• The purpose of writing essays
• What interests you, and why is this important ?
• The form of a good essay
• Some hints
• Sources and plagiarism

     First, what is the purpose of writing a Philosophy essay ? To explore or pursue a given philosophical issue. Writing the essay is itself a way of thinking about the issue. In other words, the essay should not be a mere report of your thoughts (still less of someone else's thoughts) about the issue. The essay itself should be a way of dealing with that issue. The more interestingly and effectively it does this, the more progress you will make in the subject (and the better will be your mark). Though a proportion of your final mark will come from your coursework, making progress in philosophical understanding is a much more important function of writing essays than obtaining a particular mark for each one.

     You will never write a good philosophy essay if you are uninterested in the subject-matter. Of course, interest can take many forms. Even if you believe that a question you have been asked is trivial and unimportant, this itself is a way of NOT being indifferent. You might follow it through by trying to justify and explain your judgement of triviality.

     We hope that lack of interest or indifference will be unusual, since philosophy is full of issues which have tugged at human minds for thousands of years.

     Contrary to what many so-called `writing textbooks' suggest, there is no such thing as a formula to which every good essay should conform. Nor are there many such formulae either. You will never write a good philosophy essay merely by following any such purported formula.

     The form which an essay takes must be determined, and visibly determined, by its title or subject matter as viewed from the point of view of your own interest in that subject-matter. The focus of interest must come first. This focus will then typically provide you with a task to be performed, and the form of the essay should follow from the nature of that task.

     Although there is no formula, it is typically best to start an essay by saying what you hope to do; this is not so much a rule for writing essays, as a form of courtesy to the reader.

     Once you have stated what you hope to do, it will often be clear what steps will need to be taken in order to do it. For instance, if what you want to do is to prove or at least support a certain point of view, several things naturally follow about the form of such an essay:

• you will need to make it clear (for yourself as well as for your reader) exactly what point of view it is that you want to support;
• you will need to provide positive arguments and reasons in favour of that point of view;
• you will try to satisfy yourself that those arguments are good arguments, without mistakes or fallacies;
• you ought to take into account the possibility on the negative side of arguments against the point of view, and show how any such arguments can be countered;
• you may suitably review the result of this work at the end and indicate how good a case you have been able to put forward, and where, if anywhere, its weaknesses may lie.

• Never write anything that you do not understand. If you have read something that you do not understand, and wish to mention, then say something like `I cannot understand x's claim that .....' and try to explain what it is about the claim that you do not understand. This is often an important part of philosophical work: it may BE that x's claim did not in fact make sense ! It may not be your fault that you do not understand.
• Say to yourself: `whatever can be said can be said clearly'. If your argument rambles, and you start using vague expressions, it is sure sign that you are not thinking hard enough before or while writing.
• Plato said that thought was the dialogue of the soul with itself. And dialogue is a central part of philosophical work in the case of discussion. Dialogue form within an essay can also be very helpful in pursuing an issue. It might, for example, go like this:
• paragraph A:  .....
• paragraph B:  It may be objected that .....
• paragraph C:  If this objection is correct, then .....
• paragraph D:  However, the objection given is not correct, since .....
• paragraph E:  Someone may think that this reply to objection B fails, on the grounds that .....
• paragraph F:  However, any such attempt to save objection B from argument E cannot be accepted, because .....
This third point might be made more briefly: you should try to anticipate and meet objections that an opponent might raise against your arguments.
• Never repeat a point unless you have a specific reason for doing so; it is uneconomical, and suggests that you are running out of things to say.
• The quality of what you write is much more important than its quantity.

You should be scrupulously careful in your use of sources. The following comments about sources may be helpful.

• what are sources ?  - any materials not of your own making which you wish to use to support or illustrate your arguments, or which you wish to refer to, make use of or quote for any other reason. Thus, books, articles, and other published materials can be sources, but so too can something said to you in a discussion, a lecture or a tutorial, or something heard on the radio or on TV, or even something you have read in some other student's essay.
• why use sources ? - because you think that you may have something to learn from what other people have said or thought about a certain subject, or because what you want to do in your essay requires reference to some source. This implies doing your best to get clear in your mind what the source says, and on the other hand keeping your own independence from the source, so as to be able to assess it, and see what you have to learn from it, or how best to use it.
• how to use sources ?
• Be clear in your own mind whether, in what way, and for what purpose you are using a source.
• For the sake of clear thinking, courtesy, convenience and honesty, always indicate these things very clearly in your an essay. For example all direct quotations, whether of a longer passage or just of a few words, must always be indicated as such (typically by using quotation marks). `Indirect quotations', where you summarize, paraphrase or allude to the views of a source should also always be marked as such (for instance, by phrases like `as x claims').
• Full references, in the case of direct or indirect quotation, must always be given (author's name, title of book, or title of article and name of journal, year and place of publication, page references).  There are numerous styles which vary in whether they use in-text citations, footnotes or endnotes and whether they use "short form" (e.g. "Whitney 1970, p. 15"), requiring reference to a bibliography to obtain the full reference.  You should adopt a style and follow it consistently.
• You may sometimes find yourself writing a `critical essay', i.e. one in which you focus on a text of a particular author, comment on it and bring out its implications, and argue for or against it. Here it can be an important and difficult task to express an author's view in your own words, but without distorting it. Especially in this case, avoid using someone else's words as a rough substitute for your own.
• The worst error of this kind is plagiarism. This word comes from the Latin word plagiarius, which means a kidnapper. Metaphorically, it means a literary thief. In practice, plagiarism varies from careless or half-aware systematic use of someone else's work without acknowledgement, to the deliberate and deceitful presentation of it as your own. Plagiarism is a very serious misdemeanour. It means that the plagiarist neither understands nor respects the nature of intellectual work; it is cheating, it is a form of theft, and it is also a kind of lying. In the Philosophy Department, if plagiarism is detected, the best that will happen to the plagiarist is a zero mark. Please think about this point carefully, because it is important, and may conflict with habits of work you have picked up in secondary school.

If you have any doubt at all about what plagiarism really is, please consult any teacher in the department. We shall be happy to discuss the matter with you personally, in order to help you get the most benefit from your work in philosophy.