Courtesy Sakshi.
Her Philosophy Strategy:
Classes- Dr.Ambuj Srivastava (VVR institute)
Test series- VVR.
Marks- 210(2014), 262(2016), 285(2017)
Books
- Paper 1 Indian philosophy– Datta & Chatterjee, VVR notes.
- Western Philosophy– Y. Masih,VVR notes.
- Paper 2 Socio-political philosophy– O.P Gauba, VVR notes.
- Philosophy of Religion– VVR notes, Y. Masih.
The syllabus of philosophy isn’t enormous, however a basic understanding of all topics needs a good amount of time. In my first attempt, I had been told to write everything related to a particular topic for the questions. Doing that did not work in my favour as it fetched me only 90 marks in paper 1 in 2014. To tackle the questions, one needs to have a clear understanding of different theories, in order to deliver only what is asked.
Join Decode Civils Telegram Group For Free UPSC CSE Guidance From Mudit Jain, IRS CSE 2017 (Ex-IPS CSE 2014 & 2015), Author of Decode GS-2, Decode Ethics and Decode History Books
You can reach me at Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and Telegram.
Paper 1
When I started preparing the subject, I focused on one thinker at a time. I prepared comprehensive notes from the books mentioned above and the class notes. After revising my notes, I went through the previous years’ question papers and did answer writing related to the thinker. I maintained these answers in a different notebook and revised them thoroughly.
Understanding the different concepts and theories is extremely important to be able to make comparisons between thinkers too. Eg – Carvaka and Hume.
Use of sutras in Indian philosophy will fetch you more marks. Maintain a list of all sutras and memorise them often.
Paper 2
Do not ignore this section. I went through O.P Gauba and class notes for socio-political philosophy. I referred to the Class notes and Y.Masih for Philosophy of religion.
I did a lot of answer writing for this section from previous year question papers as well as VVR test papers.
Test series
VVR tests series is known for sir’s strict marking, which is the reason many candidates quit. However, the same marking pattern was one of the reasons that helped me increase my score. So don’t get discouraged if you aren’t scoring as per your expectations, in the long run, it would certainly help in refining your approach.
Answer writing strategy
- Brief introduction
- Define the keywords in the question
- Use of Sutras related to the topic
- Conclusion
Sample answers
ATB!!!
Leave a Reply