A guide to writing philosophy essays

1. 1. What is this document?

 

One of the main types of assessment that students complete as part of a philosophy degree is to write a philosophy essay. There are lots of guides as to how to approach writing philosophy essays. What is special about this one is that it has been produced by the UEA philosophy department, i.e., the people that teach you. In fact, this document is a synthesis of the various different resources that our lecturers provide students on writing philosophy essays. You may find that some lecturers provide their own guides which are crafted to speak to the particular features of their modules. But this is a good general guide to writing philosophy essays.

 

2. 2. What is a philosophy essay?

 

To write a good philosophy essay, you need to bear in mind what a philosophy essay is. A philosophy essay is an attempt to persuade your reader that they should accept the conclusion of your essay. An essay is not an overview of a subject nor a demonstration of how much you know or how clever you can be. An essay is not about dis-cussing or critically engaging with philosophical ideas merely for the sake of discussing or critically engaging with them. Rather, everything in your essay should contribute to your attempt to bring your reader round to your way of thinking via rational means, i.e., your argument.

 

3. 3. When to start writing your essay?

 

It is a good idea to start writing something early in your essay preparation. However, the first thing you start writing probably shouldn’t be your essay itself. You should typically only start writing your essay itself once you know exactly what you are going to argue and how. When you first start writing (as part of your essay preparation), what you are writing will be notes, jottings, rough ideas, and first attempts at working out what makes sense. Eventually you will be in a position to write a clear plan detailing what you will argue for in your essay as well as a section-by-section, paragraph-by-paragraph outline of the things you need to do to make that argument. And only then is it a good idea to start drafting your essay.

The reason that beginning to write your essay straightaway isn’t recommended is that your thinking is likely to evolve as you put words to paper. That would be okay if an essay were supposed to be a record of your actual thought process or a record of your working out what you think as you go along, but that isn’t what an essay is sup-posed to be. A piece of writing that changes its mind as it goes along or which remains undecided about what it will conclude right up until the last moment is not going to be very persuasive—it is likely to be actively confusing! And, as we’ve said before, your essay should be an attempt to persuade your reader of your conclusion. With that in mind, it is strongly recommended that you don’t start writing your essay itself until you have a clear plan.

An alternative question you might as is “When should I start my essay preparation?” and the answer to that will vary depending on your other time commitments and the precise nature of your assignment. Once you have completed your preparatory reading we would strongly recommend you leave around two weeks for thinking, writing and rewriting (and, at the very least, one whole week).

 

4. 4. What should I write about?

 

This guide can’t tell you what you should write about in any given assignment or module. However, it can give some general guidance.

Once you know what the conclusion of your essay will be and how you will argue for that conclusion, the answer to the question of what you should write about should be relatively easy to work out.You should write about the things that you need to write about in order to persuade the reader of your conclusion—and nothing else!

It is important to reiterate that last point. You should try to avoid including any material that doesn’t contribute to your argument for your conclusion. Including such material will at best take up your word count without adding anything, and at worst lose you marks for irrelevance. When your lecturers read your essays, they want to read a persuasive argument. Your lecturers don’t have a long checklist of concepts, arguments, and theories which they require essays on a particular topic to cover. What’s important is that you explain everything you need in order to make your argument persuasive.

It is important, however, that your essay is responsive to the assessment brief. For each of your assessments, you will have been provided with an assessment brief of some variety. For example, you might have been given a set of essay questions to choose from or asked to set yourself an essay question on a given topic. You should make sure that your essay responds to this assessment brief, e.g., by answering one of the questions you were set. It is perfectly possible to write a very good philosophy essay that will get very disappointing marks if submitted for assessment because it doesn’t answer the question set or relate to the topic. You should therefore make sure that you have not misread the question—check your understanding against the taught content of your modules, the suggested reading, your classmates’ understanding, or with your lecturer themselves. However, once you’ve ensured that you are responding to the assessment brief, the question “What should I write about?” really is just the same as the answer to the question “What do I need to write about to persuade my reader to accept my conclusion?” The same goes for the question “What structure should my essay have?” – this should be guided by what will most effectively persuade your readers.

Here is a quick checklist of ideas that you could use to help you make sure that you write a persuasive argument for a conclusion:

1. Have you explained the question that you are tackling? 2. Have you explained your answer to the question?
2. Have you explained the main argument you are offering in favour of that answer?
3. Have you explained why it matters whether you are right and whether your argument works?

 

 

5. Are there any key concepts, ideas, theories or arguments that your reader needs to understand in order to follow and be persuaded by your argument? Have you explained them?
6. Have you anticipated the most likely reasons someone might not follow or be persuaded by your argument? And, more importantly, have you done some-thing to help them follow or be persuaded?

 

You’ll have noticed that this checklist implies you will only advance one main line of argument and develop it in depth rather offer lots of different arguments. This is no mistake. The best essays present a single line of argument and do it well. That might be counterintuitive. You might think you stand a better chance of persuading your reader if you throw all the arguments you can think of at them. But you need to consider that you have limited space in your essay. If you have 1500 words, maybe around half of that will be taken up with introduction, conclusion, and explaining all the key terms, theories, and so on (although of course the proportions will vary a lot essay to essay). That means you’d only have around 750 words to do the main argumentative work. That’s around 1.5 pages of A4 single spaced. If you tried to develop even as few as three arguments in that space, you’d only have 250 words for each. That’s only enough space to present an argument in very superficial detail. And an argument presented in very superficial detail is unlikely to persuade anyone. So, you’d stand a much better chance of offering a compelling argument in your essay as a whole if you developed a single line of argument in greater depth/detail. (Still not persuaded? Maybe that’s because this paragraph has exactly 250 words and, despite only presenting a simple argument, only had space to do so in very superficial detail.)

 

5. 5. Do I have to write something completely original?

 

The most important thing to say is that you are not being asked to come up with some grand theory that no one has ever thought of or written about before. Aiming to come up with something that no one has ever thought of before is not a helpful way to approach undergraduate philosophy essays.

The more helpful approach is the one we’ve suggested here. Focus on giving a persuasive argument for your conclusion. In doing that, you won’t simply be describing or repeating what other people have said about an issue. Instead, you’ll be critically engaging with what you have read, assessing the theories and arguments you encounter, and drawing the material you encounter together in a critical and well-reasoned way. By doing so, you will be making an original contribution. You will end up explaining ideas in new helpful ways. You will anticipate potential problems with arguments. You will make distinctions that are helpful for thinking about the issue in hand. You will draw together two existing arguments in a way that is original and interesting. In other words, you’ll be demonstrating the kind of independent thought and originality that makes for a good philosopher.

 

6. 6. What kind of style should I adopt in a philosophy essay?

 

Your style should be guided by the aim of a philosophy essay:to persuade your reader that they should accept the conclusion of your essay. Any stylistic choices that would make it less likely that you would persuade your reader should be avoided. So, the general rule of thumb is to make your writing as easy to understand as possible be-cause your reader can’t be persuaded by something they don’t understand. That means writing clearly in clear, concise, everyday English. It typically means using short sentences, short words, writing in paragraphs, and using illustrative examples. Making your writing as easy to understand as possible often means dividing your work into clear sections (which could be signposted using descriptive headings as in this document). Your philosophy will be typically be easier to understand if you avoid technical terms, Latin phrases, fancy language, and translating everything into formal logic. The above are, of course, just rules of thumb and will have exceptions. But they are good rules of thumb.

 

 

Should you write in the first person? Yes, probably. If you say, “One objection to X theory is that Y,” your reader doesn’t know what role discussion of that objection is supposed to play in your argument. If you say, “This essay now considers the objection to X that Y and will demonstrate that the objection is mistaken,” your reader won’t be so confused. But they’ll find it even easier to follow your argument if you say what you mean, rather than contort your sentences to avoid the first person. So, say things like, “I will now defend X against the objection that Y”, “I will argue that…”, “My aim in this section is to…”, “My response to Z’s objection is…”.

In short, the general advice is to write in the clearest way you can. If there is something that would help make your argument clearer, go for it! If including a picture or diagram will help you make your point clearly, don’t be afraid to do so.

 

7. 7. Who should I write for?

 

It can help guide your style by having a particular kind of reader in mind. It isn’t helpful to think of yourself as writing for your lecturer. If you think of yourself as writing for your lecturer, you will be tempted to think you don’t need to explain the things they have taught you. It also isn’t helpful to think of the reader as wholly un-informed about philosophy. If you did, it would be tempting to think you needed to explain all the very basics and fill in lots of gaps in their knowledge.

You might need to experiment a little with what kind of imagined reader works best for you, but here’s one idea that you might hear recommended: write for a class-mate at your level and on your module but who has simply not taken the relevant sections of the course. The idea is that such a classmate needs to have the issues explained—what is at stake in this debate and why does your contribution in the essay matter—but they do have a broad understanding of philosophy.

You’ll hear other recommendations too, e.g., to write for a relative who wants to know what your essay is about but who has no grounding or particular interest in philosophy as a whole. But the spirit of the recommendations is similar, it is to help you focus on explaining the precise issue at hand (and your response to it) in as clear

 

 

a way as possible, but without getting bogged down in trying to provide encyclopedic knowledge of philosophy or one of its sub fields.

 

8. 8. What to write in your introduction?

 

Your introduction is your chance to give your reader a sense of the overall structure of your argument. Don’t be afraid of spoilers! Your introduction should tell your reader what you will argue and how, i.e., your conclusion and the structure of your argument. This will make it much easier for them to follow your argument when you get to the details. Remember, your aim is to persuade them of your conclusion, and you won’t do that if they can’t follow your argument.

It can also be helpful to give readers a sense of the structure of your essay, e.g., what topics you will talk about in what order. But don’t make this the sole focus. It is more important that by, reading the introduction, the reader understands how your argument will work rather than simply what you will talk about where.

Don’t be tempted to pad your introduction with historical context, biography, definitions, and so on. This is not necessary. Only include these things if they will genuinely help your reader to get a sense of what you will argue and how in the main body of your essay.

 

9. 9. What to write in your conclusion?

 

Your conclusion is a chance to remind your reader what you’ve been arguing for and how you’ve argued for it. Don’t be afraid of repeating yourself! Remember, your aim is to persuade them of your conclusion, and you won’t do that if they can’t remember the key details of your argument.

Don’t be tempted to pad your conclusion with further implications, new ideas that didn’t play a role in your argument, new opinions which are distinct from the ones you argued for in the essay, and so on. This is not necessary and often actively unhelpful. In your essays, you have a very limited word count and it is best to devote them to making your main point well

 

 

10. 10. How should I structure my writing?

 

There is no hard and fast rule as to how you should structure your essay beyond the general advice that you should write in the way that is most effective at persuading your reader of your conclusion. This general advice lies behind the advice given above relating to introductions, conclusions, paragraphs, sections, and so on. But, in this section, we’ll give a few more general tips to guide your thinking about structuring.

A first general tip is to do one thing at a time. A common mistake in student essays is to try to do lots of things at the same time—explain an idea, evaluate the idea, anticipate objections to your evaluation, respond to those objections, etc.—within the same section, paragraph, even sentence! It isn’t always obvious to you, the philosopher, when you are doing this. All those different thoughts may be very closely bound up in your head and be difficult to separate. However, while bundling things together like this might make sense to you, it is likely to be difficult for anyone else. In particular, if you haven’t yet first explained an idea, it will be difficult for your reader to follow any of your critical engagement with that idea. So, get into the habit of ruthlessly breaking your ideas down into discrete chunks, and giving those chunks to your reader one at a time and in an order which makes your argument easy to follow.

The impact this first general tip has on how you structure your essay will vary essay to essay. Sometimes it will make sense to have one long section in which you explain all the ideas that you will go on to evaluate in the next section. Sometimes it will make sense to go through a process of explaining a little bit of a view, evaluating that bit of the view, explaining another bit of the view, and so on. Sometimes it will make sense to anticipate and respond to objections to your argument all at the end. Sometimes it will make sense to deal with objections as you go along. But whatever works best, it will involve doing one thing at a time.

A second general tip is to structure your essay in a way that reflects the logical structure of your argument. Suppose, for example, you’d been given the question, “Is it morally permissible to eat meat?”, and that you were going to argue for the

 

 

conclusion that it is only permissible in very specific circumstances that rarely apply. You might structure your essay as suggested by the following introduction:

 

I argue that it is only permissible to eat meat in specific circumstances that rarely apply. I will first explain the main arguments that have been given against eating meat (Section 1) and evaluate them (Section 2). My verdict will be that the most compelling arguments are, at least in principle,limited in scope, i.e., that eating meat involves complicity in wrongful killing, that eating meat involves a morally vicious disregard for the suffering of others, and that arguments that are not limited in scope are unconvincing, e.g., those that appeal to the idea that eating flesh is intrinsically wrong. However, I then demonstrate that the circumstances in which the most compelling arguments against eating meat would fail to apply are very rare (Section 3). This claim has been challenged in various ways in the literature but I will show that these challenges are mistaken (Section 4). Ultimately, I conclude that almost all meat eating that takes place is morally impermissible.

 

Finally, a third general tip is to avoid being mysterious. Even if you provide a super clear introduction, like the above, your reader might struggle to follow your argument unless you sign post your argument as you go along. Begin each section with a reminder of what that section achieves and how achieving that helps you establish your conclusion. The first sentence of each paragraph should make it obvious to the reader what that paragraph will achieve, e.g., a statement of the main point. Finish sections and paragraphs in a way that makes their contribution clear again, e.g., by either linking their contribution back to essay question, or linking them with what’s going to happen next.

 

 

11. 11. Is there a required referencing/citation format?

 

There is no generally required referencing system in the UEA philosophy department. For some modules, lecturers might express preferences due to the kind of material you are covering. For instance, in historical modules there might be advantages to certain referencing systems over others. And it is a good idea to explore such recommendations. But so long as you are using a conventional referencing system (e.g., APA, Harvard, Chicago, MLA) and using it effectively – that’s fine by us! Whatever system of referencing you use in the text (e.g., footnotes),you should also include a bibliography that includes all and only the sources you cite in the text. There are various tools avail-able that can help you in your academic referencing see here, here, and here. For in text citations—like this (Author, 2018, pp.67-69)—the reference manager that’s built into MS Word is pretty good for all undergraduate purposes!

 

12. 12. Are there any general formatting requirements?

 

There are no general strict formatting requirements in the philosophy department. There may be some requirements for some modules and your lecturers will tell you about those. In general, however, the following are considered good practice: use 11-12pt font size; double-space text (or 1.5); leave a decent margin; number your pages.

 

13. 13. How many sources should I reference?

 

There is no general requirement to cite any particular number of sources (but for some specific assignments, there might be specific guidance given). There are no marks available simply for referencing sources. In fact, providing citations for the sake of it is likely to lead to irrelevance which will lose you marks. You should provide a com-pelling argument and cite the sources you need to cite in the course of that argument, and that’s it!

 

 

14. 14. When should I quote other sources and how often?

 

There are only two occasions when it is necessary to provide an exact quotation rather than expressing the ideas you discuss in your own words. One is where it is important for your reader to consider the exact wording used in one of the sources you discuss. The other is where it is necessary to give your reader textual evidence, e.g., to back up your interpretation of a particular figure’s views. How often one needs to do these things will vary essay to essay, and module to module. There will be plenty of assignments in which you have no need to provide any exact quotations.

If you do need to provide an exact quotation, give some thought as to how much of the text you need to include. Most quotations that you use will be fairly short: a few words or a sentence or two. You can place the quotation in context using your own words before and after the quote. If you do need to provide a longer quotation, e.g., that runs over more than two lines, the standard practice is to format it as a block quote (as a separate, indented paragraph with no quotation marks).

Unless you need to provide an exact quotation for one of the reasons outlined above, you should always try to express the views you discuss in your own words. This gives you a chance to demonstrate that you have understood the material. It gives you a chance to demonstrate that you can communicate philosophical ideas and arguments. It gives you a chance to translate views into terms that are easy to understand for today’s reader. In other words, putting things in your own words is a good way to demonstrate your philosophical abilities. Don’t hide your abilities by relying on the words of others.

 

15. 15. How many paragraphs should my essay have?

 

There is no general answer to this question. Essay writing guides that tell you that essays should have a specific number of paragraphs, e.g., 5, should probably be ignored. The relevant rule of thumb is to make one point per paragraph. Make sure the main point is stated clearly in the first sentence, and then take the rest of the paragraph

 

 

to provide detail, explanation, examples, etc. Begin a new paragraph when you make a new point. If you need to indicate higher-level structure in your essay, use sections and consider using descriptive headings.

 

16. 16. Other pro-tips

 

Tell a story! Consider what the narrative structure of your essay is and use that to help convey the point. For example, perhaps your story looks like this: there’s this really popular theory X which has a lot going for it; oh no! – there’s this massive problem Y which seems to mean X must be false; even worse! – all the solutions to the problem are completely implausible because of Z; but wait! – I have a new solution which means theory X can survive. Most essays can be thought of as a simple story of some key characters (e.g., theories, interpretations) in which the reader is invested who face some obstacle (e.g., a puzzle, an objection) which the essay writer overcomes (e.g., by showing the puzzle can be solved, the objection can be refuted).

 

 

Be wary of words like ‘this’ and ‘they’ – remember that you can’t assume that what is clear to you will be clear to your reader! If you say, ‘this means that …’, your reader might radically misunderstand what you intended ‘this’ to refer to. So, avoid the ambiguity by being specific even if doing so takes a few extra words.

 

 

Be wary of rhetorical questions! You can’t guarantee your reader will agree with you

 

about what the answer to a rhetorical question is, let alone agree with your reasoning.

 

 

 

Cut down ruthlessly! If the point of a paragraph is still transmitted clearly without a given word/phrase/sentence, take it out! Likewise, if the argument of your essay still holds and remains clear without a given paragraph, take that paragraph out! However much you’re pleased with a phrase/section, you will that your writing is far clearer and more impressive overall if you cut everything that’s superfluous.

 

 

Pretend your reader is lazy, stupid and mean. Your reader isn’t lazy, stupid or mean. But if you pretend that they are, it will help your writing. Pretend they are lazy—that they will put only minimal effort into trying to understand your argument. Pretend they are stupid—that they will really struggle to understand what you are talking about even if they put in loads of effort. Pretend they are mean—that they are actively going to try to misinterpret your words.

 

 

Don’t try to please your marker! You will not be marked on whether they agree with your conclusions. If the marker agrees with your conclusions, but you gave no de-fence, you will get a low mark. If the marker disagrees with your conclusion, but you gave a careful critical defense that showed intelligent and open-minded treatment of the alternatives, you will get a good mark.

 

 

Try out your arguments! The marker shouldn’t be the first person that you are trying to persuade using the argument in your essay. If you tryout your argument on friends, family, course mates, etc., you will be in a much better position to produce a final draft that offers a compelling argument. Talking to your course mates about essays and helping each other by offering constructive criticism is strongly encouraged. You are not in competition. Each essay is marked on its own merits and there is no limit on how many essays can get the top marks.

 

 

Leave time for redrafting! You need to leave time between having a full draft for the first time and submitting your work. You should expect to be asking someone else for feedback on your draft. So, you will need to leave enough time for them to read it, give you feedback, and for you to work on improving your work. Even if you are not showing your work to anyone else, you need to be in a position to view your own work with a bit of critical distance. The best way to get this distance is to allow yourself time to spend a few days away from your essay thinking about other things before coming back to review your draft.