Tackling the Philosophy Essay
A Guide to Writing Philosophy
The following guide to writing a philosophy essay is intended to highlight key features of a good essay, common pitfalls and problem areas, and strategies for formulating analysing typical philosophical essay questions. Importantly, the guide is heavily stocked with annotated examples which help to demonstrate what works well, and what does not. It was developed by myself and three other authors (Claire Benn, Christina Cameron, and Shyane Siriwardena) while we were graduate students, and were looking for ways to help our students with essay writing.
We have published the guide under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. This is so that there can be collaboration and development of this work and so that it can be shared with all those who are interested.
Please contact the authors at ttpestudentguide@gmail.com if you have any questions or suggestions for development. We look forward to receiving your feedback on this ongoing project.
Amanda M. Cawston 