Why do philosophy?

BA Philosophy gives you the space and the tools to find your answers to the big questions. You will be given the opportunity to grow mentally and emotionally, to encounter other ways of looking at the world, and to work with a wide range of people you wouldn't have otherwise had the chance to meet.

For most of us, a degree has to also be a good route to a job. Thankfully, a good BA Philosophy degree is one of the best ways to prepare for the workplace. That's not because employers particularly care whether you have discovered the meaning of life, but because it prepares you with the capabilities you will need in a wide range of jobs.

The BA Philosophy course at APU was designed in close consultation with more than 20 employers, from journalists to civil service officers, to heads of NGOs. The course aims to prepare people with the capabilities most sought out by employers, and which will place you as a prized potential employee.

1. The philosophy major aims to prepare students to become active and self-directed learners. It aims at developing capabilities in students (described below) that will enable them to flourish both personally and socially, while making meaningful contributions to society. It seeks to equip students to make sense of their lived experience. Furthermore, it provides students with practice in applying their capabilities both to contribute to society and to enhance their interpersonal relationships.

2. The philosophy major aims to contribute to building a diverse student community at the University. As the discipline of philosophy is new to almost all students, and because the philosophy major has been in a way which requires a minimum of cultural capital, we aim to moderate the influence of class, caste, region, language and disability on access and outcomes, though we do not expect to eliminate it.

3. The philosophy major aims to equip students with strong reasoning skills coupled with an ethical foundation that allows them to tackle the widespread challenges of representation and exclusion. The philosophy major will enable the students to engage these challenges at a more foundational level while at the same time viewing the interconnections between them.

1. The capability to reason rigorously, especially about normative issues. The conception of reasoning stressed at Azim Premji University goes beyond a traditional Enlightenment conception, for example by including appropriate affective responses .

2. The capability to communicate with precision and charity. The philosophy major aims to enable students to draw subtle distinctions concerning complex issues, see the logical relations between these distinctions, and work out how they make a difference in the world. Moreover, students are enabled to do so through working with others.

3. The capability to find creative solutions for complex problems by drawing on different sources. The philosophy major aims to teach students to identify and explore areas of logical space which have not hitherto been explored. Creative work, at least in the sense of being the students’ own idea, is a central part of philosophical work from the very first course, and students will be enabled to combine this with rigorous assessment of their own solutions and comparison with alternative solutions.

4. The capability to critically engage with complex texts from philosophy, science, economics, history and other disciplines relevant to public service. Since philosophy engages closely with an especially wide range of disciplines and domains both within and outside academia, the philosophy major will give students the opportunity to become familiar with working in multiple different areas and engaging closely with texts from those areas.

5. The capability to build and sustain relationships with people from different backgrounds. This goal is derived from the goals of the undergraduate program in general yet receives special emphasis in the philosophy major. Through seminars, field trips and other discussions students are enabled not only to understand those with different backgrounds, ideologies and conceptions of the world, but also to work alongside them, coming together to solve problems and arrive at a shared understanding of the world.

6. The capability to apply their philosophical capabilities and ideas to new problems and practical contexts.