GS4 · 10 marks · 150 words

The mind of the superior man is conversant with righteousness; the mind of the mean man is conversant with gain. Confucius.

Answered by 6 toppers · CSE 2019–2023

Syllabus: Contributions of moral thinkers and philosophers from India and world.

How toppers approached it

From all 6 answers · about 180 words.

Opening

  • No separate opening67%
  • A definition17%
  • A restatement17%

Body

  • Continuous prose83%
  • Points and prose17%

Close

  • A way forward67%
  • No separate close33%

The toppers’ answers

Vishakha YadavAIR 6 · CSE 2019 · 193 wordsTheir whole copy

Opening

This statement of Confucius tries to explain the fact that a well formed great mind, a man with sound ethical framework would always be guided by courage and righteousness in his actions. On the other hand, a narrow minded person would simply limit himself to simple cost to benefit analysis in a given situation.

Body · continuous prose

We can give the example of Lal Bahadur Shastri, a great humblest of politicians and leaders, who took a moral righteous path by taking responsibility of the loss of lives under his tenure as a railway minister. He resigned from the post although nowhere he was legally required to do so.

We can quote another global leader like Stalin who took narrow perspectives of the things in USSR during his tenure as a President. Cultivated centralised forced leadership which further exacerbated the hardships of economically downtrodden people. His narrow minded tended to run after power foregoing the larger welfare of people.

Close

This quality specially holds true for a civil servant who is supposed to take an impartial, conscientious right path given the challenging and dynamic nature of his job to resolve ethical dilemmas such as public over private sphere.

More on World Thinkers

Moral thinkers and philosophers from outside India used as a source: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Mill, Rawls, Confucius and others.

All GS4 questions on World Thinkers