hilosophical essays represent your chance to DO philosophy in its purest form. All too often we'll be working so hard just to understand what other philosophers have said that we won't have as much time to construct our own thought and arguments about the questions we'll consider. The papers are the exception to this rule, because in those papers, you will be encouraged to not only tell me what philosopher X said about issue S, but also to tell me what you think is true about issue S offering your own support for your claims. Although I'll seek this same kind of critical insight from you during class discussions and on essay portions of the exam, you will be able to best accomplish it in the papers, because you'll have time to really think about and wrestle with the issues. But at the same time that we acknowledge that papers are the best medium for DOING philosophy, we should also note that learning to write good critical philosophy papers is every bit as difficult as learning to read for understanding [reading2]. This brief essay is intended to help you make some inroads on the task of becoming a good philosophical writer.
It shouldn't be any surprise to you to find that good philosophical writing goes hand in hand with good philosophical reading. We said previously that a good reader will do two primary readings: one to gain understanding and one to offer criticism. Since most of the papers that will be assigned in this class will require that you respond to some philosophical view that we've read, the structure of your paper will parallel the structure of your reading. First, after you've read an article to gain understanding, you should seek to demonstrate the understanding of the material that you have gained from your reading when writing your papers ...