In academic writing, it is essential that you take a clear stance or position towards the material you incorporate into your essays. This helps you negotiate your own personal understanding and reading of the material, perhaps as a basis for an original contribution to the literature one day. In the meantime, it helps you avoid the “appeal to authority” fallacy, whereby we say something is true just based on the status of the person making the claim; tempting when you feel the author is more knowledgeable about a topic than you. You can develop your own stance or position by critically evaluating or responding to the sources. A critical evaluation need not be used to disagree with the source, and you may want to partially or wholly support or defend what the author argues. Try to think of your critical response as an assessment of BOTH the uses and the limits of what an author has to say (Harris 2006); to what extent can we share and/or apply their ideas? What do their ideas help us to see or hide from our view?
Critically evaluating a source
- Are there any counter / supporting arguments or evidence in the other sources you have read?
- Is there anything missing from the argument (implicit assumptions, hidden premises, missing data)?
- Are there any errors in the reasoning (formal / informal fallacies)?
- Is there sufficient empirical evidence or plausible proofs for the reasons given (data/warrants)?
- Can you think of any counter-examples or cases where the argument does / doesn’t work (rebuttals)?
- Are anyone’s views or ideas being misrepresented (straw man fallacy)?
- Where, how, and why might the author’s ideas have developed (origins)?
- On balance, what are the potential uses and limits of the source’s position (implications/consequences)?
Responses to the “uses” of an argument can:
- cite others’ similar or supporting view and ideas
- add extra supporting examples / cases / evidence
- deal with others’ criticisms / objections
- mention beneficial applications / implementations / implications of the recommendations
Responses to the “limits” of an argument can:
- cite others’ contrasting or critical questioning of the view
- explain what has been forgotten or ignored by the view and mention counter-examples / cases
- explain errors in reasoning / fallacies and/or any problems with the proof /evidence
- mention harms / drawbacks of implementing the recommendations
EXAMPLE RESPONSE:
Nevertheless, the suggestion that happiness can only exist under politically equal conditions misunderstands Aristotle and seems overgeneralized. Firstly, Adler assumes that happiness should necessarily be “achievable by all” (1984, 6). While this is a key demand of the American Declaration of Independence, and one we might agree with, it overlooks the fact that Aristotle, who elsewhere justified Greek slavery as “natural”, never argued that everyone ought to achieve happiness just because they could (Aristotle, quoted in Adler 1984, 6). Adler also seems to set up a false dichotomy when he argues that if only one person, the leader, achieves complete happiness, others below him cannot achieve happiness by definition. Jeremy Bentham (1907) makes a convincing case for a utilitarian ethics that measures and compares all the feelings of pleasure and displeasure felt by everyone in a society to find the total “level of … general happiness” (9). This implies that, while general happiness might be low (or very low) in an authoritarian or hierarchical state, this does not mean that happiness could not exist at all there. Therefore, Adler’s argument that human happiness can only be realized in an egalitarian society (Adler 1984, 7), while well-intended, seems exaggerated.
References
Adler, Mortimer J. 1984. Aristotle’s Ethics: The Theory of Happiness. New York: Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Bentham, Jeremy. 1907. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
KEY:
- Nevertheless, … = transition from summary paragraph
Adler’s suggestion that … is overstated = topic / concluding sentence - While this is a key demand of the American Declaration of Independence (etc.) = concessions
- … is based on an assumption that (etc.) = criticisms / responses
- “original text” = quotation marks to indicate where exact quotations from a source begin and end
- Adler … (1984, 6) = partial in-text Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) author-date citation (Year-of-publication, page-number-of-quote) because the author’s name was previously mentioned
- (9) = page number only on subsequent CMS citation of paraphrase from same source
- (Aristotle, quoted in Adler 1984, 6) = CMS in-text reference for an indirect citation of a source (i.e., one which was quoted in the source that you read)
- … = shows that words have been cut from the quote of the original source
- Adler, Mortimer J. 1984. … = CMS end-text reference (for a book) (Author-surname, Author-forename(s). Year-of-publication. Title-of-book. City: Publisher.)
Notes:
- An analytical summary is an assessed task in ENG 101, and these skills are essential in ENG 102.
- Indirect citation of sources is not recommended, and consultation of the original is usually preferable. This is often not possible in ENG 101, however, where you are limited to citing the provided texts.
See Also:
References
Adler, Mortimer J. 1984. Aristotle’s Ethics: The Theory of Happiness. New York: Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Bentham, Jeremy. 1907. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Harris, Joseph. 2006. Rewriting : How to Do Things with Texts. Utah State University Press.