Characteristics of a good thesis sentence. It is specific and highly focused, not a vague generalization. It is unified, not just a list of unrelated items. It is interesting, sometimes even challenging or surprizing; don't be afraid to have a risky thesis, one that many people might be inclined to disagree with. It is not obviously or trivially true - it needs to be supported or argued for. It is not merely a statement of fact. And from the thesis sentence alone a reader gets a pretty good idea of what ideas or topics the rest of the paper must deal with. Example:
Thesis: In Book 1 of the Republic Socrates criticizes several people and ideas.
This is horribly vague.
"criticizes" - just how critical is that? Strong or weak, positive
or
negative criticizing?
Do the criticisms succeed in showing that the people or ideas are bad,
weak, wrong, or what?
And if they are successful, why and how do they succeed? If not,
why not? "several"
people - how many? If you can count, you can say how many!
If you
can read, you can state
their names! "ideas" - which ideas? Say what they are.
And it is trivial, factual,
self-evident. Anyone who's read Book 1 knows this thesis is true
-
it doesn't need any proof
or support.
It also lacks unity.
Criticizing a person and criticizing an idea are very different tasks.
Criticizing a person would
involve assessing that person's character, or abilities, or
accomplishments, etc.
Criticizing an idea would involve assessing its scope, consistency,
relations to other ideas,
usefulness for understanding or explaining things, and the like.
If this thesis were
made less vague (more specific) by stating which people and what
ideas, it would be far too
broad and ambitious. It would take a very long paper or a small
book to adequately deal
with all or most or many of Socrates' criticisms in Book 1.
So: this thesis needs to
be more specific, more debatable, more unified, and much more
narrowly focused.
Improved Thesis: In Book 1 Socrates' first attack on Polemarchus's definition of justice is unsuccessful because Socrates erroneously assumes that justice is a craft.
Here "criticizes" is replaced
by "attack," a more vivid and specific word. An attack is
definitely negative and
strong. The "first attack on Polemarchus's definition of justice."
That focuses on about two
pages (332c-333e) instead of all of Book 1: much better! But
the thesis says it is unsuccessful;
this is a bit of a surprize - what, the wise Socrates has
failed? On a first
reading, most people think Socrates succeeded, although he wasn't too
polite in the way he did
it. So this is a somewhat risky thesis; it definitely needs
support.
And the reason for Socrates'
failure is given: an erroneous assumption. Specifically, the
assumption that justice
is a craft. Obviously, the attack is directed at an idea, the definition,
not at Polemarchus as a
person.
From this improved thesis,
you can see pretty well what issues the rest of the paper will
have to deal with.
It will have to 1) explain Polemarchus's definition of justice; 2)
summarize and probably analyze
some details of Socrates' attack on the definition; 3) show
the reader why justice is
not a craft, and 4) elaborate a bit on why, without that mistaken
assumption, Socrates' attack
is unsuccessful. Notice how a well-stated thesis foreshadows
the content of the rest
of the paper; here you can envision a nice four-point outline,
probably one good paragraph
for each point. The concluding paragraph could wrap things
up by saying that if poor
Polemarchus had noticed the problem with Socrates' assumption,
he could have defended his
definition far better than he did (which was no defense at all).
Look at the papers from previous HON 102 students to see more thesis examples.
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