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Inquisitive Essay
The topic of your essay is a question, of your creation, whose response will be the substance of your essay.
Your essay will consist of four elements:
Statement of your question, its significance, how it will be treated (secondary author), and
suggestion of direction in which you are headed;
Machiavellis response;
Secondary authors response in contrast to Machiavellis;
Your evaluation of these two responses; and finally
Your response.
In your first paragraph you must: 1) explicitly state your question and its significance (what is at stake), 2) make clear your secondary author, and 3) indicate the trajectory of your inquiry. Style and grace of expression are goals, but all these points must be satisfied.
In Part 2, you show how Machiavelli answered your question. In Part 3, you examine how one of our secondary authors offered an alternative response that explicitly or implicitly critiques Machiavellis answer to your question. Finally, in Part 4, you evaluate the relative merits and shortcomings of each of these two responses and then in the final paragraph(s) conclude with your own answer to the question which can always be in the form of yet another question.
Elaboration
In Part 2, interpret or reconstruct how Machiavelli answers your question. This includes articulating the arguments Machiavelli advances in support of his conclusion. Guided by the intellectual virtue of charitable interpretation, support your reconstruction of Machiavellis argument with textual evidence (citing the text for every claim you ascribe to Machiavelli, whether it be a direct quote or paraphrase). Part 3 should have the same form as Part 2, but instead of reconstructing Machiavellis argument, it should be a reconstruction of a position advanced by one of the secondary authors we have read (Wolin, Berlin, Cassier).
Part 4 should be slightly larger in size than the parts 2 and 3. In it, evaluate the cogency of the respective authors answer to your question and the arguments advanced to support it. Remember: assessing the arguments strength is more important than evaluating the arguments conclusion. Your critique and evaluation must always advance explicit critical strategies of your own, most often in the form of:
1) Calling into question implicit premises,
2) Counterexamples to Universal Generalizations,
3) Breaking the connection between if-then premises,
4) Drawing attention to further implications of a premise that are doubtful
For more on these strategies see the material on Logic and Critiquing Arguments posted on the Course Resources webpage.
Imagine that this essay is the first salvo in a conversation between three intellectuals on an important question. The three participants are you, Machiavelli, and the author of the secondary work. In Parts 2 and 3, you faithfully reconstruct the answers advanced by the other two thinkers to your question. Your response to both fills out the final section of your essay.
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