In January of 1999, NATO forces began a sustained bombing attack on Yugoslavia.  The justification of the attack was the breakdown of negotiations over how to resolve the conflicts between Serbia and the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo and the fear that Serbia was about to send armed forces into Kosovo with genocidal intent.  Although NATO's action has received widespread support by the international community because it sets a clear standard of opposition to ethnic cleansing and genocide, critics have argued that the action is arbitrary and so not founded on any clear principle of international justice.  I will argue that NATO's action, no matter how well-intentioned, is not justified.

The topic is the justice of the NATO attack of Yugoslavia.  The issue is whether an act of aggression against a nation that merely threatens aggression is just.  The thesis is that NATO's action, no matter how well-intentioned, is not justified. It is often best to write your introductory paragraph last, since it often is unclear exactly what your thesis will be until you have worked through Steps 2-5.  As an alternative, if you prefer to write your introductory paragraph first and set forth your thesis before you defend it, just make sure that you go back and review your introductory paragraph after completing the essay to insure that your conclusion conforms to you announced thesis.  If you write your introductory essay first, you should expect to revise it before your essay is completed.  If you find that your introductory paragraph seems to need no revision, you are either very fortunate or simply mistaken.  

Summary for Step One

1) In your first sentence identify the topic of your paper, and where appropriate indicate author, text tile, and basic subject.

2) Define the issue, and its sides (two or more).

3) Indicate the way in which you plan to defend your view.

4) State your thesis clearly, and use a standard thesis indicator.  If you are discussing the claim of some thinker, make sure that you give an accurate representation of the claim.  The easiest way to get it right is to quote it.

5) The recommended form for stating your thesis of your Five-Step essays:  "I will argue that p," where p is a variable to be replaced by your thesis itself.

 (II) Step Two: Getting Off the Ground:  Presentation and Reconstruction of the Main Argument

Every argument starts somewhere, often with an argument or claim of some essay that is to be analyzed, or in an ethics class, with the statement of some problematic case, or some judgement about a case. The first step in the body of the essay is to spell out all the facts, claims, arguments, etc. relevant to the controversy you are discussing. The rule here is as it is generally in these essays. Assume the reader is ignorant but of normal intelligence. You must supply all the important facts and premises, but make sure that all the facts or premises you supply are relevant to the controversy and the particular line of argument you plan to develop. In a short essay, you need to present your primary argument as concisely as possible. In a longer essay the development of the primary argument can fill several paragraphs. In either a short or long essay the standard structure would be to present the main argument in one of two different forms as follows:

1) Present the primary argument in standard written form clearly indicating the premises and conclusion.

2) Following the recommended form in the Guide for Reconstructing Arguments, summarize the argument in the form of a diagram and put the argument in the form of a lexicon (outline).

The first form is easy to read, but often not crystal clear about the logic of the argument.  The second form might seem a bit stiff, but it has the great advantage of making the structure of the argument crystal clear.

In this essay guide, we describe two different kinds of dialectical essay.  The two kinds of essay differ in with respect to what they seek to accomplish in Step Two: the Jury Model envisions the dialectical form as if one were serving as a member of a jury listening to opposing sides in a debate; the Debater Model envisions the dialectical form as if one were presenting an argument as a participant in a dialectical debate.  Thus, in the Jury Model, you will be presenting the main argument given by one of the sides of the issue you are analysing; in the Debater's Model, you will be presenting your own main argument for your thesis.

Here is an example of the Jury Model for Step Two.  Given the thesis presented in Part One, which we have just reviewed, it is clear that the author is not presenting his or her own position but that of one of the sides of the issue. 

The main argument in favor of NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia proceeds as follows:

 A Nation or Consortium of nations may engage in the use of aggressive force against another country either in self-defense against that country's unjust and aggressive course of action or in the defense of other persons who cannot defend themselves against that country's unjust and aggressive course of action.  The situation leading up to the NATO air action and providing justification for it involves two key events.  The first event is the one of Yugoslavia refusing to sign the October peace agreement.  A resolution to the conflict acceptable to the international community and to the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo was rejected by the Yugoslav government.  During and negotiations and following their breakdown, Yugoslavia engaged in preparations for a large-scale attack on Kosovo.  Yugoslavia also engaged in a variety of practices of ethnic cleansing earlier in the decade in Bosnia.  The defenders of the air attack on Yugoslavia argue that NATO was justified in attacking Yugoslavia since these two key events made it reasonably clear that Yugoslavia was about to engage in ethnic cleansing against defenseless persons in Kosovo, which would have been an extremely unjust and aggressive course of action.

1) NATO was justified in bombing Yugoslavia.

2) Yugoslavia refused to sign the October peace  agreement.

3) During and negotiations and following their breakdown, Yugoslavia engaged in preparations for a large-scale attack on Kosovo.

4) Yugoslavia engaged in a variety of practices of ethnic cleansing earlier in the decade in Bosnia.

5) Yugoslavia was about to engage in ethnic cleansing against persons who could not defend themselves.

6) Ethnic cleansing against persons who could not defend themselves is an extremely unjust and aggressive in the use of aggressive force against another country in the defense of other persons who cannot defend themselves against that country's unjust and aggressive course of action.

(2+3+4) supports 5, and (5+6) supports 1.

Having read this example, at this point you might be asking yourself the following question.  "Is it not unnecessary to go to all this trouble, to do all, of this tedious analytical work, just to present an argument?"  We think this is a good question.  In response, we would ask you to consider under what conditions hard work is justified.  It seems reasonable to say that the value of hard work is a funciton of the good it produces.  It is our hope that all of our students will come to see that the hard work of analysing arguments is worthwhile not only for its practical utility but even for its own sake!  On the one hand, learning how to analyze arguments has practical utility, for in your personal and professional lives, you will be well served if you have developed the skills of patience and insight necessary to interpret other person's arguments fairly and rigorously.   And, on the other hand, your philosophy professors also believe that insofar as we all share a rational nature, we will find a special joy and sense of fulfillment simply by understanding opposing arguments on issues of major importance.  Note that in the essay itself, by presenting and reconstructing the main argument carefully, the author does a reasonable and good service for his or her readers by helping them to understand the logic behind the stance taken by the defenders of NATO's action.   Giving a careful analysis of important arguments is not just an abstract intellectual game!  It is of crucial importance for those who care about the quality of their own lives and who feel some responsibility to promote the well-being of others.  Yes, of course, presenting and reconstructing an argument as shown above is hard work, or at least it is some of the time, and it does require us to approach the task with a sense of fairness, honesty and charity, which attitudes often do not feel very natural.  And interpreting arguments also requires creativity.  But what is so bad about all of this?   No one is asking you to think analytically all of the time.  Indeed, there are good arguments for why we shouldn't.  But not to develop our skills of analysing arguments leaves us with no recourse but to live in a world that lives by the sort of rhetoric we see in advertising and politics.  Consider this:  If you found the 2000 Presidential debates intellectual rigorous and satisfying, you may not have a good reason to do the work we are asking you to do.  If you did not, why not become part of a radical, social movement, a movement much more profoundly radical than most of the self-proclaimed-radical academic trends which plague our intellectual and cultural worlds?  Why not, indeed, start thinking philosophically?

Summary of Step Two

1) Present the primary argument in standard written form clearly indicating the premises and conclusion.

2) Explain its context, focusing on relevant details that provide meaning, background context, or crucial evidence for subsequent argument.

3) You may, if you wish, outline your argument and show which premises support which conclusions.

4) If in presenting the main argument you must supply some premises not explicit in the text, make sure that you show that your representation of the argument is justified in light of evidence from the text.

(III) Step Three: The First Strike: The Possible Criticism

Once you present and reconstruct the main argument and the background context that makes sense of it, you need to show how a reasonable person might criticize it.  In an argumentative essay you do this no matter whether you intend to defend or criticize the sentence.  In your introductory paragraph you indicated the issue, or controversy, which your thesis is meant to resolve.  In this section you need to present in detail the arguments that make up one side of the controversy, the side that opposes the main argument.  If the side opposing the main argument has a good argument that cannot be refuted, then showing that counts as showing that the main argument is not compelling.  If the criticism against the main argument can be shown to be uncompelling, then by showing that it is uncompelling, you will have shown that the main argument is defensible (at least thus far in the dialectical conversation!).  Defending the main argument or criticizing it requires the presentation of a possible criticism of it.  Your decision about whether to defend the main argument or criticize it should depend in the end on whether or not you find the possible criticism strong.

  In order for this sort of dialectical analysis of the main argument to be credible, the possible criticism needs to be strong.  In doing this sort of analysis, the writer has a great deal of latitude in setting up the controversy, but not every possible criticism will work equally well.  A silly possible criticism will be easy to refute.  Such a refutation will show that the possible criticism was weak and so will show that the main argument can be defended from a silly criticism, but that would not be to show in any interesting form that the main argument is defensible.  Logicians refer to this form of defense of a claim as "knocking down a straw man."  Anyone can knock down a straw man and the fact that one can do so does not show any special merit. A good possible criticism must have a very good chance of being successful.  The more of a chance it has, the better it is as a possible criticism.

The possible criticism should be aimed at your main argument. Construct the strongest possible argument you can for the falsehood of that claim. In a short essay, the argument should fill a paragraph. In a longer essay (five-seven pages), the possible criticism should get a fuller development. Criticisms are arguments and arguments are made up of premises and conclusions. In the example given above, statements 2-8 are premises, or reasons, for thinking the conclusion true. They are called deductive reasons in that the arguer is claiming that if the premises are true, the conclusion follows, and so must be true.

One serious potential pitfall in this section is that your possible criticism will not have a clear conclusion, or it will not have the right conclusion. In order to make this step in your essay fit the previous two sections of your essay, it must have as its conclusion a rejection of the main argument. If the main argument seeks to show that " NATO was justified in bombing Yugoslavia," then the possible criticism needs to present reasons for thinking that the argument for that conclusion is not successful. No other criticism will do.

An example of Step Three follows. In reading the example of Step Three, see if you can answer these questions:  How do you know that the paragraph introduces a possible criticism?  How is the object of the criticism made clear?  What is the reasoning for the claim that main argument is uncompelling? A critic might challenge the main argument that NATO was justified in attacking Yugoslavia by objecting that premise (7) is in fact false.  First, let us recall what exactly Premise (7) asserts:

 A Nation or Consortium of Nations may engage  in the use of aggressive force against another country  when it suspects that this country is about to undertake an unjust and aggressive  course of action against another country.

To see what is wrong with this premise, consider the analogous case of a person who in the past had been suspected, or known, to have robbed banks.  Suppose the police in Sewanee notice the suspected bank robber in the vicinity of the bank several days running.  They believe, on the basis of his suspected past behavior, that he is about to rob the bank.  Suppose that they interview him and find that he is carrying a registered weapon.  Would they be justified in arresting, or even shooting him, just because of their suspicions?  The answer is clearly 'no.' He has as of yet broken no laws.  They would be justified in trying to prevent a possible robbery, however.  So they might want to engage him in additional conversation in order to persuade him not to rob the bank.  But prior to breaking a law, arresting him or use of force against him is not justified.  The same moral principle holds in international law: prior to an invasion by Yugoslavia, the use of force against Yugoslavia is not justified. 

            We know that this paragraph introduces a possible criticism because it indicates how  "a critic might challenge" the main argument.  The specific focus of the possible criticism is made clear insofar as it declares that one of the premises of the main argument is false. The criticism presented against the main argument is that the principle expressed in Premise (7) which NATO used to justify its aggression would clearly be unacceptable when applied to individuals and since the same holds in international law, is unacceptable when applied to the bombing of Yugoslavia.

            In this section and in the next two, avoid using rhetorical questions like "Is it not obvious that we must stop unjust aggression?" Instead what you need to present is reasons for this claim about what it is justified resistance against unjust agression. Questions are not arguments, though they often suggest an argument. In an argumentative essay, develop the arguments behind your rhetorical questions.  Who wants to read a paper full of silly rhetorical questions, anyway?

Two worries that should haunt you in this sort of writing are inconsistency and begging the question. You are inconsistent when you contradict yourself in your essay. Make sure that you do not explicitly or implicitly contradict yourself in the course of your essay.  (We have seen some essays in which the contradiction occurs in the course of a single paragraph).  Contradictions have the form of p and not p, where a single statement is an instance of the propositional variable 'p'.  Consider the following argument about NATO's policy.

NATO is morally wrong to attack a nation that has not itself been an aggressor against another nation.  Moreover, all of these policy issues are just matters of personal opinion. That being so, NATO cannot claim any strong moral basis for its policy.

You cannot have it both ways.  Either there is right or wrong for policy issues or there is not.  The writer both claims that NATO is wrong and that there is no real right or wrong. It is unfortunate that we find this sort of mistake all the time.  Avoid it at all costs.

Also once someone offers a line of argument for a view, as NATO has, one should not assert the view that rejects that line of argument until a premise in the line of argument has been refuted, not just rejected. To assert what is at issue in the context of your argument is to beg the question. Consider the following argument that one might make regarding whether NATO is wrong.

Potential ethnic cleansing never justifies an act of aggression against a nation.  So NATO's policy founders on this point alone.

The first statement does not by itself constitute an argument against the claim that NATO is justified in its policy because it is countering a threat of ethnic cleansing.  To argue against a claim simply by asserting its negation is to beg the question, or, what is the same thing, to assume your position is correct rather than to argue for it.

Summary of Step Three

1) In your topic sentence, make it clear that your are presenting a possible criticism and make it clear what in the main argument is the focus of the criticism. 

2) Present a strong and convincing argument as your possible criticism.

3) In order to explicate your argument fully, you should consider putting it in deductive form by fully spelling out any unstated assumptions or premises.

4) Avoid self-contradiction, begging the question, and rhetorical questions.

5) You may, if you wish, not only present your criticism in  the normal written form, but outline your argument, as we did in Step Two.

(IV) Step Four: Hitting Back: A Response to a Specific Premise in the Possible Criticism

These essays are designed to be investigations of the strength of the reasons for and against a position.  The next step in the essay pursues this goal by determining how strong the possible criticism is.  Find its weakest premise and try to refute it or attack the logical form of the criticism.  For this step in the argument, you are trying to show how a defender of the main argument might try to respond to the criticism  You need to focus on some aspect of the criticism and argue that it is erroneous (that is, either that a premise in the criticism is false or that the logical form of the argument is flawed).  If you can succeed in doing this, then the possible criticism is shown to be weak and the main argument from steps one and two has been in this context of debate, vindicated.  If you cannot refute a premise in the possible criticism, then the possible criticism appears strong, and the main argument from step one and two has been determined to be unsupported by the reasons; none of these steps need to produce absolute certainty.

How do you determine which aspect from the criticism in Step Three to challenge?  First determine which statements there serve as premises for the possible criticism.  Next determine whether it makes more sense to attack one of these premises or the logical form of the criticism.  Then construct your argument in response to the criticism

The argument based on analogy in Step Three is reconstructed below in order to help us see how a defender of NATO's action might respond to it.

Here is a Reconstruction of Step Three:  (Diagram will be given below the outline)

1:  Law enforcement officials would not be justified in arresting, or even shooting, the suspected thief, just because of their suspicions.

2. They would, however, be justified in trying to prevent a possible robbery.

3:  As the suspected thief has as of yet broken no laws, the law enforcement officials might want to engage him in additional conversation in order to persuade him not to rob the bank.. 

4:  But prior to breaking a law, arresting person or use of force against him is not justified.

5:  The same moral principle holds in international law:

6:  Prior to an invasion by Yugoslavia, the use of force against Yugoslavia is not justified.

(4+ 2+3 ) supports 1.

 (1+5) supports 6.      

One might, in response, argue against the claim that the same moral principle holds in international law: prior to an invasion by Yugoslavia, the use of force against Yugoslavia is not justified.  Morality governing relations between nations differs significantly from morality between individuals.  Individuals, unlike nations, are particularly vulnerable.  We protect individuals from unjust force being  used against them by maintaining a high standard of proof of wrongdoing.  That protection is important to us just because we are aware of past  abuses of  power by police.  So we constrain police action in order to protect potentially innocent individuals against unjust uses of force.

But the claim that individuals, unlike nations, are particularly vulnerable is not convincing.  Nations have in the past been subject to unjust uses of force by other nations just as individuals have.  History is littered with such examples.  And in fact we believe that force used against an aggressive nation, such as Iraq against Kuwait, has a strong justification, whereas force used against non-aggressors is not justified. In both realms we seek to protect an agent, whether a nation or an individual, against abusive use of force.  The more we examine the parallels between the morality governing use of force against individuals and actions, the less convincing the NATO position appears. So  NATO's action, no matter how well-intentioned, is not justified.

Suppose you take up the other side of the issue.  Suppose you defend the opposite thesis: I will argue that NATO's action is not only well-intentioned, but also well justified.  With this thesis, your essay could proceed to examine both sides of the issue in just the same way we have in our example.  The only difference is that in Step Five you would need to side with the response in Step Four, not argue against it.

The claim that individuals, unlike nations, are particularly vulnerable is ultimately convincing.  As a matter of fact, our intervention in Yugoslavia has as its key purpose the protection of individuals.  Because that is what we value, we are prepared to treat nations differently than individuals, especially in those cases where individuals are being harmed.  Our concern about the vulnerability of nations, therefore, rests on our concern about the vulnerability of its citizens.  As a result when a nation threatens its citizens, the same protections against abuse we uphold for individuals are no longer justified.  So NATO's action is not only well-intentioned, but also well justified.