kathybowing

Explanation is key to any essay, but it's especially crucial in philosophical writing. Avoid ambiguous claims, vague or overly brief exposition and serious omissions of thought or argument.

Upper-year essays often require students to give their own answers to fundamental questions (like “Is there a God?” or “Do we have free will?”). These answers may be based on existing theories or new theory.

Planning

Most students writing philosophy essays for the first time will be somewhat unsure of what is expected of them. While they may have written papers for English or History courses, philosophical writing is a much different animal.

Philosophical work requires a high level of precision. It's not enough to simply get the idea of somebody else's view – in order to criticize it, you need to be able to say precisely what you think they mean by a particular phrase or argument.

For this reason, it is important that you plan your essay carefully. If you don't have a clear plan, it will be difficult for the reader to follow your arguments. You should also try to find a way to have someone else read your paper before you submit it for a grade. This will allow you to see whether or not your ideas are logically connected and coherent, or if they seem confusing or nonsensical.

Research

The quality essay writing service helps students learn how to construct and defend an argument. Whether you are developing a response to a philosopher's view or argument, or giving a critical appraisal of one, it is important that your thinking is clear and that you take the time to do some background research on the issue. It is especially important to avoid using jargon in a philosophy paper. Philosophy is a subject that uses words in ways that are not obvious to people outside the discipline, and students can often be misunderstood unless they are careful not to use esoteric vocabulary. It is also important that you do not make assumptions about your instructors understanding of philosophical language or terminology. Generally, instructors will be happy as long as you are using language that any educated layperson would understand. This includes the use of concrete examples. This helps your reader grasp the more abstract, less easily understood claims and arguments you are making.

Thesis Statement

The most important thing to remember when writing a philosophy essay is that it should be exposition, not polemic or confession. Unless your instructor specifically asks you to do otherwise, your immediate aim should be to explain clearly and dispassionately some other philosopher's view on the issue at hand.

This will involve introducing the problem, explaining the relevant background, describing what is at stake and providing counter-arguments. It is also helpful to briefly mention your main points in the order in which you will discuss them, so that readers will progressively get closer to your thesis statement.

This is a difficult task because it tempts you to be imprecise, and to use unclear metaphors. But if you can resist these temptations, philosophical writing can be very effective and rewarding. It is just that it takes more practice to do well than most other undergraduate writing does. It's worth the effort, though. It will help you to understand the subject matter better and to express it more effectively.

Conclusion

As undergraduate philosophy students are essentially novices in the discipline, their writing strategies should be designed to focus on the construction and evaluation of arguments. This requires clarity, precision and organization. A student can't determine whether a set of premises supports a conclusion unless the premises are formulated clearly and precisely.

To do this, a student must be careful not to confuse her own use of language with the meaning of the words she uses in a given argument. For example, she should be careful not to say “Abortion is the same as murder” when what she really means is “Murder is the same as abortion.”

Moreover, she must also realize that it is not enough simply to undermine a conclusion; she must demonstrate that the conclusion is untenable or implausible. She must do this by demonstrating that the premises are false or implausible, or by showing that they provide insufficient support for the conclusion. This is a fundamentally different task from attacking the conclusions of other philosophers, and it must be approached with extreme charity.