Most business-school students are gunning for jobs in banking, consulting or technology. So what are they doing reading Plato?

The philosophy department is invading the M.B.A. program—at least at a handful of schools where the legacy of the global financial crisis has sparked efforts to train business students to think beyond the bottom line. Courses like "Why Capitalism?" and "Thinking about Thinking," and readings by Marx and Kant, give students a break from Excel spreadsheets and push them to ponder business in a broader context, schools say.

The courses also address a common complaint of employers, who say recent graduates are trained to solve single problems but often miss the big picture.

"Nobel Thinking," a new elective at London Business School explores the origins and influence of economic theories on topics like market efficiency and decision-making by some Nobel Prize winners. The 10-week course—taught by faculty from the school's economics, finance and organizational behavior departments—might not make students the next James Watson or Francis Crick, but it aims to give them a sense of how revolutionary ideas arise.

"It's important to know why we're doing what we're doing," says Ingrid Marchal-Gérez, a second-year M.B.A. who enrolled in Nobel Thinking to balance her finance and marketing classes. "You can start to understand what idea can have an impact, and how to communicate an idea."