Respond to this post by identifying a particular challenge that writing the second assignment is presenting for you. What aspects of writing about the literature of past are you finding difficult with this particular paper?
Deadline: Monday (10/26), start of class.
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I'm having a lot of trouble identifying the different beliefs of the authors we have read. The language of these authors and their thoughts on a lot of the same topics makes it really difficult for me to clearly explain them. Furthermore, I have found it really difficult to even get started on this assignment because we have read so many pieces of literature and its hard to pick just one.
Like Cara, I'm having a hard time pinpointing Jefferson specifically. He has so many enlightened ideas about religion, including free inquiry and reason and separation of church and state, but is he a Deist with Christian tendencies or is he saying that everyone is a Deist with specific tendencies and doctrines they've individually, by reason, picked? And once a good grasp on his religious beliefs is detailed, I know that I will need to fit in another author who doesn't necessarily share those believes, but could credit other ideas Jefferson has on religion. It's hard going through the paper and trying to find where the spots for the second author have to fit into, and also knowing I have to figure out the second author like Jefferson.
In doing this assignment, I am finding it difficult to separate each concept from the next. I am looking at desire in relation to Diderot's Enjoyment & Tahiti. However, I feel like the concept of desire in this text is tied very closely with the concept of religion and desire and religion together say much about the concept of marriage. On the other hand, I realize this is probably much of the reason we are doing the assignment. Many of these ideas are interconnected, so in order to get a real grasp on it, we need to be able to pin point an idea and talk about it specifically. The fact that the ideas are so muddled for me is perhaps a sign of my amateur status in the Enlightenment literature world.
I also had similar problems as Cara and Julia with simply trying to start the assignment. It was hard for me to pick just one reading to write about because we have already read so many and also because I don't know exactly what our future readings will be about. I didn't want to get too deep into the assignment and then realize that I will not be able to finish the second part of the assignment because I made a poor choice for the first part of the assignment. But I guess it is at that point that you just trust the construction of the assignment over personal doubts.
The argument in Part I of the paper must be able to stand up on its own. That is, it must be able to function as a hermetic, isolated argument complete in itself. At the same time, however, one must be conscious of the incorporation of an additional text into the argument at a later date. This tension seems to produce an inability to argue persuasively and with convincing specificity. Though none of this is necessarily dependent on the age of the texts, it is perhaps humorous that one must write with prescience (in reconciling Part I with the yet-to-be-written Part II) about literature nearly three centuries old.
My biggest problem with this assignment was choosing which text to use. Many of the readings for class have been quite short, and I wasn't sure if I could get a solid paper out of them. Additionally, as Andrew mentioned, we must choose one that can stand on its own as well as be related to a different text (which we know nothing about yet) at a later date. Thus, we must choose one that is long and rich enough to stand on its own for the first part of this assignment, but also somehow have a plan to incorporate an unknown text into this essay at a later date.
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