The School of Philosophy, with its long history, generation-after-generation inheritance, scientific and complete knowledge system and systematic and standardized talent-cultivating model, is characterized by its pursuit of truth, kindness and beauty as its inherent tributes. Founded on the basis of its predecessor, the Department of Philosophy of the College of Humanities of Inner Mongolia University(IMU), the School of Philosophy is a research-oriented school and the key philosophical research center in the western part of China with time-honored academic tradition, profound theoretical accumulation and distinctive features in its research. The major of Philosophy began to be offered in 1971, and the Department of Philosophy was founded in December, 1978. In 1979, the department enrolled postgraduate students majoring in philosophy and Mongolian class for the training of philosophy teachers. The enrolment of undergraduates majoring in philosophy started in 1980 and has kept uninterrupted henceforth. In December 1996, the College of Humanities of IMU was established by merging the Department of Chinese Language & Literature, the Department of History and the Department of Philosophy. In February 2008, the School of Philosophy was founded on the basis of the Department of Philosophy of the College of Humanities.

The school now has 29 staff members including 25 full-time teachers, most of whom graduated from such prestigious universities at home as Peking University, Renmin University of China, Beijing Normal University and Wuhan University. The ratio between students (including both undergraduate students and postgraduate students) and teachers at the school is 14:1. Of the full-time teachers are 5 professors and 9 associate professors, which account for 56% of all the teachers and 24 doctors accounting for 96% of the total.

The School of Philosophy has kept moving forward in the development of its disciplines and academic degree programs. It was authorized to offer master’s degree program of Philosophy of Science in 1998 and master’s degree program of Marxist Philosophy in 2002. The school was approved to offer master’s degree program of the discipline of Philosophy in 2010. In 2012, it began to enroll postgraduate students in four sub-disciplines, namely Marxist Philosophy, Chinese Philosophy, Foreign Philosophy and Philosophy of Science, which laid the foundation for the doctor’s degree program of the discipline of Philosophy. The school has 13 master student supervisors, 4 of which are doctor student supervisors in the discipline of Basic Principles of Marxism.

The school has 2 research platforms—Chinese Systematic Philosophy Research Center and Inner Mongolia Research Center for Ecological Civilization and Social Development, 2 university-level academic innovation teams of liberal arts: Team of Human Philosophy and Team of Ecological Philosophy, and Digital Literature Center for Philosophy and Religious Culture of the Northern Ethnic Groups in Yuan Dynasty. It participated in the construction of the Research Base for Society, History and Culture in Inner Mongolia. Since 2008, the school has made remarkable achievements in teaching and research. It has 10 research projects supported by the National Social Science Fund of China, 3 projects of humanities and social sciences supported by the Ministry of Education(MOE) and over 30 research projects supported by other ministerial or provincial-level departments or organizations. The grants for these research projects total more than RMB 3.2 million. Its faculty members have published more than 200 research articles in Philosophical Research, Studies on Marxism, History of Chinese Philosophy and Studies in Dialectics of Nature as well as 9 academic monographs. Its faculty members have won more than 10 prizes of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Government Awards for Excellent Achievements in Philosophy and Social Sciences. In 2020, the major of Philosophy was selected by MOE as the candidate for the development of the national first-class undergraduate majors. It is a regional-level key major, brand major and first-class major. The school has 1 national-level demonstration course for ideological and political education in courses, 1 national-level Team of Master Teachers, 1 MOE-supported project for high-quality ideological and political work of universities,7 regional-level Excellent Courses, 2 regional-level Excellent Teaching Teams and 1 regional-level Research and Demonstration Center for Ideological and Political Education in Courses.

The School of Philosophy focuses on teaching and research of the history and principles of philosophy and puts emphasis on the students’ ability to transform knowledge into wisdom and to combine theory with practice so as to make students have systematic world outlooks and methodology of philosophy, complete knowledge system, high-quality theoretical thinking, strong ability of logical analysis and excellent writing skills. The quality of undergraduate education of the school has kept improving. In recent 5 years, the rate of its students’ admission to master’s degree programs has been standing at 45% or above, ranking the first among the colleges of liberal arts of IMU. Most of the students were admitted to the master’s degree programs of the universities under the “Project 985”, and the initial employment rate of its graduates is over 86%.