Optional Theme: Philosophy and Contemporary Society
What is tested
This theme asks you to bring philosophical analysis to bear on present-day institutions, technologies and practices. Questions are contemporary in content but demand the same argumentative rigour; vague commentary about "modern life" scores poorly.
Core concepts
- Power and surveillance: Foucault's panopticon and disciplinary power; Zuboff's surveillance capitalism; Arendt on the public realm.
- Justice: Rawls's veil of ignorance and difference principle; Nozick's entitlement theory; Sen's and Nussbaum's capabilities approach.
- Liberty and speech: Mill's harm principle; Berlin's negative and positive liberty; the tyranny of the majority.
- Human rights and migration: Arendt's "right to have rights"; statelessness.
- Technology and the body: enhancement (Sandel's critique), automation and work, algorithmic decision-making, AI and responsibility.
- Environment: Jonas's imperative of responsibility; climate justice.
Worked example
"Social media undermines autonomy." Reasoning: Foucault's account of disciplinary power suggests visibility produces self-surveillance, so users internalise the gaze of the feed and adjust their behaviour without coercion. Objection: users retain agency and can resist, and the panopticon analogy overstates total visibility. Refine the claim: autonomy is not eliminated but channelled by recommendation algorithms whose opacity prevents informed consent. Test against a concrete case-algorithmic amplification of outrage-then conclude with the qualified thesis.
Traps
Writing a current-affairs report; using a philosopher as a slogan; ignoring empirical plausibility of the claim you attribute to a mechanism; failing to state what "society" or "autonomy" means in your argument.