Topics and Questions We Can Help You To Answer

Paper Instructions:

Socrates says, in the Apology (at 38a), that “the unexamined life is not worth living for men (anthropoi, human beings, all human persons).  (a)  What does he mean by this statement and why does he assert it?  (b)  Suppose we accept it as true; what are the implications of its being true?  (c) What objections might we raise against it?  (d) How might Socrates reply to such objections?



Guidelines for Philosophy Papers

Mechanics
1.  Paper should be 5 pages in length, double-spaced, using a 12-point Times Roman font and one-inch margins all around.  You should not provide a separate title page, but you should include a title at the top of the first page of your paper.  Put your name in the upper right- or left-hand corner of the first page.  Pages of the text should be numbered throughout (either top center – except for first page of course – or top right or bottom center).  Failure to number pages is a discourtesy to your reader. It establishes you as a sloppy writer and an indifferent scholar.

2.  Citations should be used where appropriate to avoid plagiarism.  This includes all direct quotations from a text and also close paraphrases.  Citations may be in the form of footnotes, endnotes or parenthetical citations in the body of the text, in the MLA style.  Either the MLA Style Sheet or Kate Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (the latter based on The Chicago Manual of Style, which may be used instead) should be followed when making citations.  Follow one or the other of these citations styles.  I hate sloppy or imprecise ways of citing sources.  For example, titles of books are always italicized.  Always.  Do not fail to do this.

See also #7, below.

Substance of Paper
3.    The preferred kind of paper is argumentative.  That is to say, it should have a point, or set of points, it is concerned to argue.  Such points should be controversial, not in the sense of being sensational but in the sense that what you say could be reasonably contested by another reader of the same text.  You must develop an interpretation of the material that you believe you can defend, for which there is evidence in the text or texts with which you are working and which is sufficiently weighty and serious to be worth arguing.  You should show that you are aware that one might look at the material in another way, that one can make different points than you are making, but that, even so, you believe your view is sound and worth considering.  What you regard as good evidence for this should, of course, be the backbone of your paper.

4.    Thus, your paper should have a well-developed and clearly formulated thesis statement in the first paragraph.  The easiest way to do this is to introduce your thesis statement with a phrase such as: “In this paper, I intend to argue that ________________________” or “In what follows, I intend to show that __________________.”  Using the first person is perfectly fine, regardless of what others have taught you; first person is widely used in philosophy and many other disciplines in the humanities and with good reason:  it makes things clear.

5.    Your paper can take the form either of an argumentative paper (preferred) or of a clarifying paper (conceptual elucidation).
!    Argumentative Paper = one in which you contend for one view or claim (or set of views or claims) over another (or several other competing views/claims), when it is possible to defend both or all of them with reasons and evidence.  E.g.:

In Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, Richard Rorty claims that the self is thoroughly contingent, that it possesses no essential, or stable, unvarying nature.  For this claim he presents two [or three or four] principal arguments, namely (1), (2), and (3) [i.e, here you would give the arguments Rorty uses; you will probably have to paraphrase in your own words his arguments, since they would likely be too lengthy and cumbersome to quote].  I intend to contest this claim by showing that all three [or two, or one] of his arguments fail on their own merit  More specifically, I will argue that even on Rorty’s contingency thesis the self remains a center of deliberation and choice over time and thus has a foundation that lies underneath any contingency it displays.  This undermines Rorty’s strong contingency claim and leaves him with a much weaker claim to contingency.


!    Clarifying Paper = one in which you attempt to spell out the meaning of a central term or terms that one of our philosophers has used.  E.g.:

Nietzsche, in Beyond Good and Evil, frequently makes use of the concept of the “will to power.”  Notwithstanding his repeated invoking of this notion in order to say what he thinks must follow upon the experience of the “death of God,” it is not immediately clear precisely what the phrase means.  Does it mean that one can and should do just whatever one wants: rape, murder, pillage, tell the truth, lie, commit suicide?  And if it does, is Nietzsche then saying anything significant and philosophically interesting?  Wouldn’t he be saying simply that people are free to do arbitrarily whatever they want?  In this paper, I intend to show that this is not what Nietzsche means by “the will to power,” that what he in fact means is connected to his belief that the will to power is the will to life.  Thus, “will to power” for Nietzsche is all the life activities of an organism just expressing themselves in whatever way is indicative of that kind of organism, including man.  But if this is the case, I will go on to show that the will to power is not an arbitrary power but is connected to the kind of being man is essentially .

(In both examples, above, the underlined sentences are the thesis statement component of the opening paragraph.)

!    Note that a Clarifying Paper is a kind of argumentative exercise.  After all, in it you must make a case for understanding a concept, or several concepts, in the way you think it (or they) must be understood – and that is tantamount to arguing a case.  Thus, a Clarifying Paper is not a paper devoid of argumentation; it is one particular kind of argumentative paper.

6.    Try to avoid what I call merely “retelling the story,” in which you simply repeat what an author has said.  If you find yourself writing several pages in which all you do is say, in effect, “first Plato says this, and then Plato says that, and then Plato says this other thing,” that is an indication that you are probably merely retelling the story.  I want to know what you think Plato, e.g., means, where he is right or insightful and where he goes wrong, etc.  You need to make space in the paper – a considerable amount of space – for you: for your interpretation, criticism, assessment, thoughts, observations.  This should be a philosophical paper, not a book report.

7.    I do not require you to have references to secondary literature (outside sources).  It might be helpful, however, if you take a look at some secondary interpretations: you might find yourself disagreeing with that writer’s interpretation of Plato or Machiavelli or Augustine, and then you would be off and running.  I can make some suggestions as to what other scholars might be helpful, but an afternoon spent in the library would surely result in your discovering some of these on your own.  If you refer to these outside scholarly interpretations in your paper, you must give full credit in the form of a footnote or endnote.  If you are unsure how to do this, consult the formats in either the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, ed. Joseph Gibaldi, 4th ed. (or later editions): e.g., look at sec. 4.2, p. 104 ff. “MLA Style”; or Kate L. Turabian, Student’s Guide for Writing College Papers.