pathways to philosophy writing a philosophy essay in this piece you will find some hints on how to get started in writing a philosophy essay. The advice is intended especially for students who are approaching philosophical writing for the first time. The main message is: there is no cookbook recipe for success but there is no mystery either. If you follow the advice here you will succeed in writing an essay. no simple recipe there is no technique, or recipe, or set of guidelines for writing an essay in philosophy. 151 that statement might not appear very helpful. To the beginner, the very idea of a philosophy essay seems mysterious, and the prospect of having to write one quite intimidating. Any attempt to explain the nature of philosophical writing in the abstract, however, merely serves to deepen the mystery.

All one can say is that once you have started to grapple with various actual examples of such writing, you will begin to form an idea of the type of approach that is needed. In short, like the very first things we were taught as infants, one learns by imitation and by trial and error. But why is it necessary to write philosophy anyway? isn't it enough just to study the works of philosophers? writing 151 whether in the form of books, articles, essays, or dialogues 151 is, quite simply, the way one works at philosophy. But none of these is a satisfactory substitute for the discipline of expressing your thoughts on paper.

The lone figure of socrates is perhaps the only recorded exception to this statement. A student who has not yet produced his or her first piece of written work has simply not reached first base. 151 that is why at pathways we encourage our students to get into the practice of writing from the start. By 'writing' one does not mean simply jotting down thoughts as they come into your head, though this too can be an initial part of the process. For all the wide variations in style and presentation, the writings of philosophers possess a common architecture, which is none other than that of logic itself. nature of philosophy what is so special about writing a philosophy essay, as opposed to an essay on any other subject? 151 simply that the cogency of one's argument depends solely on reasoning and logic. The appeal to observations, or to the results of experiments or surveys, or to any other forms of recorded data has no place in a philosophical argument.

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151 at the risk of over simplifying, the subject matter of philosophy is not the way things, as a matter of contingent fact, happen to be in our world, but rather how things must be in every logically possible world. Unfortunately, one all too easily becomes a victim of the mystique of philosophy, the thought that while a few exceptional individuals might possess the extraordinary vision or powers of reasoning needed to create works of philosophy, the most one can aspire to as a mere student is to be able to read and appreciate the writings of others: in short, to be a consumer, but never a producer. If you do not try to produce examples of philosophical writing yourself, you will find that you are severely handicapped in your ability to appreciate the productions of others. There is no better way to test your understanding of a theory or an argument than to attempt to express it in your own words. And since it is hardly possible to agree with everything you read since the writings of philosophers themselves disagree! you need some way of testing your disagreements, of seeing whether your criticisms of a piece of philosophy are valid.

The only sure way is to express those criticisms in writing, where their validity can be subjected to further examination. why writing is important 'yet surely the fact that thoughts and ideas are not written down does not detract from their intrinsic quality?' 151 beautiful thoughts are like cut flowers: condemned to swiftly wither and fade. Words written down acquire a life of their own which is more than the life we give them by our acts of thinking.

For all that, libraries of philosophy books would become mausoleums if there was no one left who could grasp the significance of the words written therein. Secondly, you will find if you take the plunge that it is not so difficult as it might seem to put your thoughts down on paper. If you can argue with someone, then it does not require too great an effort to argue with yourself, to choose a topic where you find that both sides of an argument seem to 'have a case', and then give a voice to each of your conflicting viewpoints. In a written form, that is the essence of the oldest and most respected form of philosophical writing: the dialogue.

If you feel stuck, why not give that method a try? 151 but then you will find that the difference between a dialogue and a more conventional essay format is, after all, relatively superficial, a matter of style rather than of content. choose your objective there is no single thing that every essay in philosophy sets out to do. 151 a philosophy essay can be an attempt to persuade the reader to accept a certain view, or reject some other view. It can be a means of clarifying your own ideas about a theory or problem, or exploring the logical consequences of a theory as a preliminary to examining whether the theory itself is tenable.