One thing we all come to understand over time is that influential ideas are rarely formed in the
mind of a single individual; rather, they are formed by thinkers playing off of each other’s
thoughts, theories, and discoveries. Sometimes scholars create ideas by engaging each other
directly (through verbal exchanges, email messages, or memos), but they often exchange ideas in
more indirect ways. A scholar can respond to a published text that has been in circulation in an
academic community for years, perhaps even decades or centuries. Because written texts can
span miles and millennia, a philosopher of this decade can, for example, “listen to†(read) and
“speak to†(write about) Plato in the form of an essay or an article. Of course, Plato will not be
able to listen to the modern thinker’s reply, but other living scholars can, and they too can begin
to make contributions to on-going conversations about topics, ideas, and questions that remain
matters for investigation or debate.
This progression’s essay requirement asks you to enter into conversation with published
scholars. In your essay you must reproduce and respond to a scholarly conversation in light of
these questions:
o What are the larger implications of this conversation?
o What are some of the different positions in this conversation?
o What is your response to these viewpoints?
o What is your contribution to the conversation?
Your instructor may require you to do some outside research for this essay, or s/he may provide
you with texts that represent some of the key positions within a particular discussion or debate.
You will want to use these texts to initiate and inform your argument. In other words, your
purpose should not be to cram as many sources as you can into your essay; you do not want other
writers’ voices to drown out your own.
By the end of this progression, you should understand the following key terms: conversation,
claim, and argument. You should also understand the basic concepts of formal academic
structure. You will be expected to follow MLA documentation, to perform surface editing and
deep editing, and to write a planning document.
Exercise #1: Argument and Analysis
The purpose of this first exercise is to encourage you to practice an open-minded but cautious
way of engaging with the claims of other scholars.
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For this exercise you will turn a curious yet skeptical gaze onto one of the essays that you
have read for this progression. First, even if you have reservations about the author’s ideas,
make sense of her/his argument by explaining it in your own words. What is the writer’s
position? What are the essential claims here? What evidence does the author offer for these
claims? Next play devil’s advocate: which aspects of the essay sound wrong to you? Does
the evidence persuade you? Which assumptions or conclusions strike you as problematic or
unreasonable?