Philosophy, politics and economics

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See also: Philosophy and economics

Philosophy, politics and economics, or politics, philosophy and economics (PPE), is an interdisciplinary undergraduate or postgraduate degree which combines study from three disciplines. The first institution to offer degrees in PPE was the University of Oxford in the 1920s.

This particular course has produced a significant number of notable graduates such as Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese politician and State Counsellor of Myanmar, Nobel Peace Prize winner; Princess Haya bint Hussein, daughter of the late King Hussein of Jordan; Christopher Hitchens, the British–American author and journalist;[1][2] Will Self, British author and journalist;[3][4] Oscar-winning writer and director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck; Philippa Foot and Michael Dummett, philosophers; Harold Wilson, Edward Heath, David Cameron, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak,[5] Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom; Hugh Gaitskell, Michael Foot, William Hague and Ed Miliband, former Leaders of the Opposition; former Prime Ministers of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto and Imran Khan; and Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke and Tony Abbott, former Prime Ministers of Australia.[6][7] The course received fresh attention in 2017, when Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai earned a place.[8][9]

In the 1980s, the University of York went on to establish its own PPE degree based upon the Oxford model; King's College London, the University of Warwick, the University of Manchester, and other British universities later followed. According to the BBC, the Oxford PPE "dominate[s] public life" (in the UK).[10] It is now offered at several other leading colleges and universities around the world. More recently Warwick University and King’s College added a new degree under the name of PPL (Politics, Philosophy and Law) with the aim to bring an alternative to the more classical PPE degrees.

In the United States, it is offered by over 50 colleges and universities, including three Ivy League schools and a large number of public universities.[11] Harvard University began offering a similar degree in Social Studies in 1960, which combines politics, philosophy, and economics with history and sociology.[citation needed] In 2020, in addition to its undergraduate degree programs in PPE, Virginia Tech joined the Chapman University's Smith Institute as among the first research centers in the world dedicated to interdisciplinary research in PPE.[12][13] Several PPE programs exist in Canada, most notably the first endowed school in the nation – the Frank McKenna School of Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Mount Allison University.[14] In Asia, Tsinghua University, Waseda University, NUS, Tel-Aviv University and Ashoka University are among those that have PPE or similar programs.[15][16][17][18][19]

History[edit]

Philosophy, politics and economics was established as a degree course at the University of Oxford in the 1920s,[20] as a modern alternative to classics (known as "literae humaniores" or "greats" at Oxford) because it was thought as a more modern alternative for those entering the civil service. It was thus initially known as "modern greats".[10][21] The first PPE students commenced their course in the autumn of 1921.[7] The regulation by which it was established is Statt. Tit. VI. Sect. 1 C; "the subject of the Honour School of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics shall be the study of the structure, and the philosophical and economic principles, of Modern Society."[22] Initially it was compulsory to study all three subjects for all three years of the course, but in 1970 this requirement was relaxed, and since then students have been able to drop one subject after the first year – most do this, but a minority continue with all three.[7]

During the 1960s some students started to critique the course from a left-wing perspective, culminating in the publication of a pamphlet, The Poverty of PPE, in 1968, written by Trevor Pateman, who argued that it "gives no training in scholarship, only refining to a high degree of perfection the ability to write short dilettantish essays on the basis of very little knowledge: ideal training for the social engineer". The pamphlet advocated incorporating the study of sociology, anthropology and art, and to take on the aim of "assist(ing) the radicalisation and mobilisation of political opinion outside the university". In response, some minor changes were made, with influential leftist writers such as Frantz Fanon and Régis Debray being added to politics reading lists, but the core of the programme remained the same.[7][23]

Christopher Stray has pointed to the course as one reason for the gradual decline of the study of classics, as classicists in political life began to be edged out by those who had studied the modern greats.[24]

Political theorists Dario Castiglione and Iain Hampsher-Monk have described the course as being fundamental to the development of political thought in the UK since it established a connection between politics and philosophy. Previously at Oxford, and for some time subsequently at Cambridge, politics had been taught only as a branch of modern history.[25]

Course material[edit]

The programme is rooted in the view that to understand social phenomena one must approach them from several complementary disciplinary directions and analytical frameworks. In this regard, the study of philosophy is considered important because it both equips students with meta-tools such as the ability to reason rigorously and logically, and facilitates ethical reflection. The study of politics is considered necessary because it acquaints students with the institutions that govern society and help solve collective action problems. Finally, studying economics is seen as vital in the modern world because political decisions often concern economic matters, and government decisions are often influenced by economic events. The vast majority of students at Oxford drop one of the three subjects for the second and third years of their course. Oxford now has more than 600 undergraduates studying the subject, admitting over 200 each year.[26]

Academic opinions[edit]

Oxford PPE graduate Nick Cohen and former tutor Iain McLean consider the course's breadth important to its appeal, especially "because British society values generalists over specialists". Academic and Labour peer Maurice Glasman noted that "PPE combines the status of an elite university degree – PPE is the ultimate form of being good at school – with the stamp of a vocational course. It is perfect training for cabinet membership, and it gives you a view of life". However, he also noted that it had an orientation towards consensus politics and technocracy.[7]

Geoffrey Evans, an Oxford fellow in politics and a senior tutor, critiques that the Oxford course's success and consequent over-demand is a self-perpetuating feature of those in front of and behind the scenes in national administration, in stating "all in all, it's how the class system works". In the current economic system, he bemoans the unavoidable inequalities besetting admissions and thereby enviable recruitment prospects of successful graduates. The argument itself intended as a paternalistic ethical reflection on how governments and peoples can perpetuate social stratification.[10]

Stewart Wood, a former adviser to Ed Miliband who studied PPE at Oxford in the 1980s and taught politics there in the 1990s and 2000s, acknowledged that the programme has been slow to catch up with contemporary political developments, saying that "it does still feel like a course for people who are going to run the Raj in 1936... In the politics part of PPE, you can go three years without discussing a single contemporary public policy issue". He also stated that the structure of the course gave it a centrist bias, due to the range of material covered: "...most students think, mistakenly, that the only way to do it justice is to take a centre position".[7]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ 'Hitchens, Christopher Eric', Who's Who; 2012, A & C Black, 2012; online edn, Oxford University Press, December 2012 ; online edn, January 2012 accessed 5 December 2014
  2. ^ "Christopher Hitchens - On C-SPAN discussing his book 'For the Sake of Argument'[1993]". C-SPAN. Archived from the original on 17 May 2013.
  3. ^ Self, Will (31 July 2022). "PPE has produced a Pernicious Political Ethics - and me". The Times. Retrieved 29 November 2022.
  4. ^ Self, Will (1 November 2009). "My other life: Will Self". The Guardian. Retrieved 29 November 2022.
  5. ^ Roy, Amit (25 October 2022). "Murthy son-in-law gets Hague's seat". The Telegraph. Retrieved 25 October 2022.
  6. ^ Kenny, Mark (25 November 2013). "Tony Abbott's Oxford transcript released". Sydney Morning Herald.
  7. ^ a b c d e f Beckett, Andy (23 February 2017). "PPE: the Oxford degree that runs Britain". theguardian.com. Retrieved 23 February 2017.
  8. ^ "A level results: Malala Yousafzai gets a place at Oxford". BBC News. Retrieved 17 August 2017.
  9. ^ "Malala Yousafzai gets into Oxford to study PPE after collecting A Level results". Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 12 January 2022. Retrieved 18 August 2017.
  10. ^ a b c Kelly, Jon (31 August 2010). "Why does PPE rule Britain?". BBC News. Retrieved 2 September 2010.
  11. ^ "Major/Minor". Department of Government. 7 March 2014. Retrieved 2 January 2021.
  12. ^ "Virginia Tech Announces Center for PPE". 7 October 2020.
  13. ^ "New center for philosophy, politics, and economics named for Virginia Tech alumnus". www.vtnews.vt.edu. Archived from the original on 4 May 2021. Retrieved 10 December 2020.
  14. ^ "The Frank McKenna School of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics announced at Mount Allison University | Mount Allison". mta.ca. Retrieved 10 November 2021.
  15. ^ "跨学科交叉专业-新雅书院".
  16. ^ "Degrees". School of Political Science and Economics, Waseda University. Retrieved 7 December 2022.
  17. ^ "Discover PPE – NUS Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences". Archived from the original on 27 August 2021.
  18. ^ "הרציונל של התכנית".
  19. ^ "Politics, Philosophy and Economics Programme". Archived from the original on 27 August 2021.
  20. ^ [1] Archived 2009-08-30 at the Wayback Machine "Balliol was the birthplace of the modern degree of PPE in the 1920s. A. D. Lindsay, who subsequently became the master of the college, played a key role in the establishment of the degree and Balliol has long remained a major college for the study of PPE, and PPE has long been a major subject within Balliol."
  21. ^ "History of Philosophy at Oxford – Faculty of Philosophy". Philosophy.ox.ac.uk. 19 November 2009. Retrieved 2 June 2010.
  22. ^ University of Oxford (1926) The Examination Statutes. together with the regulations of the boards of studies and boards of faculties for the academical year 1926-1927. Oxford: Clarendon Press; pp. 149=54
  23. ^ Pateman, Trevor (1968). The Poverty of PPE. Retrieved 3 May 2024.
  24. ^ Christopher Stray, Classics Transformed: Schools, Universities, and Society in England, 1830–1960. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Pp. xiv, 336. ISBN 0-19-815013-X.
  25. ^ Dario Castiglione and Iain Hampsher-Monk, The History of Political Thought in National Context. Cambridge University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-521-78234-1
  26. ^ "Why Study PPE at Oxford?". ox.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 11 July 2017. Retrieved 17 April 2012.

Further reading[edit]

External links[edit]

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