Philosophy EE - Demons and society?

[zondoeli]

Hey everyone

I'm thinking of doing my EE on something like demons, but am having difficulties deciding exactly what I should do.
I'd like to do something along the lines of "Were demons created do help or hinder the human race?" Keeping in mind the whole "If God is benevolent etc. why did he create evil?" argument, as well as how they can be used as scapegoats for a lot of our problems.
I'm still quite confused, though. Help?

[Sandwich]

Hello!

The best thing I did to help me decide on mine (once you have the title, you're all set) was to look at the ones listed in that pack called 50 Excellent Extended Essays. There are four sample essays for Philosophy and they give you an idea of firstly how specific you need to be (it's actually a very tight argument you need to produce) and also of how you have to treat the topic. If you test your question against whether you could write that standard of detail and that quality of work out of it, you'll be most of the way there to making sure your topic is good.

Basically once you've got an idea of the sort of detail you need and the approach you need to take, you can always write the essay on what enthuses you (I'm sure you like a particular bit of your argument), argue it through with a very loose title and then find a formal title to fit with it at the end. I ended up doing this (:

Your question, to me, seems both very broad and also the starting point is not philosophical. You need to be careful to tread the line between logic and theology. You can argue for and against the idea of a benevolent god creating evil, but the context you do it in may have to be more contained. For instance if you can find a particular demon in a novel or in mythology, or something to do with a demon in the work of a particular philosophical thinker, you'd not only be removing the base fallacy of an open question (that demons exist, have a purpose.. whatever) but you'd also be able to target your essay and analyse a particular presentation of a demon.

Really, read those sample EEs! You'll realise just how focussed your topic needs to be. You can also refer to the generic EE guidelines for Philosophy to see the sorts of titles they ask for, but those sample EEs are far more enlightening

As for writing it, my suggestion is that you block out the contents page before you write the essay, if possible. That way you give your argument a structure. So "the role of the demon" / "the characteristics of the demon and of god" / "the conflict between these characteristics"... I dunno! Whatever you want to write about x)

Hope that helps. Read those essays!