Indian & Western philosophy, socio-political philosophy, philosophy of religion.
Five deep-dives: syllabus, booklist, paper analysis, strategy, PYQ trends (2021–2025).
Five long-form articles. Read in order or jump to what you need.
The official Philosophy syllabus decoded topic by topic — what each line really means, how UPSC asks it, and where to draw the boundaries of your preparation.
The exact reading order topppers follow for Philosophy — NCERT base, core standard books, supplementary reference, notes strategy and what to skip.
A paper-pattern analysis of Philosophy — question structure, sectional weightage, marks distribution, difficulty trends and recurring themes over the last 5 years.
A realistic month-wise preparation strategy for Philosophy — reading, notes, answer writing, revision and mock tests, with time allocations by topic.
Year-by-year analysis of Philosophy Mains PYQs from 2021-2025 — topic distribution, repeated themes, difficulty shift and what it signals for the next cycle.
96 questions across 6 years, taken from the official papers. Every one has its own page with the directive word, marks, word limit and evaluation rubric.
Arguments for God's existence and theodicy · Advaita, Buddhism and Jain philosophy · Analytic Philosophy - Strawson, Russell, Wittgenstein · Analytic Philosophy - Wittgenstein, Logical Positivism, Moore · Analytic philosophy and ordinary language · Arguments for God, Jainism and Advaita Vedanta · Aristotle vs Plato, capital punishment, economic development and social progress · Buddhism, revelation, ontological argument
discuss (40) · critically examine (13) · explain (13) · critically discuss (8) · evaluate (6) — see the directive words guide for how each one changes the answer you should write.
96 questions at 50 marks
Browse all 96 Philosophy previous year questions →Write an answer, upload it, and our evaluator scores it on content, structure, examples and directive-word fidelity — trained on UPSC-style marking.
Try it on your own answer
Paste or photograph a Mains answer and get marks, gaps and a model answer. 5 free a month.
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