Cassette 7: WRITING THE POL167 ESSAY

The other topics should make sense already, and you would have had some ideas about some of them even before you began reading in this course. The readings you have done so far have some relevance to some of them, and by the time you are writing the final version you will have come across more material in the later readings. Don't worry if you don't have a lot to quote from and refer to at this stage: work our mostly your own ideas on one of the topics in the draft essay, and then you will have an articulation of your own thinking with which the material you read later in the course can come into dialogue.

Is democracy the best form of government? Until recently almost all of you would have answered unhesitatingly "yes", but of course this might be due to the brainwashing to which we are all subjected, living in a purportedly democratic polity. So adopt a critical attitude. For a start, what is democracy? Perhaps our regime is not really a democracy. But don't get bogged down in questions about the word. Perhaps you could ask yourself this: Are there any changes that could be made to our system that would make it (in some sense) more democratic that you would nevertheless regard as a bad thing? And are there any changes that would make the system better, but (in some sense) less democratic? What you have read so far in the course, from Macaulay, Mill, Plato and Aristotle, should provide material for reflection on this topic. See also Vol. 3, the Supplementary Readings, the lectures on "Democracy in Australia" and "Liberal Democracy".

The second topic, to what extent should governments protect private property, will mean more when you have read Locke (week 11). But already you may well have some opinions on it. One of the traditional divisions of opinion in Australian politics is between the proponents of "free enterprise" and those who advocate some significant degree of government intervention in economic affairs; see in vol. 3, Supplementary Readings, the essay on "Free Enterprise and its Critics". There is a similar division of opinion between those who support trade unions and those who oppose them. Those who support free enterprise and oppose unions take the view that governments should protect the property rights of the owners of businesses against the attempts of unions to control the operation of the business, and that governments should themselves not interfere with the running of businesses. These are questions about a particularly important kind of property, namely the property of the owner of a business. What do you think yourself about these questions? There is some food for thought in Macaulay and Mill. Look at Mill's chapter on the "Grounds and Limits of Laissez Faire" in the Readings book.

The third and fourth topics, on Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Religion, are also questions many of you will already have thought about. Almost all Australians believe, or think they believe, in freedom of speech and freedom of religion. But if you reflect a little you will probably realise that some things that could be described as free speech or religious practice are problematic. Should there be any restrictions on defamation, or on invasion of privacy? What other values might need to be balanced against free speech? And what if a religion seems to outsiders to be oppressing some of its members, say women or children: does freedom of religion mean that outsiders and governments have no right to interfere? And take a critical look at the arguments in favour of freedom of speech and freedom of religion: what are they? Do they stand up to critical examination? For example, what do you think of the claim that the truth is most likely to come to light if everyone is allowed to advocate whatever they regard as true? Is public discussion in the papers and TV careful enough? Do people remember what was said earlier and take note of criticisms made later? Jeremy Bentham used to talk about the "public opinion tribunal", as if public discussion were like a royal commission that heard all the evidence and drew a reasonable conclusion. Is it like that?

John Stuart Mill wrote a little book entitled On Liberty which might be worth reading in relation to these two topics; it is not in the Readings, but you could find it in the library. Municipal libraries often have an Encyclopaedia Britannica collection called "The Great Books of the Western World", in which On Liberty is included. What you have been reading in Plato will also bear on these topics: in Plato's ideal city the philosophers seem to be in charge; would they allow another Socrates to go round questioning their doctrines? There will be more material later in the course relating to freedom of religion; see for example the extracts from Augustine and Pierre Bayle's Philosophical Commentary.

Question 5, under what circumstances is warfare between states morally justifiable?, is another topic that every citizen has thought about, or should think about. Wars happen suddenly; you need to think beforehand what your attitude will be. Several years ago Australia was unexpectedly involved in the Gulf War, against Iraq. Even now, we are participating in United Nations sanctions against Iraq. Might anyone oppose such involvements? What might their reasons be? The extracts in the Readings book from Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and De Vitoria include attempts to formulate a morality of warfare. De Vitoria is especially interesting. See Supplementary Readings, p. 103.

On topic 6, the alleged moral obligation to obey government, see Supplementary Readings, p. 14. At the present time, talk about a "mandate" won by the Coalition in the recent election, and talk of "the umpire's decision", meaning the decision of a majority of electors, is intended to suggest that it is somehow wrong - not illegal, but in some way morally wrong or morally improper, for the Democrats in the Senate, for example, to oppose the new government's policies. What do you think about this? If you want to read more, look at my article "Locke on Political Obligation", Supplementary Readings, p. 168. There is a little book by Peter Singer, Democracy and Disobedience.

Getting ideas

Ideas often start as feelings. You feel agreement or disagreement with some suggestion, without knowing exactly why you agree or disagree. Writing is going to be largely a matter of trying to formulate the reasons behind these feelings. Of course in the process you might change your mind: you might begin by feeling strongly that something is right or wrong, and then when you work out your reasons you may realise they are not good enough.

Sometimes conversation will help you get ready to write. Conversation is a matter of expressing some reaction and then explaining why you reacted that way. In conversation the other person's reactions to what you say can make you think again. So talk about the essay to a friend. If you get ideas from them you should acknowledge the source in a footnote: "This point was suggested to me in conversation by" whoever.

It is important to be self-critical, or to find someone to talk to who thinks differently and will criticise your opinions. In all of the topics there is something to be said on both sides, and the correct answer (whatever it is) will not be black and white. (Notice the wording: "To what extent?", "Under what circumstances?" -- your answer may well be tentative and qualified.)

The task is not to engage in a lot of research and then summarise what you have found, but to do some hard thinking. One of the obstacles you may have to overcome is diffidence. "Who am I to have an opinion on such a complex subject?" "What do the experts say?" Well, who is anyone to have opinions on these things, and who are the experts? In political theory and ethics there are experts in the sense of people who know what various positions have been put forward and what arguments have been given for and against the various positions, but I'm afraid there are no recognised experts in the sense of people who can say authoritatively what the outcome of all the argument has been. So don't hesitate to make and express your own judgments: no one else can do it for you.

Now, I think, might be the time to go and write the first draft of your draft essay. After you have something substantial on paper, come back and listen to the rest of this cassette, in which I will make some suggestions about checking and revising your draft

Polishing the draft

Content

Don't believe Socrates when he says that definition must come first. Define your terms only when you feel you need to to forestall or clear up some probable or not improbable misunderstanding; it may not be necessary to define anything, and if it is necessary it may be best to do so later in the essay, not at the beginning. If you do offer a definition, make sure it really does help make things clear. The debater's practice of defining the words of a statement or question one by one is not a good one. As far as possible keep at the statement level: explain the meaning of the whole statement of which the meaning seems doubtful by offering other statements of equivalent meaning, or simply by explaining that it does not mean something it might be thought to mean or imply.

Don't try to make definitions answer questions or prove answers. If you define your terms in a certain way you may seem to block certain objections, but probably at the cost of making your position irrelevant to the question you started with: that is, if the objections are points relevant to the question, if you forestall them by definition you must be using some term in a sense different to the sense it has in the question. The use of definitions is to make it clear what you mean; they do not form part of an argument defending whatever it is you mean, except against misunderstandings.

Somewhere in the essay you should say plainly what answer you are giving to the topic question. It may be possible to state your answer at the begining of the essay, but sometimes you can't clearly say what you think until you have explained some things. In that case the statement of your answer might come late in the essay, even at the end. But it would be a good idea to give the reader right at the beginning some idea, at least a vague idea, of the direction in which your argument is going to lead. (Pause) Have a look at the opening paragraph of Warrender's article in Supplementary Readings, p. 160, (pause) and the opening paragraph of my article on Locke, Supplementary Readings, p. 168, and the first three paragraph's of Waldron's article, p. 180. Can your opening paragraph be made to give the reader a clearer indication of what you will be saying in the essay? Now that you have got to the end of a draft you may have a different idea of what you are trying to say, so your original introduction may actually be misleading.

The next thing to consider is the overall organisation of your draft. Go through it and make a summary table of contents -- a list of the main headings, with the sub-headings indented. (Pause) Now consider whether these segments would be better in some different order. Maybe as you were writing you realised fairly late in the essay that some point needed to be explained in order to clarify something you were saying: might it be better to put that explanation earlier in the essay and refer back to it?

Consider the classification of the materials of the essay under the following scheme: Some bits state the conclusion you are trying to justify, that is, your answer to the essay question; some bits are arguments in favour of that conclusion; some bits are statements of arguments in favour of the opposite of your conclusion; some bits answer those arguments; some bits are objections against arguments you have used toward your conclusion; and some bits are answers to those objections. There may be other categories. Are you sure you know what each bit is doing in your essay? If there is some bit that doesn't seem to have any business there, delete it. (Pause)

Now make sure that you have given the reader enough clues as to the part each bit plays in the essay. The clues or signposts might be explicit and elabourate, for example: "Next I will state an argument in favour of the opposite position to the one I am maintaining". But such explicit signposts can be cumbersome. You might achieve the same effect simply by saying: "But, on the other hand, someone might argue...". One way or another, explicitly or more subtly, you should indicate to the reader how each bit fits in. It might be a good idea to put headings and subheadings. My article has headings (e.g. Supplementary Readings, p. 169, "The Duty to Preserve Mankind"), Warrender's article is divided into sections by large Roman numerals and also has headings (see p. 161), and Waldron's article has no divisions (p. 180). But if you skim Waldron's article, looking at the first sentence in each paragraph, you can see even without reading it in detail that he is careful to let the reader know how the parts fit together. (Pause) Go through your draft in the same way and see if there is enough signposting. (Pause)

In checking the organisation and signposting you should of course be thinking again about what it is you are trying to say. Sometimes problems of organisation or signposting are due to the fact that your thinking is confused. So trying to fix the organisation may lead to changes of mind.

Before you leave these general questions of point and organisation, ask yourself whether you have done justice to views opposed to your own. Have you actually stated any opposing view? Have you explained why people might hold it? Would people who do hold it recognise themselves in your account of what they think, or would they feel that you are presenting a travesty of their opinion and then shooting it down? Make it a point of honour to put their view if possible more persuasively than they could themselves -- and then shoot it down if you can. Have you given reasons against their view that they might find persuasive, or do your arguments take for granted things they reject? (Pause)

Details of Expression

Check sentence structure. Make sure that each sentence, each string of words between two full stops, contains a main statement with a finite verb. An infinitive or participle is not enough. The commonest error here is to use an "-ing" word instead of a finite verb: "I could not understand your argument. The reason being...". Either the full stop should be a comma, or "being" should be "is" or "was": "The reason is..." Go through and see whether you are anywhere trying to make an "-ing" word the main verb in a sentence. (Pause)

Consider rearranging the phrases or clauses in sentences to emphasise important words, especially words that make connections with the sentence before or the next sentence, for example by reordering the elements of the sentence so as to manoeuvre the important word to the beginning or end of the sentence. Sometimes the best way to emphasise what is important is to delete unimportant words that don't really need to be there.

Check paragraphing. Journalists often write very short paragraphs. In academic writing, however, there should be a smaller number of longer paragraphs, so as to mark fairly important stages of the argument. Each paragraph should be unified: it should make one point, which should be stated either at the beginning of the paragraph or at the end. Go through and check sentence structure and paragraphing. (Pause)

Check punctuation. A common mistake is to put only a comma before "however" when there should be either a full stop or a semicolon. A parenthetical "however" ("In academic writing, however, there should be. . .") has a comma before it and after it; "however" as an adverb is preceded by a comma ("It is true, however much you don't like it"); but otherwise "however" must follow a full stop or semicolon. "We went to the meeting place, however he was not there" should be "We went to the meeting place; however, he was not there."

It is also a mistake to join together with commas bits that should be separated by semicolons or full stops. Generally a comma needs to be followed by a conjunction, such as "although", "because", "if", etc.; if there is no conjunction use a semicolon or full stop. Go through your draft and check whether any commas should be semicolons or full stops. (Pause)

Another common mistake is with commas used to make a parenthesis. They should go in pairs, like left and right brackets. People often leave out one of the pair.

Another common mistake in punctuation is to put a comma between subject and verb or between verb and object. Don't put a comma in front of a clause when it has the same subject as the clause before it. And don't put a comma in front of a clause if it is closely bound to the preceding clause as stating the condition on which that clause holds or as defining its meaning. For example, "No one will be angry if you make an honest mistake" should not have a comma after "angry". Similarly, there should not be a comma before a clause beginning "who" or "which" if that clause is needed to define who or what the previous clause is referring to. For example: in "Mr Menzies, who was prime minister when I was a boy, etc." a comma is needed before the "who", but "The man who was sitting next to you on the bus was my uncle" should not have a comma before the "who" because the "who" clause is needed to define the subject of the main clause.

In general, too many students use too many commas. Look now with hostile intent at each comma: should it be a semicolon or full stop? Should it be abolished altogether? (Pause)

Beware the dreaded apostrophe. Sometimes it is used to indicate that something has been left out, e.g. "isn't"; don't use such abbreviations in academic writing. At other times an apostrophe is used to indicate possession, and that's when trouble starts. J.S. Mill's name was "Mill", not "Mills"; the possessive of "Mill" is "Mill's". Some names end in "s", for example "Hobbes". The possessive of "Hobbes" is "Hobbes's". The rule is: To the non-possessive form of the noun add "apostrophe-s". However, if the word is a plural and already ends in "s", add an apostrophe after the "s", and don't add another "s". The possessive of "Australians" is "Australians'".

For the possessive of a noun that does not stand for some person, it is often better not to use "'s"; use "of" instead. For example, "the beginning of the essay" is better than "the essay's beginning".

The little word "its" gives a lot of trouble. It is an exception (or an apparent exception) to the rule that to form the possessive you add "'s". To form the possessive of "it" you add "s" without an apostrophe. "It's" is the abbreviated form of "it is". Actually the rule about apostrophe-s applies to nouns. Pronouns don't use an apostrophe - "its", "his", "hers", "theirs", have no apostrophe. The possessive of "who" is "whose", not "who's".

Go through your draft now and check the apostrophes. Make sure they are there if they should be and not there if they shouldn't be. Don't try to dodge the issue by putting in faint marks that might not be noticed if there shouldn't be any apostrophe, or by sitting the apostrophe on top of the "s" when you aren't sure whether it should go before it or after it. (Pause)

You don't have to wordprocess your essay, but if you do then run the spell checker. If you are writing by hand, then find a dictionary and check the spelling of any word you are doubtful of and look up the meaning of any word you are doubtful of. A thesaurus can be useful. Note that "criteria" is plural; the singular is "criterion". "To beg the question" means to use as a premise what you are supposed to be proving; it does not mean "to raise the question". (Pause)

Now check your footnotes. For each point that you realise you have borrowed from someone, there should be a footnote or endnote. For a guide to footnoting style, look at Waldron's article, Supplementary Readings, p. 180ff. Notice that the little number that indicates the footnote occurs immediately after the comma or full stop at the end of the clause or sentence to which the note relates. Look at the very first line of the article, the number after "In para. 27 of the Second Treatise of Government,". Notice in the footnotes that the titles of books and journals are in italics, and the title of a chapter or article is in quotation marks. See for example the first reference in footnote 2, "See H. Rashdall, "The Philosophical Theory of Property", in Property: Its Duties and Rights", etc.: the item in quotation marks is a chapter title, the item in italics is the title of the book in which the chapter appears. The first time an article or book is mentioned its place and date of publication should be given in brackets -- in this case "(London, 1915)". Read through that footnote. If you refer to some article or book referred to earlier, use "op. cit.", as in footnote 3. This abbreviates "opere citato", Latin for "in the work cited". If you refer to the same work as was referred to in the reference immediately preceding, use "ibid.", short for ibidem, Latin for "in the same place". See for example footnotes 10 and 11. There are other reference systems. For example, some people put the full bibliographical details in a bibliography at the end and use short titles in footnotes; a reader who wants to follow up the reference goes first to the bibliography to get the details. You can use any sensible system; Waldron's is the traditional method of reference in the humanities. Check the style of footnotes and bibliography. (Pause)

Check through now to make sure that you have acknowledged all your sources, including other students. Be warned that plagiarism, i.e. trying to pass off someone else's ideas or words as your own, incurs severe penalties. On the other hand it never does any harm to acknowledge sources.

If you submit a draft for comment and have done all this checking properly, your tutor won't need to spend time and ink making minor corrections. Most of the comments will be suggestions relating to content -- arguments you might consider or references you might look up in writing the final version of the essay. Don't take a comment as meaning that you should have already thought of this or done that: take it as a suggestion of what you might do in preparing the final version. And be prepared to stick to your guns. Maybe the comments give the impression that the tutor doesn't agree with you, but don't weakly fall into line. If you still think the same, then strengthen the argument to persuade your critic.

If you are hazy about punctuation, see Style Manual for Authors, Editors and Printers of Australian Government Publications (Canberra, various dates), section 6 (PN147.S83.1990).

On various points of essay writing and grammar see Pam Peters, The Macquarie Student Writer's Guide (Curric.PE1408.M27) and Strategies for Student Writing (PE1471.P42).

Appendix

The parts of a sentence include clauses and phrases. A 'clause' is a part that contains its own finite verb; for every finite verb in the sentence there is a clause. A part of a sentence that does not contain a finite verb form is a 'phrase'. For example, consider the sentence: 'Before writing an essay, or at least before writing the final version, you should draw up a plan of the essay and make sure that its parts are arranged in a logical way'. The string of words before the first comma is a phrase ('writing' is not a finite verb), the string before the second comma is another phrase, the rest consists of two clauses joined by 'and'. (In the second clause the subject and an auxiliary part of the verb are not explicitly stated, but they are clearly understood: 'and you should make sure ...'.) In this example the two clauses are both principal or main clauses -- neither is subordinated to the other. Many sentences have one main clause and one or more than one subordinate clause: e.g. in the sentence, 'Although your essay had a plan, the reader still could not follow your argument', 'the reader ... argument' is the principal clause. Non-principal or subordinate clauses are introduced by 'subordinating conjunctions', such as 'although', 'if', 'since', 'that', etc.

A sentence must have a least one principal clause, which must contain a finite verb.

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