy

  2. These areas are chosen in a way to further equip students with capabilities commensurate with the aims of the major, enabling them to take up a broad range of work in public service and beyond.

  3. This breadth also serves the personal development of students.

The Education Stream

Human Nature & Epistemology

This course introduces students to the nature of human beings and the nature of knowledge. With this background, students will draw out the implications for pedagogy. Some of the questions that will be explored here include: What is the relation between knowing that something is true, and knowing how it is true? What is the role of implicit knowledge?

Introduction to philosophy of education 1 & 2

In these courses, the students will engage with the core theories and texts within philosophy of education. They will also partake in intensive fieldwork. These courses will be developed from the current ‘Introduction to philosophy of education’ course.

Indian perspectives on knowledge and education

This course will examine Indian theories of human nature, knowledge and education. It will draw out consequences for what we should teach and examine Indian-based 'alternative' approaches to teaching in the light of these theories. The major aim is to train students to combine ideas from different traditions. In this case we think that it will be more helpful to teach the Indian and analytic approaches to philosophy separately.

The ECONOMICS Stream

Introduction to economics 1 & 2

At Azim Premji University, these courses are taught using the CORE curriculum. This is especially useful for philosophers, since it takes into account a close examination of economic methodology and the normative presuppositions of economic techniques. It is also less focused on mere derivation of results, and more closely applied to the world. Thus, these courses especially well serve the aims of the major. Students who have done philosophy and economics courses have almost always found that the reasoning style taught in one course helps in the other. These are prerequisites for doing other economics courses.

Political economy

This course covers a range of approaches to economics outside the standard Keynesian and Neo-classical approaches. It also forms a vital part of economics at Azim Premji University, and like the introductory courses is unusually and closely aligned with philosophy.

Economics and ethics

This course focuses on whether we can have a viable positive economics, and what economists should do if we cannot. Thus, this will complement the philosophy of measurement and philosophy of science courses from the core philosophy courses.