When you find a well-written essay, you can know that the writer has put in a lot of hard work and practice in producing such quality. In this essay, our writers will help you identify areas that you need to focus on while writing your essay. In addition to these guidelines, our writers will also discuss the various aspects that students need to include and those that they need to avoid when writing their essay.
A philosophy essay bears significant differences to essays in other disciplines. This is because the paper is neither a mere research paper nor is it an expository essay. The paper is also not a document on the thoughts of various intellectuals on the topic under study. Instead, the paper is a logical justification of the thoughts and opinions of a student in an essay. Therefore, whenever you happen to request for philosophy paper to be written from scratch. This feature makes it standout from other academic pieces. Other than the format, a philosophy paper is aimed at convincing the reader to accept a particular idea. In doing this, the student has to provide a detailed explanation, justification and provide concrete evidence.
When introducing your essay, it is important for the student to clearly state the argument they are trying to prove. This is not as easy as it sounds as many students get this part wrong. Many students simply give a rough idea of whatever they are to write about. However, this section specifically requires that a student states the thesis statement, usually in one sentence. In the event that the thesis statement is ambiguous in the introduction section, the reader will be unable to follow.
The next stage of the philosophy question is the argument section. In this section, the student strives to convince the reader that the thesis statement is correct. In doing this, the student should arrange his/her justifications logically with an aim of making the reader understand how he/she arrives at the thesis statement. When making their arguments, students should not assume that since the thesis is clear to them, it is also clear to the reader. Instead, students should seek to comprehensively make their arguments while including all the details. To effectively do this, the student should assume that the reader is an accomplished intellectual of philosophy but has not read or heard about the particular philosophy that the student is working on. Additionally, students make the mistake of thinking that by mentioning all the arguments they have heard that support the thesis statement, their argument gains credibility.
On the contrary, this has the effect of dragging the entire piece off the topic as the various arguments look at the topic from diverse points of view. Therefore, the student should only focus on the strong arguments and develop them to their conclusive end. By doing this, the student should cover fewer arguments but explain them deeply. It is important that the student thinks deeply about the subject under study. The reader will know if the student has thought through these ideas if the student puts them on a piece of paper. If the student does not write these ideas down, it will not be possible for the lecturer to know what the student wanted to say. It is equally paramount that the student writes exactly what they mean. This has the effect making the work of the student clearly understood. Therefore, for a student to write a quality philosophical essay, the student needs to consider clarity, precision and avoid grammatical errors.
Things To Avoid In Your Philosophy Essay
- Lengthy introductions. in the introduction section, the student should simply mention their topic of argument and briefly explain it. Students need to avoid writing clichés about how the topic has been an interest among philosophers for years.
- Lengthy quotations. The student needs to understand that the reader is interested in their thoughts and not the thoughts of other people. Therefore, quoting other peoples thoughts should only be do if necessary. Students should make the paper about their own thoughts.
- Fence sitting. The student must declare their position on the subject under review. This should be done through a series of arguments. It is inappropriate for the student to end a philosophical argument by saying that philosophers have been divided over the issue. Rather, they need to declare their stand over the issue. By so doing, it makes a not only a certified philosophy writer but successful as well.
- Cuteness. Students should avoid trying to be funny or making fantastic claims about the philosophy. The student must focus on driving their point home.
- During an argument and when trying to disapprove thoughts of a certain argument, it is incorrect to just state that the entire conclusion of a certain author are false. It is important to provide a step by step analysis of such concepts.
Some Suggestions For Writing Your Philosophy Paper
- Organize carefully. Students need to consolidate all the ideas they intend to write about in an outline. This will enable the student to write a philosophical essay that consists of a coherent flow of ideas. This ensures that the reader is able to follow the essay to its conclusive end.
- Use the right words. After coming up with an outline, the student now needs to focus on developing the correct vocabulary relevant to the subject under study. If the philosophy paper is about a topic in medicine, the student should ensure that the words used are medicine related. By using relevant vocabulary in the place of lengthy explanations, the reader gets the impression that the student is knowledgeable about the subject under study.
- Support your claims. Once you make a claim in an argument, always assume that your reader does not agree with your claim. You will therefore provide relevant evidence to support your claim. Students should avoid making claims without supporting them.
- Give credit. When quoting the thoughts of another author, the students need to acknowledge that these are other people’s ideas by providing relevant references. If the work of another author is heavily used in your essay without acknowledging them, it will negatively affect the credibility of your work. Additionally, when a student acknowledges the thoughts of other people, it shows that they are knowledgeable about the subject.
- Anticipate objections. Students should understand that at some point there are people who have thought about their ideas. Therefore, there are several reasons as to why these arguments have been rejected. Therefore, the student should anticipate such objections and work to resolve them. To do this, the student needs to argue that the criticism is wrong.
- Edit boldly. It is impossible to come up with a perfect paper at the first writing. Therefore, students need to always edit their paper. By editing a paper, the student needs to clarify their ideas and remove unnecessary words.
In order to clearly write a philosophical essay, the student needs to consider grammatical and stylistic opinions. There are various books that documents principles of writing a quality essay. We strongly recommend the book by William Zinsser’s called On Writing Well.
