This essay is to CHALLENGE Michael Sandel’s argument made in “The Case Against Perfection. Please follow my instructions and please do not offer me any bidding if you have not read the book or do not have the book on hand.
NO OUTSIDE SOURCES ALLOWED
MUST BE USING SANDEL’S BOOK “THE CASE AGAINST PERFECTION” ONLY
The task.
For this essay, you are to analyze Michael Sandel’s argument in The Case against Perfection and make and argue a claim about it.
In order for it to be an argument and not just a collection of observations or descriptions, your essay must first present a question or a problem about the text.
A well-structured essay will also take time and space to summarize the text being analyzed. This means not only that you are pointing out the main ideas, but that you are presenting as well the various good reasons that the author has for having these ideas (for if they’re not good ideas, why do we need an argument to debunk them? Why bother?). That is, before we can trust your analysis of an argument or a text, you have first to show that you thoroughly understand its ideas, the ideas behind the ideas, etc.
The bulk of your essay, however, will be devoted to analyzing the argument presented by Sandel. You need, for example, to show how the kinds of examples, evidence, and logic he uses lead you to make your argument. Thus, if your argument has something to do with, for example, false causal connections between different elements of Sandel’s claims, your analysis of the evidence has to show that this is truly the case. If your argument has to do with erroneous assumptions (about the way human nature works, the way society functions, or whatever), your analysis of the evidence has to show that this is the case. If your argument has to do with showing that there are deeper consequences than Sandel acknowledges, you have to show how his ideas do indeed lead to these consequences. And so on.
The goal.
What should emerge from your essay? That is, after having read your essay, how should your reader have been moved from what he or she thought before having read your essay?
You should have presented an argument that makes a point about the text that is not obvious – for if what you are arguing were obvious, why do you need to argue it? You should have, that is to say, made an argument that feels like an argument, and not just a restatement of the (obvious) facts of the text itself. Instead, your argument should have done some intellectual work in making what was perhaps initially unclear about the text or its claims clearer, or the intellectual work of showing how something superficial about the text’s claims needed to be deepened or made more complex or sophisticated. Or, again, your argument might have shown us how something ignored or made tangential is actually central or significant to the issues at hand. In any of these cases, your goal as writer of this essay – as is your goal generally as a scholar and thinker – is to have “helped” your reader come to a better understanding of not only the text, but also the issues with which the text is dealing. In other words, you should have taught us a new way to see or understand Sandel’s argument.
