How To Write A Good Philosophy Paper: Write It The Way My Dad Eats A Pear

Well, my first philosophy paper is due in a couple of weeks. It's a critique of Plato's banishment of the poets in The Republic. It's gonna be hard.

After talking over the paper with my philosophy professor, I realized how philosophy is done. You start with an argument. Then you interrogate it. You break it down into all its parts. You think there are ten parts to it? Try again. There's probably thirty. Then you take each part and start hammering away it. See if it holds up. Ask all of the counter arguments. Wring it dry, exhaust it. And that’s only one part. You have twenty-nine to go. And you have to make sure parts one and two work together. Then one, two, and three. Then look at three and one. Then on to four. And so on.

When you're done you should have taken your argument and squeezed it for all it's worth. Made sure it stands up to anything and everything. When you think you've pursued and defended one line of thinking, think again. It can go further. And further.

Which is a lot like how my Dad eats a pear. Most of us just take that pear, start with one big bite, work our way around, head towards the tops and the bottoms, get most of the fleshy deliciousness out, look at the remaining in-tact core, then throw it way.

Not my Dad. He's from the old country. He fled World War II, came here as an immigrant 60 years ago. And for folks like him, you bring your hunger with you from the motherland.

So when my dad eats a pear, he eats EVERYTHING. Everything. You'll be at the dinner table with him, you'll glance up and the back of your brain will register that he's eating a pear, and then the next time you look over at him, the pear will be gone. On the plate will only the brown stem, and that little prickly start shaped bark from the bottom. That's it. All the rest has been eaten: the tough inner core, the seeds, the bitterest parts. Hey, those are good calories in there, how dare you let them go to waste.

So I've got to write this philosophy paper and take on Plato, and when I'm done, I better have left nothing but the stem and the tiny star-shaped bark from the bottom. On my plate. On the page. In my brain.