WRITING IS CENTRAL TO PHILOSOPHY

For the great majority of us, writing is instrumental to thinking. Since it is reasonable to describe philosophy as the application of disciplined thought to a variety of topics, issues, and problems, it follows that writing is instrumental to philosophy. Therefore, we can also describe any philosophy course as a specialized course in writing. For philosophy students, this truth has a downside and an upside. The downside is that most philosophy professors do not see themselves as writing teachers. That is a job for personnel in the English Department. Perhaps you have already taken a composition or “rhetoric” course in that department. Good. You have a leg up on your fellow philosophy students. If you have not had such instruction, however, you are not alone. This book will help. As for the upside of a philosophy course being by default a writing course, if you can learn to write a persuasive philosophy paper, you have gained a skill that can be applied to any college course or, indeed, virtually any field of endeavor. The writing chops you develop in doing philosophy carry over to all manner of disciplined presentation and argument. The discipline acquired in studying philosophy is portable. You can apply it to anything to which you turn your mind. The same is true of the writing skills you develop in a philosophy class. They travel well because they do not belong to any one subject area. Master these skills of thought and expression—rational analysis and orderly argument—and they belong to you, to be applied wherever and whenever you need them