| Writing an Honours Thesis in Philosophy |
1. What is expected of an Honours Thesis ? The point of writing an honours thesis is to develop your capacity for independent, sustained research and to demonstrate to the examiners your ability to pursue further, higher-level research in philosophy. A good honours thesis is therefore expected to fulfill (at least) four main requirements: i) The thesis presents a clear, coherent argument. Remember, a thesis is not a literature survey, it is an argument. In writing a thesis, you are attempting to present a particular perspective on a topic, or to persuade your reader to accept your point of view. For this reason, you must state and present your argument and its various steps as clearly and coherently as possible. In your Introduction (which you should write after you have written the rest of the thesis), give a broad outline of your argument, stating what contribution each of the chapters will make to the argument. In the Introduction it is also helpful to give some indication of the scope of your concerns in the thesis – what you have included and why, and what you have omitted from your discussion, and why. At the beginning and end of each of your chapters, and at various crucial stages in the body of the chapter, make it clear how your discussion in the chapter relates to and supports your overall argument in the thesis. ii) The thesis demonstrates a familiarity with, and understanding of, the relevant literature. Although a thesis is not a literature survey, you are expected to show that you have researched the literature relevant to your topic. The reason for this is not merely to demonstrate your capacity for bibliographic research, but more importantly to show that you are aware of the philosophical issues raised by your topic. Except in rare cases of genius, it is only possible to make a contribution to a field by becoming acquainted with, and addressing, what has already been written in that field. iii) The thesis demonstrates a capacity for originality. This is a fairly tricky thing to define at honours level, but generally it means that you have approached your topic with a degree of philosophical independence and insight. Such independence and insight may manifest itself in a number of ways, for example, in a novel, or insightful interpretation of a thinker; in an argument which convincingly shows interesting connections between different thinkers, or different issues; in a clear exegesis of a complex topic; or in the development of a sustained critical perspective. From the examiner's point of view, the difference between a thesis of first class honours standard and a piece of work of good second class, division one standard, is the difference between a thesis which demonstrates originality in one or more of these ways and a thesis which handles the topic in a competent, but not particularly interesting, novel, or critical way. Having said this however, it should be made clear that your examiners will not expect you to revolutionize a field, or to make a significant contribution to the field, and you should not have such expectations of yourself. iv) The thesis is written clearly, understandably, and logically. By honours level you are expected to have a pretty good command of the English language and of philosophical writing. Theses which are poorly expressed, full of grammatical or spelling mistakes, or unnecessarily difficult to understand will suffer, no matter how interesting their philosophical content. Above all, avoid the temptation to use 'jargon' terms without explanation, even if this sort of thing seems to proliferate in the literature (this is especially important for those of you writing theses in the areas of poststructuralist or feminist theory). 2. Some Hints To Help You in Thesis Writing i) Don't be too ambitious. Writing a thesis will of course seem pretty pointless unless you are interested in the topic of your research. However, keen interest in the topic can also be a source of potential problems, because it often gives rise to a desire to want to be able to say all that there is to say about the topic. It is sometimes hard to do, but you should try to keep a realistic perspective on your thesis. Remember, fourth year is primarily a training to enable you to go on and do further work in philosophy. You should not regard it as the culmination of your life's work. ii) Start by doing a literature survey. This helps to fire your interest and also gets you familiar with the various key figures, debates, and points of view in a field. We will have one session early in first semester devoted entirely to library search techniques and resources in philosophy. iii) Choose a topic you can manage and settle on your topic quickly. This point is connected with the above advice about checking your ambition. As you begin to do the preliminary bibliographic research for your thesis, you will realise that there is a lot of literature that you are interested in, or that may be relevant to your interests, and that there are a myriad of issues you could explore. This may lead you to think that, if you are going to write anything of any consequence, you will need to know about, and have something to say about, all the issues that have some bearing on your interests. Or, it may make you want to chop and change your topic, as you find out more and more. Avoid both the temptation to choose a huge topic, and the temptation to change topics constantly. Both temptations will lead to chaos and confusion. Remember, you have less than a year. On this whole issue, you will need to rely to quite a large extent on the advice of your supervisor. It is up to him/her to help you delimit the scope of your concerns in the thesis and to decide which issues within the literature it is important that you address, and which you can safely ignore. Sometimes this may lead to a bit of a tussle between you and your supervisor. You may feel for example that s/he is trying to narrow down your interests too much, or trying to chop out too much of what you regard as essential. In cases where you have come to have a better knowledge of some aspects of the literature than her/him, you may be right. However, your supervisor is also more likely to have a better idea of what is manageable/relevant and what is not. Discussion and negotiation is the best way of sorting out such differences. iv) Don't be too broad. One of the results of trying to do too much is that your thesis can turn into a kind of philosophical journalese, which does little in the way of detailed analysis, makes broad generalisations, and reaches sweeping conclusions. This kind of writing often does not make for a good thesis. It is important that your discussion is focused and well-argued, and to achieve this you need a clearly-defined topic and a structured, sustained logical argument. v) Don't get it right, get it written. This is not meant to be taken literally (of course we want you to get it right!), but is meant as advice for those who procrastinate in writing. Especially after you have done a lot of reading, and are getting to know a field quite well, you may feel the temptation to put off writing because you feel you have not yet read enough. To be sure, there is a problem with trying to write when you have not read enough, but there is also the obverse problem of thinking that you cannot write until you have read absolutely everything that has been written on a topic. You may feel sure that the articles/books you have not read are crucial, and that they will contain the answers you have been looking for. Occasionally this is true, but it is also true that if you read too much before you have written anything yourself it becomes much harder to work out what you think and what you want to say. It is always useful to try to write something, no matter how rudimentary, after you have done a substantial chunk of reading, both in order to assimilate what you have read, and to help you work out what you yourself think. You will find that these rudimentary notes provide you with a starting point for your chapters. When it comes to writing chapters, it is important that you keep to some kind of schedule, and move on to the next one when you have a working draft of the one you have been working on. Whatever you do, don't write and re-write the first chapter. You can always go back and work on it again once you have a draft, but the more you succumb to the temptation to get the first one perfect, the harder it will be to move on to the next one. vi) Keep a complete and accurate bibliographic record of what you have read. It is easy to do at the time and makes the business of compiling a bibliography a relatively easy, if somewhat tedious chore. If you don't keep a working bibliography, footnoting and referencing can turn into a nightmare. vii) Some Common Doubts and Delusions. Don't despair if: you think your thesis is boring, irrelevant, a re-hash of the literature, either obvious or false or both, insignificant, trivial. It may be some of these things, perhaps all of them, but it is more likely that you have lost the ability to view it in perspective, which is what usually happens when you have been working on the same thing for a while. You should be concerned if: you think your thesis is a work of genius, about to revolutionize the field, the best thing ever written on the topic. It is just possible that you are right, but .... However, you shouldn't be unduly worried if your thesis does not reach such standards 3. Relations with your supervisor. As you know, you have quite a large hand in selecting your supervisor, and the honours co-ordinator also tries to make sure that your supervisor is someone who is both competent to supervise your thesis and with whom you get along. During the course of the year you may however run into difficulties in your relations with your supervisor. For example, you may feel you are not getting enough supervision, or that your supervisor is being too directive, or not directive enough, or is unsympathetic with your project, etc. If this happens don't give up your project, or assume it is all your fault, or all their fault. Try to talk to your supervisor about what you perceive to be the difficulties. If that fails, talk to the Honours Co-ordinator. If your supervisor is the Honours Co-ordinator, approach another member of staff with whom you feel comfortable and raise the matter with her/him. It may be easier for another member of staff to discuss the matter openly with your supervisor than for you to do so. 4. Relations with your fellow students. Your fellow students may be both a source of irritation and a help to you. It is in your best interests to try to minimise the irritation and to develop a network of support amongst yourselves. In philosophy, perhaps more than in some other disciplines, discussion and intellectual exchange are crucial. If you can get such discussion going amongst yourselves, it will make all the difference to your experience of fourth year.
Written by A/Prof Catriona Mackenzie last updated 23/4/07 |