On the essay as an attempt at thought, why school essays defeat their own purpose, and what honest essay writing asks of you.
I was asked to write a lot of essays in high school. And it has always been such a pain because first of all, I have completely missed the point of writing essays and secondly what essays are and how they would help me wasn’t taught to me at all. That is to say, there wasn’t even a single definition of an essay. The essay was first of all a coursework, which in itself is horrible, and then it was an analysis, and then it was some formalized writing. The truth is, an essay isn’t and shouldn’t be any of that. Recently, I have found myself wanting to write essays, and thus far I have not been very successful. So the first thing I naturally asked myself was, what are essays? And why do I want to write them? And why should we even write essays in the first place?
The word essay is defined as “a short piece of non-fiction writing that presents an author’s argument, perspective, or analysis on a specific subject,” which seems straightforward, then there is the verb assay, which means “to analyze, to test.” Those two words come from the same root of essai, that is from French, which means “trial, attempt.” The word is used by Montaigne in his essay book Essais in the sense of an attempt at thought. As I was just researching this, I learned that the Old French word comes from its latin origin exagium which means “the act of weighing.”
The fact that I want to write essays specifically means that I want to present my arguments, perspectives, or analysis on various subjects as a short piece of non-fiction writing, and that I want to give an attempt at thought, and that I want to weigh my thoughts. It is evident to me that the act of weighing thoughts is important. We have a lot of thoughts, about a lot of things, and it would do us good to do some weighing among them. Weighing also means to prioritise, to value, to select, to choose like we weigh spice, fruit, and gold to determine their value, or when we say “I gave more weight to this.”
Thus, by essaying, we are deciding that there are some thoughts that are valuable, and some are even valuable enough to be tested. Otherwise, we wouldn’t spend any time thinking about them let alone find within ourselves the energy to put all of that into writing. And out of all these thoughts, our goal, as we essay, is to find the best thoughts, and to refine them to their limits. Also, just like weighing something gives you a weight, essaying gives you the actual value of your thoughts. And you can compare that actual value with the perceived value you had while the thought was still in you.
This becomes evident when you start reading the essays you wrote, or when someone else (like say a teacher) reads them. Thoughts that are not as valuable simply don’t look as good on paper as they do inside your head. There is a different quality of looking at your thoughts from the outside than from the inside. They look more plain, just as words on paper, more exposed. It becomes easier to see mistakes and catch gaps. As such I abandon most of my essays as I am writing them (hopefully not this one) which is expected when we think about that second sense of attempt.
An attempt is by no means a guarantee of success, and again, that is expected. Every thought we have and every writing that this particular thought produces doesn’t have to be a success, but it is nothing short of a failure if it isn’t the best work you can do on this attempt. So it has to be the goal that you are trying to achieve an actual exploration as opposed to writing in formality. Otherwise, you are not really trying your best to think and the essay is doomed from the start. That formality part is the form and the topic and the grade and so on. A surface that is supposed to be a scratchpad for thinking becomes rough and erodes the pen of your mind.
That is what I believe is the single most problematic part of school essays for example. Children are not particularly interested in thinking about whatever topics the school has given them let alone write about it. Forcing them to write before teaching them how to think, grading and punishing them on the low quality of it, and then pretending to teach them some formulas to write essays push them away from the art of it; and not only from writing but from thinking too. And they learn this fast. Even the students who actually want to write essays and to explore different ideas are immediately crushed by the fact that they cannot be free from form and judgement, that they cannot attempt because they cannot bear the cost of failing.
So then, how should I write an essay? Truth and honesty seem to be a good part of it. It is essential to find a question which you truly want to answer. Then you have to have the courage to make an attempt at cracking it by putting words onto paper, looking at your own words, and weighing which thoughts have to go, and which have value. Then you can extend those thoughts, because thoughts are almost always infinitely expandable, and pull everything together into a coherent structure which is presentable to other people. It has to be presentable to other people because if it is not, then it is also not presentable to you, and you are the most important judge of this whole operation. Finally you have to keep deliberating and judging it so that you can make more attempts on it until you find one that is just right. That is the art of essay writing.
In the meantime, I think it is okay and desirable to share the intermediate attempts because they give you a way to track your own work and it keeps you in check so that you cannot go too out of reality or be stuck in your own bubble. The aim is to be right at the edge of your thinking because exploration happens on the edges.