Write an essay (of roughly 1-2 pp. or 300-600 words) explaining an argument found in material we have read in the class. The point of this paper is for you to get practice in one important aspect of philosophical writing and at the same time to think further about something in the reading that interested you.

You should choose a short passage, probably a paragraph or less and maybe just a sentence or two, and explain what is being argued in it. I don’t say “what the author is arguing” because authors sometimes present arguments that are not their own, and it’s fine to choose one of those. All that is necessary is that the passage somehow present a claim and suggest reasons the author or someone else might have for making this claim.

To plan the paper, you will need to analyze the argument by identifying the conclusion being argued for and the assumptions (or premises) being used to support it. Identifying these needn't mean locating them on the page because they can be suggested without being stated explicitly. You will also need to develop a sense of how the conclusion is being supported by these assumptions, but acquiring this sense will usually be part of the process of identifying the assumptions.

Writing the paper will then be a matter of presenting your analysis to a reader. Don’t think of yourself as summarizing what the author has said: your job is to explain what you think the author has said. Of course, you will probably present some ideas more briefly than the author does. But you may also present some ideas at greater length—for example, by noting an assumption that the author has not made fully explicit. And your explanation may present ideas in a quite different order from the one used by the author. It would be fine, for example—though not essential—to state the conclusion you’ve found before discussing the assumptions on which it is based even if the author presents the assumptions first.

Although you are not summarizing the passage, you should make connections between your analysis and what you have read. That will certainly involve a full citation of the passage (i.e., a full reference to the work it comes from and the page or pages it appears on). It might also involve brief quotations. In some cases, it might be useful to comment explicitly on the connection between something in the text and your analysis of it—e.g., by saying something like “the author says X and I understand that to mean Y,” where X might be a paraphrase or a brief quotation and Y is part of your analysis.

Although I’ll be willing to accept your essay on paper, I’d prefer that you send a copy by e-mail (either as an attachment or in the body of a message). My address is helmang@wabash.edu.