Writing Philosophy Papers: The Basics
Professor Mark Hopwood
September 2014
There is no single method for writing philosophy: as you will see from our readings,
different philosophers write in very different ways. However, there are some basic
rules for writing philosophy papers that are likely to serve you well in any college
class.
1) A philosophy paper is built around an argument for a thesis
When I read your papers, the first thing that I will be looking for is a clear thesis: i.e.
a potentially contestable claim for which the rest of the paper will argue. One of the
most common mistakes that college students make in writing philosophy papers
(and papers in many other disciplines) is failing to provide a clear thesis. Another
common mistake is failing to argue for the thesis once it has been stated. When you
read over the draft of your paper, look at every paragraph and ask yourself what
work it is doing for the argument. If a paragraph or sentence is not necessary for the
argument, cut it out and use the space for something else.
2) An argument is an attempt to convince an imagined reader that the
thesis is true
One of the best ways to think about your writing is through the eyes of an imagined
reader. Different forms of writing presuppose different kinds of reader, but for the
papers you write in my class, I want you to imagine that you are writing for an
intelligent adult who is skeptical about your thesis but open to being convinced. You
can assume that this person has a basic familiarity with the texts, figures, and
problems that we have been discussing (so you don’t need to explain things like who
Plato is or why it’s important to think about the nature of love or justice) but not
with the details (so you do need to explain things like Plato’s account of the three
parts of the soul and his reasons for adopting it).1 The best way to put your
argument together is to look at your thesis and think carefully about the most
important objections that might occur to such a reader. If you can do a good job of
anticipating these objections and saying something convincing in reply, your
argument is likely to be very strong. On the other hand, if you waste time dealing
with objections that no intelligent, fair-minded person is likely to raise, your
argument will look much weaker.
Just to clarify: these are examples. I’m not saying you have to talk about the three parts of the soul
in every paper you write.
1
3) The principal virtues of good philosophical writing are clarity, rigor,
and originality.
Clarity
Many students imagine that in order to write good philosophy papers they need to
use lots of long words and complex sentence structures. In fact, the opposite is much
closer to the truth. The best kind of philosophical writing – at least at the college
level – is that which leaves no room for ambiguity or misunderstanding. Try to
convey your thoughts in the simplest and most direct way you can, with as little
flowery language as possible. When you read over your draft, look at each sentence
and ask yourself if there is any way that your imagined reader could misunderstand
what you are trying to say. If there is, rewrite the sentence to remove as much of the
ambiguity as possible. When writing philosophy, it is incredibly tempting to assume
that your reader will “get” what you are thinking, even if you don’t convey those
thoughts clearly in your writing. This is very rarely the case. It is safest to assume
that any ambiguous sentences or formulations will be misunderstood, rather than
relying on your reader’s capacity for mindreading.
One very important feature of clear philosophical writing is consistency in
terminology. In other words: resist the urge to pick up your thesaurus. If you start
off talking about justice, don’t switch later to talking about fairness. These are
distinct concepts, and what is true of one may not be true of the other. If you find
that being consistent with your terminology makes your writing sound clunky, don’t
worry: I’d much rather you write papers that are clear and clunky than papers that
are elegant and ambiguous. Part of the reason for this is that the former kind of
paper is much more difficult to write than the latter. Figuring out how to express a
thought clearly in writing is probably the best way to find out whether you really
understand it or not. As the philosopher John Searle once said: “If you can’t say it
clearly, you don’t understand it yourself.” To put the same point in a more positive
light: if you can take one of Plato’s ideas and explain it clearly and simply, that is a
huge achievement of which you are entitled to feel very proud.
Rigor
There are basically two kinds of rigor that I am looking for in your writing: rigor in
argument and rigor in interpretation.
Rigor in argument involves: stating a thesis clearly and sticking to it; anticipating the
best objections to your thesis and responding to them in their strongest form;
clarifying the meaning of any key terms and making clear distinctions between
different senses of the same term; acknowledging the implicit assumptions of your
argument and bringing them to the surface.
Rigor in interpretation involves: paying close attention to the text and using
terminology faithfully and accurately; citing appropriate passages in support of your
interpretations; acknowledging potential disagreements over interpretation and
giving reasons for your own reading.
In both argument and interpretation, rigor is primarily a matter of bringing all of the
essential working parts of the paper to the surface. It is very tempting to try to
conceal the weak points in your argument or the dubious points of your
interpretation, in the hope that your reader won’t notice and will be won over by the
rhetorical elegance of your writing. This is very unlikely to happen. What is far more
likely is that your reader will notice that something is being concealed and assume
that this indicates a serious problem with the argument. If, by the time you get to the
end of your paper, you have serious reservations about your thesis, I would much
rather you acknowledge these problems openly. A paper that provides a clear and
compelling statement of any unresolved questions and problems is likely to come
across as much more impressive and sophisticated than one that simply attempts to
conceal such problems.
Originality
When I say that I want your papers to be original, I do not mean that I want you to
come up with something that no one has ever thought of before. This is incredibly
hard to do, and it would be unreasonable for me to expect it. What I do want you to
do is really to think about the problems posed in the prompt, and to write a paper
that reflects your own best efforts to come to terms with them. I don’t want you to
argue for the thesis that seems easiest to defend, or that you think I probably want
you to defend: I want you to tell me what you really think. It is surprisingly easy to
tell the difference between a paper written by someone who is just going through
the motions, and one written by someone who has really thought about the problem
and is doing their best to respond to it. Even if your argument has all kinds of holes
in it and you make all kinds of mistakes in interpreting the text, if I can tell that
you’ve really made a good faith effort to understand and engage with the material,
and done so in a way that reflects a genuine attempt to think through the problems
for yourself, I’ll reward you for it in your grade.
Some practical tips for philosophical writing
1) Whenever you quote a passage from the text, you need to explain it
It is very tempting to quote a passage in which a philosopher states her views about
x and leave it to “speak for itself”, assuming that your reader will have no trouble
understanding it. Since philosophy is very difficult, and different people’s
interpretations of even the simplest passage will often vary widely, this is an
assumption that you should avoid. Whenever you quote from the text, make sure
that you always provide some kind of explanation of the basic point that is being
made, using the simplest terms possible. For particularly difficult or abstract ideas,
examples are an excellent way of helping your reader to understand what the text is
saying.
2) Use signposting language to help your reader keep track of the
argument
One of the simplest and most effective things you can do to make your papers clear
and direct is to use signposting language throughout. Some examples of signposting
language include:
“In this paper, I will argue that p.”
“Socrates’s argument for p depends on two premises. First, that … Second, that … I
will consider these premises in order, and attempt to show that although the first is
plausible, the second is vulnerable to a variety of different counter-examples.”
“Now that we have considered Socrates’s argument for q, let us move on to his
argument for r.”
“In order to understand what Socrates means by x, we need to understand his
account of y.”
“If the argument that I have given is right, then q must be false. However, there are
at least two objections that might be raised against my argument.”
Ideally, most if not all of the paragraphs in your paper should contain at least some
signposting language. If in doubt, you should always assume that your reader is
confused about where the argument stands and provide more signposting.
3) Avoid the temptation to narrate
All of the signposting language above makes explicit reference to the structure of the
argument that is being made. Try to make sure that your signposting language does
this, and avoid language the temptation simply to present your points in
chronological order, e.g. “Socrates argues that p, then he argues that q, and later he
argues that r.” This kind of narration gives your reader no sense of how the different
arguments connect to each other, and makes it seem as if you’re just saying one
thing after another until you run out of space.
4) Don’t settle for the easy knockdown
It is very common in student papers to see arguments of the form: “Socrates’s
argument for p relies on the assumption q, but he doesn’t argue for q, so we have no
reason to accept p.” The problem with this objection is that every argument has to
rely at some point on assumptions that are not argued for, so it’s not really much of
a criticism of Socrates to point out this feature of his argument. A much better
objection would be one that gave good reasons not to accept q, considered the way
in which Socrates might defend q, and gave further argument to show that this
defense would not be viable. When you are reading the work of great philosophers,
it is usually safe to assume that any objection to their views that seems too easy
probably is too easy.
5) Try to avoid sentences of the following form:
“Ever since the dawn of time, philosophers have struggled to understand x.”
“Webster’s dictionary defines “soul” as…”
“In the Republic, Socrates claims y, but he probably just thinks that because of the
time he lived in.”
Further Resources
An excellent online guide to writing philosophy papers to which I am much
indebted:
http://www.jimpryor.net/teaching/guidelines/writing.html
A step-by-step guide to writing philosophy papers which takes you through
successive drafts of a sample paper to show you how a good piece of writing
develops through the drafting process (this is well worth taking the time to look at):
http://web.williams.edu/wp-etc/philosophy/jcruz/jcruz/writingtutor/
The Chicago Manual of Style online (accessible through the Sewanee network):
www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/