Write an essay (of roughly 2-3 pp. or 600-900 words) on a topic appearing in your reading so far. The point of this paper is to give you a chance to explore further an issue of interest to you and to provide a basis for me to evaluate both your understanding of the material we’ve read and the depth of your thinking about a philosophical issue.
Your essay should include the following elements:
• an exposition of material from the assigned reading,
• a possible objection to views expressed in this material, and
• a reply to this objection.
The first of these should be an exposition of a short passage or of a few related brief passages. Each of the other two elements could also take the form of an exposition of something in your reading; but you may well not find both of them there, so you should expect to add to what you have read. You may do this by speaking for yourself, but it is quite acceptable to present instead an objection or reply that you can imagine but that is neither you own nor found in the reading.
Our discussions have brought out some of the topics appearing in the reading, but don’t feel limited to the topics we have addressed. To look for a topic, think back to ideas or issues that you found in the reading or that came up in discussion about the reading that were interesting and that you would like to think about further. Be careful to keep the topic you choose fairly narrow; this is a short paper and it will be easier to achieve the depth of thought and clarity of writing I will be looking for if you do not attempt to cover too much ground.
Be careful also not to attempt to give an exposition of someone’s views by paraphrasing, or even summarizing in a way that merely follows the order of the text; you do not have enough space in this short paper to do that effectively. Instead think through what is said and design an account of it to suit the topic you are addressing and the space you have available.
As with your first assignment, although I’ll be happy to accept your essay on paper, I encourage you to submit it by e-mail (either as an attachment or, if there is no special formatting, in the body of a message). My address is helmang@wabash.edu.