About Department of Philosophy
Department of philosophy, Panjab University, Chandigarh has been providing a university base in the City beautiful to the cultural, social and religious heritage of Indian civilization to humanize and enrich the modern notion of .progress. and to enable it to promote, rather than to supplant, Indian cultural and philosophical identity. To respond to the challenges of our global times, the department has initiated the need for a process of convergent research. This has come from the faculty as they generate a philosophical insight in facing the deepest human aspirations and problems. Accordingly, the department has been successfully organizing national and regional seminars pertaining to community values, intercultural cooperation, and the philosophy of consciousness during the past years. In sum, the achievements of the philosophy department can be summed up under three headlines:
- Epistemology: Ways of thinking
Modern philosophy was initiated in a rupture from earlier thought. This created an empty space reserved exclusively for clear and distinct ideas. These were joined in the rigorously deductive process of objective thinking essential to science. Hence, keeping in view of the ways of thinking, the department conducted various seminars, symposia and conferences on epistemological issues.
- Ethics and Social Philosophy
The development of social life in our times expands the agenda of ethics, which Aristotle situated within politics. It points to the importance of personal probity and commitment to the values of justice and equality. Hence, a major challenge for ethics for public life today is to change the image of public administration from the horizon of personal enrichment to that of public service. This requires re-conceiving the relation of the person to society; at base it is the fundamental ethical issue of transcending egoism.
- Aesthetics and Religion
The aesthetic and religious aspects provide the integrating synthetic categories for situating each diverse element within a whole that is humane and humanizing which can respect freedom and unite its results in a work of beauty as well as inspire competition with congruence and find the proper role for diversity within the global whole. Accordingly, the faculty in the department has produced articles of international repute in the fields of aesthetics and philosophy of religion, which were published in national and international journals of repute.
