READING: Istvan Hont: How to Write Brilliant Essays
Via Adam Tooze Chartbook
Via University of St. Andrews Institute of Intellectual History <https://www.intellectualhistory.net/thousand-manuscripts-blog/how-to-write-brilliant-essays>:
HOW TO WRITE BRILLIANT HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT: A 10 POINT GUIDE:
Openings are crucial. Plunge in with something substantive about the theory and text in question. Never begin with potted biography or history, or generalities about the meaning of life.
Get the balance right between exposition and criticism. Some people are over-eager to show their critical powers: avoid hatchet jobs; it shows lack of sympathetic understanding: your author may be wrong but he or she is not stupid. Other people, by contrast, are not eager enough to show their critical powers: avoid tame plot summaries which just summarise the contents of the text.
Impose a conceptual framework on your essay. Give clear direction to the argument, a sense of an unfolding of the implications of your key claims. Provide signposts to the reader.
Most political philosophers address not just politics narrowly conceived, but also ethics. epistemology, ontology, or theology. Show how these interconnect.
You cannot cover everything in an essay, but try to make allusions to the wider hinterland of your knowledge. The specific question should be specifically answered, but should not induce tunnel-vision.
Quote from the text, using brief phrases, integrated with your own sentences. Avoid the most boringly famous quotations. Avoid large chunks of displayed quotation. Cite specific chapters or sections of the text. Acknowledge your sources, both primary and secondary.
Get the balance right between text and context. The essay should be structured as an account of a theory and a text, but along the way you should allude to influences and circumstances and traditions of a political, intellectual, or biographical kind. Avoid large chunks of scene-setting; or, on the other hand, abstracted theory without a sense of time and place.
Texts have not only arguments but a rhetoric and style. Convey the flavour of a particular mental world by referring to the text's images, metaphors, illustrations, genres, and intellectual resources—scriptural, classical, or whatever.
Get the balance right between primary and secondary sources. Lean heavily toward the primary text. Never merely parade the views of others: show that you have read the text for yourself. Sometimes, however, you will need to refer to specific controversies or interpretations. Note that the secondary literature is often written by philosophers and political scientists as well as historians: they have different approaches.
The texts are not isolated islands of thought, not distant catalogues of arbitrary opinions. They take stands on issues which are continuous with modern political philosophy. Make connections and contrasts with other texts (and with present-day issues). But do this briefly and carefully: it is hard to do.