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Philosophy EE: Machiavelli and Thomas More


Guest dannymack

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Hello IB Survival,

My question is this: "Compare and contrast the way in which human nature is diagnosed and acted upon in Machiavelli's "The Prince" and More's "Utopia""

Do you think this is a bit too "mainstream"? I think it's a really interesting topic but I keep reading to do something really niche...

Also, do you think this is appropriate for the EE? I'm trying to squash it into Philosophy, because political philosophy is a subset of that.

Beyond these, any general comments/tips would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you in advance!

The number one rule of Philosophy EEs: don't do one unless you are taking IB Philosophy, for starters. So much stuff is crammed into Philosophy which doesn't belong there, because people don't understand what it's really about. You have to take it as a subject.

Secondly, you're doing a research essay, not answering a task. The wording "Compare and contrast" eez not good! It also reeks of English Lit and is very alien to Philosophy.

Thirdly, that sounds like an English Lit essay first and foremost. You're looking at the way a theme is dealt with in two texts. Philosophy is about dissecting ideas, not dissecting texts (which is literature). So if anything, I'd say this is an English Lit piece. The main thing with EEs is that you pick the subject and THEN the topic because each subject requires very particular things in terms of which topics will score highly. So a random topic stuffed into a subject is very unlikely to tick all of the boxes.

I suggest you read the EE guide, if you haven't already, and approach it from the perspective of: which subject am I going to do my EE in? THEN find a topic to fit in that. Stuffing topics into subjects is universally regarded as a bad move.

Good luck :)

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