Introduction

Introduction: The Sewanee Dialectical Writing Project

In the early 1990s we resolved to find a way to help students to improve the quality of their philosophical essays. The result produced a Philosophy Department Writing Guide, which went through several drafts. Encouraged by the improvement in the critical writing of students who used the guide, we set out to determine if it might not be possible to use a computer to determine how well a student essay exemplifies the principles governing critical, or as we termed it, dialectical writing. We solicited the advice of Linda Lankewicz, of the Computer Science and Mathematics Department for counsel. After some deliberation, the three of us decided to seek financial support for constructing a Web-based tutorial that would aid students in learning the method described in the writing guide and to check practice essays for proper form.

In the course of working on a proposal to Vicki Sells-Lewellyn, head of the Instructional Technology Workshop, we decided that the dialectical writing format might have a general applicability in any course that requires students to take a stand on a controversial issue. So we decided to enlist the help of faculty members outside the Philosophy Department to supply examples of dialectical essays from their own disciplines and to use the guide as a tool in their courses. That project required us to revise the guide to exhibit how dialectical writing works generally as well as in various disciplines other than philosophy. It also required that we explain and justify the relevance of dialectical writing in a wide variety of academic disciplines and to an audience of students who have had little exposure to this sort of thesis-defense essay.

The result of this collaborative work, which is ongoing, is a new version of the writing guide and the new, accompanying Web-based tutorials. We look forward to additional forms of collaboration on this project with faculty and students in the form of identifying additional examples of dialectical writing to include in the guide and to use in the tutorial exercises as well as feedback on how well the guide and tutorials help to improve critical writing of the Sewanee students who use them.

We wish also to express a special thanks to Bill Clarkson for allowing us to use his essay on how to compose essays on the Macintosh, We hope that some of our writing here has the same sort of self-referential consistency exhibited in Bill’s essay.

Jim Peterman
Jim Peters Back to the Top

What you will find in this Guide

The guide begins with a dialectical essay that explains and defends the Socratic tradition and the critical conversation, central to the western tradition, that it gave rise to. As such, the essay exemplifies the type of writing this guide promotes while at the same time introducing the reader to the background story of the Socratic tradition and why the tradition can be defended from key criticisms.

The writing guide proper in its present form can be found in Chapter Two. That chapter outlines the five steps crucial to dialectical writing. Chapter Three presents three sample dialectical essays. Chapters Two and Three together serve as the foundation for the construction of dialectical essays. In order to aid students to see the logical requirements of each of the five steps and to facilitate use of the Web-based tutorials, this chapter outlines a very rudimentary version of a dialectical essay. Students are asked to use this form in their initial attempts to construct dialectical essays.

Chapter Four contains an account of basic notions of principles of reasoning. Since dialectical essays work by constructing arguments for and against a thesis statement, students need to be familiar with the goal of reasoning, crucial aspects of arguments, and how to distinguish good from bad arguments. In developing and revising dialectical arguments in these essays, we are expecting students, for the most part, to use their own good, logical sense in thinking about the strengths of weaknesses in their reasoning, but this sense can be improved by learning the basic vocabulary and principles of logic. In addition, the Philosophy Department offers semester-long courses students might be interested in taking.

Chapter Five, not yet wholly integrated into the rest of the guide, presents invaluable information about how to write essays on the MacIntosh.

Those of us who have collaborated on this project stand in different relations to the dialectical tradition, but are all committed to the project of improving our own critical writing and that of our students. We invite your participation in the project and wish our students well as they undertake the challenges and joys, and sometimes suffering, involved in thinking and writing within the Socratic tradition. Back to the Top

Chapter One: A Defense of the Dialectical Tradition

Before we proceed to spelling out our five-step method for dialectical writing, we would like to acknowledge our indebtedness to our philosophical past and provide our readers with some historical perspective on the dialectical tradition of western thought. The kind of thinking we call dialectical is exemplified in a significant variety of world traditions, in non-western forms of thinking such as Buddhism and Confucianism, as well as in a multiplicity of western perspectives such as those of Socrates and Aquinas, Hume and Mill, and Wittgenstein and MacIntyre. Surely anything approaching a full-fledged account of the history of dialectical thinking would be required to recount more than one historical narrative; it would involve the daunting task of tracking a variety of social and intellectual origins which in turn brought about a variety of forms of external resistance and of internal criticism and development.

From our point of view, however, one figure in particular stands above the rest as the true prophet and original artisan of dialectical argument, the Athenian gadfly and social critic, Socrates. In our opinion, Socrates more than any other figure, deserves to be regarded as the classic practitioner of dialectic, both on account of the depth and lucidity of his own dialectical method and for his willingness to face death rather than compromise his commitment to dialectical conversation. In what follows we intend to provide a sketch of Socrates' place in the historical narrative of dialectic. Our aim will be a modest one of providing an a brief overview and limited defense of Socratic dialectic.

When we refer to the method of Socratic dialectic we mean the conversational method exemplified by the character of Socrates in Plato's early dialogues. In a typical early dialogue such as the Euthyphro, Socrates engages in a process of questioning whereby the respondent, who quite often is a person possessed of more than a little self-assurance, blithely asserts early on in the conversation a substantial claim to absolute knowledge and is then challenged to state, clarify and defend his fundamental ethical beliefs. In the case of Euthyphro, the crucial political and religious issue is the nature of piety. Socrates, who has come to defend himself before the King Archon against the accusation of impiety, encounters the proud, young Euthyphro who has taken upon himself the mission of prosecuting his own father for impiety. The conversation between Socrates and Euthyphro begins with genuine good will: Euthyphro expresses his disapproval toward Socrates' accusers and offers sympathy; Socrates suggests to Euthyphro that only someone with a solid understanding of piety would want to prosecute his own father and then praising Euthyphro for his apparent wisdom in matters of piety, lures Euthyphro into dialectical self-examination. Socrates asks Euthyphro to articulate and defend an account of the nature of piety as the universal character shared by those actions that are truly pious. Socrates reasons that if Euthyphro really knows that his own plan of action against his father is pious, then he surely can say what it is that makes pious actions pious. Euthyphro accepts the reasonablenss of Socrates' request but then repeatedly fails to provide a definition of piety that he can stand behind and defend as coherent. The dialogue ends in ambiguity: before Socrates can engage Euthyphro in further dialectical testing of his deepest personal beliefs about piety, Euthyphro excuses himself and flees from the place of the King Archon. The reader is not sure if Euthyphro's flight means that he has attained the crucial Socratic self-knowledge of understanding his own ignorance of the ultimate nature of piety. When read in light of Socrates' clarification and defense of dialectic in the Apology, we see that one of Socrates' primary goals in cross-examining men like Euthyphro is to come to their aid, helping them to become enlightened about the limits of their own fallible understanding of human existence.

At its core Socratic philosophy is a method of questioning, the elenchus, for the sake of mutual self-enlightenment: for the enlightenment of the questioner who accepts the life-long and never finished quest for the truth about human excellence and for the respondent who often needs to achieve the very basic self-understanding that comes in the acknowledgement of our fundamental ignorance. So, in the Apology Socrates defends his practice of elenchus against the accusation of impiety. In a way that perplexes and infuriates his jury, Socrates turns the tables on his accusers, arguing that their own unwillingness to subject their ethical beliefs and principles to careful scrutiny is a symptom of a psychic disorder and civic impiety. For, argues Socrates, that the men of Athens resent having their core ethical and religious beliefs subjected to dialectical testing, and resist having their own moral confusion and incoherence revealed, exposes their own presumption of believing that they , like the gods, securely possesses the truth about arete. But it is only the gods and not mortals, according to Socrates, who may rightly claim to have absolute knowledge and, hence, need not heed the call to self-examination. For the Athenians to proudly refuse to allow their social and religious convictions to be tested dialectically amounts to the presumption of being equals with the gods. And in a way that traditional Athenians can understand, for a mortal to think that he or she is equal to the gods is impious pride. Thus, Socrates turns the tables on his accusers, defending the philosophical art of dissecting souls to reveal their ignorance as a divine service rendered to truly moral gods who desire that mortals know themselves as mortals rather than think themselves gods.

Thus, in his dialectical testing of Euthyphro, Socrates leads Euthyphro into confusion, into aporia, perplexity, about his own convictions and actions, not to humiliate him but to hold a mirror up to his psyche and help him to see himself as he truly is, as one who, though he desires to possess knowledge of the virtues, will as a mortal never finally and absolutely know them. For the person undergoing such a process of unknowing, the art of Socrates may well seem unkind and even unhealthy. But for Socrates, the painful process of self-examination is the necessary preparation for fulfilling our destiny as rational mortals by embarking on a life-long quest of thinking about what, if we could only see through the illusions of social prestige and power, would matters most to us: the health of our inner selves as passionate, rational agents.

For Socrates, whose avowed purpose in practicing dialectic publicly in Athens is primarily to serve his polis, dialectical philosophy is to the inner man as medicine is to the physical body. Just as the proper excellence of the body is a matter of proper balance, and thus the avoidance of disease, so human psychic excellence turns out to be a state in which one’s actions and beliefs accord with one’s finite nature and with one’s proper place in the cosmos. Socratic piety requires self-knowledge; Socratic self-knowledge has both a negative and a positive aspect. Its negative part is the confession of one’s ignorance and admission that one lacks final and certain knowledge; the positive part is the pursuit of wisdom, the process of testing one’s ethical convictions in an effort to determine whether one’s most fundamental values and commitments can be defended through the elenchus.

Not surprisingly, the Socratic art of dialectic appears as paradoxical to Athens as Socrates the man does before his 501 jurors in 399 B.C. At the heart of this paradox of the philosopher and his art lies the Socratic combination of humility and steadfastness that such a philosophical perspective demands. While Socrates lacks certain knowledge, his concern for living rightly is too deep and his commitment to his role as gadfly to Athens is too consistent to accept that those beliefs and attitudes that constitute the core of one’s being have no truth or falsity independent of one’s culture or personal taste. At the heart of the Socratic outlook is the moral conviction that psychic health is so valuable a possession that one ought to be prepared to sacrifice one’s life in defense of it. But if human well-being is simply a matter of private opinion or social convention, then surely it makes no sense to risk one’s life as Socrates does to reform the moral attitudes of one’s culture. And yet it is not the case that Socrates possesses self-evident knowledge of human arete, of the nature of human excellence, with which he can prove that Athens suffers from moral blindness. Rather it is a central moral intuition of Socratic philosophy that the Athenian preoccupation with external honor and material wealth corrupts the human psyche. Possessing particular moral beliefs of some kind, such as Socrates' own belief that external goods such as power and wealth are not the primary determinants of human excellence, is crucial to the process of Socratic moral thinking. Without such moral intuitions concerning how to life well versus badly, Socratic elenchus simply lacks the data it needs to test a person’s account of fundamental principles such as the nature of courage or piety.

Unlike the modern foundationalists, such as Descartes and Locke, who believed we can attain absolute and final knowledge based upon absolutely certain foundations, Socrates acknowledged that neither our particular moral intuitions nor our general ethical principles will ever be either self-evident or infallible. Instead, Socratic inquiry moves toward an articulation of fundamental principles that accord with and make sense of our particular moral beliefs. For Socrates neither our particular moral responses nor our philosophical articulations of fundamental principles are so certain that they are immune to any possible future refutation. Yet despite this lack of certainly, Socrates defends the wisdom of sacrificing his life for his fundamental beliefs. As Henry Teloh observes, "When Socrates states that he is justified in claiming to know something, he admits that his claim is open to revision. Truth is the aim, but justified belief–belief which satisfies a dialectic test–is the means, and our grasp of truth is dependent upon our best dialectical effort at any time" (Socratic Education in Plato's Early Dialogues, 2).

So, to understand Socrates’ defense of philosophy, one must grasp how it makes coherent sense both to deny possessing certainty and to insist on the fundamental importance of self-knowledge. In the absence of certain foundations, the Socratic test for self-knowledge, for an understanding of human health, is provided by the method of elenchus. Socrates’ charge against his fellow Athenians is not only that they cannot withstand his cross-examination of their moral beliefs, but that they refuse to submit themselves to its challenge. With his characteristic irony, Socrates declares to his jury that it is his humility which requires him, in service to the gods, to declare that as Athenians they ought to be ashamed of putting honor and material success before the health of their souls. Socrates condemns his fellow Athenians because he is convinced that their values reflect a proud unwillingness to open up their lives to self-examination. What matters to Socrates is the truth; being human means that whatever we take to be true may be false, but it also means that the stubborn refusal to seek the truth amounts to self-deception because being human, Socrates believes, gives us no choice but to care about our true good. In sum, Socratic philosophy seeks a form of wisdom appropriate to our human condition. Philosophical conversation is therapeutic insofar as it offers a cure against two opposite states of psychic disease: of thinking that one has attained final knowledge and of thinking that it is better not to try. Socrates’ defense is a defense of a search for self-knowledge that is humble, passionate and relentless.

Given the spirit of Socratic dialectic, it is not surprising that the tradition of dialectical philosophy that Socrates initiated by no means accepts fully the various ethical and methodological principles of Socrates own philosophy. Plato, for example, in the Republic, presents a critique of Socratic education, and Plato's own pupil Aristotle, subjects Platonism to sustained dialectical scrutiny. In the middle ages, Thomas Aquinas' method of the disputed question in the Summa Theologiae transforms Socratic dialectic into a formal method of opposing points of view with the goal of achieving the best rational solution of disputes among philosophical and religious authorities. And in the Twentieth Century philosopher Wittgenstein, we see an informal, conversational method of philosophical dialectic which challenges many modern philosophical theories and calls philosophy back to its proper dependence on the plurality of forms of life.

One of the hallmarks of the dialectical tradition is the shared commitment of its practitioners to pursue the best argument and to view one's own philosophical heritage with a sense of critical respect. We hope in this guide to foster this spirit of respect and criticism. Good dialectical papers seek to be fair and open-minded but are committed at the same time to honest criticism. As teachers, we wish our students to understand how it is an unfortunate confusion to think that respecting another person entails agreeing with their views. Our conception of dialectic, in contrast, entails the following: first, that as no one of us possesses certain, absolute knowledge about human life and as we all can gain from seeing the world from a diversity of points of view, we ought to embrace, rather than be offended by, dialectical challenges from our critics; second, that the call to think for ourselves does offer us a unique kind of freedom for authentic existence, but without seeing ourselves within community with responsibilities toward others and our world, this freedom tends to become enslaved to dogmatism and self-centeredness; and third, that dialectical thinking is both important and hard, for while human life matters to us , it resists facile and easy solutions.

As a form of serious thinking, dialectic opens us up the risk of seeing our own ignorance but also allows us to develop self-understanding. We believe that students today, living in an age of postmodern suspicion about all sources of authority and power, will be well served by developing a habit of dialectical inquiry. On the one hand, this way of thinking fits well with an age that has called into question the conceptions of autonomous reason and absolute knowledge that arose during the Enlightenment and have greatly influenced modern theories and institutions. And yet with its commitment to the importance of attaining self-coherence in one's beliefs, actions and emotions, the Socratic tradition would oppose those versions of postmodernism that regard rational discourse as mere expressions of the assertion of power and see the quest for self-understanding as futile on the grounds that the self, like all so-called realities is nothing more than a human construct. Dialectical thinking seeks a middle ground that rejects the Enlightenment doctrine of absolute knowledge as unattainable but avoids inferring that the failure of the Enlightenment entails that human rationality is so relative to context, so driven by motives of self-assertion, and so tangled with ambiguous and self-negating discourse that the Socratic vision of a community of lovers of wisdom, of a community committed to the pursuit of self-unity and to the communal good of self-examination, is a mere illusion. Our conception of what it means to engage in dialectic is well summarized by R.E. Allen:

To construe philosophy as dialectic is to view it primarily as an activity, not a product, as a discovering of truth rather than a set of truths discovered. The dialectician is unlikely to be a man with an official doctrine, oral or otherwise. The whole spirit of Plato's teaching, insofar as his writing reflects the man who wrote, lies not in the promulgation of doctrine, not in expounding, as Aristotle and others have sought to expound, a necessary system demonstratively deduced from self-evident truths, but in leading men to see things for themselves. The aim, if you will, is education not instruction. (Dialogues of Plato, vol. 1, 23)

In the spirit of dialectic, we invite our readers to take rational thinking seriously. The quality of our lives, both individually and communally, depends on the quality of our self-understanding. But, like Socrates, we do not believe that genuine wisdom is ever taught. While the road to wisdom is better walked in the company of others than alone, no one can walk it for us.

(For a defense of dialectic against crucial objections, see Appendix One.) Back to the Top

Step One: An Overview of Your Essay: The Introductory Paragraph

Step Two: Getting Off the Ground: Interpretation of the Target Claim

Step Three: The First Strike: The Possible Criticism

Step Four: Hitting Back: A Response to the Criticism

Step Five: Wrapping Things Up: Your Conclusion Back to the Top

Step One: An Overview of Your Essay: The Introductory Paragraph

Any good academic writing makes limited assumptions about the reader. Assume that the reader can read clear prose and follow lines of reasoning that are clearly presented, but lacks information. The introductory paragraph presents the crucial background information the reader needs to follow the argument of your essay.

The function of the introductory paragraph is to establish the topic of your discussion and your thesis. The topic has several components. The topic sentence typically would indicate the title of the text and author of any essay you are discussing. Essay titles are placed in quotes. Book titles in italics. If you are not discussing an essay, but rather a policy, an action, or a landmark case, still you would indicate the case and the source for it. Every substantial thesis takes a stand on some issue. An issue is a matter of controversy, for which there are at least two sides of an argument. In addition to presenting a thesis, you need to clarify the issue you will be discussing and trying to resolve. In what follows, we describe each key feature in turn. Back to the Top

Topic Sentence: The best introductory paragraphs in this sort of academic essay start off with a clear and concise topic sentence that identifies the text and author under discussion if there is one. Here is a strong sentence, "In his dialogue, The Republic, Plato successfully defends the superiority of the just life with his doctrine of ideal forms." Here is a weak version that does the same thesis but not so well: In Plato’s Republic, he deals with the doctrine of forms." "Deals with" is vague, and the true subject, Plato, does not have the subject-place in the sentence. Back to the Top

The Issue: The best introductory paragraphs also indicate some issue or controversy that will be taken up in the essay. If you write an essay on the topic of the justification of religious belief, you need to indicate the two sides of the issue for this topic that you plan to address. One side might be that only scientific beliefs are justified. The other side might be that we all have a wide range of beliefs we consider justified that are not scientific. Back to the Top

The Thesis: The best introductory paragraphs indicate a) your stand on the issue you mention and b) for longer essays especially, your plan of argument in your essay. Substantial theses present substantive controversial claims. Although some dialectical essays will seek to investigate an interpretive claim, say about the meaning of a controversial passage in Shakespeare, most dialectical essays will not simply present simply interpretive. In these essays, for the most part, theses need to be substantial. For example, "Abortion is in every case morally wrong" is a substantial controversial thesis. "NATO’s action, no matter how well-intentioned, is not justified" is another substantial thesis. "NATO is attacking Yugoslavia" is not a substantial thesis. Theses are, moreover, typically accompanied by some standard thesis indicator. Without a thesis indicator, it will very often be unclear what the thesis of the essay is or even whether it defends any thesis. The standard indicator we ask you to use in your practice essays is "I will argue that" followed by your thesis itself.

Here is an example that contains all three. As you read it, see if you can identify the topic, the issue, and the thesis.

In January of 1999, NATO forces began a sustained bombing attack on Yugoslavia. The justification of the attack was the breakdown of negotiations over how to resolve the conflicts between Serbia and the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo and the fear that Serbia was about to send armed forces into Kosovo with genocidal intent. Although NATO’s action has received widespread support by the international community because it sets a clear standard of opposition to ethnic cleansing and genocide, critics have argued that the action is arbitrary and so not founded on any clear principle of international justice. I will argue that NATO’s action, no matter how well-intentioned, is not justified.

The topic is the justice of the NATO attack of Yugoslavia. The issue is whether an act of aggression against a nation that merely threatens aggression is just. The thesis is that NATO’s action, no matter how well-intentioned, is not justified.

It is often best to write your introductory paragraph last since it often is unclear what your thesis is until you have worked through Steps 2-5. As an alternative, make sure that you review your introductory paragraph after completing the essay to insure that your conclusion conforms to you announced thesis. Back to the Top

Summary for Step One

Step Two: Getting Off the Ground: Interpretation of the Target Claim

Every argument starts somewhere, often with an argument or claim of some essay that is to be analyzed, or in an ethics class, with the statement of some problematic case, or some judgement about a case. The first step in the body of the essay is to spell out all the facts, claims, arguments, etc. relevant to the controversy you are discussing. The rule here is as it is generally in these essays. Assume the reader is ignorant but of normal intelligence. You must supply all the important facts, but make sure that all the facts you supply are relevant to the controversy and the particular line of argument you plan to develop. In a short essay, you need to make sure that you take up some facts or arguments that you clarify in a short paragraph. In a longer essay the statement of the claim or arguments can fill several paragraphs. In a longer essay the standard structure would be to go from general information about the case or argument down to the specifics that will be the focus of your essay. If you are criticizing a statement from an argument, an action of the person, a method of arguing in a philosophical text, and so forth, this section needs to indicate the specific claim, action, or method that you target for investigation in your essay. (‘Target’ is our word, and not one generally understood. So don’t call a sentence your target claim without further ado. Your intelligent reader won’t necessarily understand it.)

In what follows we outline two versions of this step: the Jury Model sees the dialectical essays as a forum for assessing in an impartial way the strengths and weaknesses of a position; the Debater Model sees the dialectical essay as a forum for the author to put forth a position and defend it.

An example of the Jury Model for Step Two follows. As you read it, see if you can identify the target claim.

The situation leading up to the NATO air action and providing justification for it involves two key events. The first event is the one of Yugoslavia refusing to sign the October peace agreement. A resolution to the conflict acceptable to the international community and to the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo was rejected by the Yugoslav government. During and negotiations and following their breakdown, Yugoslavia engaged in preparations for a large-scale attack on Kosovo. Yugoslavia also engaged in a variety of practices of ethnic cleansing earlier in the decade in Bosnia. A primary reason defenders had for the air attack on Yugoslavia was that NATO was justified in attacking Yugoslavia since Yugoslavia was about to engage in ethnic cleansing.

This paragraph clarifies the target of the investigation:

A primary reason defenders had for the air attack on Yugoslavia was that NATO was justified in attacking Yugoslavia since Yugoslavia was about to engage in ethnic cleansing.

In addition, it presents relevant facts that explain the context of the statement and the sorts of facts that would be important for determining its truth. Do you always need a target from the text you are writing about? The short answer is ‘yes.’ The longer answer is that sometimes a writer implies things he doesn’t say. The target may be an implication, not a statement. But in this case, you need to proceed very carefully to argue persuasively that the writer implies what you say he or she does. Do you always need to spell out the context of the target? "Yes." The context determines the meaning and may also provide crucial evidence for or against the target.

Note, however, that the target claim should be well-chosen. For example, in an essay evaluating an argument, the target ought to be a premise, not the conclusion of the argument. (For more on the crucial distinction between premises and conclusions, see Chapter Three.) If you want to reject a conclusion, you must show where the argument for it fails. So your best target will be the false premise or faulty inference that leads up to the falsity of the conclusion or maybe the whole argument. A lengthier essay might attack the conclusion and then the argument leading up to it. Short essays (4-7 pages) need to be focused and concise. The best target for an essay on an argument will be any faulty premise leading up to the false conclusion. You can mention that the conclusion is false and that its problem rests with the premise supporting it, but to keep the paper focused, select the premise as your target. Here’s a simple example:

Socrates criticizes the customs of Athens.

Citizens who criticize the customs of their country should be killed.

So Socrates should be killed.

You may think that the conclusion is false, but since the conclusion is derived from these two premises, pick one of those as the target claim. Here you might want to attack the following claim, a premise: Citizens who criticize the customs of their country should be killed.

In textual analysis, some targets will be implied claims or implicit modes of reasoning. It is fine to target for investigation implications, but it is crucial to insure when you state an implied claim, you show that the claim really is implied by other explicit claims in the text.

Finally, you must explain all crucial quotes you introduce in Step Two. You need to insure both that you understand the claim you are criticizing and that your reader understands it as well. Consider the argument in the previous paragraph. The sentence "Citizens who criticize the customs of their country should be killed" seems simple enough, but what does it mean and why would anyone assert it?

An alternative to this format for Step Two, what we called the Debater Model, while essentially the same, includes a more developed set of personal reflections by the writer, indicating reasons for agreeing or disagreeing with the target. Proceeding this way would produce the writer’s personal defense of his or her thesis early on in the essay. The rest of the essay might proceed then by targeting for the possible criticism one of the writer’s statements from Step Two. This approach would add a more personal element early on in the essay. In every other way, the rest of the steps would be the same. The example essay used here does not take this approach, but for an example of an essay that does see Sample Essay Three below. Back to the Top

Step three: The First Strike: The Possible Criticism

Once you establish your target and the background context that makes sense of it, you need to show how someone might criticize it. In an argumentative essay you do this no matter whether you intend to defend or criticize the sentence. In your introductory paragraph you indicated the issue, or controversy, which your thesis is meant to resolve. In this section you need to present in detail the arguments that make up one side of the controversy, the side that opposes the target claim. If the side opposing the target claim has a good argument that cannot be refuted, then showing that counts as showing that the target claim is weak. If the side of the argument against the target claim is weak, then by showing that it is weak, you will have shown that the target claim is defensible; that is, it can be defended from this criticism. Defending the target claim or criticizing it requires the presentation of a possible criticism of it. Your decision about whether to defend the target claim or criticize it should depend in the end on whether or not you find the possible criticism strong.

In order for this sort of dialectical analysis of a target claim to be credible, the possible criticism needs to be strong. In doing this sort of analysis, the writer has a great deal of latitude in setting up the controversy, but not every possible criticism will work equally well. A silly possible criticism will be easy to refute. Such a refutation will show that the possible criticism was weak and so will show that the target claim can be defended from a silly criticism, but that would not be to show in any interesting form that the target claim is defensible. Logicians refer to this form of defense of a claim as "knocking down a straw man." Anyone can knock down a straw man and the fact that one can do so does not show any special merit. A good possible criticism must have a very good chance of being successful. The more of a chance it has, the better it is as a possible criticism.

The possible criticism should be aimed at your target claim. Construct the strongest possible argument you can for the falsehood of that claim. In a short essay, the argument should fill a paragraph. In a longer essay (five-seven pages), the possible criticism should get a fuller development. Criticisms are arguments and arguments are made up of premises and conclusions. In the example given above, the first two statements are premises, or reasons, for thinking the conclusion true. They are called deductive reasons in that the arguer is claiming that if the premises are true, the conclusion follows, and so must be true.

Even though not every good argument is deductive, the critical method of formulating reasons for or against a claim in the form of deductive arguments can help to clarify the issues under examination. For example, one might argue that against the target claim: "Citizens who criticize the customs of their country should be killed" by pointing out that following such a principle would have had us kill Martin Luther King. One can also add: "Martin Luther King was an important moral reformer. So the principle is false." For ordinary purposes this reasoning is okay, but it is not deductive. In a philosophical argument, it helps to present the unstated principle that, when added, does make the argument deductive. It might be that "Innocent people ought not to be killed and Martin Luther King was an innocent person. It might also or in addition be that moral reformers ought not to be killed and Martin Luther King is a moral reformer.

One serious potential pitfall in this section is that your possible criticism will not have a clear conclusion, or it will not have the right conclusion. In order to make this step in your essay fit the previous two sections of your essay, it must have as its conclusion the negation of your target claim. If the target claim is "Alcibiades would make a better lover than Socrates," then the possible criticism needs to present reasons for thinking that this claim as stated is false. No other conclusion will do. If your thesis is not logically related to your target claim (either it is the same or the negation), the second step is off track, given the way your essay begins. If the conclusion of your possible criticism is not the negation of your target claim, then the third section of your essay is off track given what you present in your second section.

A critic might challenge the claim that NATO was justified in attacking Yugoslavia since Yugoslavia was about to engage in ethnic cleansing. Consider the analogous case of a person who in the past had been suspected, or known, to have robbed banks. Suppose the police in Sewanee notice the suspected bank robber in the vicinity of the bank several days running. They believe, on the basis of his suspected past behavior, that he is about to rob the bank. Suppose that they interview him and find that he is carrying a registered weapon. Would they be justified in arresting, or even shooting him, just because of their suspicions? The answer is clearly ‘no.’ He has as of yet broken no laws. They might want to engage him in additional conversation in order to persuade him not to rob the bank. But prior to breaking a law, arresting him or use of force against him is not justified. The same moral principle holds in international law: prior to an invasion by Yugoslavia, the use of force against Yugoslavia is not justified.

We know that this paragraph introduces a possible criticism because it indicates how "a critic might challenge" the target claim. The target of the possible criticism is made clear by repeating the target claim in the first sentence of the paragraph. The argument presented against the target is that the principle NATO uses to justify its aggression would be unacceptable when applied to individuals.

In this section and in the next two, avoid using rhetorical questions like "Is it not obvious that genuine lovers must value the soul of the person they claim to love?" Instead what you need to present is reasons for this claim about what it is to be a genuine lover. Questions are not arguments, though they often suggest an argument. In an argumentative essay, develop the arguments behind your rhetorical questions. Who wants to read a paper full of silly rhetorical questions, anyway?

Two worries that should haunt you in this sort of writing are inconsistency and begging the question. You are inconsistent when you contradict yourself in your essay. Make sure that you do not explicitly or implicitly contradict yourself in the course of your essay. (We have seen some essays in which the contradiction occurs in the course of a single paragraph). Contradictions have the form of p and not p, where a single statement is an instance of the propositional variable ‘p’. Consider the following argument about NATO’s policy.

NATO is morally wrong to attack a nation that has not itself been an aggressor against another nation. Moreover, all of these policy issues are just matters of personal opinion. That being so, NATO cannot claim any strong moral basis for its policy.

You cannot have it both ways. Either there is right or wrong for policy issues or there is not. The writer both claims that NATO is wrong and that there is no real right or wrong. It is unfortunate that we find this sort of mistake all the time. Avoid it at all costs.

Also once someone offers a line of argument for a view, as NATO has, one should not assert the view that rejects that line of argument until a premise in the line of argument has been refuted, not just rejected. To assert what is at issue in the context of your argument is to beg the question. Consider the following argument that one might make regarding whether NATO is wrong.

Potential ethnic cleansing never justifies an act of aggression against a nation. So NATO’s policy founders on this point alone.

The first statement does not by itself constitute an argument against the claim that NATO is justified in its policy because it is countering as threat of ethnic cleansing. To argue against a claim simply by asserting its negation is to beg the question, or, what is the same thing, to assume your position is correct rather than to argue for it. Back to the Top

Step Four: Hitting Back: A Response to a Specific Premise in the Possible Criticism

These essays are designed to be investigations of the strength of the reasons for and against a position. The next step in the essay pursues this goal by determining how strong the possible criticism is. Find its weakest premise and try to refute it. For this step in the argument, your target statement will just be the weak premise from the possible criticism. You need to quote the target, the weak premise, and argue that it is false. If you can succeed in doing that, then the possible criticism is weak and the target claim from steps one and two has been in this context of debate, vindicated. If you cannot refute a premise in the possible criticism, then the possible criticism is strong, and the target claim from step one and two has been determined to be unsupported by the reasons; none of these steps need to produce absolute certainty. Note that there are two different target claims under discussion here: the one your essay is about and the one you are challenging in this step. These are not the same claims.

How do you determine which statement from Step Three to challenge? First determine which statements there serve as support for the possible criticism. Next determine which of the support statements is most controversial. Then construct an argument against the most controversial support statement. Step Three is reproduced below with the support statements, or premises, underlined.

A critic might challenge the claim that NATO was justified in attacking Yugoslavia since Yugoslavia was about to engage in ethnic cleansing. Consider the analogous case of a person who in the past had been suspected, or known, to have robbed banks. Suppose the police in Sewanee notice the suspected bank robber in the vicinity of the bank, several days running. They believe, on the basis of his suspected past behavior, that he is about to rob the bank. Suppose that they interview him and find that he is carrying a registered weapon. Would they be justified in arresting, or even shooting him, just because of their suspicions? A. The answer is clearly ‘no. ’B. He has as of yet broken no laws. They might want to engage him in additional conversation in order to persuade him not to rob the bank. C. But prior to breaking a law, arresting him or use of force against him is not justified. D. The same moral principle holds in international law. E. So prior to an invasion by Yugoslavia, the use of force against Yugoslavia is not justified.

B and C support A. A and D together support E. So to challenge this reasoning present a criticism of B, C or D.

In addition, one can challenge inferences from premises to a conclusion. If B and C are put forth as supporting A, then a response might challenge the claims that B and C do in fact support A. In what follows, we present a response that challenges statement D. See if you can determine how the reader should know that and what the reasoning is against statement D.

One might, in response, argue against the claim that the same moral principle holds in international law: prior to an invasion by Yugoslavia, the use of force against Yugoslavia is not justified. Morality governing relations between nations differs significantly from morality between individuals. Individuals, unlike nations, are particularly vulnerable. We protect individuals from unjust force being used against them by maintaining a high standard of proof of wrongdoing. That protection is important to us just because we are aware of past abuses of power by police. So we constrain police action in order to protect potentially innocent individuals against unjust uses of force.

The writer makes it clear in the first sentence of the paragraph that he or she is presently a possible challenge to statement D. We know that because of the phrase "One might in response argue" and because statement D is repeated. The reasoning against statement D is that there is relevant difference between individuals and nations. Individuals are in a special way vulnerable to abuses of power.

In constructing the argument for Step Four, follow the guidelines for avoiding weak arguments already announced in Step Three. Back to the Top

Summary of Step Four

Step Five: Wrapping Things Up: Your Conclusion

In a final paragraph you need to wrap up your case. There is no easy route to the end. What you need to say will depend on the details of the dispute and your thesis. In fact at this juncture, you might want to determine if you are still committed to your thesis. Perhaps the other side of the argument is stronger. It is relatively easy, especially in practice essays, to change your thesis at this point. However you bring the essay to a close, review your fundamental reasons for your conclusion and make sure that the conclusion you draw is the thesis you announced in paragraph one. Make it clear why you land on one side rather than the other. At this point you should have come full circle back to your thesis. The end is the beginning. Note that it is best to add additional evidence if you can. To support one side without a reason will beg the question. In the argument we give below, we reject the Step Four response to the possible criticism. After we present this strategy, we will give an example of how to affirm the response.

In what follows, how does the writer indicate that he or she is arguing against the response to the possible criticism? How do we know which claim of Step Four is being challenged? What is his or her reasoning?

But the claim that individuals, unlike nations, are particularly vulnerable is not convincing. Nations have in the past been subject to unjust uses of force by other nations just as individuals have. History is littered with such examples. And in fact we believe that force used against an aggressive nation, such as Iraq against Kuwait, has a strong justification, whereas force used against non-aggressors is not justified. In both realms we seek to protect an agent, whether a nation or an individual, against abusive use of force. The more we examine the parallels between the morality governing use of force against individuals and actions, the less convincing the NATO position appears. So NATO’s action, no matter how well-intentioned, is not justified.

We know that this paragraph presents the writer’s argument against the response because the sentence pattern "But the claim that . . .is not convincing." We know that the sentence being challenged is " individuals, unlike nations, are particularly vulnerable," since it is mentioned in the topic sentence. The reasoning against this statement is that nations are as an historical fact just as vulnerable as individuals. Note also that the paragraph ends with the explicit repetition of the thesis, which only now is it possible to assert with confidence, as a result of dialectical reasoning. Back to the Top

Alternative Step Five

Suppose you take up the other side of the issue. Suppose you defend the opposite thesis: I will argue that NATO’s action is not only well-intentioned, but also well justified. With this thesis, your essay could proceed to examine both sides of the issue in just the same way we have in our example. The only difference is that in Step Five you would need to side with the response in Step Four, not argue against it.

An example of this alternative approach follows. In the following example, how do you know that the writer agrees with Step Four? How does he or she strengthen the case for that side of the argument?

The claim that individuals, unlike nations, are particularly vulnerable is ultimately convincing. As a matter of fact, our intervention in Yugoslavia has as its key purpose the protection of individuals. Because that is what we value, we are prepared to treat nations differently than individuals, especially in those cases where individuals are being harmed. Our concern about the vulnerability of nations, therefore, rests on our concern about the vulnerability of its citizens. As a result when a nation threatens its citizens, the same protections against abuse we uphold for individuals are no longer justified. So NATO’s action is not only well-intentioned, but also well justified.

We know that the writer sides with the response because of the topic sentence pattern: The claim that individuals. . . is ultimately convincing. He or she strengthens the argument in the response by taking up one of its controversial claims, unlike nations, are particularly vulnerable and giving more support for it. It provides additional support by arguing that the reason we protect nations is to protect individuals. So when a nation harm individuals, we drop prohibitions against harming nations. Back to the Top

In writing and checking your draft, we recommend that you consult this checklist to insure that each step contains all crucial elements and has the proper form.

Summary for Step One

Summary of Step Two

Summary of Step Three

Summary of Step Four

Summary of Step Five

State your thesis clearly, and use a standard thesis indicator: "I will argue that p," where p is a variable to be replaced by your thesis itself.

Identify the target of your investigation: a statement using the phrases "primary reason" followed some point later in the sentence by "is that, or was that" followed by the target itself.

In your topic sentence, make it clear that your are presenting a possible criticism and make it clear which sentence from Step Two you are targeting: "A critic might challenge the claim that" followed by the target claim itself.

In your topic sentence, make it clear that your are presenting a response to Step Three and make it clear which sentence from Step Three you are targeting: the first statement of the paragraph should contain the phrase "One might in response argue against the claim that" followed by the premise from Step Three to which you are responding.

Step Five: Wrapping Things Up: Your Conclusion

Show why one side of the argument is stronger then the other:

1. If you are rejecting the reply in step four then, the first statement of the paragraph should contain the sentence pattern "But the claim that" and "is not convincing" and a sentence from the previous step.
   
   OR

2. If you are affirming the reply in step four then, the first statement of the paragraph should contain the sentence pattern "The claim that" and "is ultimately convincing" and a sentence from the previous step.

And, finally: Make sure that your thesis statement from Step One is repeated in your final paragraph. Do so by using the conclusion indicator "so" and your thesis itself.

Back to the Top

Sample Essay 1: NATO: Protector or Abuser? (Jury Model)

In January of 1999, NATO forces began a sustained bombing attack on Yugoslavia. The justification of the attack was the breakdown of negotiations over how to resolve the conflicts between Serbia and the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo and the fear that Serbia was about to send armed forces into Kosovo with genocidal intent. Although NATO’s action has received widespread support by the international community because it sets a clear standard of opposition to ethnic cleansing and genocide, critics have argued that the action is arbitrary and so not founded on any clear principle of international justice. I will argue that NATO’s action, no matter how well-intentioned, is not justified.

he situation leading up to the NATO air action and providing justification for it involves two key events. The first event is the one of Yugoslavia refusing to sign the Ramboullet Peace agreement. A resolution to the conflict acceptable to the international community and to the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo was rejected by the Yugoslav government. During and negotiations and following their breakdown, Yugoslavia engaged in preparations for a large-scale attack on Kosovo. Yugoslavia also engaged in a variety of practices of ethnic cleansing earlier in the decade in Bosnia. A primary reason defenders had for the air attack on Yugoslavia was that NATO was justified in attacking Yugoslavia since Yugoslavia was about to engage in ethnic cleansing.

A critic might challenge the claim that NATO was justified in attacking Yugoslavia since Yugoslavia was about to engage in ethnic cleansing. Consider the analogous case of a person who in the past had been suspected, or known, to have robbed banks. Suppose the police in Sewanee notice the suspected bank robber in the vicinity of the bank, several days running. They believe, on the basis of his suspected past behavior, that he is about to rob the bank. Suppose that they interview him and find that he is carrying a registered weapon. Would they be justified in arresting, or even shooting him, just because of their suspicions? The answer is clearly ‘no.’ He has as of yet broken no laws. They might want to engage him in additional conversation in order to persuade him not to rob the bank. But prior to breaking a law, arresting him or use of force against him is not justified. The same moral principle holds in international law: prior to an invasion by Yugoslavia, the use of force against Yugoslavia is not justified.

One might, in response, argue against the claim that the same moral principle holds in international law: prior to an invasion by Yugoslavia, the use of force against Yugoslavia is not justified. Morality governing relations between nations differs significantly from morality between individuals. Individuals, unlike nations, are particularly vulnerable. We protect individuals from unjust force being used against them by maintaining a high standard of proof of wrongdoing. That protection is important to us just because we are aware in the past of past abuses of power by police. So we constrain police action in order to protect potentially innocent individuals against unjust uses of force.

But the claim that individuals, unlike nations, are particularly vulnerable is not convincing. Nations have in the past been subject to unjust uses of force by other nations just as individuals have. History is littered with such examples. And in fact we believe that force used against an aggressive nation, such as Iraq against Kuwait, has a strong justification, whereas force used against non-aggressors is not justified. In both realms we seek to protect an agent, whether a nation or an individual, against abusive use of force. The more we examine the parallels between the morality governing use of force against individuals and actions, the less convincing the NATO position appears. So NATO’s action, no matter how well-intentioned, is not justified. Back to the Top

Sample Essay Two: Megahed’s Dilemma (Jury Model)

Step One

Lisa Belkin’s First, Do No Harm reports on several difficult life or death cases discussed in Houston’s Hermann Hospital. One case is of Mr. Hardy, a sixty-five year old man, who, in a car crash, broke his neck and was completely and irreversibly paralyzed. His doctor, Dr. Megahed, refused the request from Mr. Hardy’s family to have him removed from a respirator before he became conscious of his situation. Dr. Megahed’s reasoning was incoherent and thoughtless. In this essay I plan to discuss the details of his reasoning and show that not only is his actual reasoning poor, it is also extremely difficult to reconstruct his reasoning to formulate it any plausible form. After clarifying Dr., Megahed’s actual reasoning and showing that it is wanting, I will attempt a reconstruction. The key claim in this reconstructed argument is that one ought to try to preserve life at all times. Some people argue that life is such a fundamental good that it ought never to be violated, but others would argue that in some cases pain and suffering can be so great as to overshadow the good of life. I will argue that the claim that we should preserve life at all times is implausible.

Step Two

Mr. Hardy was sixty-five when, in a car crash, he broke his neck and was completely and presumably irreversibly paralyzed. He was heavily sedated and because of that not aware of his fate. The family requested of Dr. Megahed that he disconnect him from the respirator before he could become aware of his situation (152-153). Dr. Megahed refused the request. His reason for refusing the request was that that he is to, as his father told him, "try to preserve life at all times". His primary reason for this approach, however, is that he doesn’t "mess" with these decisions because there are no answers. Here he is arguing that since there is no way to know for sure what the correct decision is, it is better to follow the maxim to preserve life at all times. Moreover, he argues against the family’s right to determine whether Mr. Hardy should allowed to die. He argues, "It’s not your place to decide whether he lives or dies" (153). Finally, he claims that to accede to the families request would be to commit murder: "I can’t turn off the machine on someone who is alive like this. That would be murder" (153). He feels so convinced of this last argument that he excuses himself from the case once Mr. Hardy requests to be removed from the respirator. So he is committed to the principle that if a patient is "alive" and if his life is sustained and made possible only by the support of some piece of technology, it would be murder to disconnect the machinery and cause the person to die even if the patient is competent and requests it. The Ethics Committee argued, contrary to the wishes of the family, that Mr. Hardy should be awakened and his choice respected (153). Their approach held that the patient has a right to choose whether on not to be kept on life-sustaining machinery and also held that the wishes of the family in cases where the patient is competent to decide are irrelevant. Appealing to the patient’s right to choose, the Committee recommended that Mr. Hardy’s request be respected. Although I will not explicitly defend the Ethics Committee in this essay, let me indicate that the Committee’s approach does uphold an important principle governing medical ethics: the principle of autonomy. That principle holds that a competent patient has a right to refuse any treatment. So the Ethics Committee decision has that strong basis.

Step Three

A critic might challenge the claim that he doesn’t "mess" with these decisions because there are no answers. Even though his explicit reasoning is clearly inconsistent, the deeper question is whether we can save the core of his reasoning by dropping his claim that there are no answers to these questions. Once we make that move, the reasoning would appear to be as follows:

Try to preserve life at all times.

It’s not your [Hardy’s family’s] place to decide whether he lives or dies.

Turning off the machine on someone who is alive like this would be murder.

So, don’t turn off the machine.

But even with this reconstruction, there are problems. The second claim might mean that it is not his family’s place to decide since it is only Mr. Hardy’s place to do so. That view would affirm a principle of autonomy. Note, however, that Dr. Megahed rejects the principle of autonomy in this case since he conscientiously rejects acceding to Mr. Hardy’s request to turn off the machine. If the second claim is not an affirmation of patient autonomy, what is it? If it does not mean that, it does not mean anything. So let’s drop it. His real claim is that we should try to preserve life at all times. How plausible is this claim? If it seemed self-evident to intelligent people once that life should be preserved at all times, it no longer does. It is increasingly difficult to find anyone who thinks that preserving life is an absolute good that overrides all others. That is not to say that the claim is false; it is, however, to say that it is a controversial claim and as such is in need of defense. Megahed treats is as self-evident in a situation where it is questionable. He is, consequently, begging the question, asserting without argument something at issue. He needs to provide a defense of his principle, but does not do so. Could that defense be supplied?

Step Four

One might, in response, argue against the claim that if it seemed self-evident to intelligent people once that life should be preserved at all times, it no longer does. Death is really is the worst thing that can happen to a person. So it should be avoided at all costs. The worst thing that can happen to one is to die. Everyone who is rational seeks to avoid death. Everyone also thinks that when someone dies, say in a car crash, it is a mishap. Moreover, we do not seriously think that we can come back to life or at least we do not think that such a reversal is always possible or even likely. The very fact of moral confusion and value disagreements that define contemporary life should not distract us from this obvious truth.

Step Five

But the claim that death is the worst thing that can happen to a person is not convincing. Being in pain and being incapacitated are also in some cases great evils and irreversible while alive. Moreover, it is not so clear that there is an objective scale of evils we can appeal to that would show that in every case dying is worse than being incapacitated. Reasonable people disagree about these assessments. So not all rational beings seek to avoid death in every case. They do so under normal circumstances, but there are cases where rational beings think that the great evil of death can be eclipsed by other great evils. If this claim is correct, then Megahed confuses normal circumstances, in which the desire to live trumps all others, with abnormal circumstances, in which for some people the desire to live only under certain circumstances has priority. I have argued that Megahed’s key claim–that one ought to try to preserve life at all times–is implausible by showing that it is a premise that in some cases some reasonable people would reject. Any plausibility it has derives from what normal people desire in normal circumstance. Therefore this premise cannot be put forth as an absolute principle. So the claim that we should preserve life at all times is implausible. Back to the Top

Sample Essay Three: Richard Watson's Critique of Deep Ecology (Debater’s Model)

Step One

In an ingenious and provocative essay entitled "A Critique of Anti-Anthropocentric Biocentrism", Richard Watson takes on influential Deep Ecologists such as Arne Naess, George Sessions and John Rodman and argues that their Biocentric philosophy is incoherent. According to Watson, the basic outlook of Deep Ecology is logically inconsistent in its account of the proper place of human beings in the natural world. Essentially, Deep Ecologists believe that human beings should view themselves merely as part of nature and as mere members of the natural community, equal to all other living animals. Deep Ecologists declare that we should regard all living beings as our equals and "let all natural things act naturally". Yet, Watson observes that Deep Ecologists proceed to place special moral restraints on human behavior in such a way that sets human beings apart from all other organisms, imposing special and unique moral obligations on human agents in order to protect the rest of nature from our destructive actions. Yet by imposing such limits uniquely on human beings, Watson argues that Deep Ecologists now separate human beings from all other animals and thereby fail to treat human beings as equal members of the natural community. In this essay, I intend to clarify Watson's reasoning and show how his critique of Deep Ecology presupposes an inappropriate definition of the term "natural". I will argue that Watson fails to make a convincing case that Deep Ecology is an incoherent environmental philosophy.

Step Two

Basically Watson argues that Deep Ecologists are inconsistent in their beliefs about the status of human beings in the order of nature: on the one hand, they declare that human beings are a part of nature, should be regarded as members rather than masters of the natural community, and should be treated equally with all other forms of life; and yet, on the other hand, deep ecologists insist that human beings are immoral when they disregard how their actions will harm other species and must come to an enlightened state of eco-consciousness where they will see the need to curtail their destructive and rapacious activities that cause serious harm to the natural world. As Watson argues, these two central beliefs–"let all natural things act naturally" and "do not let human beings act selfishly and destructively in their treatment of the rest of nature– are in fact logically incompatible. Since all species by nature act in accordance with their wants and desires, no activities fueled by an organism's wants and desires may reasonably be deemed "unnatural". If we are to treat every species as a part of nature and if we are to "let all natural things act naturally", then, according to Watson, we must allow all species to act on their wants and desires without imposing moral restrictions on their pursuit of their own interests. In other words, if I believe that all living things should be allowed to act naturally, then I must not only accept that such species as beavers and woodpeckers will alter their environments, but also that human beings will do so and that doing so is perfectly in accordance with nature and should not be opposed as "bad". Unfortunately, in stipulating that "natural" be understood as a morally neutral term, Watson misrepresents the outlook of the Deep Ecologist. For a Deep Ecologist, nature cannot be a morally neutral arena because all living things in nature possess their own intrinsic value. My primary reason for rejecting his critique of Deep Ecology is that Watson forces on to the Deep Ecologist an understanding of the term "natural" that violates the basic outlook of the Deep Ecologist's position.

Step Three

A critic might challenge the claim that Watson forces on to the Deep Ecologist an understanding of the term "natural" that violates the basic outlook of the Deep Ecologist's position, I am overlooking an obvious weakness in the Deep Ecologist outlook. Watson might argue that the burden of proof lies on the shoulders of those who like the Deep Ecologists reject the view that nature is a morally neutral arena of facts. Surely since the beginning of modern science, Watson might note, it has become clear that nature itself is just a collection of material particles without any inherent value. Watson might well challenge my view on the grounds that it contradicts what is today nearly self-evident: that all values are merely creations of human beings. Without proof, any view that holds that nature itself possesses beings of inherent value is implausible.

Step four

One might, in response, argue against the claim that claim that without proof, any view that holds that nature itself possesses beings of inherent value is implausible. Watson's stance on the meaning of "natural" takes for granted a view of reality, beholden to the Enlightenment, that reality is nothing more than a collection of facts and a set of laws specifying how the subjects of these facts will behave. But surely such a view of reality is not at all self-evident. As many so called postmodern philosophers have argued, all of our acts of description and interpretation involve us in some context of value. A natural scientist who seeks to set aside personal ambition for the objective results of an experiment acts on a set of values and places a value on achieving reliable experimental results. It seems clear that all acts of human perceiving and thinking take place in a social, narrative context in which one pursues certain goods or goals in relation to other persons and in relation to the ends and purposes of one's past, present and future. But if all human thinking involves such a complex world of values and relationships, then we cannot regard the very important practice of natural science as somehow purely factual and therefore neutral with respect to any commitment to specific values. This account of human thinking still leaves open the question of whether it makes sense to see the world itself in the morally rich way that the Deep Ecologists do, that is, as possessing natural values independently of human preferences and interpretations. But without careful argument, Watson cannot assume that science makes his own perspective on a valueless nature rationally compelling. In effect, Watson defeats the Deep Ecologists by assuming a model of nature that is incompatible with the basic, fundamental beliefs of Deep Ecology. In so doing, he in effect begs the question.

Step Five

The claim that Watson defeats the Deep Ecologists by assuming a model of nature that is incompatible with the basic, fundamental beliefs of Deep Ecology is ultimately convincing. Watson's critique has the virtue of forcing us to raise some fundamental questions about the nature of value and the value of nature. But because he assumes a model of nature that is not the only possible one, and is surely not the one the Deep Ecologists hold, Watson's case does not provide us with the arguments necessary to convince us that Deep Ecology is untenable. So Watson fails to make a convincing case that Deep Ecology is an incoherent environmental philosophy. Back to the Top

Chapter Four: The Goal of Reasoning and its Pitfalls

In writing your dialectical essays, you will, in presenting both sides of an issue and resolving it, engage in reasoning. Dialectical essays are meant to be persuasive—you want to persuade your reader of the truth of plausibility of your thesis—but the persuasion in dialectic is of a specific sort. Sometimes, say in therapy, a therapist tries to persuade of a patient to change his or her way of thinking through humor or appeal to his or her own authority as therapist. Politicians persuade by presenting points that sound good. Or they pose questions in a way that is meant to cause us to give a specific answer without really thinking about it: That is dirty pool, isn’t it? These questions are called rhetorical questions, and while fine in speeches, they are often illicitly substituted for well-formed reasoning. These types of persuasion will have secondary role in dialectical writing if any role at all. The goal of dialectical persuasion is to change the reader’s mind or reinforce the reader’s mind through reasoning. In addition, some dialectical essays, like the sample essays in Chapter Three on medical ethics and deep ecology, examine the reasoning of an author in order to expose its weakness. But even though all dialectical essays use reasoning, not all dialectical essays examine reasoning. You might, for example, want to challenge Dante’s vision of the relation between God and human beings in his Inferno, or Ernest Hemingway’s nihilism in his short story, "A Clean, Well-lighted Place." In presenting a dialectical challenge, you could give reasons, from both sides of the issue, even though Hemingway presents his nihilistic view without himself arguing for it. This is not to suggest that Hemingway failed in not arguing for his view. Literature often seeks to be plausible by being realistic, but to do that it is not the same as defending the claims and principles implicit in its narratives. A novel can, however, fail to be plausible, and a dialectical essay would be an appropriate format for airing this issue. Back to the Top

The Goal and Structure of Reasoning

Reasoning is a goal-driven activity. The goal of reasoning is to provide rational support for claims or statements, or actions. Take, for example, the following medical reasoning:

Since (A) the chemotherapy has no chance of working in an advanced case of leukemia like Bill’s, (B) we should not even attempt it.

Statement A provides a reason for statement B. But in reasoning we seek more than just to give reasons, we want to do that well, by giving reasons that actually succeed in supporting the claim they seek to support. Determining whether reasoning is successful requires understanding the basic structure of reasoning. In what follows, we will present some of the basic structure of reasoning.

Because reasoning is the activity of providing support for some statement or action, all reasoning requires at least two items: the support-giver and the support-receiver. The support-giver is called a reason, evidence, or a premise. The support-receiver is called a conclusion. The array of both is called an argument. More complicated arguments can contain more than one premise and even more than one conclusion.

How do you know if an author is presenting reasoning? How can you, as an author, make it clear to your reader that you are providing rational support for a statement? Good writers of dialectical essays will make their reasoning explicit. To make reasoning explicit it is crucial to use standard premise and conclusion indicators.. Back to the Top

Premise indicators: since, because, for, reason for. Note also that a sentencing leading up to and supporting a conclusion is premise even if it does not have an explicit premise indicator. We know it is a premise from its relation to an explicit conclusion.

Conclusion indicators: so, therefore, thus, consequently, it follows that

There are innumerable ways to indicate that one presents a reason or a conclusion, and this list is not exhaustive. A good writer of arguments will find some way to make his or her reasoning explicit. The main mistake to avoid is putting the burden on the reader of figuring out the reasoning of your essay. One common way to fail to make reasoning explicit is by presentation of a list of sentences, with no premise or conclusion indicators to show which sentences are premises and which conclusions. Consider the following:

(A) John is a good basketball player. (B) He runs well. (C) He shoots well.

Which in this list is/are the premise(s)? Which is/are the conclusion(s)? There is no way to know. A might be a premise and B and C both conclusions, or B and C might both be premises and C a conclusion. The context of an essay might make it clear to the reader, but the best way to make it clear is to use the indicators. If I am attempting to support A with the evidence from B and C, I indicate so in the following ways, among others:

Since John runs well and shoots well, he is a good basketball player.

John is a good basketball player, for he runs well and shoots well.

John runs well and shoots well. Therefore, he is a good basketball player.

It is often helpful to diagram any argument your are analyzing or presenting in order to clarify, for you or for the reader, what the argument is. We could diagram the example argument presented above as follows:

Premise: The chemotherapy has no chance of working in an advanced case of leukemia like Bill’s.

Conclusion: We should not even attempt it.

In presenting such an argument, the arguer is committed to claiming that the premise is true, or at least probably true, and that the conclusion follows logically from the premise or is very likely to be true because of the truth of the premise. Good reasoning seeks to satisfy these conditions. Back to the Top

Testing and Criticizing Reasoning

These conditions of good reasoning also give rise to a strategy for testing and criticizing reasoning. We can test someone’s reasoning by

determining the premise(s) and the conclusion(s);

determining whether the premises are true or probably true;

determining whether the conclusion follows logically from the premise or is very likely to be true if the premise is true,

We can criticize someone’s reasoning in the following two ways: (1) Should it turn out that a premise is false or probably false, we can reject the argument as weak. A false premise does not give us a genuine reason for accepting its conclusion. (2) Should the conclusion not be likely to be true if the premise is true, then the premise provides no real support for the conclusion.

Please note the following logical terminology:

1. Should it turn out that a premise in an argument is false or probably false, we can reject the argument as unsound. An argument is sound if and only if all of its premises are true and it is valid.

2. Should the conclusion not follow logically from the premises, then the premises provide no real support for the conclusion and the argument is invalid. An argument is valid if and only if the conclusion must be true if the premises are true.

Consider the argument diagrammed above. Suppose that a medical researcher points out that published in the New England Journal of Medicine last month is an article showing a 50% success rate of treating advanced leukemia with a new chemical. That evidence would show that premise A is false. On this ground we could criticize the argument as weak.

Or suppose that even though the premise is really true, another article shows that even in cases of futile treatment of cancer, cancer patients fare much better being treated, because of the hope they feel and comfort they feel at getting treatment, even though the success rate is negligible. The improved end of life situation might provide a reason for treating them even though physiologically the treatment does not work. That study might show that even though a patient has no chance of recovering through the chemotherapy, it ought to be administered anyway if he or she wants it. In this case, the argument is weak because the conclusion—that we ought not to attempt the treatment—is not likely to be true because the premise is true. Back to the Top

Fallacies: Typical Failures of Reasoning

Logicians describe a set of standard ways in which a premise can fail to support a conclusion. It is helpful to be aware of some of these standard fallacies so as to help you spot fallacies in other’s reasoning and to avoid them in your own.

Fallacies of Relevance

An ad hominem argument, literally an argument aimed at the man who makes a claim, not at the claim itself. Such an argument attempts to show that a statement is false, but it fails to provide a reason for thinking a claim is false. The fact that someone makes a claim does not by itself make it likely that the claim is false.

The government statement that we will get out of Bosnia in a year is obviously false since Clinton made it.

The claim that God id dead is false since Nietzsche said it and he went crazy.

Neither of these premises gives direct support for their conclusions. Back to the Top

An argument ad populum, literally an appeal to the views of the masses, is another standard fallacy of relevance. The fact that most people believe something is not itself evidence that what they believe is true. So, the following arguments would contain fallacies:

Since everyone believes that life has meaning, it must have meaning.

Scepticism, the view that we do not know that there is a world of physical objects, must be false, for everyone not engaged in philosophy believes that he or she knows that the external world of physical objects exists,

Since it is possible that what everyone believes if false, this sort of argument is unsuccessful. Back to the Top

An argumentative appeal to tradition to support a claim or action presents another fallacy of relevance. The fact that tradition holds some claim to be true or some action to be good does not by itself show that the claim is true or the action good. In the tradition of Roman Catholicism, homosexual acts are deemed immoral, but the fact that the tradition holds this view, does not make it correct. So the following arguments contain fallacies:

Abortion must be wrong since the Roman Catholic tradition takes it to be wrong.

It must be wrong to make it difficult to get an abortion, for the liberal democratic tradition has for many years steadfastly opposed laws designed to limit access to abortions.

Both of these arguments appeal to tradition to support a moral view, but both fail by introducing considerations not directly relevant to the truth of the conclusions they aim to support. Back to the Top

An argumentative appeal to authority attempts to support a claim or action by indicating that some authority believes the claim or embraces the action. But the fact that an authority accepts a claim or embraces an action does not directly show that the claim is true or the action good.

I must have wanted to have sex with my mother; after all, Freud says all males want to.

Dr. Milton is an authority on Socrates, so my view of Socrates, which is different from his, must be false.

A red herring is a mode of reasoning in which an irrelevant side-issue gets introduced to divert attention from the central issue. The image refers to a practice of attempting to cause hunting dogs from an opposing team to get diverted from the scent of the fox by dragging a red herring, a smelly fish, across the hunt path. The dogs would get diverted onto the path of the smellier scent. A writer introduces a red herring in the following exchange between John and Bill:

John: The Russians were correct to point out that NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia violates international law and so is as criminal as the acts that the bombing was supposed to counter.

Bill: Those Russians haven’t been able to get their act together since the fall of the Soviet Union. Drinking vodka in Russia is up in the past five years.

Bill's points are clearly red herrings. To respond to John's point, Bill needs to argue that the bombing does not contravene international, or if it does, there is some higher moral law that makes violating international law okay in this case. But Bill introduces true but irrelevant side issues designed to divert attention from the main point. Back to the Top

Fallacies of Relevant, but Insufficient Evidence

The fallacy of hasty generalization is committed when someone reasons from a single case, or even several cases to a general conclusion insufficiently supported by the small array of examples given. For example, consider this following reasoning:

Tom, who is in a fraternity gets drunk every night, so all fraternity members get drunk every night.

This sort of reasoning is not, however, improved by adding a few more instances. Consider a modified instance of this fallacy:

Tom, Dick, and Harry, who are in a fraternity get drunk every night, so all fraternity members get drunk every night.

Another type of relevant but insufficient evidence arises when one constructs in an argument a false dilemma. A false dilemma is proposed when two alternatives are assumed, one is ruled out, the other consequently endorsed when there are more alternatives than just two. Consider the following example:

Either John is a liar or he is honest. He is obviously not a liar, so he must be honest.

The problem with this reasoning is that since there are other ways to be dishonest, one cannot on ruling out that he is a liar conclude that John is honest. For example, one can be a deceiver without being a liar. In some of Clinton's public announcements about his affair with Monica, he made statements that were intentionally misleading and so deceptive, but did not, at least in some of those statements directly lie.

Reasoning can also fail by treating a complex question as something simple. For example, if one reasons from the medical fact that a treatment has little chance of working to the conclusion that we ought not to pursue it, we are introducing a true premise that does not support its conclusion because there are additional factors involved in the decision about how best to proceed. A patient may want to pursue long-shot treatments in particular cases in order to bolster or in order to try to stay alive long enough to see her grandchild. Treatment decisions are complex questions, and a simple, single premise reasoning about how best to proceed is, therefore, fallacious.

Another fallacious form of reasoning that introduces some relevant evidence insufficient to support its conclusion is the fallacy Post Hoc, ergo Propter Hoc: literally after this and because of this. Suppose you have a conversation with your History professor. Afterwards you receive a lower than usual grade on your next essay. You might reason that your lower grade came about because of something you said in that conversation. But just because the low grade arises after the conversation does not show that it arises because of the conversation. More evidence is needed to show that. The fact that the low grade comes only after the conversation is necessary for proving the claim that the grade lowering came about because of the conversation, but more would be required to prove that.

Arguments employing analogies are suggestive and important but often too weak and questionable to support the evidentiary burden they bear: such fallacies are called questionable analogies. There is no magic formula for determining whether an analogy is questionable. Typically one looks for differences that invalidate the appeal to the salient similarities that make the analogy attractive. Consider the following example:

A doctor tells a patient which treatment he is going to pursue without seeking permission of the patient. He treats the patient like a child. Therefore, since the patient is a competent adult, he treats the patient inappropriately.

Is it fair to see the treatment of the patient and child as analogous? There are some similarities, but are there crucial differences? For example, the doctor has no control of his patient. So the patient could refuse the treatment and seek medical treatment elsewhere. Can the child seek parental guidance elsewhere? Because of these differences, the analogy appears weak.

A person commits a fallacy of equivocation when he or she uses a word in one sense in a premise to prove a conclusion using the word in a different sense. Consider the following argument:

Sally's God is fashion design, so God exists and should be worshipped according to the dictates of biblical scripture.

‘God' in the first sense means "passion" or "ultimate concern." But the existence of God in the first sense shows nothing about the existence of God in the second sense.

Fallacies of Dialectical Bad Faith

In dialectic, as we have described it, defense of a thesis is indirect and so involves defending it from some line of argument, either a possible criticism or a response to a possible criticism that would be in conflict with it. The defense is no stronger than the challenge made of the thesis and the response given to that challenge. Good faith efforts at defending a thesis require good faith efforts at presenting substantial challenges and responses. Weak challenges and responses or failure to take a challenge seriously undermines the effectiveness of the argument. In what follows we describe two such fallacies.

A person begs the question when he or she asserts as true what has been called into question by some challenge. Consider the structure of a dialectical essay. Step Three presents a possible criticism of some claim in Step Two. One can either ignore the challenge or respond to it. Ignoring the challenge, even in subtle ways, can result in begging the question, asserting as correct what has been called into question. The way to avoid begging the question is to respond in detail to the possible criticism, by refuting some premise in it. Consider the following exchange:

John: There is a God.

Bill: There cannot be a God since (a) there are evil human events and (b) no God would allow such events.

John: But since there is a God, your reasoning must be faulty.

The problem with this reasoning is that John does not even attempt a critique either of Bill's premises or of his inference from those premises to his conclusion. Instead John continues to assert his claim, which has been called into question by Bill's criticism. Asserting this claim without first attempting to refute the premises or the inference in Bill's reasoning is begging the question. While often parading as reasoning, (note the premise indicator, ‘since') begging the question is a refusal to construct a reasoned response to a challenge. In that way this fallacy undercuts the very project of dialectical reasoning.

An argument presented against one side of an issue, which is weaker than other possible challenges, is said to be a straw man argument. The image is of a boxer punching a defenseless straw man, not a real one who can fight back. It is crucial to the dialectical enterprise to present a possible criticism or response that is as compelling as possible even if you are going to argue against the argument. It is clear why strong arguments from the side you oppose are important; if I can show that my thesis can be defended against fairly compelling objections, then I have shown something of substance. If, instead, I show that my thesis can be defended against relatively weak objections, I can not shown much about the strength of my thesis. Just as I show no real skill as a boxer to knock down a straw man, I show no real merit for my thesis to knock down a straw man argument in its defense. There is no easy method for determining whether an argument is a straw man. That tag depends on being able to think of stronger possible criticism.

One easy way to generate a straw man argument is to construct a possible criticism that fairly obviously contains any the fallacies that we have described in this section. Then expose the fallacy. If there are other more compelling criticisms you could have investigated, then you have knocked down a straw man. Back to the Top

Chapter Five: Preparing Academic Essays: Issues of Style, Design and Word processing on a Macintosh

William Clarkson
Dept of English

This document is both an explanation and a guide for preparing academic papers. The faculty strongly recommend that all essays be prepared on Macintosh computers using Microsoft Word. You should follow these directions when you prepare your essays, and your essays should look like this document, except that this is single spaced to save paper. Your name, class and section, and the date should appear at the upper right of the first page. The title should be centered a few inches down from the top. Choose with care a title that is well-phrased and informative: "Marx Contra Dickens"; "Proles in Holes: Bourgeois Oppression in Dickens and Marx." Your text should be double-spaced except for extended quotations and a list of works consulted which are explained later.

Your first paragraph should establish a topic (even if one is assigned) and present a thesis. Introduce the topic quickly and closely. If you are to write on a poem by Keats, make that clear immediately. Don't sneak up on it after noting that poems have been written throughout history. A thesis is an idea about the topic; with luck the idea will be interesting and powerful. If your topic were the imagery of Keats's "To Autumn," you might consider these two theses:

1. The poem presents many different kinds of images of the harvest season.

2. The poem's imagery divides the season into three distinct stages, early, middle, and late, whose movement underscores the beauty as it reinforces the sad inevitability of the way all life moves towards death.

The first is a trivial commonplace. The second constitutes the real idea of someone who understands something about the poem. The difference between them is real, is typical of college essays, and is often indicated by professors with letters C and A. Your first paragraph should address an intelligent audience familiar with your topic. Your first paragraph is crucial, and should be written or rewritten last. Back to the Top

Paragraphs, like essays, should have topic sentences. The body of the paragraph should deal with the topic introduced in the first sentence. Each sentence should be tied to the next with logic and language. Each sentence, in other words, should reach back to the one preceding and reach forward to the one that follows. You should be able to scramble the sentences of a paragraph and reassemble them inevitably. Scramble one of yours and see if a friend can put it back together. See if you can.

The word processor seems to make it easier to write a correct paragraph, but harder to keep clear track of each paragraph's place in the whole. If you were to list the topics of each of your paragraphs, the list should reveal obvious and compelling principles of organization that lead through your topic to explain and prove your thesis. A sure way to improve your written work is this. Print out a draft and lay out the pages. In the margin next to each paragraph write a key word or two expressing the main topic. Then look over the sequence and, if any paragraph fails to seem obviously in the right place, cross it out or draw an arrow where it should be moved. Then consider whether an added or altered phrase at the beginning or end of each paragraph would make real connections clearer, or give the appearance of connection where there is none. (If you are using Microsoft Word, you can get an even quicker [and sometimes terrifying] view of your essay's structure by choosing the "outline" command in the view menu. Look on your work, you mighty, and despair!)

There is no better guide to style than the advice to be found in a little book, The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E. B. White. You should own this book and read it until its contents are part of your personality. In general, aim for a clear and unaffected style in middle diction. Avoid repeated noun + preposition phrases when verbs are available for the purpose: x is the representation of y, x is certain evidence of y, x is a description of y are stronger and simpler in this form: x represents, proves, or describes y. Avoid heavy use of the verb to be that comes with overusing noun phrases and overusing the passive voice. Avoid forms like There is a movement that influences and It is cubism that is influential; instead say Cubism influences. Don't start sentences with demonstrative pronouns (notably this). Avoid empty assertive qualifiers like pretty, very, truly, virtually, incredible, and awesome. Don't overuse the vague words aspect, facet, or element, the pop-psy words lifestyle, mindset, wellness, or relationship. Avoid the adverb hopefully. Back to the Top

Quotations and other specific references to the text (including musical and artistic "texts") form the evidentiary backbone of argument in the humanities. Use brief, pithy, pertinent quotations to substantiate or demonstrate your points. Don't use quotations when summary would serve more quickly and as well. Quotations are not necessary to establish facts of person, costume, setting, statement, and incident, but rather to substantiate judgments about language, character, motivation, values, and ideas. Judgments about writers, thinkers, and artists should be based on your observation of their own work, not on secondary opinions drawn from lectures or textbooks. A long quotation should be justified by extensive and careful analysis of the quoted passage. And always double check your quotations for accuracy. Far too many student quotations contain errors. Back to the Top

According to the Sewanee Student Handbook,

plagiarism is a form of cheating because the plagiarist copies or imitates the language and thoughts of others and passes the result off as an original work. Plagiarism includes failing to identify a direct quotation by the use of quotation marks or another accepted convention which delimits and identifies the quotation clearly, paraphrasing the work of another without an acknowledgment of the source, or using the ideas of another, even though expressed in different words, without giving proper credit. (20)

Avoiding plagiarism is imperative and simple. Follow these requirements:

1. At the end of your essay, include a list of every secondary work you consult in its preparation.

2. Before every quotation, paraphrase, or allusion involving one of these consulted works, introduce the name of its author.

3. At the end of every quotation, paraphrase, or allusion to one of these consulted works indicate, in parentheses, the page numbers where the pertinent words or ideas can be found.

This parenthetical system of documentation is acceptable in all semesters of the humanities sequence. It is described much more completely in the MLA Handbook, and, though this brief description will serve most purposes, that book is available at the library (on reserve) and bookstore and should be consulted by authors of more complex research papers. Back to the Top

Quotations should be surrounded by quotation marks or indented, and the words in quotation marks or indented should be exactly the words that appear in the text you indicate with two exceptions that should be used sparingly. Explanatory or clarifying information may be added in square brackets, and omissions may be replaced by marks of ellipsis—three spaced dots. Here's an ellipsis in square brackets: [ . . . ]. A period is required in addition if the ellipsis occurs between one sentence and part or all of another. Three or more lines of poetry or more than 60 words of prose should be indented (in which case use quotation marks only as the author does). Introduce quotations with a clause or phrase that fits the excerpt grammatically; be sure the thought is complete.

Punctuation of and around quotations is complicated but exact. A colon follows an independent introductory clause (Here is Searle's thesis: . . . ). A fragment that fits your sentence seamlessly needs no preceding punctuation. Otherwise, a comma usually precedes (As Northrop Frye argues cogently, . . . ). When quoting poetry, be sure to follow the poet's conventions of initial capitalization and indentation, and to indicate the line endings with a slash mark (virgule) or, in indented quotations, by typing your lines exactly like the original. At the end of an excerpt, period and comma precede quotation marks, semi-colon and colon follow. Question mark and exclamation point depend on the sense (Did he say "Go to hell!"?). Exception: if a parenthetical citation follows a quotation, the punctuation follows the parenthesis (see example 1). Exception to the exception: punctuation precedes parenthetical citation after indented quotations (see example 2). Back to the Top

Here are some examples:

1. Romeo's "mind misgives / Some consequence yet hanging in the stars" (1.4.106-7).

2. As he is entering the great hall, Romeo delivers his most important speech about fate:
   . . . my mind misgives
   Some consequence yet hanging in the stars
   Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
   With this night's revels and expire the term
   Of a despisèd life, closed in my breast,
   By some vile forfeit of untimely death.
   (1.4.106-111)

3. According to Hugh Kenner, the detail of the lady in the white gown "simply records the way Vivien Eliot looked when she was hospitalized" (33).

4. In an early essay, E. E. Stoll contends that Shylock receives "the heaviest penalty to be found in all the pound of flesh stories" (157-58).

5. Kenneth Myrick provides some indispensable pages on Shylock's relationship to Judaism (xxxii-xxxiv).

6. Our editor's lengthy explanation (DiYanni 9-12) is ultimately unsatisfactory. Back to the Top

Citations appear in parentheses and contain no more information than is necessary. If the author is mentioned in the text only page numbers appear in the citation. Otherwise, last name and page number appear without intervening comma or p./pp. abbreviation. For examples, see the citations above, especially 3 through 6. All of these citations mean that the words or ideas in question can be found on the cited pages of books identified fully, by author's name, at the end of the essay.

You must proofread your essays carefully; enlist the help of a classmate or friend if you are a poor editor. Number your pages with your name on each page. Provide a List of Works Consulted in the same form as the list at the end of this document. If you are using the Macintosh and Microsoft Word 5, specific instructions for these and other routine formatting operations are included in the following appendix. Back to the Top

Appendix I. Formatting an Essay with Microsoft Word 5

When you enter the text of your essay, be sure that you type the return key only at the end of a paragraph (or line of poetry). Typing returns at the end of lines of prose makes future editing and formatting tremendously time-consuming. At the end of the first paragraph, choose the "Save" command from the File menu. Give your document a name in this form: Your last name, your subject. For example: "Peters, Plato," "Clarkson, music" or "Jones, Marx-Dkns." If you wish to take out insurance, click in the box that says "Make Backup." Before you click "Save," notice the disk and folder where you are directing your document to be saved. If you want it saved elsewhere, make the change now. Be especially careful that you don't save your essay to a friend's disk or a lab disk drive that will be locked, erased, or out of town when you return. Save frequently as you proceed. If you are working during an electrical storm, save and pray frequently.

To indent a quotation, first type it normally with no returns or, in the case of poetry, with a return at the end of each line. Then select the quotation and click the little icon that shows a paragraph and an arrow to the right. If you don't see the icon, go to the ruler (there's a ruler command if you can't see it), and move the quotation by dragging to the right the lower of the two triangles that appear below the zero of the ruler scale.

Run spelling check (Tools Menu) before printing your essay. Professors are often very hostile to errors SpellCheck should have caught. Then proofread. Ewe cant ketch aviary arrow bye dewing SpellCheck a loan. In the preceding sentence, only the word "SpellCheck" would be presented for correction. Be particularly careful with proper nouns. The checking utility will present "Shakspeare" and Emily "Dickenson" for your decision. Both names are misspelled.

Your last name and the page number should appear in the upper right corner of every page except the first. To effect this result choose "Section" in the Format menu. Click to put an X in the box next to the label "Different First Page." Click OK. Choose "Header" from the View Menu. Tab twice and then type in your last name, space, and click on the left icon in the header window (page number icon). Select the text and choose the font you intend to use for the body of your text. Close the header window.

If you have consulted secondary sources, proceed as follows. At the end of your last paragraph type the return key once, then hold down the shift key and press the key labeled "enter." That sequence will insert a page break, and you can then enter the title "List of Works Consulted." Then enter each work you have consulted as a paragraph with a period following each of the following entries (You will find examples at the end of this document; see MLA Handbook for more complicated situations.):

1. Name (last first) of the person who wrote what you quote. If you cite an essay from a collection you should name the author of the essay, not the editor of the collection.

2. Title of the work, in quotation marks if a work in a collection or anthology, underlined or in italics if a complete book.

3. If 2 was a work in a collection, this entry should provide the collection title.

4. This sentence might provide the name of a collection editor or a translator (following abbreviations "Ed." or "Trans.").

5. Place of publication: publisher, date of publication. Back to the Top

Center the title (List of Works Consulted) and then format your list in five steps:

1. select every item in your list from first to last

2. choose "Sort" in the Tools menu to alphabetize

3. while all items are still selected, hold down the shift and command keys (the command key has the ? and cloverleaf symbols) with your left hand and type "T" with your right.

4. while all items are still selected, Show the Ruler and click on the single space icon (above the 3 inch mark).

5. while all items are still selected, click on the spaced paragraph icon (above the 4 and 1/4 inch mark) to space between each entry.

Here are three last steps. First, set your essay in a suitable font. To set the font select the whole document (choose Select All from the Edit menu) and then make your choice from the Font menu. Header and Footnote fonts may need to be changed as well. Open those windows in the View menu and follow the same procedure. I suggest you use Palatino or Bookman 12 point. To make the text appear on fewer pages, use Times (as I have done here). To make it appear on more pages, use New York. Next choose Print Preview from the File menu and scroll through your essay. Check the header, the location and spacing of quotations, and so on. If you have not followed instructions about indentation, you will have to redo your quotations. Finally, print your essay on a laser printer or one of the personal printers that gives laser quality.

List of Works Consulted

DiYanni, Robert. "Introduction." Modern American Poets: Their Voices and Visions. New York: Random House, 1987.

Gibaldi, Joseph and Walter S. Achtert. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 2nd ed. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1984.

Kenner, Hugh. The Mechanic Muse. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Myrick, Kenneth. "Introduction." The Merchant of Venice. Revised Signet Edition. New York: New American Library, 1987.

Prentice-Hall Guide to MLA Documentation. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1984.

Sewanee Student Handbook 1994-1995 Sewanee, Tennessee: The University of the South, [1994].

Stoll, Elmer Edgar. "Shylock." The Merchant of Venice. Ed. Kenneth Myrick. Revised Signet Edition. New York: New American Library, 1987.

Appendix One: Critics of Socratic Dialectic

We have argued that the Socratic practice of dialectical philosophy provides us with a viable model for rigorous and open-minded philosophical inquiry. We have contended that this Socratic perspective on the nature of human thinking has the significant virtue of avoiding two unjustified stances: the Enlightenment view of autonomous rationality and the extreme postmodern view of autonomous non-rationality . For the purposes of this inquiry, we will assume that our readers have read Chapter One where we attempt to argue for a Socratic vision of dialectical philosophy. In this section our task will be to take seriously two lines of criticism. Here we will seek to give both of these alternative, non-Socratic outlooks the opportunity to respond. Our aim here will be to take seriously how two important points of view would criticize the Socratic conception of philosophy as the search for self-knowledge. We will argue that Socratic dialectical philosophy withstands the critical assaults of the both a Cartesian defender of autonomous rationality and the postmodern defender of the radical autonomy or interpretation. Back to the Top

To see how a proponent of the Enlightenment doctrine of rationality might object to Socrates' dialectical conception of philosophy, let us begin with a passage from Descartes' Rules for the Direction of the Mind. Here Descartes contrasts the kind of thinking worthy of be counted as true wisdom from an inferior alternative that can only render uncertain judgments whose truth is open to further questioning and doubt:

All knowledge [scientia] is certain and evident cognition, Someone who has doubts about many things is no wiser than one who has never given them a thought; indeed, he appears less wise if he has formed a false opinion about any of them. Hence it is better never to study at all than to occupy ourselves with objects which are so difficult that we are unable to distinguish what is true from what is false, and are forced to take the doubtful as certain; for in such matters the risk of diminishing our knowledge is greater than our hope of increasing it. So, in accordance with this Rule, we reject all such merely probable cognition and resolve to believe only what is perfectly known and incapable of being doubted. Men of learning are perhaps convinced that there is very little indubitable knowledge, since, owing to a common human failing, they have disdained to reflect upon such indubitable truths, taking them to be too easy and obvious to everyone. But there are, I insist, a lot more of these truths than such people think—truths which suffice for the sure demonstration of countless propositions which so far they have managed to treat as no more than probable. Because they have thought it unbecoming for a man of learning to admit to being ignorant on any matter, they have got so used to elaborating their contrived doctrines that they have gradually come to believe them and pass them off as true. (Rules for the Direction of the Mind, pp. 10-11) Back to the Top

Insofar as the Socratic practioner of dialectic regards all of his or her philosophical conclusions as fallable and as open to future revision, a Cartesian critic might challenge our claim that Socratic dialectic provides us with a viable method for philosophical thinking. Following Descrates he or she would reject Socratic dialectic on the grounds that fails to be genuinely philosphical: this is the case because Socratic dialectic provides no means for attaining the certainty that is the proper aim of philosophical thinking.

We would in response argue against Descartes' claim that Socratic philosophy fails to be genuinely philosphical because it provides no means for attaining certainty that is the proper aim of philosophical thinking. Following many critics of modern foundationalism, we think that Descartes has an overly-ambitious vision of proper task of philosophy. Descartes' condemnation of his philosophical forebearers for their inabilty to transcend uncertainty might have been justified if it were the case that Descartes own ideal of philosophical certainty were attainable. The Socratic dialectical philosopher would argue that Descartes' ideal is unattainable. Back to the Top

Let us recall that Descartes envisions a plan of establishing a system of autonomous knowledge resting upon a foundation of luminously self-certifying, indubitable truths. As Allen notes, this Cartesian conception of philosophy is so deeply at odds with the Socratic and Platonic conception of dialectic that the two are mutually exclusive. What the dialectical philosopher may not do is simply reject this criticism on the grounds that it calls into question one of the fundamental convictions of dialectic. Such dogmatism would only betray the commitment of dialectic to be open to criticism. The appropriate response of the dialectician would be to subject the Cartesian alternative to the same kind of dialectical testing which Socrates' Athenian respondents encounter in Plato's early dialogues. The primary question to pose would be whether in fact the Cartesian project can succeed in constructing a foundationalist structure of certain knowledge. Such is clearly the ambition of Descartes' Meditations as well as that of many important efforts of systematic philosophizing in modern thought. As a number of contemporary critics of Cartesian foundationalism argue, "modernity" may well begin with the ambitious project of Descartes to establish a system of autonomous rational knowledge upon a foundation of luminously self-certifying truths. Then for the next several centuries, philosophers would pursue a variety of ingenious strategies to overcome the errors of Descartes and turn philosophy into a rigorous, purely objective science.

But all of these efforts in one way or another self-destruct. That they all fail is inevitable for the very project of modern foundationalism was itself untenable. Human reason simply cannot not provide a sufficient number of rational certitudes upon which modern foundationalists could actually re-order their intellectual and social lives. Either we can discover no such pure foundations at all, not even one, or the number and kind we can establish are so limited that few if any important philosophical problems could be solved by appealing to them. Whichever the case, we today must accept that fact that this modern quest for pure foundations has lost its credibility. This version of story of the death of modernity leaves open the question of whether it is wise to believe in such realities as God, freedom and the immortality of the soul. What the "moderate" postmodernist rejects is simply the possibility of answering the classical questions of philosophy with a final and infallible certainty.

The claim that we cannot answer "the classical questions of philosophy with a final and infallable certainty" is ultimately convincing. To be postmodern in this dialectical sense requires that we accept the finitude and uncertainty of all human believing and reject as unwise the quest to establish reason as an autonomous authority. But being postmodern in this moderate sense also means that one is still committed to the classical philosophical enterprise of critically examining human experience in order to understand the real nature of the self. The moderate postmodernist holds that while Cartesian certainty is beyond our grasp, we must remain committed to establishing the best account we can of what is real. Postmodernism in this form rejects the Enlightenment doctrine of reason while still seeking to understand what really is. Back to the Top

Alasdair MacIntyre defends such a moderate version of postmodernism in two of his later works, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? and Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry. In Three Rival Versions, MacIntyre defends the tradition of dialectical rationality found in the works of Plato, Aristotle and St. Thomas. According to MacIntyre, this classical and medieval form of philosophical inquiry is rationally superior to the alternative visions of Enlightenment foundationalism and the anti-metaphysical form of postmodernism exemplified in what MacIntyre terms the tradtion of the Nietzschean Genealogist. Whereas the two rival perspectives succumb, in their own distinctive ways, to internal incoherence, the classical dialectical tradition both avoids their fundamental errors and illuminates for us exactly how and why these rival traditions are unsustainable. MacIntyre leaves open the possibility that rival traditions will emerge that are incompatible with one another but each of which is rationally sustainable. Traditions fail to be rational to the extent that they cannot sustain themselves through a process of Socratic testing; they succeed insofar as they are able to survive dialectical scrutiny and maintain themselves as coherent ways of thinking and living. The function of reason according to this dialectical model is not to provide us with certainty but to afford us a critical method in our quest for self-understanding.

Like Socrates, MacIntyre does not believe that human reason will ever afford us the kind of final, absolute knowledge that would render our beliefs immune from the need for any possible future correction, adjustment or revision. For MacIntyre, traditions exhibit their rationality insofar as they succeed in clarifying their beliefs and practices and in responding to questions and objections about them. Here reason functions not in the establishing of final proofs but in the giving of a logos for a historically-constituted set of beliefs and practices. According to MacIntyre's vision of a dialectical postmodern reason, the telos of reason is not to achieve a system of certain knowledge constructed upon a basis of autonomous rational certitudes; rather, it is to achieve a kind of self-knowledge whereby a tradition can rationally sustain its way of life in the face of philosophical criticisms.

Against the Enlightenment, Encyclopedist tradition, MacIntyre urges a more humbled account of human rationality, one in which our ability to reason successfully depends upon our membership in human communities that mold our moral character in accordance with fundamental intuitions about the human good. MacIntyre's dialectical postmodernism envisions ethical inquiry as a journey in search of our real ethical selves. It is a quest in which we cannot be entirely certain of our success before we reach our final destination. So MacIntyre contrasts his Thomistic postmodernism to the traditions of the Enlightenment and the anti-metaphysical "genealogist".

Descartes symbolized for the nineteenth century encyclopaedist a declaration of independence by reason from the particular bonds of any particular moral and religious community. It is on this view of the essence of rationality that its objectivity is inseparable from its freedom from the partialities of all such communities. It is to allegiance to reason as such, impersonal, impartial, disinterested, uniting, and universal that the encyclopaedist summons his or her readers and hearers. And it is of course this very same conception of reason as universal and disinterested that the genealogist rejects, so that genealogist and encyclopaedist agree in framing what they take to be both exclusive and exhaustive alternatives: Either reason is thus impersonal, universal, and disinterested or it is the unwitting representative of particular interests, masking their drive to power by its false pretensions to neutrality and disinterestedness. Back to the Top

What this alternative conceals from view is a third possibility, the possibility that reason can only move towards being genuinely universal and impersonal insofar as it is neither neutral or disinterested, that membership in a particular type of moral community, one from which fundamental dissent has to be excluded, is a condition for genuinely rational enquiry and more especially for moral and theological enquiry. Yet just this possibility was the one presented by Plato in initiating the philosophical tradition, particularly in the Gorgias and in the Republic. What emerged from Socrates confrontation with Callicles in Gorgias was that it is a precondition of engaging in rational enquiry through the method of dialectic that one should already possess and recognize certain moral virtues without which the cooperative progress of dialectic will be impossible, something further acknowledged by Plato in the Republic in his identification on those virtues the practice of which must precede initiation into the philosophical community and by Aristotle in his account of the inseparability of the moral and the intellectual virtues in both political and philosophical community. Enquiry into the nature of the virtues and of human good more generally is on this Socratic view therefore bound to be sterile if disinterested. A prior commitment is required and the conclusions which emerge as enquiry progresses will of course have been partially and crucially predetermined by the nature of this initial commitment.

According to this Socratic type of postmodernism, the mainstream modern philosophical tradition embodied in the Encyclopedists were justified in their desire to find the Truth concerning what is real; their undoing resulted from their failure to acknowledge the essential finitude of all human efforts to know just what this Truth is. Still, MacIntyre remains committed to the philosophical project of seeking to understand what really constitutes the human good. And for MacIntyre, our individual quest for this self-understanding can only make progress as we see our individual selves as members of an historically-constituted social tradition. Traditions of moral thought are rational insofar as they can sustain themselves coherently in the face of criticisms generated both from within the tradition itself as well as from other, rival traditions.

In marked contrast to MacIntyre's postmodern realism, there is a much more radical point of view urged by other postmodernists who also find the basic narrative the fall of modern reason convincing: according to "radical" or "anti-realist" postmodernists, the failure of the Cartesian project undermines the whole of modern philosophy and indeed of the western tradition of metaphysical inquiry. Such persons regard the failure of modern foundationalism as signaling the end of philosophy as the "western tradition" has known it. The time has come, so they contend, for postmodernists who have seen through the illusions of the past to begin to address social problems and read canonical texts in an entirely new way. Because Socratic dialectic conceives of the philosophical quest as an search for the truth about the self, the more radical postmodernist might challenge our claim that Socratic dialectic provides us with a viable method for philosophical thinking. Back to the Top

With the collapse of the Cartesian project and of the Enlightenment, the traditional creeds of the church and the traditional western belief in objective realities are regarded as thoroughly discredited. According to this more radical postmodern way of thinking, whatever commitments we are able to find credible in our postmodern world, they cannot be of the sort that claim to have some metaphysical authority that transcends human conventions; in particular, we can no longer put our faith in those authorities such as God or reason which have been so influential for the western traditions of church and metaphysics. To solve the problems of the postmodern world, we must not look to such authorities of our past. We must start over with a postmodern sincerity that looks with honesty and yet suspicion upon the idols of the past. For the radical postmodernist, the question of whether it is wise to believe in such realities as God, freedom and the immortality of the soul is no longer open. To be postmodern in this more extreme sense requires that we accept the finitude and uncertainty of all human believing and that we reject as unwise the quest to establish reason as an autonomous authority. But it also insists that we reject as incoherent and naive the very idea of a transcendent God or even of an objective reality existing outside of and beyond our human interpretions. As Derrida states, "There is nothing outside of the text". Unlike MacIntyre, the radical postmodernist contends that the name of the game is not the discovery of what is but the creation of a diversity of images of self-expression. Where MacIntyre looks for a rationally sustainable but inevitably situated and uncertain perspective on our true self, the radical postmodernist invites us to reconcile ourselves to living with the worlds of our own creation. So writes Francios Lyotard in a reflection entitled "Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism?":

The postmodern would be that which, in the modern, puts forward the unpresentable in presentation itself; that which denies itself the solace of good forms, the consensus of a taste which would make it possible to share collectively the nostalgia for the unattainable; that which searches for new presentations, not in order to enjoy them but in order to impart a stronger sense of the unpresentable. A postmodern artist or writer is in the position of a philosopher: the text he writes, the work he produces are not in principle governed by pre-established rules, and they cannot be judged according to a determining judgment, by applying familiar categories to the text or to the work. Those rules and categories are what the work of art itself is looking for. The artist and the writer, then, are working without rules in order to formulate the rules of what will have been done. Hence the fact that work and text have the characters of an event ; hence also, they always come too late for their author, or, what amounts to the same thing, their being put into work, their realization (mise en oeuvre) always begin too soon. Post modern would have to be understood according to the paradox of the future (post) anterior (modo). Back to the Top

Finally, it must be clear that it is our business not to supply reality but to invent allusions to the conceivable which cannot be presented. And it is not to be expected that this task will affect the last reconciliation between language games (which, under the name of faculties, Kant knew to be separated by a chasm), and that only the transcendental illusion (that of Hegel) can hope to totalize them into a real unity. But Kant also knew that the price to pay for such an illusion is terror. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have given us as much terror as we can take. We have paid a high enough price for the nostalgia of the whole and the one, for the reconciliation of the concept and the sensible, of the transparent and the communicable experience. Under the general demand for slackening and for appeasement, we can hear the mutterings of a desire for the return of terror, for the realization of the fantasy to seize reality. The answer is: Let us wage a war on totality; let us be witnesses to the unpresentable; let us activate the differences and save the honor of the name.

Here Lyotard provides a vivid example of what MacIntyre refers to in Three Rival Versions as the "geneological" tradition–the perspective we have referred to above as embracing the radical autonomy of interpretation. Two features of Lyotard's postmodern vision are noteworthy: first, Lyotard condemns as illusory and even dangerous the traditional philosophical desire to understand the systematic unity and coherence of the fabric of reality; and second, having declared our liberation from such metaphysical realism, Lyotard invites us to celebrate our radical freedom through artistic, interpretative acts of self-expression. Through these acts of "presenting the unpresentable", we create, rather than discover, our selves. Both of these features deny the conception of Socratic rationality central to MacIntyre's postmodernism. Lyotard, like Derrida, declares war on all such doctrines of rationality that conceive of philosophy as seeking the truth. Back to the Top

We would in response argue against the claim that in philosophical inquiry we create rather than discover our selves. To puruse this line of response, the dialectical philosopher would subject the radical postmodernist's view to dialectical cross-examination. This would require proceeding in the classic Socratic style, sifting through the web of claims and arguments central to this kind of anti-Socratic postmodernism. This line of responses might prove fruitful insofar as there appears to be a tension between the act of promulgating this postmodern skepticism through discourse and repeated denials that language can ever say how things really are. Extreme Postmodernists seem to by saying what is true where "true" means how things really are independently of public opinion or scholarly consensus. That there is no real self and or real world beyond our interpretations seems to be regarded by extreme postmodernists with a sanctity and conviction that looks very much like an attitude about how things really are. So the practice of extreme postmodernism appears to be inconsistent with its theory and thus a dialectical failure.

And yet the claim that "extreme Postmodernists seem to by saying what is true where "true" means how things really are independently of public opinion or scholarly consensus" would be ultimately convincing only to someone already committed to the presuppostions of Socratic dialectic. To appreciate this point let us note that the crafty postmodernist might well resist every such dialectical move with the caveat of having never mean to say how things really. The success of dialectic presupposes that persons say what they really think and will care about self-consistency. It is unclear that the really committed extreme postmodernist intends to say anything in the form of an assertion or cares about the unity of our lives. So it may well be the case that the radically skeptical postmodernist escapes the snares of dialectical self-destruction as a result of refusing to accept the standards for responsible dialectical conversation. The charge of self-fragmentation is simply not compelling to the person who sees no reason to believe in the possibility of self-unity. Back to the Top

And yet the question remains of whether any human being can seriously and honestly so divorce him- or herself from the activity of objective discourse or the concern for self-integrity. A second dialectical strategy against extreme postmodernism would be that of challenging not so much what the extreme postmodernist says but whether in saying it, he or she can honestly believe it. As we have alluded to in our account of the Socratic method, dialectic is more a process of recollecting than of constituting the self. By its very nature, dialectic tests our beliefs and commitments by asking us to state, clarify and defend them. Such a process serves as a mirror reflecting to the inquiring self one's pre-existing beliefs and commitments. In this way, dialectic places us before ourselves not by providing us with proofs but by enabling us to see ourselves more clearly than we have before and to challenge us to alter and change as we see flaws and inconsistencies in our selves. Dialectic can succeed only if a person already possesses certain virtues of character such as the courage to risk being revealed as flawed and the humility to accept the help of others in correcting those flaws. But just as the practice of dialectic depends upon the prior possession of certain traits of character, so it also depends upon the desire to be a rational self, not in the abstract sense of being able to state clever doctrines but in the very real and existential sense of being unified in one's words and deeds. The manner in which the dialectician can therefore challenge the extreme postmodernist would be to urge such a person to be truthful with themselves and to accept the challenge to show how one can succeed in giving a dialectically sustainable account of the unity of the self. From a dialectical perspective, extreme postmodernism avoids the charge of self-refutation only by turning itself into an abstraction; as a concrete, lived philosophy, extreme postmodernism fails dialectically because it presents us with an image we cannot really believe reflects our real self. The claim that extreme postmodernism fails dialectically because it presents us with an image we cannot really believe reflects our real self is ultimately convincing to us. Which side the reader takes on this important issue is not for us to dictate or presume.