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How to Become an Exceptional Writer by Studying Philosophy

A comprehensive examination of how engaging in philosophical analysis will make you a much stronger thinker and writer

In this piece I’m going to argue and demonstrate through the use of various examples that if you’re serious about becoming a stronger writer, you should invest time into the study of philosophy.

Engaging with philosophical puzzles and ways of thinking will significantly improve your capacity to think through, make sense of, and write about your ideas in clear, logical, and systematic ways.

It will bring you a clarity of thought and expression you might not believe you can actually achieve.

Because what follows is a very detailed and rather intellectually demanding analysis, here’s a preview of the key elements of my arguments:

1. Writing is the externalization of thinking: It’s the attempt to make manifest, to make available to others, the internal conversations taking place inside our own heads. Consequently, exceptional writing is fundamentally the product of exceptional thinking.
2. Systematic, clear, and logical writing emerges only from systematic, clear, and logical thinking: Learning how to carefully and methodically think through your ideas and make sense of them is a prerequisite to conveying your thoughts to others in convincing, engaging, and intelligible ways.
3. Philosophical study is the paramount method for cultivating the power to think critically and, therefore, to write effectively: Because philosophy is the search for knowledge via the use of argumentation, logic, and relentless questioning, it’s the activity that’s best suited to helping us refine both how we think and the matters about which we think.

Engaging in philosophical analysis will help you become a much more skilled writer if you put in the time and effort required to learn what philosophy has to teach you.

To demonstrate this, later in this article I’m going to explore three pairs of foundational philosophical concepts I believe all non-fiction writers should understand and apply (even if only indirectly) in order to become truly exceptional at their craft.

Table of Contents (clickable)
1. The Relationship Between Philosophy and Writing
1.1 Where Should I Start If I’m New to Philosophy?
1.2 Why Should Writers Care About Platonic Dialogues and Other Works of Philosophy?
1.3 Introductory Example of Philosophical Analysis: Opioid Overdoses in Western Canada
2 Philosophical Concepts 1: Definition and Essence
2.1 Example 1 of Definition and Essence: Gender-Based Violence
2.2 Example 2 of Definition and Essence: A Fictional Character’s Quest for Vengeance
3 Philosophical Concepts 2: Appearance versus Reality
3.1 Example 1 of Appearance versus Reality: An All-Out ‘War on Drugs’
3.2 An Alternative Take On Appearance versus Reality
3.3 Example 2 of Appearance versus Reality: Opium Production in Afghanistan
3.4 Example 3 of Appearance versus Reality: Orthodox Marxism
4 Philosophical Concepts 3: Objective versus Subjective
4.1 Example of Objective versus Subjective: “This Is What Canadians Want!”
5. Summary

The Relationship Between Philosophy and Writing

Without exception, writing begins inside the mind. Before a single word is ever written or typed out, it begins as a thought.

The intellectual act of conceptualizing an idea precedes the practical act of putting that idea to paper or screen.

Disorganized, jumbled, and disconnected thinking produces disorganized, jumbled, and disconnected writing.

Conversely, world-class thinking produces world-class writing.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about writing in the last 15 years, it’s this:

Exceptional writing is fundamentally grounded in exceptional thinking.

How, then, do we improve our thinking?

We study philosophy.

Philosophy is the most effective intellectual system human beings have developed thus far for spotting bullshit (i.e., flawed ideas) and showing why it stinks so bad (i.e., why such ideas are mistaken).

In more formal terms,

philosophy is the attempt to use reason, logic, and argumentation to question, ‘sort through’, make sense of, and reconfigure every thought that enters the mind.

Philosophy teaches us how to use slow, methodical, and analytical thinking to ‘take apart’ an idea and critically assess everything about it.

This includes questioning its foundational assumptions and implications, understanding its evolution over time, and tracing out its connections to power.

As John Campbell famously put it,

“[p]hilosophy is thinking in slow motion. It breaks down, describes and assesses [intellectual] moves we ordinarily make at great speed[.] … It then becomes evident that alternatives [to our current beliefs] are possible.”

Philosophy provides us with tools and methods to become highly sophisticated thinkers by demanding

1. extreme attention to detail at all times
2. a commitment to the systematic ‘processing’ of each element of a given idea, theory, or topic.

This unwavering insistence on meticulous and careful thinking enhances our powers of skeptical examination and logical reasoning.

Fundamentally, philosophical study teaches us how to intelligently answer the all-important question, “Does this make sense?”

Whether we’re consciously aware of it or not, every aspect of writing involves asking whether some given thing makes sense:

• Technical matters → Does this phrase make sense grammatically? Should I use single or double quotations here? Would it make sense to move these sentences to a different paragraph?
• Logical matters → Does my conclusion follow from the key arguments I’ve established? Has this theory been used in a consistent way? Does the author’s commitment to x (e.g., tough-on-crime initiatives) undermine their promise to do y (e.g., implement only evidence-based policy)?
• Ethical matters → Should I quote this source if doing so means compromising the source’s identity? Can I legitimately explore certain medical evidence in this piece whilst purposely ignoring other findings?

Becoming better at making sense of things is fundamental to improving as a writer.

Philosophical study is the gateway to developing this enhanced understanding.

Where Should I Start If I’m New to Philosophy?

First, I suggest enrolling in a reputable Introduction to Philosophy course at a recognized college or university.

If organized properly and taught by a qualified instructor, a Philosophy 101 course should introduce you to, and help you to think about, topics like the following:

• What is philosophy?
• What can we do with philosophy?
• What is ontology, epistemology, logic, argumentation, knowledge, reality, essence, cause, meaning, evidence, etc.?

Of course, enrolling in a formal philosophy course isn’t possible for everybody.

If you can’t — or simply don’t want to — take a formal course, I strongly encourage you to begin your philosophical journey by examining the works of the Ancient Greeks, which represent the beginning of Western philosophy.

Starting with Thales and the Pre-Socratics and then moving on to Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle is an excellent strategy for studying the origins of the defining ideas, questions, and problems that philosophers (and everyday people) have been examining for more than 2,500 years.

If you’re pressed for time, you can skip the Pre-Socratics and jump straight into Plato’s Dialogues (see below).

In one way or another, the issues the Ancient Greeks examined and the ‘solutions’ they offered represent the foundations of nearly all of Western philosophy up to the present day.

Studying not only what these thinkers analyzed but also how they thought about the puzzles under investigation will teach you how to slowly and carefully work through and better understand ideas — and that will allow you to write more effectively.

Here are six philosophy books I wholeheartedly recommend:

1. Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy: From Thales to Aristotle — a ‘gold standard’ introductory textbook on Ancient Greek philosophy (this is where you should start)
2. Plato: Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo — five defining Platonic dialogues, each of which is a fantastic demonstration of philosophy in action as well as a relatively easy read
3. Nicomachean Ethics: Translation, Introduction, and Commentary — a comprehensive reproduction of, and analytical commentary on, one of Aristotle’s most important treatises, which explores the complex question, “What is happiness/human flourishing?”
4. The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, Vol. 1 and The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, Vol.2 — the definitive collection of Aristotle’s known writings
5. Neoplatonic Philosophy: Introductory Readings — one of the most important texts on Platonic philosophy after the deaths of Plato and Aristotle (this is where Platonic philosophy began to compete with, and be influenced by, Christian thought)
6. Hellenistic Philosophy: Introductory Readings — a fantastic collection of works from the Epicureans, the Stoics, and the Skeptics.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEoP) offers 1,500+ first-rate articles on philosophy, all of which are free and peer reviewed:

• Table of Contents — alphabetical listing of every entry on the SEoP
• Pre-Socratic Philosophy — main entry for philosophers who came before Socrates (including Thales, the ‘founder’ of Western philosophy)
• Socrates — main entry for Socratic philosophy
• Plato (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) — key entries for Platonic philosophy
• Aristotle (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) — key entries for Aristotelian philosophy.

If you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed and you’re still unsure where or how to begin, I suggest either 1) buying one or both of the first two books I’ve listed above and starting there or 2) reading through the SEoP’s entires for the Pre-Socratics and Socrates and then progressing to Plato.

Why Should Writers Care About Platonic Dialogues and Other Works of Philosophy?

Philosophical texts like Plato’s dialogues on love, justice, and courage show us, in painstaking detail, how to systematically think through an idea, question, or argument from beginning to end.

Examining a given topic in a step-by-step, logical manner is a surprisingly complex and intellectually thrilling task, one that many people struggle to undertake effectively.

Only once you’ve deconstructed an idea (i.e., revealed its assumptions, errors, and influences) and put it back together again with a deeper sense of what it means and why it matters can you write about it coherently and persuasively.

Plato’s Republic (1, 2) and Euthyphro (1, 2) are two brilliant demonstrations of how to think carefully and systematically about complex, vital life questions.

Republic is dedicated to answering the seemingly simple question, “What is justice?”

It represents Plato’s attempt to make sense of what turn out to be incredibly complicated and difficult questions about the meaning, different forms, and production of justice, certain elements of human psychology, social and political divisions and responsibilities, and other crucial matters.

Plato undertakes a similar project in Euthyphro, wherein he, through the character of Socrates, attempts to establish a valid definition of piety.

This proves to be a very difficult puzzle to solve: Each time a potential definition is offered, one or more insurmountable problems are revealed.

As a result, the characters in the dialogue are forced to try to come up with a new formulation after each prior suggestion is rejected as untenable.

Plato’s works and Ancient Greek philosophy as a whole are dedicated to the unforgiving search for valid arguments and definitions capable of standing up to vicious criticism (from oneself and from others).

The ways in which Plato, Aristotle, the Neoplatonists, and the Epicureans, Stoics, and Skeptics each engage with intellectual puzzles vary, but they all share in common a commitment to rigorous thinking, the precise use of logic and evidence, and the careful consideration of ideas.

This approach is emblematic of how the best writers articulate, develop, and defend their own claims.

As a writer, you must critically question every choice you make — conceptually, grammatically, organizationally, stylistically, etc. — so you can not only express yourself clearly but also effectively thwart attacks from others.

Having written at least several million words over the past 15 years, I’ve come to believe the following:

There’s no better way to develop the capacity to think — and therefore to write — clearly than ‘struggling alongside’ thinkers like Plato and Aristotle as they attempt to formulate intelligible answers to some of life’s most interesting and confusing questions.

It’s not the specifics of their solutions that matter to us but rather how they arrive at such solutions; keep this in mind as you go forward in your own journey into philosophy.

Now that you know what philosophy is, why philosophy is essential to writing, and which philosophical resources you should start reading, let’s do philosophy by actively working through various practical examples and looking at three sets of foundational philosophical concepts.

First, though, let’s look at a brief example of philosophical analysis.

Introductory Example of Philosophical Analysis: Opioid Overdoses in Western Canada

As a preview of the kind of critical analysis in which philosophical thinking allows you to engage, consider the following hypothetical example.

Although this example is fictional, it’s based on the all-too-real circumstances of death and despair currently surrounding opioid overdoses in Western Canada (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).

Imagine that the Premier of British Columbia were to give the following televised speech:

“The opioid crisis is now a full-blown epidemic. British Columbian citizens are dying from opioid-related overdoses at numbers that far exceed any other cause of death in this province. We know that 95% of people who try heroin or fentanyl become life-long addicts, and of those, 85% die of drug overdoses within five years of starting to use drugs. People don’t want to hear this, but there’s no cure for opioid addiction. Have you ever met a hardcore addict who got and stayed clean? I certainly haven’t. They don’t exist.

The time has come for a new strategy to our drug problem. We must put law enforcement at the front of this very real war for survival. No longer can we rely on permissive policies that allow people to use illegal drugs in the streets whenever they want to without consequence. Canadians are demanding a hardline approach against heroin and fentanyl addicts: no more safe consumption sites and no more lax laws! Enough is enough already!”

A mind trained in philosophical examination would demand answers to the following kinds of questions in response to the Premiere’s speech.

1. On what evidence is the Premier basing his claims?

Many of his statements alleged that the world is a certain way, such as

• 95% of people who try heroin or fentanyl become life-long addicts
• no cure exists for opioid addiction
• Canadians don’t support safe consumption sites.

We need to determine at least two things here.

First, do the existing facts support these assertions?

Second, what kinds of research have been done on these issues (academic studies, opinion polls, etc.) and by whom (scientists, policy experts, think-tank representatives, government officials, etc.)?

Only once we’ve gathered answers to these kinds of questions can we legitimately assess whether the Premiere’s allegations about the nature of addiction, the opinions of Canadians, and other referenced issues are accurate.

2. What does the Premier mean by phrases like “full-blown epidemic”, “life-long addicts”, “cure for opioid addiction”, “permissive policies”, “war for survival”, and “us[ing] illegal drugs in the streets without consequence”?

What, exactly, are these ambiguous phrases intended to signify?

From where or whom has the Premier got these phrases?

What functions are these phrases supposed to carry out?

3. Which logical fallacies, if any, does the Premier commit?

For instance, is his insistence that he’s never “met a hardcore addict who got and stayed clean” because they simply “don’t exist” problematic? (The answer is yes.)

4. What are the Premier’s motivations for making such a speech?

What does he seem to be trying to achieve by offering these remarks?

Does he have one or more specific interests to protect and promote here?

Is there a certain audience (e.g., a voting block) that he is trying to engage and appease?

In other words, why make this speech in the first place?

Posing and investigating these sorts of questions, refusing to accept the taken-for-granted as true, and going beyond what’s immediately obvious in order to examine what lies behind it — this is critical thinking in action, what analytical deconstruction looks like in its concrete form, and what philosophy makes possible.

The more you engage with philosophy, the more you’ll naturally apply an inquisitive and skeptical attitude to the issues, ideas, and events about which you write.

This is why philosophy is so valuable to writers.

By working through difficult philosophical texts, breaking down and building up arguments, and learning about rhetorical tropes and fallacies, you become naturally disposed to think, and therefore to write, in critical and piercing ways.

As Helmholtz Watson, a character from Brave New World — one of the greatest pieces of fiction ever written — famously said,

“[w]ords can be like X-rays if you use them properly — they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced. That’s one of the things I try to teach my students — how to write piercingly.”

Let’s now consider three pairs of foundational philosophical concepts with which I believe all non-fiction writers should acquaint themselves.

Philosophical Concepts 1: Definition and Essence

One of the most common mistakes I see novice writers make is conflating definition with essence. Instead of explaining what some given thing is (definition), they describe different instances or cases of that thing (example).

As writers, we must constantly ask ourselves the following: What, exactly, is the specific concept, idea, or topic I’m exploring or argument I’m developing in this piece?

The question is not merely “What name do I give to it?” or “What do I call it?”; rather, the questions are “What is it, at its very core?” and “What is its essence?”

This is one area where Aristotle’s writings are very instructive. Yes, his words are often highly formal and technical; however, if you merely focus on the crux of what he’s claiming, you’ll recognize the value of his insights.

Aristotle tells us the following:

“A definition is a phrase signifying a thing’s essence. … People whose rendering consists of a term only, try it as they may, clearly do not render the definition of the thing in question” (Topics I.5 101b34–102a5).

“Since a definition is said to be an account of what a thing is, it is evident that [a definition] will be an account of what the name…signifies — e.g., what triangle signifies” (Posterior Analytics II.10 93b29–31).

So, a definition

1. signifies (i.e., gives an account of) something’s essence
2. consists of more than words that merely go round in circles, so to speak.

(Incidentally, this is why thesauruses don’t define the words they contain: They only offer synonyms — not explanations of essences.)

Elsewhere, Aristotle argues definitions must

• avoid obscure language
• be expressed as clearly as possible (Topics VI.1 139a13–16, VI.3 140b1–2).

As for essence, here’s what he says:

“The essence of each thing is what it is said to be in virtue of itself. For being you is not being musical; for you are not musical in virtue of yourself. What, then, you are in virtue of yourself is your essence. … The formula [i.e., definition]…in which the term itself is not present but its meaning is expressed, this is the formula of the essence of each thing” (Metaphysics VII.4 1029b13–20).

Thus, essence

1. is what something is in virtue of itself
2. is expressed in a definition that explains its meaning and does not include the very term for which the definition is to provide an account.

On this view, it’s incorrect to define courage as “the disposition to act courageously in any given situation” because the term courage has been snuck back into the alleged definition.

Putting all this together, then, Aristotle tells us that a definition

1. offers an account
2. of some given thing’s essence, i.e., of its meaning, of what it fundamentally is in virtue of itself,
3. that is clearly expressed and free of irrelevant and redundant information.

On this view, the definition of, for example, the word triangle is “a three-sided plane figure whose interior angles add up to 180 degrees”.

If any of these elements — i.e., 1) three sided, 2) plane figure, 3) interior angles totalling 180 degrees — were to be removed, the essence of what makes a triangle a triangle would be lost.

As a result, nothing in this definition is irrelevant or redundant.

Admittedly, it’s far easier to offer a valid definition of triangle than of something like courage, happiness, knowledge, love, or truth.

However, this isn’t what matters from the perspective of studying philosophy for the purpose of becoming a better writer. Rather, the takeaway point is this:

A writer must always define their key terms and concepts. They do so by offering defensible answers to the questions “At its core, what is x?” and “What is x’s fundamental meaning or essence?” (where x is the concept, event, idea, or issue under consideration).

Only once a writer has formulated and presented a valid definition of what they wish to write about can they actually write about it intelligently.

Let’s now look at a concrete example of the application of the concepts of definition and essence.

Example 1 of Definition and Essence: Gender-Based Violence

Let’s assume you’re writing a long-form blog post or an essay about gender-based violence (GBV). The very first task to complete before undertaking any sort of critical or evaluative assessment is to precisely define the meaning of this phrase.

Why? Because it doesn’t make sense to write about a concept without first explicitly stipulating what you mean by it.

For instance, if your readers are unclear about what kinds of behaviours you consider GBV to comprise, the former might not understand why you’re advocating (or criticizing) a specific strategy for intervening against GBV.

Defining the essence of GBV is actually far more complicated than it might initially seem, primarily because it requires asking and answering some complex questions, including the following:

1. What does the word gender mean?

The debates currently raging in biology, gender studies, psychology, women’s studies, in other scientific fields, and in the popular media over gender (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) clearly point to the difficulty associated with providing a defensible answer to this question.

For example,

• what, if any, is the relationship between sex and gender? If such a relationship exists, what is its nature?
• is gender binary or non-binary? How do we know this, one way or another?
• is gender mostly constant over time, or is it fluid and evolving?

2. What does the phrase gender based mean?

How can we differentiate between something that is, and something that is not, based on gender?

What does based on mean?

How much of a role does gender have to play in a given situation in order for us to conclude that the behaviour under consideration is based on gender? How do we determine this level of contribution?

3. What does the word violence mean?

Does violence refer only to observable physical conduct?

Can certain speech acts qualify as violence?

Can other phenomena or dynamics be understood as violence?

Whose perspectives are we considering — and whose are we ignoring — whenever we define something as violent or not violent?

Only once you’ve thought hard about these crucial questions and devised what you consider to be defensible answers to them can you hope to write intelligibly and convincingly about GBV, regardless of whichever ethical, political, scientific, or social perspectives you embrace or reject.

Spending even five minutes thinking about the above questions should lead you to realize that writers must be extremely careful with — i.e., attentive to — the terms and phrases they use, lest they risk being misunderstood and/or attacked for their positions.

You should never assume your reader knows what you mean by your use of a specific word, phrase, concept, or theory. It’s always better to explicitly articulate your thoughts than to presume your words are being received as you intend them to be received.

Specifying exactly what a given concept means — whether GBV or otherwise — is difficult yet essential work, which is why it’s one form of philosophical analysis in which you must engage as a writer.

Example 2 of Definition and Essence: A Fictional Character’s Quest for Vengeance

To be clear, I’m not a writer of fiction nor is this article explicitly intended to help those of you who write fictional stories.

Having said that, it seems to me that writers of all stripes can benefit from thinking about a second example of how the concepts of definition and essence can help writers clarify and write more effectively about their ideas.

Aristotle tells us the following:

“[E]verything is superfluous upon whose removal the remainder still makes the term that is being defined clear” (Topics VI.3 140b1–2).

In other words, if you can successfully define something by listing elements a, b, and c but without mentioning elements d, e, and f, then elements d, e, and f are unnecessary, i.e., superfluous and redundant.

If you’re a fiction writer, it’s good practice to think about your different characters in terms of each of their unique essences or narrative roles.

As you write and edit your story, ask yourself questions like

• what would I have to change about this character in order to fundamentally alter what they mean to my narrative?
• how much could I strip away from this character without losing the essence of what they signify to the development of my plot?

Let’s assume your story centres on a bitter, pessimistic, and vengeful twenty-something-year-old who’s trying to find the man who killed his mother when he, the main character, was merely a young boy.

You could very well alter many dynamics about this character — such as his height and hair colour, the name of his high school, and his favourite meals — without drastically affecting the essence of your story.

However, there are other elements about him that, if you were to change them, would arguably pose serious problems for the coherency and continuity of your plot. These elements may include

• the manner in which his mother was killed — e.g., from being brutally attacked by a stranger and left for dead to accidentally slipping on a patch of ice and knocking her head against a steel railing
• the actions of law enforcement following his mother’s death — e.g., from failing to apprehend the suspect and then eventually abandoning the investigation to arresting the killer within a few hours of the incident and providing the courts with sufficient evidence to convict without difficulty.

It’d make no sense to try to write a narrative about a blood-thirsty son’s quest to avenge his mother’s unsolved death when, in fact, her passing was the result of an accidental slip or her killer had been quickly caught by the police and effectively processed by the courts.

His mother’s violent, undeserved, and untimely death resides at the core of who he is and of what he’s trying to accomplish with his life; it forms his essence as a character.

If you were to alter or eliminate this dynamic, the very foundations of this character’s psychological motivations would change dramatically, and you’d have, in effect, an entirely different character.

This, then, is another example of how thinking about definition and essence can make you a stronger and more self-reflexive writer.

Philosophical Concepts 2: Appearance versus Reality

Karl Marx once famously wrote, “all science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided”. By this he meant science seeks to discover the ‘realities’ that hide behind the deceptive ‘surface’ of everything we encounter in our daily lives.

Philosophy, like science, aims to go beyond the immediately given, the obvious, and common sense to the deeper structures and more fundamental ‘truths’ residing underneath the facade of mere appearances.

Aristotle expressed a similar sentiment more than 2,000 years ago. He insisted attempts to produce knowledge about the world necessarily begin with what is “prior”, “more familiar”, and “better known to us” (i.e., to human beings) and only then progress to what is “prior”, “more familiar”, and “better known to nature” (i.e., in itself) (Posterior Analytics I.2, 71b32–72a5; Physics I.1, 184a16–20).

This idea — i.e., that philosophy helps us move from the surface to what lies beneath — is essential to the doctrine of appearance versus reality:

Appearance versus reality can be conceptualized as the doctrine that things often appear to be a certain way at one level but then turn out to be another way at a different, ‘deeper’ level.

Indeed, what appears to be the case upon first inspection often turns out to be quite different later on, with our initial understanding proving to be incomplete, misleading, and/or mistaken.

As we’ve all experienced first hand, our senses and our everyday, lazy thinking tend to lead us astray, to fail to reveal the ‘whole picture’, and to incorrectly attribute cause-effect relationships.

Let’s say a little more about the above-discussed opioid crisis in Western Canada in order to explore the practical utility of thinking about appearance versus reality.

Example 1 of Appearance versus Reality: An All-Out ‘War on Drugs’

Nearly 1,500 people died in British Columbia in 2017 due to opioid-related drug overdoses.

(If you’ve been paying attention so far, you should have just asked yourself, “What does ‘opioid-related drug overdoses’ mean?” If so, good for you! Let’s leave this matter to the side for now, though, as I wish to make a different point.)

If so many British Columbians are dying due to opioid-related drug overdoses, it would appear to make sense to do whatever it takes, legally and politically, to get opioids off the streets and to incarcerate those who are manufacturing, supplying, and selling these substances.

The causal chain of thinking behind this perspective is this:

Tougher laws and greater police powers → more people prosecuted more harshly for drug crimes → fewer people willing to risk consequences of being convicted → fewer drugs produced, sold, and therefore available → fewer people using drugs → fewer people dying from drug-related overdoses.

Should we, then, introduce harsher penalties for drug crimes (such as mandatory minimum sentences), grant law enforcement agencies more search-and-seizure powers, and crack down on dealers and users regardless of their economic, medical, or social circumstances?

This appears to make sense; it appears to be the right thing to do.

It is, however, a thoroughly mistaken mentality and strategy for reducing drug-related harms, including overdose.

Harsher penalties, enhanced law enforcement powers, and street crackdowns will not reduce drug-related harms, deaths, or crimes.

How do we know this? Mountains of robust scientific evidence demonstrate that punitive responses to substance use lead to more death, suffering, health and social problems, and destroyed lives for users and non-users — not less.

Evidence shows the War-on-Drugs approach to psychoactive substances

• does not discourage people from using illicit substances
• makes the use of illicit substances inherently more dangerous to users and to members of the wider communities to which users belong
• encourages and allows gangs involved in the drug trade to become ever-more violent, profitable, and politically powerful
• does virtually nothing to decrease the cost, purity, or availability of illegal substances (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

On the one hand, common-sense thinking tells us the ‘obvious’ and ‘correct’ response to solving the ‘drugs problem’ is to crack down on everybody who willingly breaks the law by manufacturing, distributing, selling, or possessing banned drugs. On the other hand, however, the ‘deeper’ reality is that the actions Western governments have taken over the past 100+ years to try to eliminate illicit substance use have, in fact, produced the very conditions in which the criminal black market for drugs exists and thrives.

Even though punitive responses to illicit drugs appear to make sense and to represent the best strategy for ending ‘drug epidemics’, the reality is that repressive tactics and retributive mentalities exacerbate and prolong the problem rather than help bring it to an end.

By embracing the philosophical principle that things often appear to be a certain way at one level — e.g., intelligible, effective, and ethical — but turn out to be another way upon deeper inspection — e.g., questionable, impotent, and unethical — you’ll be well positioned to think analytically and to write intelligently about controversial and complex topics, such as the War on Drugs.

An Alternative Take On Appearance versus Reality

The dichotomy of appearance versus reality can also be expressed as the principle that two or more things are really one thing. Here, some sort of unity (sameness) is shown to exist behind appearances of diversity (difference).

One of the most foundational principles of philosophy — especially of Ancient Greek studies — is that unity often exists behind diversity. That is to say, things often appear as numerous and scattered but turn out to be manifestations or expressions of the same one thing.

The basic insight here is that understanding our chaotic world would be impossible were there not some sort of intelligible structure or organization that ultimately accounts for the apparent randomness in the world.

Things appear one way — e.g., diverse, disconnected, and random — but are really another way — e.g., similar, connected, and orderly.

(Arguably, the ultimate philosophical demonstration of this principle is Plato’s theory of Forms—start here and here, if you dare…)

As a writer, the key idea to keep in mind with respect to the notion that diversity is often the product of unity (i.e., that two things are often really one) is this:

You must always be on the lookout for connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena; ideas, events, objects, and processes are typically far more dependent on (or related to) each other than they first appear to be.

For one, this means you should maintain a healthy dose of skepticism whenever you encounter exceedingly simplistic explanations.

Because it’s virtually always possible to produce a more nuanced and accurate explanation of some given thing, you shouldn’t content yourself with accepting pre-fabricated accounts.

Remember, we live in a relational world in which clearly defined boundaries and neatly packaged, simple causes and effects don’t exist.

Example 2 of Appearance versus Reality: Opium Production in Afghanistan

It might appear odd to suggest that anti-drug policies passed by lawmakers in the United States, Britain, and other Western nations have contributed to the Taliban’s involvement in opium production in Afghanistan. However, this is exactly what has occurred over the past decade.

The West’s War on Drugs creates the social, political, and economic conditions within which terrorist organizations generate huge sums of money by growing the plants from which black market heroin is manufactured.

Legislative efforts to eliminate illegal drugs in one part of the world actually further entice the Taliban and other terrorist groups to grow and manufacture these substances in other parts of the world.

The result is that the explosion of opium production in Afghanistan in recent years, the forced labour of Afghan farmers (Taliban soldiers: “Either grow poppies for us, or we’ll kill you”), the rise of well-funded terrorist groups, and the enhanced capacity for terrorists to acquire deadly chemical and biological weapons are all, in fact, outcomes of the same system of drugs prohibition launched in the Western world and now spreading across the globe (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).

Opium production in Afghanistan is, thus, an empirical illustration of the philosophical principle that phenomena that appear separate and unrelated often turn out to be connected via a ‘hidden’ system or framework (in this case, the policies and enforcement practices of the War on Drugs).

Example 3 of Appearance versus Reality: Orthodox Marxism

Orthodox Marxism represents an ambitious attempt to demonstrate that many diverse phenomena are actually the products of a single, highly complex, and fundamental economic reality.

To over-simplify greatly, orthodox Marxism suggests

• a virtually endless array of phenomena — from buying bread at the grocery store and applying for a job at the lumber mill to securing a loan from the bank and watching news broadcasts about crime rates—
• are, in fact, all outcomes of a class struggle
• produced by the foundational political-economic structure (mode of production) of the modern Western world, i.e., capitalism (1, 2, 3).

Ultimately, (nearly) all aspects of life can be understood in terms of the (economic) ‘base’ and the (ideological and political) ‘superstructure’.

Workers’ strikes, differential imprisonment rates for the rich and the poor, gasoline prices at the pumps, successful versus unsuccessful bids for political office, offshore tax havens for Big Business, and wage gaps between different groups might seem only loosely connected, if at all. However, Orthodox Marxism portrays these (and all other) phenomena as products of the same bedrock political-economic structure, i.e., capitalism.

It doesn’t matter for our purposes here if Orthodox Marxism is correct or not. Rather, what counts is what Orthodox Marxism symbolizes or represents: the idea that unity behind diversity (i.e., appearance versus reality) is a powerful conceptual tool with which writers can think and write about difficult topics in holistic, relational, and ‘lateral’ ways.

As a writer, you must always be on the lookout for potential ‘threads’ that ‘tie’ things together.

Making sense of the processes and patterns of modern life ultimately requires appreciating the relational and interdependent nature of our experiences and of our world.

Again, philosophy is what teaches us how to develop this ‘big picture’-type thinking.

Philosophical Concepts 3: Objective versus Subjective

The objective versus subjective dichotomy—and everything else that comes along with it (historicism, constructivism, relativism, etc.) — represents one of the most contentious and fiercely debated topics in all of human enquiry and has done so for thousands of years.

In one form or another, many of the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities have dealt with the objective-subjective dialectic, either implicitly or explicitly, throughout their histories.

Endless pages have been written about various topics deriving from the following key question:

As human beings, can and/or should we try to investigate the world around us, including our own behaviour, in ways that aren’t ‘coloured’ by personal or group-level biases, prejudices, or proclivities?

Rather than entering into this debate, I want to suggest the following:

As a writer, you stand to benefit immensely from thinking through this controversy and from developing an appreciation of the core issues at stake.

Armed with an understanding of why the objectivism-versus-subjectivism debate matters, you’ll be able to apply your new insights to whichever topics you write about in your day-to-day content.

In plain terms, objectivism and objectivity express the following core ideas:

1. It’s possible, in both principle and practice, to undertake bias-free investigations and to produce impartial analyses.
2. Value-free examinations are an attainable ideal. An individual’s racial, ethnic, gender, sexual, religious, political, cultural, or social upbringing or status doesn’t necessarily or unavoidably ‘colour’ their ability to plan and execute unbiased examinations of the world.
3. There exists a set of time-tested rules, methods, and checks that, if followed properly, allow all potential errors and confounding variables to be controlled for and/or eliminated.
4. Replicability is the ultimate goal and sign of a valid scientific study. If team B follows the same procedures used by team A, and if team B achieves the same results as team A, then team A’s findings can be said to be sound.

Conversely, subjectivism and subjectivity represent the following defining principles:

1. It’s impossible to investigate or analyze something in a biased-free, impartial, or unprejudiced way. The ‘view from nowhere’ that objective analysis would require in order to be feasible simply doesn’t exist (i.e., it’s a fiction). None of the design, the process, or the results of a study can be fully safeguarded against personal or group-level biases.
2. ‘Value-free examination’ is nothing but an unrealistic illusion. There’s no way to separate an individual from their racial, ethnic, gender, sexual, religious, political, cultural, or social upbringing or status such that they can analyze something free of those influences. We all necessarily and automatically encounter the world through unique intersections of various identities, histories, experiences, beliefs, values, and dispositions.
3. There exists no method, rule, or test (or combination thereof) that can legitimately control for every so-called confounding variable. Notions of validity, reliability, and replicability are merely concepts; they’re not objective assessments of whether data or analyses of data are free of bias or error.
4. True replicability is likely impossible because of 1–3. Even if replicability could be achieved, it wouldn’t automatically guarantee an impartial, ‘scientific’, or otherwise valid outcome.

It’s worth noting that more and more people, especially (social) scientists, seem to be abandoning traditional notions of objectivity. These folks are embracing the idea that, in one way or another, all behaviours, beliefs, ideas, and values are culturally, socially, politically, and/or historically relative.

Regardless of where you fall on the objective-versus-subjective debate, it’s crucial to accept — or at least to think deeply about — the following idea:

As writers, we ought to remain humble with our words, particularly because we can, by necessity, only ever write from one perspective, i.e., our own. Each of us has but one set of life experiences. It’s impossible for a single writer to fully capture, respect, and account for the full range of human experience and of the myriad perspectives, knowledges, and identities that exist.

As a writing coach, I regularly encourage novice writers to pay very close attention to word choice in an effort to ensure that the phrases they use represent as accurately as possible the precise claims they want to make.

Understanding that your perspective and personal experience regarding a particular issue or phenomenon will always be partial and incomplete opens up a valuable space within which to reflect on

• how your own biases, prejudices, and other sets of ‘blinders’ might obscure your ideas, complicate your writing process, and/or make it challenging for others who are differently situated in life to grasp the meaning of your words
• how you can express yourself effectively and convincingly whilst simultaneously avoiding making ostentatious claims you’re not entitled to make.

I’m not suggesting you shouldn’t write with passion or express strong opinions — far from it, in fact.

Instead, I’m encouraging you to remain diligent about the need to ensure that you don’t make claims for which you haven’t provided sufficient evidence (whether based in personal experience and/or scientific study).

Part of this consists of using less strong language in favour of more cautious words wherever appropriate.

The example that always springs to mind here for me is that of undergraduate students who submit essays that unabashedly feature claims about having “clearly proven x” or “definitively demonstrated y” — something they simply haven’t done, especially in a six-to-eight-page paper.

When writing argumentative pieces, it’s usually best to use phrases like “would seem to suggest”, “leads us to postulate”, and “appears to demonstrate” rather than the more absolute phrases overzealous university students tend to favour.

Let’s now consider an example that concretely demonstrates the relevance of the objective-versus-subjective debate to writing.

Example of Objective versus Subjective: “This Is What Canadians Want!”

One crucial fact that writers — especially those who cover political events — should always keep at the forefront of their minds is this: The appearance of objectivity and neutrality grants increased legitimacy, reverence, and even power to those who manage to secure for themselves an image of impartiality.

People have an interest in appearing disinterested (impartial, unbiased, neutral, etc.) because there are tremendous benefits to being recognized as objective and non-partisan — this is a Bourdieusian argument.

Even if they’re not fully conscious of it, people often represent themselves as if they don’t have a particular ‘dog in the fight’ in an attempt to convince others to accept the legitimacy of their specific beliefs, claims, findings, or actions.

The former Conservative Government under Stephen Harper used this tactic throughout its tenure.

(‘Conservatives’ and ‘Tories’ are synonymous terms in Canada.)

On many occasions when opposition Members of Parliament questioned the Conservatives about the latter’s attempts to create new (or to change existing) legislation, the Tories proudly proclaimed, “We’re delivering what Canadians have been asking us for!”

“All across the country”, they’d say, “Canadians have been telling us this is what they want!”

Usually, “this” would refer to a new piece of punitive criminal justice legislation the Conservatives were trying to pass into law.

By swearing that they were merely following the will of the people, the Tories were attempting to effect an air of neutrality, i.e., of objectivity and impartiality, about their efforts to change Canadian law.

Essentially, Harper and the other members of his party were publicly trumpeting the following sentiment:

“How could you possibly accuse us of bias when all we’re trying to do is pass the type of legislation the voters of this country elected us to pass? It’s not our choice; it’s the choice of the people of Canada!”

This, of course, conveniently glosses over the fact that the Tories never managed to capture more than 40% of the popular vote in any of the federal elections from 2006 to 2015 (1, 2).

More to the point, we could ask the same sorts of questions about the Harper Government’s insistence on the need to respect the wishes of Canadians as we asked above about the B.C. premier’s hypothetical speech concerning opioid-related overdoses:

1. Which Canadians, specifically, were the Tories talking about whenever they stressed they were acting in accordance with the will of Canadians?

If the majority of Canadians didn’t vote for Harper, which indeed they did not, how valid is it to suggest Canadians were in favour of harsher criminal justice legislation or changes to environmental regulations or the like?

2. How, exactly, did the Tories know what Canadians wanted?

What evidence, if any, exists showing Canadians supported punitive criminal justice legislation?

Did the Harper Government commission opinion polls? If so, what kinds of questions were asked, who asked the questions, and how were the results tabulated?

3. What evidence was there that the specific legislation the Tories were trying to introduce accurately reflected the general themes of which Canadians were allegedly supportive?

If, for example, a significant number of Canadians voted Harper into power because they wanted a reduction in crime rates and an increase in community safety, was there any evidence to suggest the Tories’ crime bills would effectively decrease offending and make communities safer?

Investigating these sorts of questions might very well reveal that the Conservatives were trying to serve, and bolster the subjective interests of, their tough-on-crime supporters (who, again, represented a minority of the Canadian population) rather than pass legislation that scientific analysis suggests would improve the safety and wellbeing of citizens.

Recognizing the Tories’ attempts to portray their subjective wishes as the objective demands of Canadians is an example of how this third pair of foundational philosophical concepts can help writers break through taken-for-granted appearances by uncovering more complex and nuanced dynamics.

Summary

I’ve put forth two major arguments in this essay.

Argument 1: If you wish to express your ideas as clearly, convincingly, and systematically as possible, you should engage earnestly with philosophical concepts, puzzles, and modes of analysis.

Philosophical study will benefit you as a writer because

• exceptional writing is, at its core, the product of exceptional thinking
• philosophy teaches you how to refine your thinking from haphazard, disconnected, and confused to organized, relational, and intelligible by demanding that you work through a given concept, idea, or question slowly and progressively from beginning to end
• philosophy’s dedication to the relentless questioning of, and to the thorough application of logic and argumentation to, every thought that enters the mind allows you to cultivate critical thinking powers and the skeptical attitude with which to effectively assess whether some given thing makes sense.

Argument 2: As a writer, you should familiarize yourself with (at least) three specific foundational pairs of philosophical concepts if you truly want to upgrade how you conceptualize, make sense of, and write about the specific topics in which you’re interested.

First, you should study the concepts of definition and essence because

• writers must always define their key terms by offering valid answers to the questions “At its core, what is x?” and “What is x’s fundamental meaning or essence?”
• only once a writer has formulated and presented a defensible definition of some given thing can they hope to write intelligently about it
• stating precisely what you mean by a specific term, phrase, or claim helps protect you against the possibility that your words will be misunderstood, misrepresented, and/or criticized.

Second, appearance versus reality is a powerful conceptual dichotomy you ought to incorporate into your writing insofar as

• what appears to be the case upon first inspection often turns out to be quite different later on, with our initial understanding proving to be incomplete, misleading, and/or mistaken
• complex and controversial topics (e.g., the War on Drugs) tend to initially appear much simpler and more straightforward than they can be shown to be via analytical deconstruction
• writers must adopt and apply a skeptical attitude towards the ‘veneer’ of common-sense ideas if they wish to pierce the ‘surface’ of taken-for-granted narratives and thereby uncover ‘deeper’ (and often more interesting) dynamics
• recognizing that unity (sameness) often exists behind appearances of diversity (difference) reminds writers of the need to look for connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena in order to reveal existing patterns that can help give rise to the production of better explanations of the human experience and of the natural world.

Finally, you should attend to the philosophical dialectic of objectivity versus subjectivity because

• elements of bias, prejudice, and partiality exert influence on virtually every form of writing, albeit sometimes in much more subtle and less discernible ways than others
• writers — especially those who engage with folks in positions of power — must be capable of spotting, critically evaluating, and writing effectively about subjective opinions being misrepresented as objective statements of fact
• understanding that writing is always the product of limited perspectives should lead writers to write humbly, cautiously, and precisely rather than egotistically and haphazardly.

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