Writing Philosophy: A Student's Guide to Writing Philosophy Essays

Writing Philosophy: A Student's Guide to Writing Philosophy Essays is a concise, self-guided manual that covers the basics of argumentative essay writing and encourages students to master fundamental skills quickly, with minimal instructor input. Opening with an introductory chapter on how to read philosophy, the book then moves into the basics of writing summaries and analyzing arguments. It provides step-by-step instructions for each phase of the writing process, from formulating a thesis, to creating an outline, to writing a final draft, supplementing this tutorial approach with model essays, outlines, introductions, and conclusions. Skills essential to evaluating arguments, citing sources, avoiding plagiarism, detecting fallacies, and formatting final drafts are dealt with in detail. The final two chapters serve as a reference guide to common mistakes and basic skills in sentence construction, writing style, and word choice.
Employing a rulebook format similar to that of the classic Elements of Style (by Strunk, White, and Angell), Lewis Vaughn distills helpful writing advice into simple rules that students can easily remember and apply--and that instructors can refer to when reviewing student papers. These rules cover essay organization, sentence structure, documentation styles, plagiarism, grammar, usage, and more. Written in a clear and engaging style and incorporating samples of student writing, Writing Philosophy is an indispensable resource for virtually any philosophy course.

Customer Reviews:

Writing Essays and Making Good Arguments

By Fauzia Lala - January 27, 2008

This is a really good book. I bought this book for my Intro to Philosophy class 3 months ago and did not sell it. I am going to keep this book since it's a really informative one. This is not really about Philosophy at all. It is about how to analyze/interpret text, write good essays, make good arguments and identify fallacious ones.

So this is a very practical book. It also helps format your essay and cite your sources effectively with the MLA and CMS citing guidelines.

Great for undergrads, not so great for grads.

By Matthew Sexton - June 18, 2012

I read this book thoroughly in about 1.5 hours. It has the advantage of being small, easily digested. It does a fair job of explaining philosophy, and the importance of logic and argument. The other reviews are largely from undergrad students who were assigned this for their class. I do think this might be a good book for an intro level philosophy course, especially for someone who has just rolled out of high school and who may need to know how to write.

But this book does not have the depth for graduates. I bought this in part because I thought it would help me write a paper to submit with my application to a Ph.D programme in philosophy at a very respected university. This book, however, will not help you to write publishable philosophy journal articles. Mostly its advice is focused on keeping you and I from making (what should be) obvious errors in our writing - no slippery slope fallacies, no racism, double check your assumptions, no ad-hominem attacks, etc... read more

Mandatory for Philosophy Students

By Blair Broughton ""Avid Reader and Philoso... - January 29, 2010

I had to buy this for a class and I think this is one of the most useful books I have read. Philosophy teachers love to assign many papers and this made my papers much easier to write. There is a very different mindset required to write a philosophy paper from what you are used to and this helped me get rid of the normal English class fluff that I had learned to throw in. My grades on papers went up (I finally had the As that I wanted instead of the Bs I was receiving for "unneeded" information). Definitely suggest it. It's an easy read that really makes a difference.