Philosophy
What the exam expects
Philosophy questions test the ability to problematise, argue and conclude, not to recite doctrine. Candidates must know the major branches (metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, logic), the canonical problems (freedom and determinism, knowledge and opinion, truth, justice, the state, work, technology, culture, the Other), and representative thinkers with their positions: Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Sartre, Arendt, and African philosophers such as Placide Tempels, Alexis Kagame, Kwame Gyekye, Paulin Hountondji and Henry Odera Oruka.
Traps that recur
- Replacing argument with biography: telling Kant's life instead of reconstructing his argument.
- Confusing the dissertation (a problem to be resolved) with the commentaire de texte (an argument to be reconstructed).
- Confusing determinism (everything has a cause) with fatalism (outcomes are fixed in advance regardless of action).
- Treating "African philosophy" as folklore rather than as a contested field with a real debate (ethnophilosophy versus critical philosophy).
- Concluding with a summary instead of a position.
Rule of thumb
Build the dissertation on a three-moment movement: thesis (common opinion), antithesis (objection that breaks it), synthesis (a refined position). Every paragraph must contain a claim, a reason and an example.
Worked example
"Is freedom the absence of constraint?" Thesis: yes, freedom as non-interference. Antithesis: internal constraints (passions, ignorance) also enslave, so absence of external constraint is insufficient. Synthesis: freedom is autonomy - the capacity to give oneself a law and act on reasons. This movement produces a problem, not a catalogue.