Introduction

Structure

• We will meet in my office, once per week, for each week of Michaelmas term and for the first two weeks of Hilary Term.
• Prior to each meeting, you should submit (i) an essay answering the question assigned for that week and (ii) a typed up body of condensed notes from the reading you've completed.
• The essay should be no more than 1400 words long and should be submitted as a Google Doc. (You are welcome to write your essay using a different word processor. But once you finish writing it, you should create a Google Doc and paste what you wrote there.)
• The notes can be of whatever form is most useful for you. I find that a 'map' of the different philosophical positions, with each position labelled with the main arguments for (and each counterarguments against) to be particularly useful; I lay out these arguments for and against just using bullet points. Again, they should be uploaded as a Google Doc along with your essay.
• This essay length is short: that's because I'm looking for quality, not quantity. If you haven't redrafted the essay twice before submitting it, then you probably aren't investing enough time in polishing the essay.
• For each topic, you'll submit an original essay and set of notes.
• You should share your essay and notes with me (william.macaskill@philosophy.ox.ac.uk) no later than 5pm the day before the tutorial. For example, if we are meeting on Thursday at 3pm, you should submit the essay by Wednesday at 5pm. I will treat late submissions as non-submissions and will not read them.

Introductory readings

• Kymlicka, Will, Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Useful resources

General

• MacAskill, W., How to Do Well in Philosophy, part 1.
• MacAskill, W., How to Do Well in Philosophy, part 2.

Research

• Google Scholar
• Oxford Libraries
• PhilPapers
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Writing

• Lenman, J. How to Write a Crap Philosophy Essay.
• Pryor, J., Guidelines on Writing a Philosophy Paper.

For more resources on writing, see the final section of 'How to Do Well in Philosophy, part 1', listed above.