philosophy essay title

How to Write a Philosophy Paper: Bridging Minds

Table of contents

• 1 What is a Philosophy Paper?
• 2.1 Philosophy Research Paper Introduction
• 2.2 Body Sections
• 2.3 Writing a Philosophy Paper Conclusion
• 3 Template for a Philosophy Essay Structure
• 4 How to Format a Philosophy Research Paper
• 5.1 Choose a Topic
• 5.2 Read the Material and Take Notes
• 5.3 Think about Your Thesis
• 5.4 Make an Outline
• 5.5 Make a First Draft
• 5.6 Work on the Sections
• 5.7 Engage with Counterarguments
• 5.8 Don’t Niglet Citations
• 5.9 Check Formatting Guidelines.
• 5.10 Revise and Proofread
• 6 How to Select the Best Philosophy Essay Topic?
• 7.1 Argumentative Philosophy Essay Topics
• 7.2 Plato Essay Topics
• 7.3 Worldview Essay Topics
• 7.4 Transcendentalism Essay Topics
• 7.5 Practical Philosophy Essay Topics
• 7.6 Enlightenment Essay Topics
• 8 Let Your Philosophy Paper Shine

As a college student who has decided to take a philosophy course, you may be new to this science. A philosophy assignment may seem hard, and this subject is indeed pretty difficult. You read some text, but what you read is just one level of the text, as you need to think critically and analyze what the author is trying to get across. It also involves a lot of analytical and deep thinking. Thus, it is difficult to do an assignment unless you fully understand the text. Don’t freak out if you have little experience with this subject, as we have prepared a comprehensive guide on how to write a philosophy paper, from which you will know:

• The essence of philosophy paper, its structure and format
• Why it is important not to omit the outline stage
• Practical tips on writing a philosophy research paper.

What is a Philosophy Paper?

A philosophy research paper is an academic work that presents a comprehensive exploration of a specific philosophical question , topic, or thinker. It typically involves the analysis of arguments, the articulation of one’s own positions or perspectives, and the evaluation of philosophical texts and ideas. The primary objective of such a paper is to contribute to the understanding of philosophical issues by critically examining existing views, offering new interpretations, or developing novel arguments. The paper is characterized by rigorous logical reasoning, clear articulation of ideas, and grounding in relevant philosophical literature.

Drafting a philosophy essay begins with appreciating precisely what a philosophy research paper entails. It involves taking a definite position on a philosophical topic and defending that viewpoint with a logical, irrefutable claim. A good research essay generally uses rational arguments to lead readers down a path to a conclusive, hard-to-contradict resolution.

Philosophy Paper Outline Structure

Writing a quality philosophy paper means beginning with a first-rate outline. The best philosophy paper outline is straightforward in its intent, takes up a position, and is uncomplicated in its language. A proper outline makes drafting easier and less time-consuming. Moreover, philosophical writing with a clear-cut outline will lend assurance that your end result is condensed yet enlightening.

After determining a format, you are ready to begin writing out your philosophy paper outline. The first step in this process is to determine how to choose a topic for a paper. Great papers are those that the writer is most interested in. Once your topic has been chosen, your outline can be written with specific details and facts. Said specifics will take your introduction, body, and conclusion through an easy-to-follow guide.

Philosophy Research Paper Introduction

Your research essay should begin with a striking and  attention-grabbing hook . It should identify your topic of focus in some way and ensure that readers have the desire to continue on. The hook is intended to smoothly transition to your thesis statement, which is the claim your thesis is venturing to prove. Your thesis statement should lead readers to  the question of research – the distinct question that will be wholly explained in the body of writing. Finally, your  introduction for the research paper will close with your stance on the question.

Body Sections

The body aspect of a philosophy thesis is considered the meat of any paper. It is hard unless you find someone to  write my philosophy paper for me . This element is where most of the logic behind your stance is contained. Typically, bodies are made up of 3 sections, each explaining the explicit reasoning behind your position. For instance, the first chunk of the body will directly and logically answer the question posed.

In your second body section, use statements that argue why your position is correct. These statements should be informed, prudent, and concise in their reasoning, yet still presented without overly fancy lingo. The explanation of your argument should not be easily opposed. It should also be succinct and without fluff, insulating the explanatory material.

The third portion of the body section should defend your thesis against those that may have counterarguments. This will be the backbone of the essay – the portion that is too hard to refute. By ensuring that criticisms are properly and utterly denounced and the thesis is ratified, philosophical writing will begin to reach its end – the conclusion.

Writing a Philosophy Paper Conclusion

The conclusion is ultimately meant to tie the entire work together in a nice, coherent fashion. It should start with a brief rehash of the body section of your essay. Then, it will move into explaining the importance of the thesis and argument as a whole.  Quality conclusions are ones that will offer a sense of closure.

Template for a Philosophy Essay Structure

A suggested template to help guide you when writing out a philosophy outline is as follows:

The use of the above outline template is sure to help with the overall drafting procedure of philosophical writing. Understanding the proper use of the outline is ideal for the best end product.

Putting an outline to use makes the process of writing a philosophy paper much more simple. By using an outline to navigate your thoughts as you write, your essay nearly composes itself. The addition of detail to an outline as it is written provides pronounced facts and a full outline. Take the outline chock full of thoughts and ideas, add words and transitions, and you have a complete paper.

How to Format a Philosophy Research Paper

Formatting a philosophy paper starts with choosing a citation style . The choice between APA, MLA, and Chicago styles simply lay out citations in contrasting manners for your philosophical writing. Each of these styles requires a differing method of citing sources and varying types of organization. Most commonly, philosophy research paper citations are done in MLA or Chicago. While both are accepted, it may be best to choose which your supervisor requires.

Luckily, you can  APA research papers for sale and forget about this stress.

10 Steps to Write a Great Philosophy Paper Like a Pro

Learning how to write a philosophy research paper outline is a skill that can be carried over to numerous other subjects. While philosophical writing is a bit different than most other topics of discussion, the outline can be applied to others fairly easily. Proper utilization of outlines makes for a well-thought-out and structured thesis work that a writer can be proud of.

Choose a Topic

One of the primary steps is choosing a topic, and that is the first thing college students get stuck on. If you can not choose a topic you are interested in, talk to your university professor. You can also take a look at different lists of ideas on the Internet.

Read the Material and Take Notes

Read all materials carefully and take notes of important ideas. It is a good idea to read the material a couple of times as there will always be something you don’t notice at first. It is important to have a clear understanding of what you read to nail your assignment. If you feel like you don’t understand anything, then Google ‘ write my philosophy paper for me ’ and get help from real professionals.

Think about Your Thesis

Before you start writing, realize what you are going to show. Your work should have a strong thesis that states your position. The central component of the work is a clear thesis statement followed by supporting claims.

Make an Outline

An outline should include your ideas for the introduction, your thesis, main points, and conclusion. Having a philosophy paper outline before working on the assignment can help you stay focused and ensure you include all major points.

Make a First Draft

Don’t worry about perfection at this stage. Instead, focus on getting your ideas on paper. Following your outline, start building your arguments. Make sure to provide evidence or reasons for your claims.

Work on the Sections

Introduction: An introduction for a research paper is an essential part of any assignment because it gives your readers an overview of your work. It is your opportunity to grab their attention, so take this step seriously. Remember the thesis statement? You should present it here.

Main body: In this part, you need to present arguments and support your thesis. Start with providing a clear explanation of the philosopher’s ideas and move to the evaluation. Support your thesis by using examples.

Conclusion: A conclusion for any research paper is where you restate your central thesis. It should look like a mirror image of the introduction. Here you need to summarize the major points of your work.

Engage with Counterarguments

A good philosophy paper acknowledges opposing views. Make sure to address these counterarguments and provide reasons for why you believe your stance is more compelling.

Don’t Niglet Citations

Citations serve as a bridge. They link your ideas to the broader world of philosophical discourse, allowing readers to trace back your sources and delve deeper if they wish. Always remember, that citations are more than a mere formality. They correspond to specific ideas, arguments, or facts you present in your paper. This means every claim, idea, or quote you borrow from a philosopher needs to be clearly linked to its source. In this way, you will be sure that your work will be free of plagiarism .

Check Formatting Guidelines.

It’s also crucial to maintain consistency in your citation style. Whether you use APA, MLA, or Chicago, stick to one style throughout your paper.

Revise and Proofread

Once you finish your masterpiece, it is time to  edit and proofread the research paper . We recommend you put your work aside for a few days to have a fresh perspective when start editing it.

How to Select the Best Philosophy Essay Topic?

First of all, we recommend deciding on a direction that interests you more. It can be a theoretical aspect, applicative use of philosophy or even the integration of this science with others – for example, ontology or metaphysics. After all, it is essential to reflect your thoughts correctly in writing for any direction. You will need to use writing tools for students to show your judgments accurately in the essay. Sometimes this can be a difficult task when the authors of the papers get into a so-called flow state.

Secondly, choosing a good topic that can be compared with the opinions of already-known thinkers is necessary for a deeper justification of your point of view. To do this, use the appropriate essay quotation format to make your paper easy to read. After all, while we are not recognized philosophers, proving our claims will be helpful to get the highest score.

If you still need to get philosophy essay ideas, continue reading this article. Here you will find 70 interesting topics that you can use as a topic for your essay or get inspired to create your own.

Easy Philosophy Paper Topics

Often we want to avoid reinventing the wheel. We are interested in writing an exciting but easy essay. So, if you were looking for simple philosophical essay topics, here is the list of the top 10 topics in philosophy for your paper:

• Human Responsibilities in Different World Religions: Why are They Distinct?
• Good and Evil: Do They Have Anything in Common? Will They Be Able to Insulate One without the Other?
• Advantages and Disadvantages of a Hedonistic Approach to Life
• Life after Death: Should We Endure the Circumstances of the X-axis for a Better Future on the Y-axis?
• Why Ancient People Asked Themselves the Same Questions as We Do: Isn’t Humanity Progressing?
• Do We Fulfill Our Moral Obligation to Parents by Helping Children?
• Three Features: Each from an Animal and an Angel. What is the Nature of Man?
• Is Genetic Engineering Ethical with Respect to the Laws of Nature?
• How Society Can Influence the Personal Choice of the Sense of Life for Each of Us
• Self-Determination of a Person & the Formation of our Microuniverse

Argumentative Philosophy Essay Topics

If you think more analytically, use it to your advantage. The argumentative type of philosophy essay is an unusual and exciting option for such papers since it requires strong thesis statement points. If you want to write exactly this sort of essay, these essay topics ideas will come in handy to decide on the topic of your work:

• Peaceful Protests/Desperate Battle: a Critical Analysis of the Philosophy of Resistance
• The Borderland Situation and Absurdity: Analytical Review.
• Explanation of the Path of any Subject to the Point of No Return. A Critical Analysis of “The Myth of Sisyphus” 1942.
• The Paradox of Absurdity and How to Find a Way Out of It: Follow the Rules or Set Yours
• Comparative Analysis of Forms of Globalization from the Point of View of Philosophy
• E. Leroy, P. Teilhard de Shader and Volodymyr Vernandskyi: Together About the Noosphere, Separately About its Functioning.
• Analysis of the Origins of the First Thinkers from the Point of View of Metaphysics.
• The Legal Aspect of Organ Cloning and Entire Human Cloning. Does it Make a Difference?
• Are People Obliged to Always Tell the Truth and Nothing But the Truth?
• Is Experience Acquired through Lived Years or Situations? Explanation of Each of the Parties.

Plato Essay Topics

Plato and Aristotle were the founders of philosophy in their classical sense. That is why writing an essay that will outline or refute Plato’s reasoning is a surefire option to impress your teacher and stand out from the rest of the group. If you still don’t know what to write about, below are the topics in the philosophy type of paper:

• Understanding a Being as a Multiplicity of Organic Elements According to Plato’s Postulates.
• Reflection of the Philosophy of Truth As an Idea: Plato’s Teaching
• Plato’s way of Familiarizing themself with the Truth through Memories
• Is It Possible to Trace the Influence of Socrates on Plato’s Philosophy: a Detailed Analysis
• Truth Exists, but It does not Exist until Being Developed – the Main Contradiction of Plato’s System of Philosophy Understanding
• “Phaedo”: Philosophy is the Science of Death.
• Plato’s Dialectic: Philosophy is the Cornice that Crowns All Our Knowledge
• Platonic Vision of Four Types of Dialectics as Four Modes of the Soul Activity
• A Move Against Democracy from the Platonic Postulates of Understanding the State and Society According to Personal Philosophy
• Plato and the “Ladder of Love” in the “Banquet”: Beautiful Bodies, Souls, Tempers and Sciences.

Worldview Essay Topics

Worldview and philosophy are similar concepts; they are rooted in the history of the human race. That is why this type of essay is interesting for both writing and reading. Choose your worldview essay topic from the options below to create your perfect piece of writing:

• Three-Aspect Structure of Worldview: Elements, Levels, Main Subsystems
• Mythological and Religious Types of Worldview: What do They Have in Common?
• Worldview as an Individual Prism of Multilevel Interaction Between Man and the World
• The Influence of Previous Generations on Modern Prejudices of our Outlook
• Ideological Form of Globalization. How does Social Media Affect It?
• The Noosphere as a Part of Countering Global Warming
• Modern Beauty Standards and the Bodily Phenomenon of Existence: What is the Connection between Them?
• Human Rights. Philosophy and Ethics
• Religious Beliefs as a Form of Philosophy Existence
• A Complex and Fragmented Approach to Studying the Worldview of Different Nations

Transcendentalism Essay Topics

Transcendentalism, as a new stage in the formation of philosophy, played a key role in its modern appearance. If you are more inclined towards more modernist lines of philosophy, these topics will suit you perfectly:

• Classical German Philosophy. Rational and Intelligent Thinking
• Subjectively Realistic Description of the Environment According to Categories of Philosophy
• The Influence of Transcendentalism on the Ongoing Development of Philosophy Accordingly to the Categories of Multiplicity and Necessity
• 10 Categories Denoting Deep Connections in being Relative to Transcendentalism: What Unites and Distinguishes Them
• Scientific Contemplation as a Mental Category through the Prism of the 20s Years of the 20th Century
• Life at the Intersection of the Past and the Future: Influence on Currents of American Transcendentalism Philosophy
• Modes of Perception of Time & Time as Duration: New ideas of Transcendentalists or Paraphrasing of Hegel’s Postulates?
• Ontological Doctrines and their Essential Characteristics: Henry David Thoreau
• Concepts of Understanding Space and their Qualitative Changes Relative to New Views on Philosophy
• Nature for Self-Sufficiency as the Main Myth of Philosophy Currents at the Beginning of the 20th Century

Practical Philosophy Essay Topics

The theory is great. However, any science’s practical and applied meaning is interesting for each of us. If you are interested in delving into the use of philosophy in modern society, these topics will not leave you indifferent:

• Everyday/Life Level of Philosophy
• Philosophy of Principles. What does It Mean to be Guided by a Certain Life Principle?
• Approach of Philosophy to the Life of Tibetan Monks – does It Correlate with Reality?
• Prejudice against Residents of Third World Countries: Reasons for Contempt for Their Mentality and Lifestyle
• Unpreparedness of College Teachers for Changes in the Education System: What are They Afraid of?
• Truth as the Last Instance of Communication with People. Is It Always Necessary?
• The Philosophy of Excessive Consumption in the USA. What Basis does it Have?
• Does the Concept of One’s Opinion Exist in the Era of Oversaturation of Information?
• The use of Ancient Greek Postulates in Philosophy Today – is the Appeal to Classical Canons Still Relevant?
• The Concept of Ethical and Moral Principles in the Era of Excessive Permissiveness.

Enlightenment Essay Topics

Enlightenment played a huge role in all sciences and spheres of human life. It’s a mind-blowing theme to write about. So, if you were looking for some ideas for your Enlightenment essay topic, we’ve prepared the best ones for you:

• Does the Urge to Study and Develop the Beautiful in Man Still Influence Modern Philosophy?
• Empiricism and Rationalism: Julien Aufre de Lametre’s Attempt to Unite Them
• The Concept of Atheistic Speech of Enlightenment: Religious Dogmatics Debunktion by Voltaire
• Voltaire: Ignorance, Fanaticism, Delusion and Lies Are Cultivated by Christianity
• The State as a Level of Inequality between the Rich and the Poor, According to Rousseau’s Views.
• The Immense Book of Nature as an Object of Knowledge According to Denis Diderot
• The Structure of Existence through Its Concepts: Elements, Substratum, Substance, Objective Reality beyond Human Consciousness and the Condition of Multiplicity.
• Concepts of Understanding Space and Time in Enlightenment Philosophy
• “Molecular Motion” by Paul Holbach: What is It?
• Social Life Based on the Principles of Reason and Justice – “About Reason” Andrian Helvetius

Let Your Philosophy Paper Shine

Good philosophy research paper writing requires some craft and care. Edit your work until it feels right, and make sure you are confident about your claims. If this science is just not your thing, or you struggle to understand it and doing assignments is sheer torture for you, then order a philosophical work crafted by real professionals! The best way to do your assignment is to leave it to experts and forget about your problems.

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1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology

Philosophy, One Thousand Words at a Time

How to Write a Philosophical Essay

Authors: The Editors of 1000-Word Philosophy [1] Category: Student Resources Word Count: 998

If you want to convince someone of a philosophical thesis, such as that God exists , that abortion is morally acceptable , or that we have free will , you can write a philosophy essay. [2]

Philosophy essays are different from essays in many other fields, but with planning and practice, anyone can write a good one. This essay provides some basic instructions. [3]

1. Planning

Typically, your purpose in writing an essay will be to argue for a certain thesis, i.e., to support a conclusion about a philosophical claim, argument, or theory. [4] You may also be asked to carefully explain someone else’s essay or argument. [5]

To begin, select a topic. Most instructors will be happy to discuss your topic with you before you start writing. Sometimes instructors give specific prompts with topics to choose from.

It’s generally best to select a topic that you’re interested in; you’ll put more energy into writing it. Your topic will determine what kind of research or preparation you need to do before writing, although in undergraduate philosophy courses, you usually don’t need to do outside research. [6]

Essays that defend or attack entire theories tend to be longer, and are more difficult to write convincingly, than essays that defend or attack particular arguments or objections: narrower is usually better than broader.

After selecting a topic, complete these steps:

• Ensure that you understand the relevant issues and arguments. Usually, it’s enough to carefully read and take notes on the assigned readings on your essay’s topic.
• Choose an initial thesis. Generally, you should choose a thesis that’s interesting, but not extremely controversial. [7] You don’t have to choose a thesis that you agree with, but it can help. (As you plan and write, you may decide to revise your thesis. This may require revising the rest of your essay, but sometimes that’s necessary, if you realize you want to defend a different thesis than the one you initially chose.)
• Ensure that your thesis is a philosophical thesis. Natural-scientific or social-scientific claims, such as that global warming is occurring or that people like to hang out with their friends , are not philosophical theses. [8] Philosophical theses are typically defended using careful reasoning, and not primarily by citing scientific observations.

Instructors will usually not ask you to come up with some argument that no philosopher has discovered before. But if your essay ignores what the assigned readings say, that suggests that you haven’t learned from those readings.

2. Structure

Develop an outline, rather than immediately launching into writing the whole essay; this helps with organizing the sections of your essay.

Your structure will probably look something like the following, but follow your assignment’s directions carefully. [9]

2.1. Introduction and Thesis

Write a short introductory paragraph that includes your thesis statement (e.g., “I will argue that eating meat is morally wrong”). The thesis statement is not a preview nor a plan; it’s not “I will consider whether eating meat is morally wrong.”

If your thesis statement is difficult to condense into one sentence, then it’s likely that you’re trying to argue for more than one thesis. [10]

2.2. Arguments

Include at least one paragraph that presents and explains an argument. It should be totally clear what reasons or evidence you’re offering to support your thesis.

In most essays for philosophy courses, you only need one central argument for your thesis. It’s better to present one argument and defend it well than present many arguments in superficial and incomplete ways.

2.3. Objection

Unless the essay must be extremely short, raise an objection to your argument. [11] Be clear exactly which part of the other argument (a premise, or the form) is being questioned or denied and why. [12]

It’s usually best to choose either one of the most common or one of the best objections. Imagine what a smart person who disagreed with you would say in response to your arguments, and respond to them.

Offer your own reply to any objections you considered. If you don’t have a convincing reply to the objection, you might want to go back and change your thesis to something more defensible.

2.5. Additional Objections and Replies

If you have space, you might consider and respond to the second-best or second-most-common objection to your argument, and so on.

2.6. Conclusion

To conclude, offer a paragraph summarizing what you did. Don’t include any new or controversial claims here, and don’t claim that you did more than you actually accomplished. There should be no surprises at the end of a philosophy essay.

Make your writing extremely clear and straightforward. Use simple sentences and don’t worry if they seem boring: this improves readability. [13] Every sentence should contribute in an obvious way towards supporting your thesis. If a claim might be confusing, state it in more than one way and then choose the best version.

To check for readability, you might read the essay aloud to an audience. Don’t try to make your writing entertaining: in philosophy, clear arguments are fun in themselves.

Concerning objections, treat those who disagree with you charitably. Make it seem as if you think they’re smart, careful, and nice, which is why you are responding to them.

Your readers, if they’re typical philosophers, will be looking for any possible way to object to what you say. Try to make your arguments “airtight.”

4. Citations

If your instructor tells you to use a certain citation style, use it. No citation style is universally accepted in philosophy. [14]

You usually don’t need to directly quote anyone. [15] You can paraphrase other authors; where you do, cite them.

Don’t plagiarize . [16] Most institutions impose severe penalties for academic dishonesty.

5. Conclusion

A well-written philosophy essay can help people gain a new perspective on some important issue; it might even change their minds. [17] And engaging in the process of writing a philosophical essay is one of the best ways to develop, understand, test, and sometimes change, your own philosophical views. They are well worth the time and effort.

[1] Primary author: Thomas Metcalf. Contributing authors: Chelsea Haramia, Dan Lowe, Nathan Nobis, Kristin Seemuth Whaley.

[2] You can also do some kind of oral presentation, either “live” in person or recorded on video. An effective presentation, however, requires the type of planning and preparation that’s needed to develop an effective philosophy paper: indeed, you may have to first write a paper and then use it as something like a script for your presentation. Some parts of the paper, e.g., section headings, statements of arguments, key quotes, and so on, you may want to use as visual aids in your presentation to help your audience better follow along and understand.

[3] Many of these recommendations are, however, based on the material in Horban (1993), Huemer (n.d.), Pryor (n.d.), and Rippon (2008). There is very little published research to cite about the claims in this essay, because these claims are typically justified by instructors’ experience, not, say, controlled experiments on different approaches to teaching philosophical writing. Therefore, the guidance offered here has been vetted by many professional philosophers with a collective hundreds of hours of undergraduate teaching experience and further collective hundreds of hours of taking philosophy courses. The editors of 1000-Word Philosophy also collectively have thousands of hours of experience in writing philosophy essays.

[4] For more about the areas of philosophy, see What is Philosophy? by Thomas Metcalf.

[5] For an explanation of what is meant by an “argument” in philosophy, see Arguments: Why Do You Believe What You Believe? by Thomas Metcalf.

[6] Outside research is sometimes discouraged, and even prohibited, for philosophy papers in introductory courses because a common goal of a philosophy paper is not to report on a number of views on a philosophical issue—so philosophy papers usually are not “research reports”—but to rather engage a specific argument or claim or theory, in a more narrow and focused way, and show that you understand the issue and have engaged in critically. If a paper engages in too much reporting of outside research, that can get in the way of this critical evaluation task.

[7] There are two reasons to avoid extremely controversial theses. First, such theses are usually more difficult to defend adequately. Second, you might offend your instructor, who might (fairly or not) give you a worse grade. So, for example, you might argue that abortion is usually permissible, or usually wrong, but you probably shouldn’t argue that anyone who has ever said the word ‘abortion’ should be tortured to death, and you probably shouldn’t argue that anyone who’s ever pregnant should immediately be forced to abort the pregnancy, because both of these claims are extremely implausible and so it’s very unlikely that good arguments could be developed for them. But theses that are controversial without being implausible can be interesting for both you and the instructor, depending on how you develop and defend your argument or arguments for that thesis.

[8] Whether a thesis is philosophical mostly depends on whether it is a lot like theses that have been defended in important works of philosophy. That means it would be a thesis about metaphysics, epistemology, value theory, logic, history of philosophy, or something therein. For more information, see Philosophy and Its Contrast with Science and What is Philosophy? both by Thomas Metcalf.

[9] Also, read the grading rubric, if it’s available. If your course uses an online learning environment, such as Canvas, Moodle, or Schoology, then the rubric will often be visible as attached to the assignment itself. The rubric is a breakdown of the different requirements of the essay and how each is weighted and evaluated by the instructor. So, for example, if some requirement has a relatively high weight, you should put more effort into doing a good job. Similarly, some requirement might explicitly mention some step for the assignment that you need to complete in order to get full credit.

[10] In some academic fields, a “thesis” or “thesis statement” is considered both your conclusion and a statement of the basic support you will give for that conclusion. In philosophy, your thesis is usually just that conclusion: e..g, “Eating meat is wrong,” “God exists,” “Nobody has free will,” and so on: the support given for that conclusion is the support for your thesis.

[11] To be especially clear, this should be an objection to the argument given for your thesis or conclusion, not an objection to your thesis or conclusion itself. This is because you don’t want to give an argument and then have an objection that does not engage that argument, but instead engages something else, since that won’t help your reader or audience better understand and evaluate that argument.

[12] For more information about premises, forms, and objections, see Arguments: Why do You Believe What You Believe? by Thomas Metcalf.

[13] For a philosophical argument in favor of clear philosophical writing, and guidance on producing such writing, see Fischer and Nobis (2019).

[14] The most common styles in philosophy are APA (Purdue Online Writing Lab, n.d.a) and Chicago (Purdue Online Writing Lab, n.d.b.).

[15] You might choose to directly quote someone when it’s very important that the reader know that the quoted author actually said what you claim they said. For example, if you’re discussing some author who made some startling claim, you can directly quote them to show that they really said that. You might also directly quote someone when they presented some information or argument in a very concise, well-stated way, such that paraphrasing it would take up more space than simply quoting them would.

[16] Plagiarism, in general, occurs when someone submits written or spoken work that is largely copied, in style, substance, or both, from some other author’s work, and does not attribute it to that author. However, your institution or instructor may define “plagiarism” somewhat differently, so you should check with their definitions. When in doubt, check with your instructor first.

[17] These are instructions for relatively short, introductory-level philosophy essays. For more guidance, there are many useful philosophy-writing guides online to consult, e.g.: Horban (1993); Huemer (n.d.); Pryor (n.d.); Rippon (2008); Weinberg (2019).

Fischer, Bob and Nobis, Nathan. (2019, June 4). Why writing better will make you a better person. The Chronicle of Higher Education . 

Horban, Peter. (1993). Writing a philosophy paper. Simon Fraser University Department of Philosophy . 

Huemer, Michael. (N.d.). A guide to writing. Owl232.net .

Pryor, Jim. (N.d.). Guidelines on writing a philosophy paper. Jimpryor.net .

Purdue Online Writing Lab. (N.d.a.). General format. Purdue Online Writing Lab . 

Purdue Online Writing Lab. (N.d.b.). General format. Purdue Online Writing Lab .

Rippon, Simon. (2008). A brief guide to writing the philosophy paper. Harvard College Writing Center .

Weinberg, Justin. (2019, January 15). How to write a philosophy paper: Online guides. Daily Nous .

Related Essays

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Philosophy and its Contrast with Science by Thomas Metcalf

What is Philosophy? By Thomas Metcalf

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Philosophy essay writing guide

Introduction.

This guide is intended to give new students of philosophy some preliminary advice about writing philosophy essays at university. For many of you, writing a philosophy essay will be something of a new experience, and no doubt many of you will be a little unsure of what to expect, or of what is expected of you. Most of you will have written essays in school for English, History, etc. A philosophy essay is something a little different again. However, it is not an unfathomable, mysterious affair, nor one where anything goes.

Just what a philosophy essay is will depend a lot, as you'd expect, on just what philosophy is. Defining philosophy is always a more or less controversial business, but one way to think of what is done in university philosophy departments is to think of the difference between having a philosophy and doing philosophy. Virtually everyone "has a philosophy" in the sense that we have many basic beliefs about the world and ourselves and use certain key concepts to articulate those beliefs. Many of us initially come to thus "have a philosophy" (or elements of several philosophies) often only unconsciously, or by following "what's obvious" or "what everybody knows", or by adopting a view because it sounds exciting or is intellectually fashionable.

"Doing philosophy", on the other hand, is a self-conscious unearthing and rigorous examination of these basic beliefs and key concepts. In doing so, we try to clarify the meanings of those beliefs and concepts and to evaluate critically their rational grounds or justification. Thus, rather than having their heads in the clouds, philosophers are really more under the surface of our thinking, examining the structures that support - or fail to support - those who trust that they have their feet on the ground. Such examination may even help to develop new and firmer ground.

Doing philosophy, then, begins with asking questions about the fundamental ideas and concepts that inform our ways of looking at the world and ourselves, and proceeds by developing responses to those questions which seek to gain insight into those ideas and concepts - and part of that development consists in asking further questions, giving further responses, and so on. Human beings across the world have been engaged in this sort of dialogue of question and response for many centuries - even millennia - and a number of great traditions of reflection and inquiry have evolved that have fundamentally influenced the development of religion, art, science and politics in many cultures. The influence of philosophical thinking on Western civilization, in particular, can be traced back more than 2,500 years to the Ancient Greeks.

In philosophy, a good essay is one that, among other things, displays a good sense of this dialectic of question and response by asking insightful, probing questions, and providing reasoned, well-argued responses. This means that you should not rest content with merely an unintegrated collection of assertions, but should instead work at establishing logical relations between your thoughts. You are assessed not on the basis of what you believe, but on how well you argue for the position you adopt in your essay, and on how interesting and insightful your discussion of the issues is. That is to say, you are assessed on how well you do philosophy, not on what philosophy you end up having. Nonetheless, you ought to make sure that your essay's discussion is relevant to the topic. (See Section 5.2 below on relevance.)

It is hoped that you enjoy the activity of essay writing. If you have chosen to study Arts, it is likely that you will have a particular interest in - even a passion for - ideas and the variety of forms and genres in which ideas are expressed and explored. The argumentative or discursive formal academic essay is one such form, and one which can be a pleasure to read and to write. Thus, the assessment that is set in philosophy courses is primarily an invitation to you to pursue what is already (or, hopefully, soon to be) your own interest in writing to explore ideas. However, your immediate goal in writing an academic philosophy essay ought not to be to write a personal testament, confession or polemic. Rather, you should primarily aim at articulating, clearly and relatively dispassionately, your philosophical thinking on the topic at hand. Nevertheless, the kind and degree of personal development one can gain from taking up the challenge to think and to write carefully, clearly and thoroughly is certainly something to be greatly valued.

This guide is intended to help you get started in the business of writing philosophy essays. As you practise your philosophical writing skills, you will develop your own technique, and learn what is appropriate in each particular case. So you may well come to "work around" many of these guidelines. Nonetheless, it is important that you pass through that which you seek to pass beyond.* In addition to your own writing, your reading of other philosophers will help you to develop your sense of what constitutes good philosophical writing. As you read, note the various styles and techniques that philosophical authors employ in their treatment of philosophical issues. Practice and studying good examples, then, are the most valuable ways to develop your essay writing skills.

This guide is, moreover, only one of many publications that introduce philosophy students to essay writing. Some others you may like to consult include:

• A. P. Martinich, Philosophical Writing, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997)
• J. Feinberg and R. Shafer-Landau, Doing Philosophy: A Guide to the Writing of Philosophy Papers, 2nd ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 2001)
• Z. Seech, Writing Philosophy Papers, 4th ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 2003)
• R. Solomon, "Writing Philosophy", Appendix to his The Big Questions: A Short Introduction to Philosophy, 6th ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 2001)
• S. Gorovitz et al., Philosophical Analysis: An Introduction to its Language and Techniques, 3rd ed. (New York: Random House, 1979)

Also, the websites of many philosophy departments in universities around Australia and the world contain downloadable essay writing guides or links to them.

*This phrase is adapted from Jacques Bouveresse, "Why I am so very unFrench", in Alan Montefiore, ed., Philosophy in France Today (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 12.

What do I do in a Philosophy essay?

Philosophy essay topics are not designed to provide an intellectual obstacle course that trips you up so as to delight a malicious marker. They are designed to invite you to "grapple with" with some particular philosophical problem or issue. That is to say, they are designed to offer you an opportunity to demonstrate your understanding of a particular philosophical problem or issue, and to exhibit your own philosophical skills of analysis, argumentation, etc. These twin goals are usually best achieved by ensuring that your essay performs two basic functions (your understanding and your skills apply to both):

an exposition of the problem or issue in question (often as it is posed in some particular text); and a critical discussion of the problem or text

These two functions can, but need not always, correspond to physically or structurally distinct sections of your essay. See Section 5.1.

The expository ("setting forth") aspect of your essay is where you should make clear what the issue is and why it is an issue. Where you are dealing with an issue as it is presented in some particular text, your aim should be to make clear what it is that the author in question meant in their text, what they see as the issue and why they see it as an issue. This does not involve merely quoting or paraphrasing a text. Of course, occasional quotation and paraphrase may be appropriate - sometimes necessary - but these ought not to constitute the sole or major content of your exposition. Where you do quote or paraphrase, make sure you attribute your sources in footnotes or endnotes. (See Section 7.)

Exposition is, then, primarily a matter of developing in your own words what you think the issue is or what you think the text means. In all expository work you should always try to give a fair and accurate account of a text or problem, even when the exposition becomes more interpretive rather than simply descriptive. You ought to be patient and sympathetic in your exposition, even if you intend later to criticise heavily the philosopher in question. Indeed, the better the exposition in this regard, usually the more effective the critique.

An important part of exposition is your analysis of the text or issue. Here you should try to "break down" the text, issue or problem into its constitutive elements by distinguishing its different parts. (E.g. "There are two basic kinds of freedom in question when we speak of freedom of the will. First, … . Second, …", or "There are three elements in Plato's conception of the soul, namely... He establishes these three elements by means of the following two arguments... ") This also involves showing the relationships between those elements, relationships which make them "parts of the whole".

As well as laying out these elements within a text or issue, you can also (when appropriate or relevant) show how a text or issue "connects up with" other texts, issues, or philosophical and/or historical developments, which can help to shed further light on the matter by giving it a broader context. (eg "Freedom of the will is importantly connected to the justification of punishment", or "Plato's tripartite theory of the soul bears interesting resemblances to Freud's analysis of the psyche", or "Kant's transcendental idealism can be seen as reconciling the preceding rationalist and empiricist accounts of knowledge".)

An exposition of a text need not always simply follow the author's own view of what it means. You should, of course, demonstrate that you understand how the author themself understands their work, but an exposition can sometimes go beyond this, giving another reading of the text. (eg "Heidegger might deny it, but his Being and Time can be read as developing a pragmatist account of human understanding.") A given text or issue may well be susceptible to a number of plausible or reasonable interpretations. An exposition should aim to be sensitive to such variety. When appropriate, you should defend your interpretations against rivals and objections. Your interpretation ought, though, to be aimed at elucidating the meaning or meanings of the text or issue and not serve merely as a "coat-hanger" for presenting your own favoured views on the matter in question, which should be left to your ...

Critical discussion

This is where your thought gets more of the centre stage. Here you should attempt to develop a response to the issues which your exposition has made clear, and/or, in the case of a discussion of some particular text, attempt to give a critical appraisal of the author's treatment of the issue. In developing a response to a philosophical problem, argumentation is, again, of central importance. Avoid making unsupported assertions; back up your claims with reasons, and connect up your ideas so that they progress logically toward your conclusions. Consider some of the various objections to and questions about your views that others might or have put forward, and try to respond to them in defence of your own line of thinking. Your goal here should be to discuss what you have expounded so as to come to some conclusion or judgement about it. ("Critical" is derived from the Ancient Greek for "to decide, to judge".) Critical discussion is thus not necessarily "destructive" or "negative"; it can be quite constructive and positive.

In the case of a critical appraisal of a particular author's text, you can negatively criticise the author's arguments by pointing out questionable assumptions, invalid reasoning, etc. If, on the other hand, you think that the text is good, then your critical discussion can be positive. This can be done by revealing its "hidden virtues" (that is, by showing that there is more to the author's arguments and views than what lies on the surface) and/or by defending an author against possible and/or actual criticisms. (eg "Norman Malcolm argues that Descartes is mistaken in assuming that dreams and waking episodes have the same content.* However, Malcolm fails to appreciate the subtlety of Descartes' argument in the First Meditation, which allows Descartes to claim . . .") Just to expound an author's arguments and then say "I disagree" or "That seems right" is not really enough - you need to "have something to say" about it. Of course, by all means go on, after finding fault with some philosopher, to answer in your own way the questions tackled or raised by the author. (eg "Simone de Beauvoir's analysis of women's oppression in The Second Sex suffers from serious weaknesses, as I have shown in Section 2 above. A better way to approach the issue, I shall now argue, is to . . .".)

Where you are not primarily concerned with evaluating or responding to a particular text, your critical discussion can be more focused on your own constructive response to the issue. (eg "Having used Dworkin's account to clarify the meanings of the concepts of 'the sanctity of life' and 'voluntariness', I shall now argue that voluntary euthanasia is morally permissible because its voluntariness respects what is of value in the notion of the sanctity of life" - where you now leave Dworkin behind as a source and move on to give your own account.)

* See Norman Malcolm, "Dreaming and Skepticism", in Willis Doney, ed., Descartes: A Collection of Critical Essays (London: Macmillan, 1967), p. 56.

Guide to researching and writing Philosophy essays

5th edition by Steven Tudor , for the Philosophy program, University of Melbourne, 2003.

This fifth edition of How to Write a Philosophy Essay: A Guide for Students (previous editions titled A Guide to Researching and Writing Philosophy Essays ) was prepared in consultation with members of the Philosophy program, the University of Melbourne. For advice and assistance on this and earlier editions, thanks are due to Graham Priest, Barry Taylor, Christopher Cordner, Doug Adeney, Josie Winther, Linda Burns, Marion Tapper, Kimon Lycos, Brendan Long, Jeremy Moss, Tony Coady, Will Barrett, Brian Scarlett, and Megan Laverty. Some use was also made of materials prepared by the Philosophy Departments of La Trobe University, the University of Queensland, and The Australian National University.

Disclaimer: University, Faculty and program rules

Please note: this booklet does not provide authoritative statements of the official policies or rules of the University of Melbourne, the Faculty of Arts, or the Philosophy program with regard to student essays and examinations or any other matters. Students should, therefore, not rely on this booklet for such information, for which they should consult the various appropriate notice boards, handbooks, websites, and/or members of staff.

Essay topics

What do philosophy essay topics look like? There are, very roughly, two basic kinds of philosophy essay topics: "text-focused" topics and "problem-focused" topics. Text-focused topics ask you to consider some particular philosopher's writing on some issue. (eg "Discuss critically David Hume's account of causation in Part III of Book I of his A Treatise of Human Nature " or "Was Wittgenstein right to say that 'the meaning of a word is its use in the language', in his Philosophical Investigations, Sec. 43?"). Problem-focused topics are more directly about a particular philosophical problem or issue, without reference to any particular philosopher's text. (eg "Is voluntary euthanasia morally permissible?" or "What is scientific method?")

There is another sort of topic, one which presents a statement and asks you to discuss it, where that statement is a "made up" or, at least, unattributed quote. (eg. "'Without belief in God, people cannot be moral'. Discuss.") I shall regard these as variations of the problem-focused type of topic. Where you are asked to discuss some such statement "with reference to" some specified text or philosopher, then that topic becomes more text-focused. (eg "'Without belief in God, people cannot be moral'. Discuss with reference to J.L. Mackie's Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. ") Occasionally, a topic presents an unattributed statement, but the statement is, in fact, a quote from a particular philosopher you've been studying, or, at least, a good paraphrase of their thinking. (An example of the latter: "'All the ideas in our minds originate from either sense perception or our reflection upon sensory information.' Discuss.", in a course devoted to John Locke, whose views are summed up in the quoted statement, though those words are not actually his.) Should you take such topics as problem- or text-focused? Rather unhelpfully, I'll say only that it depends on the case. You might ask your lecturer or tutor about it. Whichever way you do take it, be clear in your essay which way you are taking it.

The difference between text-focused and problem-focused essay topics is, however, not very radical. This is because, on the one hand, any particular philosopher's text is about some philosophical problem or question, while, on the other hand, most philosophical problems (certainly virtually all those you will be given as essay topics at university) will have been written about by previous philosophers.

The basic way to approach text-focused topics, then, is to treat the nominated text as an attempt by one philosopher to deal with a particular philosophical problem or issue. The essay topic will, generally speaking, be inviting you to do philosophy with that philosopher, to engage with them in thinking about the issue, whether that engagement proves to be as an ally or an adversary. The chosen text will usually be one which has been (or deserves to be) influential or significant in the history of philosophy, but the task is not to pay homage to past masters. But, even if homage is your thing, the best way to do that here is to engage with the master philosophically.

With regard to problem-focused topics, you will often find your exploration of the problem aided by taking some text or texts which have dealt with it as reference points or prompts. This is not always strictly necessary, but many of you starting out in philosophy will find it helpful to do so - it can help you give focus to your response to the question. (Thus, you might, in an essay on the topic "Is voluntary euthanasia morally permissible?" take it upon yourself to use, for example, Ronald Dworkin's Life's Dominion and Peter Singer's Practical Ethics as reference points. Or, in an essay on the topic "What is scientific method?", you might set up your answer via a comparison of the two different accounts in Karl Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery and Paul Feyerabend's Against Method.*) How will you know which texts to adopt as reference points or prompts, if none is mentioned in the essay topic itself? One way is to consider what texts have already been mentioned with regard to the topic in your course reading guide and in lectures and tutorials. Another way is to do some of your own research. On this see Section 4 below.

* In this guide, in giving examples of how to go about answering an essay question, I am not necessarily giving any concrete or reliable advice for any particular topic. The examples are primarily to do with the form or style or strategy you might find helpful.

Researching your essay

To do research for your philosophy essay you need to do only two things: read and think. Actually, for problem-focused essays, thinking is the only truly necessary bit, but it's highly likely that you will find your thinking much assisted if you do some reading as well. Philosophical research at university is a little different to research in most other disciplines (especially the natural sciences), in that it is not really about "collecting data" to support or refute explanatory theories. Rather, the thinking that's involved in philosophical research (as part of one's preparation for philosophical writing) is more a matter of reflecting critically upon the problems in front of one. Researching the writings of other philosophers should, therefore, be primarily directed towards helping you with that reflection rather than aiming at gathering together and reporting on "the relevant findings" on a particular topic. In many other disciplines, a "literature review" is an important research skill, and sometimes philosophy academics do such reviews - but it is rare that philosophy students are asked to do one.

What, then, to read? It should be clear from your lectures and tutorials what some starting points for your reading might be. (All courses provide reading guides; many also have booklets of reading material.) Your tutor and lecturer are also available for consultation on what readings you might begin with for any particular topic in that subject. Independent research can also uncover useful sources, and evidence of this in your essay can be a pleasing sign of intellectual independence. Make sure, though, that what you come up with is relevant to the topic. (See Section 5.2 below on relevance.) Whichever way you proceed, your reading should be purposive and selective.

In the case of essay questions that refer to a particular text, you should familiarise yourself thoroughly with this text. Usually, such a text will be a primary text, i.e. one in which a philosopher writes directly about a philosophical issue. Texts on or about a primary text are called secondary texts. (Many philosophical works will combine these two tasks, and discuss other philosophical texts while also dealing directly with a philosophical issue.) Some secondary texts can be helpful to students. However, don't think you will only ever understand a primary text if you have a nice friendly secondary text to take you by the hand through the primary text. More often than not, you need to have a good grasp of the primary text in order to make sense of the secondary text.

How much to read? The amount of reading you do should be that which maximises the quality of your thinking - that is, you should not swamp yourself with vast slabs of text that you can't digest, but nor should you starve your mind of ideas to chew over. There is, of course, no simple rule for determining this optimal amount. Be wary, though, of falling into the vice of looking for excuses not to read some philosopher or text, as in "Oh, that's boring old religious stuff" or "She's one of those obscure literary feminist types", or "In X Department they laugh at you if you mention those authors in tutes". If someone wants a reason not to think, they'll soon come up with one.

Philosophical writings

Most philosophical writings come in either of two forms: books or articles. Articles appear either in books that are edited anthologies or in academic journals, such as Philosophical Quarterly or Australasian Journal of Philosophy. Some academic journals are also on the internet. Most articles in the journals are written by professional philosophers for professional philosophers; similarly with many books. But by no means let this put you off. Everyone begins philosophy at the deep end - it's really the only kind there is!

There are, however, many books written for student audiences. Some of these are general introductions to philosophy as a whole; others are introductions to particular areas or issues (eg biomedical ethics or philosophy of science). Among the general introductions are various philosophical dictionaries, encyclopedias and "companions". These reference works collect short articles on a wide range of topics and can be very useful starting points for newcomers to a topic. Among the most useful of the general reference works are:

• Edward Craig, ed., The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (10 vols.) (London: Routledge, 1998)
• Paul Edwards, ed., The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (8 vols.) (New York: Macmillan, 1967)
• Robert Audi, ed., The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)
• Ted Honderich, ed., The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995)
• Simon Blackburn, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)
• Thomas Mautner, ed., The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy (London: Penguin, 1998)
• J.O. Urmson and Jonathan Ree, eds., The Concise Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy and Philosophers (London: Routledge, 1993)
• Edward N. Zalta, ed., The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (an internet-based reference work: plato.stanford.edu/ )

Note taking

Note taking, like your reading, should not be random, but ought to be guided by the topic in question and by your particular lines of response to the issues involved. Note taking for philosophy is very much an individual art, which you develop as you progress. By and large it is not of much use to copy out reams of text as part of your researches. Nor is it generally helpful to read a great number of pages without making any note of what they contain for future reference. But between these two extremes it is up to you to find the mean that best helps you in getting your thoughts together.

Libraries and electronic resources

The University's Baillieu Library (including the Institute of Education Resource Centre), which is open to all members of the University, contains more than 2,500 years' worth of philosophical writings. The best way to become acquainted with them is by using them, including using the catalogues (including the Baillieu's on-line catalogues and subject resources web-pages), following up a work's references (and references in the references), intelligent browsing of the shelves, etc.

In the main Baillieu Library, the philosophical books are located (mostly) between 100–199 in the Dewey decimal system, and philosophical journals are located in the basement. The Reference section on the ground floor also has some relevant works. The Education Resource Centre also has a good philosophy collection.

In addition to hard-copy philosophical writings, there is also a variety of electronic resources in philosophy, mostly internet-based. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy was already mentioned above. Links to other useful internet sites (such as the Australasian Association of Philosophy website) can be found through the Baillieu Library's web-page and the Philosophy Department's web-page.

A strong word of warning, however, for the would-be philosophical web-surfer: because anyone can put material on a website, all kinds of stuff, of varying levels of quality, is out there - and new-comers to philosophy are usually not well placed to sort their way through it. Unless you have a very good understanding of what you're looking for - and what you're not looking for - most of you will be much better off simply carefully reading and thinking about a central text for your course, eg Descartes' First Meditation, rather than wandering about the internet clicking on all the hits for "Descartes". Exercise your mind, not your index finger.

Writing your essay

Planning and structuring your essay.

It is very important that you plan your essay, so that you have an idea of what you are going to write before you start to write it. Of course, you will most likely alter things in later drafts, but you should still start off by having a plan. Planning your essay includes laying out a structure. It is very important that your essay has a clearly discernible structure, ie that it is composed of parts and that these parts are logically connected. This helps both you and your reader to be clear about how your discussion develops, stage by stage, as you work through the issues at hand.

Poor essay structure is one of the most common weaknesses in student philosophy essays. Taking the time to work on the structure of your essay is time well spent, especially since skill in structuring your thoughts for presentation to others should be among the more enduring things you learn at university. A common trap that students fall into is to start their essay by writing the first sentence, then writing another one that seems to follow that one, then another one that sort of fits after that one, then another that might or might not have some connection with the previous one, and so on until the requisite 1,500 words are used up. The result is usually a weak, rambling essay.

There are, of course, no hard and fast rules about how to structure a philosophy essay. Again, it is a skill you develop through practice, and much will depend on the particular topic at hand. Nonetheless, it might be helpful to begin by developing an essay structure around the basic distinction between your exposition and your critical discussion (as discussed above). In this it will be important that you make clear who is putting forward which point, that is, make it clear whether you are presenting your own thoughts or are expounding someone else's. (Again, confusion in this regard is a common problem in student essays.) It can often help your structuring if you provide headings for different sections (possibly numbered or lettered). Again, this helps both your reader to follow your discussion and you to develop your thoughts. At each stage, show clearly the logical relations between and the reasons for your points, so that your reader can see clearly why you say what you say and can see clearly the development in your discussion.

Another key to structuring your essay can be found in the old adage "Tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em. Tell 'em. Then tell 'em what you've told 'em", which provides you with a ready-made structure: Introduction, Main Body, and Conclusion.

In your Introduction, first introduce the issues the essay is concerned with. In doing so, try to state briefly just what the problem is and (if there is space) why it is a problem. This also applies, of course, to issues covered in text-focused essay topics. Next, tell the reader what it is that you are going to do about those problems in the Main Body. This is usually done by giving a brief sketch or overview of the main points you will present, a "pre-capitulation", so to speak, of your essay's structure. This is one way of showing your reader that you have a grasp (indeed, it helps you get a grasp) of your essay as a structured and integrated whole, and gives them some idea of what to expect by giving them an idea of how you have decided to answer the question. Of course, for reasons of space, your Introduction might not be very long, but something along these lines is likely to be useful.

In your Main Body, do what you've said you'll do. Here is where you should present your exposition(s) and your critical discussion(s). Thus, it is here that the main philosophical substance of your essay is to be found. Of course, what that substance is and how you will present it will depend on the particular topic before you. But, whatever the topic, make clear at each stage just what it is you are doing. You can be quite explicit about this. (eg "I shall now present Descartes' ontological argument for the existence of God, as it is presented in his Fifth Meditation. There will be three stages to this presentation.") Don't think that such explicitness must be a sign of an unsophisticated thinker.

A distinct Conclusion is perhaps not always necessary, if your Main Body has clearly "played out" your argument. So you don't always have to present a grand summation or definitive judgement at the end. Still, often for your own sake, try to state to yourself what it is your essay has achieved and see if it would be appropriate to say so explicitly. Don't feel that you must come up with earth-shattering conclusions. Of course, utter banality or triviality are not good goals, either. Also, your essay doesn't always have to conclude with a "solution" to a problem. Sometimes, simply clarifying an issue or problem is a worthy achievement and can merit first-class honours. A good conclusion to a philosophy essay, then, will usually combine a realistic assessment of the ambit and cogency of its claims with a plausible proposal that those claims have some philosophical substance.

What you write in your essay should always be relevant to the question posed. This is another common problem in student essays, so continually ask yourself "Am I addressing the question here?" First-class answers to a question can vary greatly, but you must make sure that your essay responds to the question asked, even if you go on to argue that the question as posed is itself problematic. (eg "To ask ‘What is scientific method?' presupposes that science follows one basic method. However, I shall argue that there are, in fact, several different scientific methods and that these are neither unified nor consistent.") Be wary, however, of twisting a topic too far out of shape in order to fit your favoured theme. (You would be ill-advised, for example, to proceed thus: "What is scientific method? This is a question asked by many great minds. But what is a mind? In this essay, I shall discuss the views of Thomas Aquinas on the nature of mind.")

This requirement of relevance is not intended as an authoritarian constraint on your intellectual freedom. It is part of the skill of paying sustained and focused attention to something put before you - which is one of the most important skills you can develop at university. If you do have other philosophical interests that you want to pursue (such as Aquinas on mind), then please do pursue them, in addition to writing your essay on the set topic. At no stage does the requirement of relevance prevent you from pursuing your other interests.

Citing Philosophical "Authorities"

There might be occasions when you want to quote other philosophers and writers apart from when you are quoting them because they are the subject of your essay. There are two basic reasons why you might want to do this. First, you might quote someone because their words constitute a good or exemplary expression or articulation of an idea you are dealing with, whether as its proponent, critic, or simply its chronicler. (eg "As Nietzsche succinctly put the point, 'There are no moral phenomena at all, only a moral interpretation of phenomena'.*") You may or may not want to endorse the idea whose good expression you have quoted, but simply want to use the philosopher as a spokesperson for or example of that view. But be clear about what you think the quote means and be careful about what you are doing with the quote. It won't do all the work for you.

The second reason you might want to quote a philosopher is because you think their words constitute an "authoritative statement" of a view. Here you want to use the fact that, eg Bertrand Russell maintained that there are two kinds of knowledge of things (namely, knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description) in support of your claim that there are two such kinds of knowledge of things. However, be very careful in doing this, for the nature of philosophical authority is not so simple here. That is to say, what really matters is not that Bertrand Russell the man held that view; what matters are his reasons for holding that view. So, when quoting philosophers for this second reason, be careful that you appreciate in what exactly the authority lies - which means that you should show that you appreciate why Russell maintained that thesis. Of course, you can't provide long arguments for every claim you make or want to make use of; every essay will have its enabling but unargued assumptions. But at least be clear about these. (eg "For the purposes of this essay, I shall adopt Russell's thesis* that ...").

* Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973 [first German ed.1886]), Sec. 108.

* See Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967 [first pub. 1912]), Ch. 5.

Philosophy is by its nature a relatively abstract and generalising business. (Note that abstractness and generality are not the same thing. Nor do vagueness and obscurity automatically attend them.) Sometimes a longish series of general ideas and abstract reasonings can become difficult for the reader (and often the writer) to follow. It can often help, therefore, to use some concrete or specific examples in your discussion. (Note that there can be different levels of concreteness and specificity in examples.)

Examples can be taken from history, current events, literature, and so on, or can be entirely your own invention. Exactly what examples you employ and just how and why you use them will, of course, depend on the case. Some uses might be: illustration of a position, problem or idea to help make it clearer; evidence for, perhaps even proof of, a proposition; a counter-example; a case-study to be returned to at various points during the essay; or a problem for a theory or viewpoint to be applied to. Again, be clear about what the example is and how and why you use it. Be careful not to get distracted by, or bogged down in, your examples. Brevity is usually best.

English expression

There's another old saying: "If you can't say what you mean, then you can't mean what you say" - and this very much applies to philosophical writing. Thus, in writing philosophically, you must write clearly and precisely. This means that good philosophical writing requires a good grasp of the language in which it is written, including its grammar and vocabulary. (See Section 9.3 for advice for people from non-English speaking backgrounds.) A high standard of writing skills is to be expected of Arts graduates. Indeed, this sort of skill will last longer than your memory of, for example, the three parts of the Platonic soul (though it is also hoped that some of the content of what you study will also stick). So use your time at university (in all your subjects) to develop these skills further.

Having a mastery of a good range of terms, being sensitive to the subtleties of their meaning, and being able to construct grammatically correct and properly punctuated sentences are essential to the clear articulation and development of your thoughts. Think of grammar, not as some old-fashioned set of rules of linguistic etiquette, but rather as the "internal logic" of a sentence, that is, as the relationships between the words within a sentence which enable them to combine to make sense.

Virtually all sentences in philosophical writing are declarative (ie. make statements), as opposed to interrogative, imperative or exclamatory types of sentences. There is some place, though, for interrogative sentences, ie. questions. (Note that, in contrast, this guide, which is not in the essay genre, contains many imperative sentences, ie. commands.) As you craft each (declarative) sentence in your essay, remember the basics of sentence construction. Make clear what the sentence is about (its subject) and what you are saying about it (the predicate). Make clear what the principal verb is in the predicate, since it is what usually does the main work in saying something about the subject. Where a sentence consists of more than one clause (as many do in philosophical writing), make clear what work each clause is doing. Attend closely, then, to each and every sentence you write so that its sense is clear and is the sense you intend it to have. Think carefully about what it is you want each particular sentence to do (in relation to both those sentences immediately surrounding it and the essay as a whole) and structure your sentence so that it does what you want it to do. To help you with your own sentence construction skills, when reading others' philosophical works (or indeed any writing) attend closely to the construction of each sentence so as to be alive to all the subtleties of the text.

Good punctuation is an essential part of sentence construction. Its role is to help to display the grammar of a sentence so that its meaning is clear. As an example of how punctuation can fundamentally change the grammar and, hence, meaning of a sentence, compare (i) "Philosophers, who argue for the identity of mind and brain, often fail to appreciate the radical consequences of that thesis." and (ii) "Philosophers who argue for the identity of mind and brain often fail to appreciate the radical consequences of that thesis." In the first sentence it is asserted (falsely, as it happens) that all philosophers argue for the identity of mind and brain; in the second, only some philosophers are said to argue for the identity of mind and brain. Only the punctuation differs in the two strings of identical words, and yet the meanings of the sentences are very different. Confusions over this sort of thing are common weaknesses in student essays, and leave readers asking themselves "What exactly is this student trying to say?"

It will be assumed that you can spell - which is not a matter of pressing the "spell-check" key on a word-processor. A good dictionary and a good thesaurus should always be within reach as you write your essay.

Also, try to shorten and simplify sentences where you can do so without sacrificing the subtlety and inherent complexity of the discussion. Where a sentence is becoming too long or complex, it is likely that too many ideas are being bundled up together too closely. Stop and separate your ideas out. If an idea is a good or important one, it will usually deserve its own sentence.

Your "intra-sentential logic" should work very closely with the "inter-sentential logic" of your essay, ie. with the logical relations between your sentences. (This "inter-sentential logic" is what "logic" is usually taken to refer to.) For example, to enable sentences P and Q to work together to yield sentence R as a conclusion, you need to make clear that there are elements within P and Q which connect up to yield R. Consider the following example: "Infanticide is the intentional killing of a human being. However, murder is regarded by all cultures as morally abhorrent. Therefore, people who commit infanticide should be punished." This doesn't work as an argument, because the writer has not constructed sentences which provide the connecting concepts in the various subjects and predicates, even though each sentence is grammatically correct (and possibly even true).

If you are concerned to write not only clearly and precisely, but also with some degree of grace and style (and I hope you are), it's still best to get the clarity and precision right first, in a plain, straightforward way, and then to polish things up afterwards to get the style and grace you want. But don't sacrifice clarity and precision for the sake of style and grace - be prepared to sacrifice that beautiful turn of phrase if its presence is going to send your discussion down an awkward path of reasoning. Aim to hit the nail on the head rather than make a loud bang. What you are likely to find, however, is that a philosophy essay which really is clear and precise will have a large measure of grace and style in its very clarity and precision.

Remember that obscurity is not a sign of profundity. (Some profound thought may well be difficult to follow, but that doesn't mean that one can achieve profundity merely through producing obscure, difficult-to-read writing.) Your marker is interested in what's actually in your essay, not what's possibly inside your head (or indeed what's possibly in some book you happen to have referred to in your essay). So avoid hinting at or alluding suggestively to ideas, especially where they are meant to do some important work in your essay. Instead, lay them out explicitly and directly. Of course, you won't have space to spell out every single idea, so work out which ideas do the most important work and make sure that you at least get those ideas clearly articulated. In expounding a text or problem that ultimately just is vague, muddled, or obscure, try to convey such vagueness, muddle or obscurity clearly, rather than simply reproducing it in your own writing. That is, be clear that and how a text or problem has such features, and then perhaps do your best to make matters clearer.

Despite these stern pronouncements, don't be afraid of sometimes saying things which happen to sound a little odd, if you have tried various formulations and think you have now expressed your ideas just as they should be expressed. Philosophy is often an exploratory business, and new ways of seeing and saying things can sometimes be a part of that exploration.

The need for clarity and precision in philosophical writing sometimes means that you need to stipulate your own meaning for a term. When you want to use a particular word in a particular way for the purposes of your essay - as a "technical term" - be clear about it. (eg "In this essay, I shall intend ‘egoism' to mean ...") Also, be consistent in your technical meanings, or else note when you are not. Be wary, though, of inventing too many neologisms or being too idiosyncratic in your stipulations.

With regard to what "authorial pronoun" to adopt in a philosophy essay, it's standard to write plainly in the first person singular ("I", "me", "my", etc.) rather than use the royal "we" (as in "we shall argue that ..."), or the convoluted quasi-legal indirect form ("It is submitted that ..."), or the scientific objectivity of a physics experimental report. Nonetheless, stick closer to "I argue", "I suggest", "my definition", etc., than to "I wish", "I hate", "my feeling", etc. A philosophy essay is still something more intellectual and formal than a personal reminiscence, polemic, or proclamation. In terms of audience, it's probably best to think of your reader as someone who is intelligent, open to discussion and knows a little about the topic you're writing on, but perhaps is not quite clear or decided about the issues, or needs convincing of the view you want to put forward, or is curious about what you think about the issues.

Try also to use non-discriminatory language, ie. language which does not express or imply inequality of worth between people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and so on. As you write, you will be considering carefully your choice of words to express your thoughts. You will almost always find that it is possible to avoid discriminatory language by rephrasing your sentences.

Other things to avoid:

• waffle and padding
• vagueness and ambiguity
• abbreviations (this guide I'm writing isn't an eg. of what's req'd. in a phil. essay)
• colloquialisms (which can really get up your reader's nose)
• writing whose syntax merely reflects the patterns of informal speech
• unnecessary abstractness or indirectness
• unexplained jargon
• flattery and invective
• overly-rhetorical questions (do you really need me to tell you what they are?) and other flourishes

There are many guides to good writing available. Anyone who writes (whether in the humanities or the sciences, whether beginners or experienced professionals) will do well to have some on hand. Most good bookshops and libraries will have some. Among the most consulted works are (check for the latest editions):

• J. M. Williams and G. C. Colomb, Style: Toward Clarity and Grace (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995)
• W. Strunk and E. B. White, The Elements of Style, 4th ed. (New York: Longman, 2000)
• E. Gowers, The Complete Plain Words, 3rd ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987)
• R. W. Burchfield, ed., The New Fowler's Modern English Usage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)
• Pam Peters, The Cambridge Australian English Style Guide (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1995)
• Australian Government Publishing Service, Style Manual for Authors, Editors and Printers, 5th ed. (Canberra: AGPS, 1995)

Vocabulary of logical argument

Closely related to the above points about English expression is the importance of having a good grasp of what can rather generally be called "the vocabulary of logical argument". These sorts of terms are crucial in articulating clearly and cogently a logical line of argument. Such argumentation will, of course, be of central importance in whatever discipline you are studying, indeed in any sphere of life that requires effective thinking and communication. I have in mind terms such as these (grouped a little loosely):

all, any, every, most, some, none, a, an, the that, this, it, he, she, they if . . . , then. . . ; if and only if . . . , then . . . ; unless either . . . or . . .; neither . . . nor . . . not, is, are therefore, thus, hence, so, because, since, follows, entails, implies, infer, consequence, conditional upon moreover, furthermore which, that, whose and, but, however, despite, notwithstanding, nevertheless, even, though, still possibly, necessarily, can, must, may, might, ought, should true, false, probable, certain sound, unsound, valid, invalid, fallacious, supported, proved, contradicted, rebutted, refuted, negated logical, illogical, reasonable, unreasonable, rational, irrational assumption, premise, belief, claim, proposition argument, reason, reasoning, evidence, proof

Most of these are quite simple terms, but they are crucial in argumentative or discursive writing of all kinds. (Many are themselves the subject of study in logic, a branch of philosophy). The sloppy use of these sorts of terms is another common weakness in students' philosophy essays. Pay close and careful attention to how you employ them. Moreover, pay close and careful attention to how the authors you read use them. For further discussion of some of these terms and others, see:

• Basic Philosophical Vocabulary, prepared by the staff of the Philosophy Department and available from the programs Office
• Wesley C. Salmon, Logic, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1973)
• Antony Flew, Thinking About Thinking (London: Fontana, 1985)
• Graham Priest, Logic: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)
• Joel Rudinow and Vincent E. Barry, Invitation to Critical Thinking, 4th ed. (Fort Worth, Texas: Harcourt Brace, 1999)

Revising your essay

It is virtually essential that you write a first draft of your essay and then work on that draft to work towards your finished essay. Indeed, several drafts may well be necessary in order to produce your best possible work. It is a rare philosopher indeed who can get things perfectly right on the first attempt, so be prepared to revise and re-develop what you write. Don't be too precious about what you have written, if it appears that it should be sacrificed in the revision process. There is usually a very marked difference between essays which are basically first draft rush-jobs done the night before they are due and those which have been revised and polished. Give yourself time to revise by starting writing early on. For most philosophy students, the greater part of the work in essay writing is in the writing, not in the preliminary researches and planning stages. So be wary of thinking "I've done all the research. I only need to write up my notes, which I can do the night before the essay's due". This is likely to lead to a weak, perhaps non-existent, essay (and very likely a sleepless night).

Stick to the word limit given for your essay. Why are word limits imposed? First, to give the markers a fair basis for comparing student essays. Second, to give you the opportunity to practise the discipline of working creatively under constraints. Skill in this discipline will stand you in very good stead in any sphere where circumstances impose limitations. Again, word limits are not constraints on your intellectual freedom. Outside your essay you are free to write without limit. But even there you'll probably find that your creativity is improved by working under a self-imposed discipline.

As a general rule, most student essays that fall well short of the word limit are weak or lazy attempts at the task, and most essays that go well over the limit are not much stronger or the result of much harder work - the extra length is often due to unstructured waffle or padding which the writer hasn't thought enough about so as to edit judiciously. If you structure your essay clearly, you'll find it easier to revise and edit, whether in order to contract or expand it. ("Hmm, let's see: section 2 is much longer than section 4, but is not as important, so I'll cut it down. And I should expand section 3, because that's a crucial step. And I can shift that third paragraph in the Introduction to the Conclusion.")

Plagiarism and originality

Plagiarism is essentially a form of academic dishonesty or cheating. At university level, such dishonesty is not tolerated and is dealt with severely, usually by awarding zero marks for a plagiarised essay or, in some cases, dismissing a student from the university.

When you submit your essay, you are implicitly stating that the essay is your own original and independent work, that you have not submitted the same work for assessment in another subject, and that where you have made use of other people's work, this is properly acknowledged. If you know that this is not in fact the case, you are being dishonest. (In a number of university departments, students are in fact required to sign declarations of academic honesty.)

Plagiarism is the knowing but unacknowledged use of work by someone else (including work by another student, and indeed oneself - see below) and which is being presented as one's own work. It can take a number of forms, including:

• copying : exactly reproducing another's words
• paraphrasing : expressing the meaning of another's words in different words
• summarising : reproducing the main points of another's argument
• cobbling : copying, paraphrasing or summarising the work of a number of different people and piecing them together to produce one body of text
• submitting one's own work when it has already been submitted for assessment in another subject
• collusion : presenting an essay as your own independent work when in fact it has been produced, in whole or part, in collusion with one or more other people

None of the practices of copying, paraphrasing, summarizing or cobbling is wrong in itself, but when one or more is done without proper acknowledgment it constitutes plagiarism. Therefore, all sources must be adequately and accurately acknowledged in footnotes or endnotes. (See Section 7.) Plagiarism from the internet in particular can be a temptation for a certain kind of student. However, be warned: there is a number of very good internet and software tools for identifying plagiarism.

With regard to collusion, it's undoubtedly often very helpful to discuss one's work with others, be it other students, family members, friends or teachers. Indeed, philosophy thrives on dialogue. However, don't kid yourself that you would simply be extending that process if you were to ask your interlocutor to join with you in the writing of your essay, whether by asking them to tell you what you should write or to write down some of their thoughts for you to reproduce in your essay. At the end of the day, you must be the one to decide what goes into your essay.

Originality

Students sometimes worry about whether they will be able to develop "original ideas", especially in light of the fact that nearly every philosophical idea one comes up with seems to have been thought of before by someone else. There is no denying that truly original work in philosophy is well rewarded, but your first aim should be to develop ideas that you think are good and not merely different. If, after arguing for what you believe is right, and arguing in way that you think is good, you then discover that someone else has had the same idea, don't throw your work away - you should feel vindicated to some extent that your thinking has been congruent with that of another (possibly great) philosopher. (If you have not yet handed your essay in when you make this discovery, make an appropriately placed note to that effect.) Don't be fooled, however, into thinking that plagiarism can be easily passed off as congruent thinking. Of course, if that other philosopher's ideas have helped you to develop your ideas, then this is not a matter of congruent ideas but rather of derivative ideas, and this must be adequately acknowledged. If, after developing your ideas, you discover that they are original, then that is an added bonus. But remember that it is more important to be a good philosopher than an original one.

Quotations, footnotes, endnotes and bibliography

Quotations in your essay should be kept to a minimum. The markers know the central texts pretty well already and so don't need to have pages thereof repeated in front of them. Of course, some quotation will usually be important and useful - sometimes essential - in both exposition and critical discussion.

When you quote the words of someone else directly, you must make the quotation clearly distinct from your own text, using quotation marks . (eg "Descartes said that 'it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once.'* He makes this claim …" - where the words quoted from Descartes are in 'single quotation marks'. Note that it is relatively arbitrary whether one uses 'single' or "double" quotation marks for "first order" quotations, but whichever style you adopt, use it consistently in the one essay.) Alternatively, where the quoted passage is greater than three lines, put the quoted words in a separate indented paragraph , so that your essay would look like this:

In his First Meditation , Descartes argues as follows:

Whatever I have up till now accepted as most true I have acquired either from the senses or through the senses. But from time to time I have found that the senses deceive, and it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once.* In this essay I shall argue that prudence does not in fact require us to distrust our senses and that Descartes's sceptical method is therefore seriously flawed.

In both cases, the quotations must be given proper referencingin a footnote or endnote.

When you are not quoting another person directly, but are still making use of their work - as in indirect quotations (eg "Descartes says that it is wise not to trust something that has deceived us before"*), paraphrases, summaries, and cobblings - you must still acknowledge your debts, using footnotes or endnotes.

* Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy , trans. John Cottingham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986 [first French ed., 1641]), p. 12.

Footnotes and endnotes

Footnotes appear at the foot of the same page on which the cited material appears, clearly separated from the main body of the text, each one clearly numbered. Endnotes appear at the end of the essay, again clearly separated from the main body of text, numbered and headed "Endnotes" or "Notes". Either method is acceptable, but you should choose one and stick with it throughout the one essay.

Below are some examples of how to put the relevant referencing information in footnotes and endnotes. This is not intended as an exercise in pedantry, but as a guide to how to provide the information needed for adequate referencing. The reason we provide this information is to enable our readers to find the sources we use in order to verify them and to allow them to pursue the material further if it interests them. In your own researches you will come to value good referencing in the texts you read as a helpful source of further references on a topic. Again, it is this sort of research skill that an Arts graduate will be expected to have mastered.

There are various conventions for writing up footnotes and endnotes. The Philosophy Department does not require that any particular convention be followed, only that you be consistent in your use of the convention that you do choose. For other conventions see the style guides mentioned above, or simply go to some texts published by reputable publishers and see what formats they employ.

Imagine, then, that the following are endnotes at the end of your essay. I will explain them below.

• James Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy , 2nd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993), p. 25.
• Philippa Foot, "Moral Relativism", in Michael Krausz and Jack W. Meiland, eds., Relativism: Cognitive and Moral (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), p. 155.
• Ibid., p. 160.
• Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. H. J. Paton (New York: Harper and Row, 1964 [first German ed., 1785]), p. 63.
• Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, (London: Dent, 1973 [first pub. 1651]),p. 65.
• Rachels, The Elements, p. 51.
• Peter Winch, "The Universalizability of Moral Judgements", The Monist 49 (1965), p. 212.
• Antony Duff, "Legal Punishment", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2001 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2001/entries/legal-punishment/ at 15 June 2003, sec. 6.

Notes explained

• This is your first reference to a book called The Elements of Moral Philosophy. The title is given in full and in italics. If you are unable to use italics, then you should underline the title. The book's author is James Rachels. It's the 2nd edition of that book, which was published in New York, by the publishers McGraw-Hill, in 1993. The page you have referred to in your main text is page 25
• This is your first reference to Philippa Foot's article, "Moral Relativism", the title of which is put in "quotation marks". This article appeared in a book (title in italics) which is an anthology of different articles, and which was edited by Krausz and Meiland (names in full). The rest is in the same style as note (1)
• "Ibid." is short for "ibidem", which means "in the same place" in Latin. Use it on its own when you want to refer to exactly the same work and page number as in the immediately preceding note. So here the reference is again to Foot's article at page 155
• Ditto, except this time you refer to a different page in Foot's article, namely page 160
• This is reference to a book by Kant. Same book details as per note (1), except that, because this is a translation, you include the translator's name, and the date of the first edition in the original language
• This is a book reference again, so it's the same as note (1), except that, because it's an old book, you include the date of the original edition. (How old does a book have to be before it merits this treatment? There is no settled view. Note, though, that this convention is not usually followed for ancient authors)
• Here you are referring to Rachels' book again, but, because you are not in the very next note after a reference to it, you can't use "ibid.". Simply give the author's surname and a short title of the book, plus page reference. There is also a common alternative to this, whereby you give the surname, and write "op. cit." (which is short for "opere citato", which is Latin for "in the work already cited") and page reference (eg "Rachels, op. cit., p. 51.") Your reader then has to scan back over the notes to see what that "op." was exactly. The first option (author plus short title) is usually easier on the reader
• This is a reference to an article by Peter Winch in a journal called The Monist. The article's title is in "quotes", the journal title is in italics. The volume of the journal is 49, the year of publication is 1965, the page referred to is p. 212
• This is a reference to an article in the internet-based Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The article is titled "Legal Punishment" and was written by Antony Duff. The Encyclopedia was edited by Edward N. Zalta. Note that I have basically followed the mode of citation that the Encyclopedia itself recommends. (This is one sign of the site being a reputable one. Where a site makes such a recommendation, it's best to follow it.) I have, however, also added the date on which the article was retrieved from the site, and put the author's given name first, to be consistent with the other footnotes. I have also added the reference to section 6, in an effort to be more precise as to where in the article the material I used came from. Since web pages aren't numbered in the manner of hard copy works, it will help if you are able to refer to some other feature, such as paragraphs or sections, so as to pin-point your reference. In the absence of a site recommending a mode of citation to its own material, the basic information needed for adequate citation of internet-based material is (where identifiable) the author, the document title, the year the document was created, the website name, the uniform resource locator (URL) in <arrow-brackets>, date of retrieval, and a pin-point reference*

* I am here following the mode of citation of internet materials recommended in Melbourne University Law Review Association Inc, Australian Guide to Legal Citation , 2nd ed. (Melbourne: Melbourne University Law Review Association Inc, 2002), pp. 70-73. I have, though, added the desirability of a pin-point reference.

Bibliography

At the end of your essay (after your endnotes, if used) you should list in a bibliography all of the works referred to in your notes, as well as any other works you consulted in researching and writing your essay. The list should be in alphabetical order, going by authors' surnames. The format should be the same as for your notes, except that you drop the page references and should put surnames first. So the bibliography of our mock-essay above would look like this:

• Duff, Antony, "Legal Punishment", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2001 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2001/entries/legal-punishment/ at 15 June 2003
• Foot, Philippa, "Moral Relativism", in Michael Krausz and Jack Meiland, eds., Relativism: Cognitive and Moral (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982)
• Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan (London: Dent, 1973 [first pub.1651])
• Kant, Immanuel, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals , trans. H.J. Paton (New York: Harper and Row, 1964 [first German ed. 1785])
• Rachels, James, The Elements of Moral Philosophy , 2nd ed., (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993)
• Winch, Peter, "The Universalizability of Moral Judgements", The Monist 49 (1965)

Presentation of essays and seeking advice

Generally, you should present an essay that is legible (hand-writing is OK, but typed or word-processed essays are preferable), in English, on one side of pieces of paper that are somewhere in the vicinity of A4 size and are fixed together . You should attach a completed Cover Sheet provided by the Philosophy program. Plastic document covers, spiral binding and other forms of presentational paraphernalia are not necessary (nor are they usually even desirable, as they mostly just get in the marker's way).

Late essays

Late essays are penalised . (For details of penalties consult the Philosophy program's notice board.)

Essays not handed in

Essays not handed in at all get zero marks. An essay that is handed in but gets a mark below 50 (and so is technically a "failed" essay) still gets some marks. (At least, it will so long as it's not so extremely late that the deducted marks wipe out all the marks it would have received if handed in on time.) All marks received for your essay (whether pass or fail) go toward your final score in the subject. Therefore, even if you think your essay is bound to fail (but please let your marker be the judge of that), or the due date has already passed, or both, it is still in your interests to hand your essay in .

Tutors and lecturers

Philosophy staff are not there just to be listened to by you; they are also there to listen to you. So don't hesitate to contact your tutor or lecturer to discuss questions or problems you have concerning your work.

If you have a legitimate excuse, you may be granted an extension on the due date for your essay by the lecturer in charge. Similarly, special consideration may also be granted when illness or other circumstances adversely affect your work. Applications for special consideration are made online via the Special Consideration web page.

Student counselling

Some personal or non-philosophical academic difficulties you might have you might want to discuss with someone other than your tutor or lecturer. Student Counselling and Psychological Services are there for you to discuss all sorts of problems you might encounter. Please consult your student diary for details on the counselling service.

English language assistance

As noted above, good philosophical writing requires a good grasp of the language in which it is written. If you are from a non-English speaking background and are having difficulties with your English expression in an academic context, you might like to make use of the services provided by Student Services Academic Skills . Many native English speakers, too, can benefit from short "refresher" courses and workshops run by the Centre. Please consult your student diary for details about this service.

A bit on Philosophy exams

Essays of the sort discussed so far in this guide are not the only form of assessment in the Philosophy program - examinations are also set. What is to be said about them?

First, not much that is different from what's been said above about philosophy essays. This is because what you write in a philosophy exam is none other than a philosophy essay . Have a look at past philosophy exam papers, in the Gibson and Baillieu libraries, to get a feel for them. The only basic difference between essays and exams is the matter of what constraints you're working under. Essays have word limits; exams have time limits . Again, stick to them. (Actually, you'll be made to stick to them by the exam invigilators.)

It's best, then, to think about how long to spend writing on an exam essay topic, rather than about how many words to write on it. Simple arithmetic will tell you how much time to spend on each exam question. (eg if you have a 2-hour exam and have to answer 3 questions, each worth one-third of the exam mark, then spend 40 minutes on each question.) Avoid the trap of "borrowing time" from a later question in order to perfect your answer to an earlier question, and then working faster on the later questions to catch up on lost time - this is likely to get you in a tangle. There are no word limits in philosophy exam essays, but don't think that the more you scrawl across the page, the more marks you'll get. Nonetheless, use the time you've got so as to maximise your display of your philosophical understanding and skills in answering the question.

Planning and structuring remain very important in exam essays. With regard to the niceties of footnotes, endnotes and bibliographies, etc., these are not necessary, so don't waste time on these. However, if you quote or refer to a specific passage from a text, do indicate clearly that it is a quotation or reference. (The principle of being clear as to who is saying what remains central.) If you have the reference handy, just put it briefly in the text of your exam essay. (eg "As Descartes says in Meditation I (p. 12), . . ." or "'[I]t is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once' (Descartes, Meditation I, p. 12)".) Generally speaking, you will show your familiarity with any relevant texts by how you handle them in your discussion. This is also true for your non-exam essays.

Your preparation for the exam should have been done well before entering the exam hall. Note that various subjects have restrictions on what texts and other items can be brought into the exam hall. (Consult the Philosophy program's notice board for details.) Many subjects will have "closed book" exams. Even if an exam is "open book", if you are properly prepared, you should not need to spend much time at all consulting texts or notes during the exam itself.

You won't have time for redrafting and revising your exam essay (which makes planning and structuring your answers before you start writing all the more important). If you do want to delete something, just cross it out clearly. Don't waste time with liquid paper or erasers. Write legibly . Don't wr. "point form" sav. time. Diff. kn. mean. use incomp. sent.

Finally, read the instructions at the beginning of the exam paper. They are important. (eg it's not a good strategy to answer two questions from Part A, when the Instructions tell you to answer two questions, one from Part A and one from Part B.) Note the (somewhat quaint) University practice of starting Reading Time some time before the stated time for the exam. Philosophy exams usually have 15 minutes of reading time. (Check for each of your exams.) So, if your exam timetable says the exam is at 2.15 pm, with reading time of 15 minutes, then the reading time starts at 2.00 pm and the writing time starts at 2.15pm - so get to the exam hall well before 2.00 pm. Reading time is very important. Use it to decide which questions you'll answer and to start planning your answers.

Checklist of questions

• Do I understand the essay question ? Do I know when the essay is due ?
• Do I know which texts to consult? Do I know where to find them?
• Have I made useful notes from my reading of the relevant texts?
• Have I made a plan of how I'll approach the question in my essay?
• Have I given myself enough time to draft and redraft my essay?
• Have I written a clearly structured essay? Is it clear what each stageis doing? Do I do what I say I'll do in my Introduction?
• Have I clearly distinguished exposition and critical discussion ? Have I given a fair and accurate account of the author(s) in question?
• Is my response to the topic relevant ? Do I answer the question? Have I kept my essay within the general bounds of the topic?
• Have I displayed a good grasp of the vocabulary of logical argument ? Are my arguments logically valid and sound? Are my claims supported by reasons ? Am I consistent within my essay?
• Is my English expression clear and precise ? Are my grammar, punctuation and spelling correct? Have I said what I meant to say? Is my writing legible?
• Have I fully acknowledged all my sources in footnotes or endnotes? Are my quotations accurate? Have I included a bibliography ?
• Do I need to revise any part of my essay again?
• Have I made a copy or photocopy of my essay for myself?
• Have I kept the receipt for my handed-in essay?

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Preparation

Referencing & help.

• Good essay writing begins with good course preparation. You should remember that just attending courses is not enough. You will engage with the lectures and seminars only if you do the required primary and secondary reading. By the time you come to write your first essay you should already know enough to approach the subject confidently.
• Make sure you have properly understood the question. If you do not, ask. Review your lecture notes and the course outline in order to put the question into context and to relate it to other aspects of the subject. If you can break down the question into parts, do so. Decide which are the most important and weight each part accordingly.
• Read the suggested texts with your question or questions in mind. If you find the reading hard to understand, try reading a whole article or chapter to get the gist and then re-read slowly, making notes.
• Think for yourself. Don't borrow thought or ideas without giving yourself time to digest them. Discuss them with your fellow students. It can be very helpful to discuss the articles and books you read with others. Also, when you take notes, don't simply excerpt long passages, write them in your own words.
• Always start from a plan, however rudimentary; but you will inevitably find your argument developing a dynamic of its own, so do not be afraid to revise your plan as you go along. As Socrates says in Plato's Republic: 'Where the argument takes us, like a wind, hither we must go.'
• Write a draft, leave it for a while, then come back and revise it. On the first draft concentrate on getting the content and structure right and do not dwell on the style. Do not be held up by the precise formulation of a sentence, jot down a phrase and move on.
• Write the final draft. Check the spelling, grammar and make sure all the bibliographical details are correct. leave a wide margin on the right hand side of your page for the marker's comments. Be kind on your marker: use a font that is easy to read and a line spacing of at least 1.5 or 2. Make a photocopy of your essay as a precaution, since they sometimes can go astray.
• Your essay should contain a clear exposition of the theory you are studying, a detailed discussion and critical assessment of that theory. The criticisms you look at may be your own, or those of other philosophers.
• Make sure you indicate when you are expounding the view of someone else and when you are writing in your own voice. Don't just write a long list of objections to a particular argument. Indicate whether you endorse or reject them and give your reasons.
• Use examples to illustrate your point. Preferably, choose your own examples. Always make the point of your example clear to the reader.
• Don't worry too much about the 'originality' of the content of your essay. Nobody expects you to come up with a new philosophical theory in your first four pages of writing. Your essay will be original enough if you think for yourself, use your own words, give your own examples and always provide reasons for accepting or rejecting a particular view.
• Avoid rambling introductions and conclusions. Some books begin with a portentous opening sentence e.g., 'Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and achieved fewer results, than any other branch of learning.' (B. Russell) You can get away with such a sentence as the opening line of a 400 page book, but not as the opening line of a 4 page essay. State briefly what you think the question involves, if this is not obvious, and get stuck in to your answer. With conclusions, sum up your argument if you want to and leave it at that.
• Think small or be methodical. There is a gap between your brain's ability to grasp something and your ability to express in writing what you have already understood. It is as if your intuition can leap up whole flights of stairs at once, whereas your written explanations climb one step at a time. This means that you can easily get ahead of yourself, producing the illusion that your ideas are far more lofty than they really are. Only by patiently stepping through the details of an argument can you avoid such illusions. So be patient! If you are not sure whether you have made your point, try putting it another way; 'The upshot of this argument is...', 'the point of this example is...'. Do not simply repeat yourself, try instead to look at your subject from different angles. Sometimes it will feel as if your point is trivial and not worth making. But a trivial point can be a solid step in an interesting argument. The ability to tease out the subtleties of a small point will serve you better than a grand philosophy of life, the universe and everything.
• One way to structure your essay is to outline an argument, consider an objection, then reply to the objection and then move on to the next point. Avoid the two extremes of length and unbroken paragraphs on the one hand, and staccato sound bytes on the other. Divide your essay into clearly defined paragraphs and devote a whole paragraph to each point. Make the connections between them explicit, by telling the reader what they are. Write things like, 'There are two major objections to this line of thought...' or 'what this example shows is...' Think of these connections as signposts telling the reader where she is, where she has been or reminding her where she is heading.
• 'Style is the feather in the arrow, not the feather in the cap.' Do not worry about repeating important words or phrases. In philosophy it is more important to be consistent in your terminology than to find new and imaginative ways of saying the same thing. Clear prose has its own elegance, wordiness can sometimes cloud the issue.
• Empathise with your reader. Once you understand something, you forget what it was like not to understand it; but doing just this will help you to get your point across. To write clearly you have to put yourself in the place of your reader. Imagine the reader is someone who knows nothing about the subject. What would you have to do firstly to convince them and secondly to maintain their interest. Generally speaking a concrete example will get you much further than a passage of purple prose or a string of high-falutin' epithets. One useful way to attain clarity and simplicity of style is to write in short sentences. It is easier to waffle in long rambling sentences.
• Use 'signposts' to let the reader know what you are trying to do. You can say things like , 'one objection is...', 'A possible reply to this is...', 'What this example shows...', 'This importance of this point is that...', 'What X is assuming is that...'. Be explicit about what you are arguing and why.
• Stylistically it is vital to use your own words. Quite apart from the dangers of plagiarism, if you borrow chunks of text from another author and then insert them into your essay, you will end up with a patchwork of different styles that reads awkwardly. By all means paraphrase someone else's view, although make it clear that you are paraphrasing. This will help you to understand the position you are adumbrating; and there is a lot of skill involved in a lucid and concise exposition of somebody else's argument.
• Occasionally you will want to cite somebody else's words directly. Be sparing in your use of quotation. There is much less skill to quotation than to paraphrase or précis. When you select a passage for quotation, make sure it is both brief and relevant. There is nothing worse than reading a string of long quotations interspersed with brief and gnomic comments.
• Use a dictionary (or spell check) and a grammar. Good spelling and good grammar are not wholly unrelated to the content of your essay. The thread of an essay is easier to follow if the reader does not have to guess the word which you actually meant to write. Good grammar makes not only for elegant but for precise prose. So do not be ashamed to use a dictionary. I prefer the Chambers to the Collins single volume dictionary, but both are good. (Webster's and M.S. Word dictionaries are American.) Michael Dummet, the philosopher, has written an excellent little English grammar for his students, published by Duckworth.

Use of sources

• All verbatim quotations, whether long or short should be enclosed in inverted commas or indented, and the precise source given. Make sure that you give enough information for the reader to find the passage, i.e. author, work, edition page number or section.
• Passages of close paraphrase should be acknowledged, and the purpose of these paraphrases made clear e.g. as a summary of a view to be discussed disputed or agreed with.
• When a point has been derived directly from an author, even though it mode of expression may be original, this should be acknowledged in a footnote or parenthesis.
• Extensive use of an essay written by another student should be acknowledged. This applies to essays borrowed from the 'Essay Bank' and to essays which are borrowed on a personal basis. Just as the rule that you should acknowledge your dependence on published sources is not supposed to discourage you from reading widely, the rule that you should acknowledge your dependence where it exists, on other students' essays, is not supposed to discourage you from reading each others' essays. In the end however the only thing of value to you and of interest to us is work in which you express and develop your own thoughts.
• At the end of any essay to be submitted for formal assessment (not tutorial essays) write a list in alphabetical order of all the works consulted or read during the preparation and writing of the essay, as well as those from which you quote directly (see Referencing).

Referencing

The Philosophy Department accepts the Harvard or MLA styles of referencing.  Please refer to the specific information below on each permitted style.

Additional help

You may find the extra help below useful when writing Philosohy essays.

This guide to writing Philosophy essays was written by Gordon Finlayson

Department of Philosophy University of York , York , YO10 5DD , UK Tel: work +44 (0)1904 323251 | Fax: fax +44 (0)1904 324023 | [email protected]

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2.6 Writing Philosophy Papers

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Identify and characterize the format of a philosophy paper.
• Create thesis statements that are manageable and sufficiently specific.
• Collect evidence and formulate arguments.
• Organize ideas into a coherent written presentation.

This section will provide some practical advice on how to write philosophy papers. The format presented here focuses on the use of an argumentative structure in writing. Different philosophy professors may have different approaches to writing. The sections below are only intended to give some general guidelines that apply to most philosophy classes.

Identify Claims

The key element in any argumentative paper is the claim you wish to make or the position you want to defend. Therefore, take your time identifying claims , which is also called the thesis statement. What do you want to say about the topic? What do you want the reader to understand or know after reading your piece? Remember that narrow, modest claims work best. Grand claims are difficult to defend, even for philosophy professors. A good thesis statement should go beyond the mere description of another person’s argument. It should say something about the topic, connect the topic to other issues, or develop an application of some theory or position advocated by someone else. Here are some ideas for creating claims that are perfectly acceptable and easy to develop:

• Compare two philosophical positions. What makes them similar? How are they different? What general lessons can you draw from these positions?
• Identify a piece of evidence or argument that you think is weak or may be subject to criticism. Why is it weak? How is your criticism a problem for the philosopher’s perspective?
• Apply a philosophical perspective to a contemporary case or issue. What makes this philosophical position applicable? How would it help us understand the case?
• Identify another argument or piece of evidence that might strengthen a philosophical position put forward by a philosopher. Why is this a good argument or piece of evidence? How does it fit with the philosopher’s other claims and arguments?
• Consider an implication (either positive or negative) that follows from a philosopher’s argument. How does this implication follow? Is it necessary or contingent? What lessons can you draw from this implication (if positive, it may provide additional reasons for the argument; if negative, it may provide reasons against the argument)?

Think Like a Philosopher

The following multiple-choice exercises will help you identify and write modest, clear philosophical thesis statements. A thesis statement is a declarative statement that puts forward a position or makes a claim about some topic.

• How does Aristotle think virtue is necessary for happiness?
• Is happiness the ultimate goal of human action?
• Whether or not virtue is necessary for happiness.
• Aristotle argues that happiness is the ultimate good of human action and virtue is necessary for happiness.
• René Descartes argues that the soul or mind is the essence of the human person.
• Descartes shows that all beliefs and memories about the external world could be false.
• Some people think that Descartes is a skeptic, but I will show that he goes beyond skepticism.
• In the meditations, Descartes claims that the mind and body are two different substances.
• Descartes says that the mind is a substance that is distinct from the body, but I disagree.
• Contemporary psychology has shown that Descartes is incorrect to think that human beings have free will and that the mind is something different from the brain.
• Thomas Hobbes’s view of the soul is materialistic, whereas Descartes’s view of the soul is nonphysical. In this paper, I will examine the differences between these two views.
• John Stuart Mill reasons that utilitarian judgments can be based on qualitative differences as well as the quantity of pleasure, but ultimately any qualitative difference must result in a difference in the quantity of pleasure.
• Mill’s approach to utilitarianism differs from Bentham’s by introducing qualitative distinctions among pleasures, where Bentham only considers the quantitative aspects of pleasure.
• J. S. Mill’s approach to utilitarianism aligns moral theory with the history of ethics because he allows qualitative differences in moral judgments.
• Rawls’s liberty principle ensures that all people have a basic set of freedoms that are important for living a full life.
• The US Bill of Rights is an example of Rawls’s liberty principle because it lists a set of basic freedoms that are guaranteed for all people.
• While many people may agree that Rawls’s liberty principle applies to all citizens of a particular country, it is much more controversial to extend those same basic freedoms to immigrants, including those classified by the government as permanent residents, legal immigrants, illegal immigrants, and refugees.

[ANS: 1.d 2.c 3.c 4.a 5.c]

Write Like a Philosopher

Use the following templates to write your own thesis statement by inserting a philosopher, claim, or contemporary issue:

• [Name of philosopher] holds that [claim], but [name of another philosopher] holds that [another claim]. In this paper, I will identify reasons for thinking [name of philosopher]’s position is more likely to be true.
• [Name of philosopher] argues that [claim]. In this paper, I will show how this claim provides a helpful addition to [contemporary issue].
• When [name of philosopher] argues in favor of [claim], they rely on [another claim] that is undercut by contemporary science. I will show that if we modify this claim in light of contemporary science, we will strengthen or weaken [name of philosopher]’s argument.

Collect Evidence and Build Your Case

Once you have identified your thesis statement or primary claim, collect evidence (by returning to your readings) to compose the best possible argument. As you assemble the evidence, you can think like a detective or prosecutor building a case. However, you want a case that is true, not just one that supports your position. So you should stay open to modifying your claim if it does not fit the evidence . If you need to do additional research, follow the guidelines presented earlier to locate authoritative information.

If you cannot find evidence to support your claim but still feel strongly about it, you can try to do your own philosophical thinking using any of the methods discussed in this chapter or in Chapter 1. Imagine counterexamples and thought experiments that support your claim. Use your intuitions and common sense, but remember that these can sometimes lead you astray. In general, common sense, intuitions, thought experiments, and counterexamples should support one another and support the sources you have identified from other philosophers. Think of your case as a structure: you do not want too much of the weight to rest on a single intuition or thought experiment.

Consider Counterarguments

Philosophy papers differ from typical argumentative papers in that philosophy students must spend more time and effort anticipating and responding to counterarguments when constructing their own arguments. This has two important effects: first, by developing counterarguments, you demonstrate that you have sufficiently thought through your position to identify possible weaknesses; second, you make your case stronger by taking away a potential line of attack that an opponent might use. By including counterarguments in your paper, you engage in the kind of dialectical process that philosophers use to arrive at the truth.

Accurately Represent Source Material

It is important to represent primary and secondary source material as accurately as possible. This means that you should consider the context and read the arguments using the principle of charity. Make sure that you are not strawmanning an argument you disagree with or misrepresenting a quote or paraphrase just because you need some evidence to support your argument. As always, your goal should be to find the most rationally compelling argument, which is the one most likely to be true.

Organize Your Paper

Academic philosophy papers use the same simple structure as any other paper and one you likely learned in high school or your first-year composition class.

Introduce Your Thesis

The purpose of your introduction is to provide context for your thesis. Simply tell the reader what to expect in the paper. Describe your topic, why it is important, and how it arises within the works you have been reading. You may have to provide some historical context, but avoid both broad generalizations and long-winded historical retellings. Your context or background information should not be overly long and simply needs to provide the reader with the context and motivation for your thesis. Your thesis should appear at the end of the introduction, and the reader should clearly see how the thesis follows from the introductory material you have provided. If you are writing a long paper, you may need several sentences to express your thesis, in which you delineate in broad terms the parts of your argument.

Make a Logical and Compelling Case Using the Evidence

The paragraphs that follow the introduction lay out your argument. One strategy you can use to successfully build paragraphs is to think in terms of good argument structure. You should provide adequate evidence to support the claims you want to make. Your paragraphs will consist of quotations and paraphrases from primary and secondary sources, context and interpretation, novel thoughts and ideas, examples and analogies, counterarguments, and replies to the counterarguments. The evidence should both support the thesis and build toward the conclusion. It may help to think architecturally: lay down the foundation, insert the beams of your strongest support, and then put up the walls to complete the structure. Or you might think in terms of a narrative: tell a story in which the evidence leads to an inevitable conclusion.

Connections

See the chapter on logic and reasoning for a developed account of different types of philosophical arguments.

Summarize Your Argument in the Conclusion

Conclude your paper with a short summary that recapitulates the argument. Remind the reader of your thesis and revisit the evidence that supports your argument. You may feel that the argument as written should stand on its own. But it is helpful to the reader to reinforce the argument in your conclusion with a short summary. Do not introduce any new information in the conclusion; simply summarize what you have already said.

The purpose of this chapter has been to provide you with basic tools to become a successful philosophy student. We started by developing a sophisticated picture of how the brain works, using contemporary neuroscience. The brain represents and projects a picture of the world, full of emotional significance, but this image may contain distortions that amount to a kind of illusion. Cognitive illusions produce errors in reasoning, called cognitive biases. To guard against error, we need to engage in effortful, reflective thinking, where we become aware of our biases and use logical strategies to overcome them. You will do well in your philosophy class if you apply the good habits of mind discussed in this chapter and apply the practical advice that has been provided about how to read and write about philosophy.

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100+ Philosophy Research Paper Topics

One of the most difficult tasks philosophy students faces each year is in having to come up with a philosophy topic to write a paper on. Students can get notifications of big projects months ahead of time and then spend weeks trying to figure out whether their philosophy essay topics are good enough to earn a good grade.

We get it. It’s hard to pull this task together with schedules and responsibilities. This is why we work to find philosophical topics that are current and relatable. We stick to important issues that are at the forefront of the discipline and bring them to you in one convenient philosophical topic for the essay list.

Finding the right philosophy topics can turn regular assignments into A+-winning assignments and we’ve done the work to help you and hundreds of other students get started with these philosophy paper topics. Here are our top 100 philosophy topics for the current school year:

Argumentative Philosophy Research Paper Topics

• Do people naturally have good and bad qualities?
• Do we need family support to find happiness?
• How humans can be happy without reproduction?
• What is the definitive explanation of happiness?
• Do most people feel they aren’t living their full lives?
• Would you marry for money if it meant you could never be happy?
• Would you like to live your life more than once?
• Would you rather work vocationalation job or a high-paying job?
• Are personalities unique or are they just template?
• Do you think that it is moral to follow all the rules?

Good Philosophy Paper Topics for All Levels

• Does one need to lead a moral life to achieve happiness?
• Why do people find life harder than expected?
• Which is the better teacher? Experience or learning?
• Do people always do what they want at that moment?
• Is truth universal or does it change because of perspective?
• Do animals have a better sense of morals than humans?
• Can people gain an education without proper schooling?
• Does one need to be literate to understand philosophy?
• Which ie preferable? Determinism or Free Will?
• Is capital punishment ethical in today’s world?

Controversial Topics in Philosophy

• How does society shape a person’s life and beliefs?
• Do you need a lot of money to live a rich life?
• Why are some people living without actually experiencing things?
• Is spiritual power more important than free will?
• Do genetics play a bigger role in the way people behave?
• What impact does the word “love” have on positivity?
• What is the real reason we live our lives?
• Is it possible to form a perfect world?
• Do religion and philosophy contradict one another?
• Can a world exist without laws or regulations?

Fun Philosophy Paper Topics for High School

• What would be your form ideal government?
• What are the different ways in which humans understand each other?
• How is the concept of happiness defined by different philosophers?
• Is existence simply a dream experienced by a larger being?
• If you can spend a week in any period, which would it be?
• Are we alone in our galaxy or are there other intelligent life forms?
• What does it mean to have free will versus determinism?
• If you can change one thing from your past, what would it be?
• Does religion limit our abilities to explore the meaning of life?
• What does it mean to be loved or to love others?

Topics for Philosophy Paper on the Classics

• What does it mean to understand our universe?
• Does happiness come from our actions toward others?
• Are our thoughts evidence that we exist?
• What is the definition of evil as it relates to the modern world?
• Could societies exist without laws and regulations?
• Are people born good or evil or are they raised to be one or the other?
• Is torture a justifiable form of punishment?
• How can past leaders influence today’s youth positively?
• Is beauty truly in the eye of the beholder?
• Can we refocus our minds to think more positively?

Easy Philosophy Paper Topics for High School

• What does it mean to be moral in today’s world?
• Can wars be justified if it supports the greater population?
• What does it mean to be a postmodern philosopher?
• What are today’s most important life values?
• What is the current perspective on the definition of loneliness?
• How does one prepare for life after death?
• Would you like to repeat your life with full knowledge of the prior?
• Does something better than nothing always lead to benefits?
• Do people choose to suffer or is it a feeling beyond our control?
• Should people have to right to die by suicide?

Philosophy Topics to Write About Quickly

• Do we exist in some form after death?
• Do supernatural entities exist in the world?
• Are video games negatively impacting people’s moral values?
• How does one boost his or her ability to be creative?
• Is it important to spend your entire life learning?
• What does it mean to be mentally conscious?
• What is the definition of loneliness and have you experienced it?
• What are the most important character traits for leaders to have?
• Does one need a lot of money to be considered rich?
• Are we alone in the universe or is there another life?

Philosophical Topics for Essays on Current Issues

• Are parents responsible for how their children behave?
• Are the U.S. and U.K. meritocratic societies?
• Has social media had an impact on people’s morals?
• Do you agree with the notion that love only exists for 3 years?
• Are humans more likely to cause trouble because of boredom?
• Is capital punishment morally justified in modern society?
• Do humans have the same ideas about what is right and what is wrong?
• How does death affect how humans view life?
• Is it complicated to live a life of happiness?
• Should teenagers be given the responsibility to make their own choices?

Philosophy Thesis Topics for a Big Project

• Do religion and the belief in God change a person’s behavior?
• Are Machiavellian ideals still relevant in today’s government?
• Is animal experimentation ever justified to protect humans?
• What are the pros and cons of a utilitarian society?
• What are the pros and cons of a communist government?
• Why are humans the only species to be violent?
• Is economic justice more important than legal justice?
• Should women have univerabortion rightstion?
• What impact did the 20th-century wave of philosophy have on the U.S.?
• How do you know that you are different from other people?

Philosophy Research Paper Topics

• What are the tendencies we see most in humans?
• Are our morals connected to or influenced by culture?
• Would you live your life a second time?
• Should religion have a voice in a nation’s government?
• What do you think makes for an ideal society?
• Are truths relative to specific situations or circumstances?
• What is the most important aspect to gain human knowledge?
• What is something that veritably upsets you?
• What is something in your life that you would like to change?
• What is the most effective way to increase one’s IQ?

Getting a good grade on a philosophy research paper requires you to consider several different options and narrow down those options to a topic you feel you can conduct complete philosophy research on. The topic should also be something that interests you and verges into new areas in the discipline and area of study. This can be a difficult task for many students, so we create custom philosophy research topics to suit every situation. If you can’t find a topic you like from this list, just give us a call, email us, or send us a message via chat. We can direct you to a qualified philosophy expert writer to create a custom list of philosophical ideas to fit your assignment needs.

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Philosophy research and writing: sample papers.

• Reference Texts
• Sample Papers
• Writing Guides

Examples of Philosophical Writing

One of the most difficult things about writing philosophy papers as a new undergraduate is figuring out what a philosophy paper is supposed to look like! For many students here at Cal, a lower division philosophy class is the first experience they have with philosophical writing so when asked to write a paper it can be difficult to figure out exactly what a good paper would be. Below are a few examples of the kinds of papers you might be asked to write in a philosophy class here at Cal as well as the papers written by professional philosophers to which the sample papers are a response.

Precis Sample Paper

• "War and Peace in Islam" by Bassam Tibi In this paper, Bassam Tibi explores the Islamic position on war and peace as understood through the Quran and its interpretations in Islamic history.
• Max Deleon's Precis of Tibi on war and peace in Islam In this sample paper, Max Deleon, a former tutor at the university of Vermont gives a summary of an argument made by Bassam Tibi in his paper "War and Peace in Islam"

Critical Response to a Philosopher's Position

• "In Defense of Mereological Universalism" by Michael C. Rea In this paper, Michael Rea defends the position in ontology known as mereological universalism which he defines as that position which holds that "for any set S of disjoint objects, there is an object that the members of S compose."
• Max Deleon's critical response to Michael Rea on Mereological Universalism In lower division philosophy courses here at Cal, the most common type of paper that you will write will be one in which you are asked to respond to some given philosopher's position by uncovering some difficulty in that position. In this paper, Max Deleon critically examines Michael Rae's paper "In Defense of Mereological Universalism"

Exposition and Amending of Existing Philosopher's Position

• "Against Moral Rationalism, Philippa Foot" in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy The section "Against moral Rationalism" in the article "Philippa Foot" from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explores Foot's positions on moral motivation which Max Deleon deals with in the paper below.
• Max Deleon's exposition and emendation of "Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives" In this paper Max Deleon looks at Philippa Foot's argument from "Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives," raises a few possible objections, and proposes emendations to Foot's position to respond to those objections.
• "Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives" by Philippa Foot One of the most influential paper in 20th century philosophy, Philippa Foot's "Morality as a System of Hypothetical Impreatives" tackles to dominant Kantian conception of the nature of morality and offers an alternative understanding of the nature of morality.
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• Last Updated: May 19, 2020 2:25 PM
• URL: https://guides.lib.berkeley.edu/philosophy_writing

Guide on How to Choose Philosophy Paper Topics

f you get lucky, you'll be able to choose philosophy paper topics instead of having to handle the complex prompts suggested by your tutors. At the same time, you need to pick topics very carefully to write a quality philosophy paper.

As an excellent philosophy essay is argumentative or persuasive in most cases, we recommend following these principles of topic choice from our custom term paper writing service .

How to Choose the Right Idea for a Philosophy Essay

The basic rule to follow when choosing philosophy essay topics is evaluating your knowledge about a discussed problem and the number of available sources to work with. We also recommend that you read definition essay topics .

Here is several more hint to make the right choice:

• Study classroom discussions and notes

Take notes during your classes. It helps to pick philosophy essay topics related to what you study.

• Come up with a list of options

Put down the best philosophy essay topics that you have to analyze on a separate sheet of paper. Look through them and decide which of the issues you can cover in-depth.

• Create content to persuade

The philosophy papers should explain why the prospected dispute is critical. Include some philosophical judgments to support your idea.

• Select something you have an opinion about

Your argument will sound bad in case you select the question you have no interest in.

• Choose a problem you can see both sides of

Do not be narrow-minded: it is up to you to pick a topic that has two sides, just like a coin. An opposite problem could be a good idea to discuss in a philosophical work. View the subject from multiple perspectives to have a stronger case while refuting the opposition.

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Good Philosophy Paper Topics

The tips above alone could be insufficient to understand how a great title for a philosophy essay should sound. Our write my dissertation service has listed philosophy paper topics to help students with their choices.

5 Easy Philosophy Research Paper Topics

If you are a freshman having no idea which theme to choose, we suggest that you take a look at these easy to write philosophy research paper topics.

• Reasons why animals inhabit this planet
• Missions that every man should accomplish during his life
• Are males and females that different as media present them?
• Causes and effects of living in a dream
• Why do I prefer blond hair?

Interesting Philosophy Paper Topics for Essay Writing

If you have a deep interest in studying philosophy, you may offer more unique issues to observe. Think about covering one of the following philosophy essay topics:

• Select a preferred account of specific particulars (e.g., alternative version or the Aristotelian theory) and interpret the concept of particular details that it endorses.
• Explain what the slingshot argument is and discuss its key assumptions
• What is the relation of exemplification?
• Offer and evaluate one of the claims adduced by Loux in support of Metaphysical realism
• Discuss Austere Nominalism with the help of a single argument of your choice

5 Political Philosophy Paper Topics

Most often, students will have to cover political philosophy paper topics in a thoughtful piece of writing. These topics might work:

• The pros & cons of violent and non-violent resistance/revolution
• Socialism VS Capitalism on unplanned and planned economics
• Locke VS Thoreau on the question of property
• Cultural unity VS multicultural plurality
• Bentham VS Mill on Utilitarianism

Easy Philosophy Paper Topics

There are some philosophy topics that are widespread and thus easy to write on:

• The Game Theory by J. von Neumann
• How does language influence people?
• Knowledge and imagination: what is prevalent?
• A prior and a posteriori
• The gens and how they influence people's behavior

Fun Philosophy Paper Topics

Sure thing, philosophy is a serious subject, but some topics may be funny to write essays on. Here are some examples.

• How do AI helpers like Siri or Alice affect our lives?
• Is there a human being without society? According to L.Tolstoi.
• The influence of comedies and dramas on human life perception.
• Does existentialism make sense in the 21 century?
• Extraterrestrial life: pieces of evidence and whether governments should reveal them to everyone.

Excellent Philosophy Essay Topics

• Is there a life after death? Discuss and prove with arguments.
• Family file traditions and principles.
• To Lie or not to lie? Discuss the cases when lying may be helpful.
• What is a perfect life?
• Is it possible to always be happy?

Interesting Philosophy Topics

• Ageism in 18 and 21 centuries.
• Feminism and religion.
• The use of genetic engineering research and how it affects our life
• How useful can preserving cultural heritage be?
• How important is achieving self-development?

After you choose the topic, do not forget to consult your tutor. Ask whether the issue is acceptable to discuss in your upcoming excellent philosophy essay. Now that we have an idea about how to select the right, we can move on to the next stage of crafting a good philosophy paper, which is writing a strong thesis statement.

If you want to pay someone to write your essay , contact us. Our professionals provide psychology, law, history essay help , or any other.

Discover How to Write a Thesis for a Philosophy Paper

If you wonder how to start a philosophy paper, think about a compelling thesis first. So, what is a thesis statement? A thesis is a central argument to defend. Compared to other types of essays, in a philosophy paper, a student often has to analyse the thesis offered by the distinguished author. Let's jump right to how to write a thesis statement for a philosophy paper.

When writing a thesis statement, you may decide which strategy to choose to support the claim of some philosopher:

• Interpret the thesis statement
• Propose an argument to support the thesis
• Come up with an objection
• Defend against a complaint to the thesis
• Assess points for and against the principal claim
• Think about the possible outcomes
• Define if some other argument commits one to the thesis
• Decide whether some different positions can be held consistently with the main argument

The last few options are more challenging than the first several, but such strategies make the paper much more interesting to read. It is more difficult to object one's opinion than defend it. A writer should find a defence versus the criticism of other sides, search for exact reasons to reject the theory of another person, include numerous counter-examples, and operate with credible data to object.

Anyway, here are some things to keep in mind that will help to support the thesis no matter which strategy you choose for your writing process:

• Add examples from both sources and real life;
• Compare & contrast the weak and strong points of the central argument;
• Make the thesis more plausible by offering alternative theories — show your objectivity;
• Imagine what would happen if the thesis - key arguments - were correct;
• Find out if some philosophers are committed to the argument by personal views;
• Proofread & edit the thesis several times to make sure it is specific, narrow, concise, compelling, reasonable, and has a hint concerning the rest of the paper.

Do you still wonder how to write a good thesis? How about the examples of thesis statements that could help you? Look at them to have an idea:

“I have to argue that Singer's thesis should be revised in light of Steve's criticism, but not entirely. I want to offer an improved version of Singer's central argument… And I should admit that this updated version avoids Steve's rejections. My final mission is to protect the updated thesis statement against other possible objections.”

“I should argue that if the fetus is an individual who possesses a right to live, abortion is moral even though it might not be viewed as an ethical activity. The fetus has no right to use the female's organism without her tacit consent. If the woman gets pregnant after a violent sexual act, she has all the moral rights to get rid of the fetus with the help of abortion.”

“I disagree with most of the positions that do not support the death penalty in this state. The one who took away the life of another one does not deserve to live. Murderers and papers should not be set free even after ages spent in jail as nothing can change a human being. By letting the serious criminals out, we put the lives of our children under threat!”

A Few Words About Evidence

Having proper evidence to support your claim is the critical success factor when it comes to writing a philosophy paper . Philosophers always find something to debate even when they leave empirical questions aside. On the one hand, what type of empirical evidence would be required to solve the problem might itself appear as a non-empirical issue that philosophers study. On the other hand, philosophers spend plenty of time discussing how various arguments are logically interconnected. An essential tool to use when rationalizing your statement is a reductio ad absurdum .

What Is Reductio ad Absurdum?

A reductio ad absurdum is an argument that aims to show how several views cannot be held consistently with each other. It may also point that even though a few ideas are consistent with each other, together, they entail an implausible final claim. Reductio allows having exact reasons to disagree with at least one of the offered premises.

Example of a Question-Begging

Another type of argument for your philosophical writing is a question-begging one . Here is how it looks like:

Keep in mind that ambitious terms like “religious experiences,” in our case, are a common issue, and can mask other pitfalls.

Another Way to Classify Arguments

It is possible to categorize arguments for the philosophy paper in a different way. The more popular division is deductive and non-deductive arguments.

A deductive argument is one that insists on the truth of the conclusion in case the premises are all true. An example could be, “They released 10,000 tickets for the Sweden Rock Festival. There will be no extra tickets, and the time is limited for all users to purchase them online. Thus, my chance of getting one ticket is 1 in 10,000.”

A non-deductive argument is one that states that there is just a high degree of probability for the conclusion. For instance, “All cats that I have ever met in my life will love playing with humans. Buffy is a cat. Therefore, Buffy will probably like playing with me.”

Checklist to Start a Philosophy Paper

• Study discussions and notes that you have made in a classroom
• Create a list of philosophy essay topics
• Explain why disputes are critical
• Select a topic you have an opinion about, and you can see both sides of its problem
• Choose a central argument to defend and write a thesis statement
• Find proper evidence to support your claim

Our readers find the Great Gatsby summary very interesting, we recommend you read this article from our authors.

Get Prompt Writing Help

If you would like qualified assistance with your philosophy paper, then contact to our team.

Daniel Parker

is a seasoned educational writer focusing on scholarship guidance, research papers, and various forms of academic essays including reflective and narrative essays. His expertise also extends to detailed case studies. A scholar with a background in English Literature and Education, Daniel’s work on EssayPro blog aims to support students in achieving academic excellence and securing scholarships. His hobbies include reading classic literature and participating in academic forums.

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Writing a Philosophy Essay

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Is there a God? Are there objective, universal moral norms or rules? What is meant by ‘reality’? Do we have free will? In studying philosophy, students aim to do the following:

• understand such philosophical questions and the concepts, arguments, and theories that philosophers use to address them
• think critically about such arguments and theories
• develop their own answers to philosophical questions

Writing philosophy essays is a key part of studying philosophy. Make sure first to understand the assignment, looking out for the questions asked and paying attention to prompts such as “outline” or “evaluate” or “compare”. Most philosophy assignments will ask you to demonstrate your understanding of the subject through exposition of arguments and theories, and many will also test your ability to assess these arguments and theories by writing a critical evaluation of them. Write your paper so that the reader understands how your exposition and evaluation answer the questions and address all parts of the assignment.

Read the Texts Carefully, Asking Questions

Before you write a paper, though, you need to understand the course texts and recommended readings. Philosophical works need to be read slowly and with focused attention. As you read, ask yourself the following:

• What philosophical question(s) is the author addressing?
• What exactly is meant by key ideas or concepts in the text (e.g., Plato’s “Forms”, Aristotle’s “substance” and “accident”, Kant’s “categorical imperative,” Sartre’s “being-for-itself”)? Each discipline has its own technical language, which students must learn.
• What arguments does the author make (e.g., Aquinas’s five arguments for the existence of God)?
• What theories does the author propose (e.g., a dualist mind-body theory or—one of its competitors—a physicalist theory of mind)?

Organize Your Ideas into a Logical Structure

Take notes as you read. Then put your ideas for the essay into a logical order. Because philosophy papers proceed by logical argument, creating a point-form outline that captures the structure of your argument is generally a good strategy. An outline will allow you to spot problems in your argument more easily.

Augment Your Thesis with a Road Map that Reveals the Structure of Your Argument

Most assignments will require you to present a clear thesis statement that sums up the position for which you are arguing. In the introduction you should also provide a ‘road map’—a few sentences that announce in sequence what you intend to accomplish in each of the key stages of your paper. Road maps often rely on first person (“First, I will analyze . . . “), but if your professor prefers that you don’t use the first person, you can instead describe what your essay will accomplish (“First, the essay will analyze . . . “).

Show Your Understanding through Clear and Accurate Exposition

Try to make your expository writing as clear and accurate as possible, and try to show the logical connections between the different parts of a philosophical system. Avoid vague or overly brief exposition, serious omissions, or misunderstandings.

In some first year courses, an early assignment may ask you to write a short paper expounding but not evaluating a concept or theory. For example: “Explain what Plato means by Forms.” Subsequent assignments in the course usually involve evaluation as well as exposition (e.g., “Outline and evaluate Plato’s theory of Forms”). In some courses, assignments may call for detailed interpretation of a text rather than an assessment of it. “Was Hume an idealist?”, “Was Wittgenstein a behaviourist?” and “Was Marx a nihilist about morality?” are examples. Such questions are posed when there is disagreement among scholars about how to interpret a philosopher. In such essays, you will need to examine texts very closely, find passages which support a yes or no answer, choose where you stand in the debate, and defend your answer.

Critically Evaluate a Philosophical Theory

When studying a philosophical theory, you will need to think about both its strengths and weaknesses. For example, is a particular theory of art (such as the view that art is the expression of emotion) comprehensive: does it apply to all the arts and all types of art, or only to some? Is it logically consistent or does it contain contradictions? Are there counterexamples to it?

As you think about your topic, read the course materials, and take notes, you should work out and assemble the following:

• the strengths of a philosopher’s theory
• the arguments the philosopher gives in support of the theory and those the philosopher did not provide but which might still support it
• possible criticisms of those arguments
• how the philosopher has replied or could reply to these criticisms

Finally, ask yourself how you would evaluate those replies: do they work or not? Be selective, especially in a shorter paper. In a 1,000-word essay, for instance, discuss one or two arguments in favour and one or two against. In a 2,000- or 2,500-word paper, you can include more arguments and possible replies. Finally, plan carefully: leave enough space for your assessment.

A different type of critical evaluation assignment may ask for a comparative appraisal of two or more theories. For example, “Which account of human decision-making is stronger: X’s free will theory or Y’s determinist theory?” In such essays, your thesis could be that one account is better than the other or, perhaps, that neither account is clearly superior. You might argue that each has different strengths and weaknesses.

Develop Your Own Answers to Philosophical Questions

In the type of critical assessments above, you are already, to some extent, articulating your own philosophical positions. As you read texts in a course on, say, philosophy of mind or philosophy of art, you should be asking, based on what you have read so far, which theory is the best? Don’t be content to just understand theories and know their strengths and weaknesses. Push yourself to think out your own account of mind or art.

Some upper-year essay assignments may throw a fundamental philosophical question at you: “What is art?”, “Do we have free will?”, “What is morality?”, or “What is reality?”. Here, you will present your own answer, giving reasons, answering objections, and critically evaluating alternative approaches. Your answer/thesis might be an existing theory or a synthesis of two or more theories, or (more rarely) a completely new theory. Now you are not only expounding theories or critically evaluating them; you are also developing your own philosophy!

Toward a Phenomenological Stoicism in Dialogue with Seneca and Ortega y Gasset: Philosophy in Times of Crisis

• First Online: 01 June 2024

Cite this chapter

• Noé Expósito Ropero 6  

Part of the book series: Happiness Studies Book Series ((HAPS))

The aim of this essay is to offer a reinterpretation of classical Stoic philosophy from contemporary phenomenology, hence the expression of the title “phenomenological Stoicism.” The two basic authors for this purpose will be Seneca and Ortega y Gasset, whom I will put into dialogue taking as central themes, first, the notion of human life (philosophical anthropology) and, second, the theory of value (axiology) that bases their ethical proposals. To offer a concrete example of the notions of virtue, freedom, and happiness that follow from this philosophical proposal, we will briefly analyze in the last section of the work the theory of suicide defended by Seneca.

This study has been carried out under the research project PID2021-123252NB-100 and the support of the Department of Philosophy and Moral and Political Philosophy of UNED.

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For this topic, see Ortega’s essay “Introduction to an Estimative Science. What are values?”, recently translated in the volume The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy ( 2022 , pp. 125–139).

There are, of course, notable exceptions, but the fact is that it remains a field of research yet to be explored. I limit myself here to citing as a sample of such exceptions the suggestive work of Cassanmagnago, entitled, precisely, “La ragione e la virtù dell’uomo nel De vita beata di Seneca, in rapporto alla fenomenologia di Husserl” ( 1987 ), or the more recent one by Majolino ( 2021 ) on Husserl and the Stoic doctrine of lekton . In my opinion, Gabriel Schutz’s doctoral thesis—directed by Antonio Zirión—which later became a book, Éticas de la serenidad ( 2016 ), deserves special mention, where he offers us a precise and brilliant interpretation of Hellenistic ethics, with special attention to Stoic ethics, from a phenomenological perspective. I do not ignore nor is it my intention, of course, to undervalue the very valuable studies of Nussbaum nor those of so many other contemporaries who, following in the wake of Hadot, as is the paradigmatic case of the late Foucault, have contributed to the important recovery of the ancient ethics of “care,” with Heidegger, by the way, as one of the central references (cf. Mayeroff, 1971 ; Mortari, 2022 ), but I refer only to the striking absence of works specifically devoted to Stoic philosophy by contemporary phenomenologists. This absence is even more conspicuous when compared, for example, with those dedicated to Plato or Aristotle, and this is pointed out by Majolino himself (2021, pp. 27–28) in the collective volume Phenomenological Interpretations of Ancient Philosophy , in which this lack is also reflected.

Let us recall that the idea of the political materialization of this “moral order of the world” in a “universal republic” claimed by Husserl in the IV article of Kaizo (1923–1924), namely, “the ultimate idea of a universal ethical Humanity, the idea of a truly human universal people embracing all singular peoples and all constellations of peoples and cultures; and to the idea of a universal state embracing all singular state systems and all individual states” ( 1989 , p. 59) appears already formulated— practically in its literalness—in Seneca’s essay On Leisure (cf. 2015, pp. 222–225).

Since it fully concerns my proposal to put phenomenology and Stoicism in dialogue by turning to Seneca and Ortega, it is very pertinent to recall how Julián Marías concludes in 1943 his long “Introduction”—of thirty pages—to the translation that Ortega himself commissioned him to make of Seneca’s De vita beata : “It is clear that there is a different possibility: that of a maximum morality, capable of overcoming the situation by relying on a saving God. And this alone suffices to show the absolute distance, despite certain epidermal similarities, between the Stoic, the ancient man , and the Christian, who is, in a radical sense, the new man ” ( 2004 : 32). Both Marías’ “Introduction” and the sixty footnotes he adds to his translation of this work assume and reproduce the two aforementioned prejudices, the ethical and the metaphysical-religious. Taking into account the influence of Marías in the Spanish-speaking intellectual sphere, as well as the impressive diffusion of his translation of this work in Alianza Editorial—from 1981 to 2004 fifteen reprints were printed, and it continues to be reprinted—this is not a minor fact, at least as far as Spanish-speaking readers are concerned. This misrepresentation of his philosophy is, moreover, accompanied by the “black legend” that drags the image of Seneca, forged already during the philosopher’s lifetime, as demonstrated by the monumental intellectual biography of Monterroso ( 2018 ), and from which we have not yet managed to detach ourselves.

I follow here San Martín’s approach in his Philosophical Anthropology , where he lists the following “dimensions” or “basic structures” of human life: bodily being (corporeality), worldliness and spatial horizon, temporality, linguisticity, selfhood, recursivity, sociality, and historicity ( 2015a , pp. 39–42), as well as the basic “scenarios” of human life—called by Eugen Fink “fundamental phenomena”—: work, love, power, death, and play (ib., p. 55).

The passage quoted by Ortega, with some transcription errors (he writes, as we see, “dignitates se pretia rerum” instead of “dignitates et pretia rerum”), is taken from sections 14–15 of letter 89: “Ergo cum tripertita sit philosophia, moralem eius partem primum incipiamus disponere. Quam in tria rursus dividi placuit, ut prima esset inspectio suum cuique distribuens et aestimans quanto quidque dignum sit, maxime utilis. Quid enim est tam necessarium quam pretia rebus inponere? Secunda de impetu, de actionibus tertia. Primum enim est, ut quanti quidque sit iudices, secundum, ut impetum ad illa capias ordinatum temperatumque, tertium, ut inter impetum tuum actionemque conveniat, ut in omnibus istis tibi ipse consentias. Quicquid ex tribus defuit, turbat et cetera. Quid enim prodest inter se aestimati habere omnia, si sis in impetu nimius? Quid prodest impetus repressisse et habere cupiditates in tua potestate, si in ipsa rerum actione tempora ignores nec scias quando quidque et ubi et quemadmodum agi debeat? Aliud est enim dignitates et pretia rerum nosse, aliud articulos, aliud impetus refrenare et ad agenda ire, non ruere.”

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Expósito Ropero, N. (2024). Toward a Phenomenological Stoicism in Dialogue with Seneca and Ortega y Gasset: Philosophy in Times of Crisis. In: Magalhães, L., Ferreira Lopes, M.J., Nobre, B., Onofre Pinto, J.C. (eds) Humanistic Perspectives in Happiness Research. Happiness Studies Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38600-8_4

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