IIT Madras – Humanities and Social Sciences
DEPARTMENT OF Humanities & Social Studies
Indian Institute of Technology Madras
This course aims at an understanding of the philosophical basis of the cultural history of the western world. It will see how the western philosophical tradition has evolved and emphasise metaphysical and epistemological issues and later, issues which deal with conceptual problems related to language and linguistic understanding with an examination on certain central concepts like truth, objectivity, universality etc.
The philosophical attempts in understanding human nature, life and experience – the Socratic-Platonic approaches – Cartesian Meditations – birth of modernity – the empiricist reinterpretation of epistemology – Kant’s Copernican revolution – linguistic turn and postmodern challenges to concepts like reason and truth and the major responses to these challenges.