The Essay – Guest post by AC Grayling
It is an honour for me to welcome Professor A. C. Grayling CBE MA DPhil (Oxon) FRSL, the Founder and Principal of the New College of the Humanities (NCH).
Professor Grayling is widely regarded as one of the most prominent philosophers worldwide. Before founding NCH, he was Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London, and is also a supernumerary fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford, where he taught for many years.
I was fortunate enough to work with him from 2017 to 2020, in my capacity as Head of the Law Faculty at the New College of the Humanities. I would like to take this opportunity to thank him for his guidance and sage mentorship, and for the many things he taught me about the academic world and modern education in particular.
Being the author of (inter alia) half a dozen published volumes of essays, and the biographer of the English language’s greatest essayist William Hazlitt, it is no surprise that Professor Grayling’s post is full of invaluable insights on essay-writing. Enjoy!
The Essay
by AC Grayling
Among the most accurate but least helpful definitions of the essay is: a short prose work on any subject. What does ‘short’ mean? A good answer is anything from a few dozen to thirty thousand words. After the latter you are probably writing a book. ‘Prose’ is unambiguous, though many essays are poetical in style and feel. ‘Any subject’ Yes: that is the beauty of the essay. But the manner and the form of the essay varies according to the subject matter; a dreamy reminiscence of a stroll through a summer landscape needs less structure than an essay on metaphysics or the principal points in R v Smith.
For present purposes let us distinguish between the more and the less structured kinds of essay as ‘literary’ and ‘discursive’ respectively. This is a little unkind to discursive essays, which can be high in literary quality, and indeed profit from being written with elegance as well as clarity and concision, because they are more effective in communicating their points therefore. But I mean to signal the difference between essays that are meditative or descriptive from those that set out to make, examine or criticise a point. In academic and professional life the latter – the discursive essay – is the norm, and most often goes by the name of report, dissertation or thesis.
The optimal form of the essay in either its literary or discursive kinds is: a brilliant head, a strong body, and a recapitulating tail. The brilliant head grasps the reader’s attention and sets the scene for what follows. The body of either kind of essay unfolds the promise made by the head; the recapitulating tail takes one back to the head either (in the discursive essay) by concluding or summarising, or (in the literary essay) by rounding off the whole in a neat or allusive or surprising way.
The difference between the two kinds of essay lies in the body. A literary essay’s body can be like the laying out of picture-cards on a table, more or less in any sequence unless a narrative is involved, in which case the narrative dictates the sequence. A discursive essay requires logic in its sequence, for example: proposition, evidence for it, rebuttal of criticism of it, identification of what follows from it. A logical order of argument, and the provision of support for claims made, is essential to the discursive essay; it otherwise fails in its purpose.
One of the best ways to become a good essay writer is to read good essays, taking conscious note of the many successful methods employed by their writers. If there is one tip I have found invaluable in my own career as an essayist, it is this: never begin an essay with the word ‘the’. This powerful little tip forces you to think how you are going to start your essay – and it will make a great difference to how you both continue and conclude it.
