Skepticism, Atheism, and Religious Faith (Religious Studies 2LL3)
Fall 2013

TEXT SUMMARY 2

Assignment due in class on October 2* from students who did not hand in Text Summary 1

*As noted on the course syllabus: Text Summary assignments are designed to help you prepare the reading assignment for a particular class meeting, in conjunction with your participation in that class meeting.  Thus, those assignments may only be submitted in class on the days they are due.  If you have to miss that day's class, please contact the instructor to make alternate arrangements.

1.
Before beginning the writing assignment, please read:

  • Hugo Bedau, Thinking and Writing About Philosophy, pp. 7-10 top [selection in coursepack/book on reserve], on writing summaries to understand reading

 You might also find it helpful to have a look at: (Text summary assignments were also discussed in tutorial on September 18.)

2.
Please prepare a written summary (1-1.5 pages** long, approximately 500 words) of:

(Be sure to use the print editions of the texts selected for this course, i.e., in this case:  Descartes, Discourse on Method, and Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. Donald A. Cress (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998), available for purchase at the Campus Store.)

The purpose of the summary is to lay out what the text says, in roughly the order in which it is said, taking care to mention the aspects that you think are most important or interesting.  A major focus will be highlighting key concepts, and describing the main argument(s).  Your observations about the text should be backed up with references that allow your reader to see what they are based on; for this purpose, please use in-text parenthetical page references - for an example of these, see Harvey, Writing with Sources, p. 51, under "MLA Basic Rules." 

For your writing on Descartes, your parenthetical references should be not to the regular page numbers in the book, but to the marginal "Adam-Tannery" page numbers (see "Note on the Translation" at the beginning of the book), e.g., "(AT 41)."

In your summary please include at least one quoted phrase (e.g., embedded into a sentence of your own) that helps you convey a point more effectively or vividly (see e.g., the list of reasons to quote in Harvey, p. 17 item (f)).  Since this summary is short, quote only a phrase or a short sentence at a time, and be sure to make clear in your own words what the quoted phrase/sentence is supposed to illustrate.

Note: Since this is your first reading of this text, and since we have not yet discussed it in class, the summary assignment is simply a first effort at figuring out what it says, and doing it will help you get the most of our in-class work on it.  Your fuller understanding will develop in the course of our class meetings, and with successive re-readings.

**Please print your assignment double-spaced and with one-inch margins, using a 10-12-point font.  Please number and staple the pages you hand in.

Please indicate the total word count at the end of your assignment.

Please keep a copy of your summary to refer to in our class discussions of Descartes over the next few meetings.


posted/distributed September 11, 2013