Guidelines for Presentations

The period from 1600-1800 in Europe was the most vibrant period in the history of philosophy, and the major philosophers we focus on in this course represent only a small fraction of the philosophers who developed exciting and well-developed philosophies worth taking seriously today. Thus a portion of most classes will be devoted to a presentation on another major modern philosopher. This will give each of you a relatively easy way to get a sense for the breadth of philosophy during this period, and it will give those presenting a chance to dive in depth into at least one other philosopher over the course of the semester. In addition, each of you will have the opportunity to prepare and offer a philosophical presentation to your peers. The maximum length of these presentations is the length of a TED talk, and you should look online at advice for preparing TED talks to get some advice about preparing these talks. Among the most important advice is to prepare your content well and to Practice! Practice! Practice! so that the presentation is delivered smoothly and within the time limit. You will be cut off after 18 minutes, even if you are not finished with your presentation.

For each class day, there is at least one philosopher listed as a presentation option. Those in bold are philosophers that I particularly hope people will present on. If you would like to present on a philosopher not listed on syllabus who falls within the period we are studying (roughly 1500-1850), let me know and we can arrange a good date for presenting on that philosopher. If more than one student wishes to present on a given philosopher, the first two who inform me of their preference can present on the philosopher as a pair.

At least 48 hours before your presentation, you should submit a 2000-word (minimum) paper with the form of a philosophical encyclopedia entry on your philosopher. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is an excellent model of what these entries should look like. As with those articles, you should include a bibliography of at least three non-internet-based* secondary sources on your philosopher, and you should read and refer in your entry to at least two of these. (By “non-internet-based,” I mean scholarly sources that have a reference other than a web address. You are free to use books and articles that are available online through Penrose library.)

These presentations are the main exception to my “no secondary sources” rule for the course. For your presentation, you can and should make ample use of scholarly resources to better understand the philosopher you are presenting on. I also very strongly recommend that you visit my office hours the week preceding your presentation to talk with me about any confusions or lingering questions you have about your presentation, or just to run ideas by me.

While the papers associated with each presentation should give a relatively comprehensive overview of the philosopher, your presentation can focus on one or two more important or interested aspects of their philosophy, if you prefer to do this in order to provide more depth in those areas. In general, those presentations should include at least some biography, but they should focus on laying out the most important philosophical insights in a clear and engaging way. Ideally, you should give not only the most important philosophical claims made by your philosopher but also the most important arguments for those claims.

The final paper for the course requires each student to incorporate a philosopher on whom they heard a presentation, so your presentation should try to show your classmates how the philosopher you are presenting on could help them think about philosophical issues they care about, giving ideas for how they might use your philosopher in their final paper.