How To Write An Effective Philosophy Paper

AFTER ASSISTING NUMEROUS first-year philosophy students with their essays, I have come to discover a number of handy tips one may refer to throughout the course of any level of essay writing. The following is the culmination of these tips, in no particular order.


- When making new points, say “ultimately” to make it seem like you were getting to that point all along.
• E.g.: Plato was a brilliant thinker. Ultimately, Plato wrote “The Republic”.

- Throw in “fundamentally” wherever possible. This will make your argument sound precise, for you are addressing not the thing itself, but the thing’s fundaments. To bump that B+ up to an A-, switch it off with “inherently”.
• E.g.: Hannah Arendt is inherently against totalitarianism.

- Refer to themes and notions as “underlying”. If you’re unsure as to whether you’re outright making something up, odds are it’s lying under something else.
• E.g.: If closely examined, one can see the underlying themes of agoraphobia in Descartes’s “Meditations”.

- Use semicolons instead of periods. Your professor will be so impressed by your literary flair that he’ll be more inclined to bump that up that A- to an A.
• E.g.: Nietzsche did not have sex until he lost his virginity to a prostitute who gave him syphilis; Nietzsche did not like women.

- Refer to arguments as “critiques”. Generally, words with “q” are more insightful than those without.
• E.g.: Kant’s critique of Descartes is a quarrelsome quarry, quintessentially quarantined in Iqualuit. Wait, did I say Kant? I meant Qant.

- Instead of saying “existence”, refer to it as “existence as such”. This remedies the common error of generalizing “existence” as all of existence, and specifies it as such, which is considerably less general and means something to professors. Just don’t ask what.
• E.g.: So what exactly is existence as such?

- If you feel your argument is lacking merit, say it echoes antiquity, because it probably does.
• E.g.: Women are fundamentally inferior to men. This echoes Aristotle.

- When using secondary sources, praise their scholarly value. Your professor will agree and bump that A up to an A+.
• E.g.: To quote Karl Löwith, who beautifully summarizes my crummy thesis in his 500-page book on the same subject…

- If ever you don’t understand something, call it an “inherent contradiction”.
• E.g.: Neoplatonism is an inherent contradiction.

- Use “polemic” a lot. In fact, make up words stemming from it, like “polemicize”.
• E.g.: I once heard Professor Kierans use the word “polemicize”. I looked it up in the dictionary—it doesn’t exist.

- Use as many philosophical synonyms as you can to make it seem like you’re referencing various authors whom you’ve encountered previously. This will show your knowledge of past ideas, bumping that A+ up to a request for you to lecture at your university next year.
• E.g.: Heidegger is concerned with the a priori, rational, invisible, metaphysical, unseen realm of principles, realm of God, kingdom of principles, unconscious realm, hypothetical realm, Heaven, infinity, infinitude, ad infinitum, ad nauseum, pleasegodletmebeover1000 words, realm of ideas, the theoretical, the dialectical, the Good, the Nous, nothingness, pure anxiety, the sublime, the void, the abyss, my basement apartment.