How to write a philosophy paper

The body of your paper should include: (1) an exposition of the views, concepts, and arguments to be discussed, (2) your own arguments in support of your thesis and claims, and (3) a consideration of objections and counterarguments along with your responses to them.

Each body paragraph should present only a single idea or set of related ideas, and each should bring your reader one step closer to accepting your thesis and the cogency of your arguments. Because each body paragraph should play a part in the defense of your thesis, you should be mindful of the overall organization of your body paragraphs. A good way to test the strength of both your topic sentences and your argument as a whole is to construct an outline of your paper using only your paper’s thesis statement and the topic sentences contained in the body of your essay. This outline should contain the logical core of your paper's argument, and it should follow a clear logical pattern.

The first step in writing an effective body paragraph is the construction of its topic sentence. Just as your thesis statement acts as the controlling idea behind your entire paper, a topic sentence acts as the controlling idea that binds together the sentences within a paragraph. The sentences within a paragraph should explain, develop, or support the idea/claim that was introduced in the topic sentence. (Although most paragraphs should have a topic sentence, not every paragraph needs one. For instance, a topic sentence won't be needed in a paragraph that continues to develop an idea that was introduced by the topic sentence of the previous paragraph. And although a topic sentence needn’t always appear as the first sentence in a paragraph, it is often most effective when it does.)