Philosophy
Division Handbook
E. Advice on Preparing and Writing Essays
[Writing a Philosophical Essay?] [Critical Reviews] [Use of Literature] [Presentation and Format] [ Submission]
Writing a Philosophical Essay
What is the Point of Writing a Philosophical Essay?
In the context of an undergraduate programme writing a philosophical essay has the following functions.
- It provides you with an opportunity to come to grips with a topic of a module. It is very hard to do this without writing about it. For most of us, it is only through writing that our thoughts become clear.
- It enables you to demonstrate the level of your knowledge and understanding of a topic. The extent to which you understand the issues will become clear. This is a step towards gaining an improved understanding.
- It enables your teachers to grade your performance and so judge the extent to which you are achieving the learning outcomes of the module.
If an essay is to serve function (2) then it must be clearly written, well organized, and well informed. It is advisable to write as if your essay were directed at someone who does not know what the topic is about but wants to learn about it, and what you think about it, by reading your essay. Keeping such a reader in mind may help you to write plainly and clearly, making each crucial point explicit enough, enabling it to be understood by those who do not already know about the topic.
What is Distinctive of a Philosophical Essay?
A philosophical essay will always be concerned, more or less directly, with a philosophical problem or problems. It will be an attempt to convey the character of the problems, to comment upon them, and to consider how they might be resolved. Usually, it will involve discussion of the views of particular philosophers, in which case these views need to be expounded and assessed.
A philosophical essay at undergraduate level should normally contain the following elements:
- Exposition of relevant portions of the literature in which the issues relating to the specified topic are explored.
- Comments on the ideas and arguments discussed aimed clarifying and explaining them.
- An attempt to evaluate the ideas and arguments and to reach some conclusion about them.
In considering the literature the most important questions to ask are these:
- Are the author’s assumptions and conclusions true, or at least plausible?
- Are the arguments that the author advances in support of his or her conclusions good arguments?
- How do the various parts of the author’s discussion link up?
To address these questions you need to consider what you think. The comments and evaluations in your essay are meant to be your comments and evaluations. You are expected to pass judgement on the matters you are considering. But being opinionated is not enough. You must give reasons for your judgement. .
The Organization of a Philosophical Essay
An essay is well organized when it has a clear aim and every paragraph of the essay clearly contributes to achieving the aim in an order that makes sense. For instance, if you are asked whether freedom is compatible with determinism, then the aim of your essay might be to show that freedom is compatible with determinism, or it might be to show that freedom is not compatible with determinism. If you are not sure after reflection on the matter whether freedom is or is not compatible with determinism, your essay could still have a clear aim: to identify the problems for either view and make some assessment of the strengths or weakness of each. You should set yourself this aim anyway even if you aim to reach a more specific conclusion.
When we say that an essay should contain various elements, for instance, exposition and critical comment, we do not mean that it needs to be structured in parts, each dealing with one of these elements. You will need to think for yourself how best to structure it. For example, should you begin with an account of the literature and then follow up with critical comment, or interweave the two together? Should you set the scene for subsequent exposition and comment by describing the relevant context, or points of connection with the wider issues covered in the module? There are no single right answers to such questions. The grade for your essay will reflect the extent to which you have organized your essay in a sensible way. Do not try to provide detailed discussion of everything in the texts on which you are writing, or of every important claim or argument. If you do that your essay will either be much too long, or much too superficial. It is crucial to be selective: pick out just one or two claims or arguments for detailed discussion. Provide a brief general overview of the key items of literature on which you are focusing, but then select the particular aspect(s) on which you will focus your critical discussion.
Real Discussion
You are meant to discuss and develop a stance on the topic. You do not discuss simply by placing alongside one another opposing views that you have found in the literature.
As you read you need to ask yourself at each crucial point, ‘What do I think of that? Am I convinced by it? Does the author give a good reason for what he or she says?’. If you think a claim or an argument is suspect, then ask yourself, ‘Why does it strike me as being suspect?’ If you think that a claim advanced is correct then try to say why you think it’s right and consider how it might be defended against any who disagree with it.
You are not expected to do better than the authors you are discussing. You are expected to have some opinions about the pieces you discuss and to make an intelligent effort to present and defend these opinions. Never, never, never, say, ‘What you think of this depends on your point of view’ or ‘It all depends on your opinion’. Why? Because what you think is your point of view or opinion and the issue is whether there is good reason to think what you are inclined to think. Discussion of that issue is not advanced by saying that it all depends on your point of view or on your opinion.
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Critical Reviews or Reports
On some modules you may be asked to write an essay in the form of a critical review or critical report on a set text. (As used here these terms stand for the same thing.) An essay of this type need not be critical in the sense that it rejects the ideas or arguments discussed, or dismisses them as bad or unpersuasive. In this context, ‘critical’ means something like ‘evaluative’: you must not merely report or summarise the author’s views and arguments, but evaluate or assess them. In writing a critical review or report you will be focusing on a particular piece of literature, but this does not mean that you should read only that piece. Read again some of the other readings set for the relevant seminars so that you can locate the text you are discussing in the wider philosophical context.
Your review or report should include the following three elements.
- An account of the content of the text on which you are reporting. (That is, exposition.) Do not try to summarise or paraphrase everything. You will need to decide what the most important or interesting claims and arguments are, and offer a brief account of those; and though it might sometimes be useful to quote the author’s exact words to support a point or claim that you make, your account should as far as possible be expressed in your own words.
- A discussion of how the text links up with a broader philosophical context. For instance, a discussion of the moral status of animals would link up with wider arguments between consequentialist and non-consequentialist moral theories. A discussion of the sceptical arguments in Descartes’s Meditations would link up with broader issues about the nature of knowledge and how knowledge may be obtained.
- Some critical discussion of the author’s arguments. Is it clear what the arguments are? Are they persuasive? Are there objections that the author fails to meet, or fails even to notice? Remember that ‘critical’ here means ‘evaluative’: you are asked to assess the arguments. You might think that they are quite clear, sound, and persuasive: in that case you should say so, and also try to justify your judgement. Also think of objections that others might bring against the arguments or conclusions, and think how those objections could be answered.
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Use of Literature
What is relevant literature? It is any written text bearing on the topic you are discussing. Literature comprises books, or chapters from books, and articles from journals. It includes any lecture notes prepared by your teachers and made available to you. It also includes any materials you access on the Web.
There are two key things to remember about literature:
- Literature is an object of discussion, not simply a source of things for you to say. So the literature is something about which you write, making it clear by appropriate references which piece you are writing about. When you are expounding or discussing the views of an author then use phrases to indicate that you are doing so. For instance, ‘Cottingham claims that Descartes …’, ‘Davidson concludes that there are no strict psychological laws …’, ‘Ayer thinks that the incompatibilist view rests on a mistaken understanding of freedom’, and so forth.
- It will often be appropriate, and sometimes necessary, to summarise and explain the views of a particular author. In doing so you will attribute views and arguments to this author. The literature written by that author provides the evidence for what he or she thinks. You must back up what you attribute to the author by referring to appropriate evidence. The best way to do so is to cite appropriate passages in the author’s writings, giving page references. If you cite a passage reproduced in a secondary source (i.e., a source in which the author in question is discussed) then make sure you cite the secondary source as well the literature cited by the secondary source.
It may occasionally be appropriate to present in your own words information that you have gleaned from some source, or to mention some passage in a source, even though you do not say in the main text of your essay that so-and-so says this or that. But you must cite the source and give page references. You can do this in brackets or in footnotes or endnotes. If you use the exact words of the author then you must place them in quotation marks.
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Plagiarism
Plagiarism is a very serious offence. It is the reproduction of the work of another without adequate acknowledgement. Note that in order to acknowledge a source it is not enough merely to give bibliographical details of the source in your bibliography. If you reproduce what an author says verbatim then you must place what is reproduced in quotation marks or display it clearly as a quotation by, for instance, indenting it. You must cite the source at the point at which words from the source are reproduced. If you paraphrase the source then in that case too you must cite the source there and then. Plagiarism is penalised in accordance with University policy. The policy, including description of the penalties, is set out on the following web site.
You should also note that it is not acceptable to return an essay a large portion of which consists in quotation from other sources even if this is acknowledged. Such an essay is likely to receive a very low mark on the grounds that it does not contain enough of your own work.
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Presentation and Format
Essays at university-level should contain a bibliography and references, presented in an acceptable manner as illustrated below.
Bibliography
In listing books, give the author(s) or editor(s), the title (underlined or italicized), the publisher, and the place and date of publication. Thus,
Duff, R. A. 1986. Trials and Punishments, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Le Poidevin, Robin and MacBeath, Murray (eds.) 1993. The Philosophy of Time, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
In listing articles, give the author(s), and place the title of the article in inverted commas. If the article is in a journal, cite the year of publication, the title of the journal, the volume number, and pages. Thus,
Millican, Peter 2004. 'The One Fatal Flaw in Anselm’s Argument', Mind 113, pp. 437-76.
If you are citing an article from a collection of articles, give its bibliographical details. Thus,
Lowe, E. J. 1992. ‘Experience and Its Objects’, in Tim Crane (ed.), The Contents of Experience, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 79-104.
If not all of the bibliographical information is available to you then enter at least the author’s name and the work, and as much else as you can.
Sometimes you may wish to refer to a reading selected from a work by an author and contained in a published collection of such readings. Such selections are not always articles. Sometimes they are made up of chapters or edited extracts from a book. When referring to sources in such collections cite the heading that is used for the selection in question, the book or journal from which the selection is taken, and the collection that includes the selection thus:
James Rachels, ‘The Challenge Cultural Relativism’, from Rachels’s The Elements of Moral Philosophy, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986. Reprinted in Joel Feinberg and Russ Shafer-Landau (eds.) Reason and Responsibility: Readings in Some Basic Problems of Philosophy, 12th Edition, Belmont CA.: Wadsworth, 2002. Page references in the essay are to this reprint.
When citing in the bibliography an item in a coursepack prepared by the Department of Philosophy, for which bibliographical details are given, there is no need to refer to the fact that the item is in the pack. Simply use the bibliographical details that are given. For instance,
Anthony Kenny, ‘Body, Soul, Mind and Spirit’, ch. 2 of Kenny’s The Metaphysics of Action, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
References
Remember that listing a work in your bibliography does not in itself provide adequate acknowledgement of it. There is no point in listing a work if you have not made use of iit in the course of the essay, and if you have so used it then you also need to cite it in the main text or in footnotes or endnotes. Works are cited by means of references. These need not reproduce all of the details that figure in the bibliography of the essay. A note might take the following form:
For this argument, see Duff 1986, pp. 45-48.
The purpose of such references is to be helpful to the reader, enabling the reader to identify passages that you have used. Markers, or any other readers, may wish to compare what you have attributed to an author with the passages that you cite as evidence for an attribution. To home in on a passage they need page references, so ensure that your references contain these. Footnotes or endnotes may contain brief comments of your own as well as citations of texts. Sometimes they may be useful for spelling out details that do not belong in the main body of text, but as a general rule explanatory footnotes should be avoided so far as possible in essays, and long footnotes should be avoided altogether. When referring to a passage in an item in a coursepack, there is no need to mention that it is in the coursepack. Simply cite the author, date, and page numbers.
Essay Presentation
Your essay should have the topic specification (the topic as specified in the Module Handout or essay sheet) on the first page. Pages should be numbered.
Essays must be word-processed and should not be single spaced—they should either be double-spaced or 1.5 spaced, to allow room for markers' corrections and comments.
The following guidelines will help you to ensure that your essay is easily readable:
- Break the essay up into clearly distinguishable paragraphs, each one of which carries out some task that contributes to the aims of the essay.
- Use left and right margins of a reasonable size and no smaller than one inch.
- Use a standard font like Times, or Times New Roman, no smaller than 12 point.
Occasional quotations may be used. They must be used whenever the words of an author are reproduced. (See the guidance above on plagiarism.)
When quotations are embedded in a longer sentence make sure that there is grammatical fit between the embedded quotation and the embedding sentence.
Longish quotations are best displayed in a separate paragraph. When they are so displayed it is not necessary to place them between quotation marks, but it should be clear that the passage in question is a quotation. This can be done by indenting it. All quotations must be attached to a reference to the work from which the passage is taken.
Add a word count to the end of your essay.
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The Submission of Essays
Regulations and procedures governing the writing and submission of essays may be found in section F of this document. Essays are marked anonymously, so do not put your name on the essay or cover sheet.
Each essay submitted for a Philosophy module must use as its opening page the divisional Cover Sheet which is available on the Succeed home page for each philosophy module under the link 'Turnitin Submissions', or can be collected from the pigeonholes by the divisional office. Cousework essays must be submitted, in hard copy, to the letter box next to the Division Office, Pathfoot A73, by noon on the due date. Note that you must also submit an electronic copy of each essay, identical to the hard copy submitted to the office. This electronic copy must be submitted through Succeed and the Division will make use of the plagiarism detection service, TurnitinUK.
Please follow the guidance on how to do this, available at:
http://www.is.stir.ac.uk/docs/succeed/students/turnitin-student.pdf <http://www.is.stir.ac.uk/docs/succeed/students/turnitin-student.pdf>
The submission of essays is logged by Divisional Office staff. You must also ensure that you retain a copy of your essay.
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