Aragón PAU History of Philosophy common mistakes
Aragón PAU History of Philosophy · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
In the text commentary, the candidate summarizes the passage paragraph by paragraph ("the author says... and then says...") instead of identifying the thesis being defended and reconstructing the argument that supports it.
Secondary-school habits of 'commentary' reward retelling, and paraphrasing feels safe because it cannot be marked wrong; candidates also fear that extracting a thesis requires knowledge they may not have.
What to do instead
Before writing, produce a three-line skeleton on scratch paper: (1) the thesis in one sentence, (2) the premises the author gives for it, (3) the conclusion or consequence. Then write the commentary around that skeleton, quoting at most two short fragments as evidence for each step and explaining the logical link between them ('this premise supports the thesis because...'). Practise on a 15-line passage with a 200-word limit so the summarizing reflex is squeezed out.
Treating contextualization as a biography dump: listing dates, works, and anecdotes about the author without connecting any of it to the meaning of the text.
Textbooks and summaries present 'context' as a list, so candidates memorize lists and reproduce them; they are not taught that context must answer a question the text poses.
What to do instead
Use a two-column plan: left column 'problem the author is answering', right column 'what in his historical situation makes this problem urgent'. Admit only contextual facts that fill the right column (e.g., for Kant, the conflict between Newtonian science and metaphysical dogmatism; for Ortega, the crisis of European rationalism after 1914). Delete any date or title that does not illuminate a specific phrase in the passage.
In Plato, describing the theory of Forms as 'another world of perfect things' and leaving it there, without explaining the epistemological and ethical functions it performs (grounding of true knowledge versus opinion, the possibility of universal definitions, the standard for action).
The imagery of the cave and the 'world of ideas' is memorable and easy to repeat, so candidates stop at the metaphor and never state what the theory is for.
What to do instead
For every mention of a Form, force yourself to add 'which explains...'. Prepare three sentences: Forms explain how there can be stable knowledge of changing things; they explain how one word (justice, beauty) can apply to many particulars; they explain what the soul contemplates when it acts rightly. Tie each to a specific dialogue passage you can cite by name (Republic V–VII, Phaedo, Symposium).
Attributing to Aristotle a simple rejection of Plato's Forms ('Aristotle said ideas don't exist') instead of stating the precise criticism and the alternative he offers (the third-man regress, the separation problem, and the hylomorphic solution of form-in-matter).
The 'Plato versus Aristotle' contrast is taught as a slogan in the Raphael fresco, and the technical arguments are compressed into a single line in many summaries.
What to do instead
Memorize the structure of the criticism in three moves: (a) if Forms are separate from particulars, they cannot be the cause of their being or movement; (b) the third-man argument shows the theory generates an infinite regress; (c) the alternative is form as the what-it-is (to ti ēn einai) present in the composite of matter and form. Practise writing this in 120 words with one concrete example (e.g., what makes this human a human).
Presenting Descartes' methodical doubt as ordinary skepticism or as a proof that nothing exists, rather than as a deliberate, provisional instrument whose goal is to find an indubitable foundation.
The dramatic phrases ('evil demon', 'I think therefore I am') dominate the memory, and the word 'doubt' naturally suggests a conclusion rather than a procedure.
What to do instead
Write the doubt as a sequence with a purpose at each stage: suspend judgment on sensory knowledge because senses deceive; on mathematics because of the dreaming hypothesis; on everything because of the evil-demon hypothesis; then note that even the doubt itself cannot be doubted as an act of thinking. Always end the paragraph with the function: doubt is hyperbolic and methodological, and it terminates in the cogito as a first principle, not in nihilism.
Explaining Hume's empiricism as 'all knowledge comes from experience' and then failing to apply his own distinctions (impressions versus ideas, relations of ideas versus matters of fact, and the role of custom in causal inference).
The one-line definition is the version most frequently memorized, so candidates never deploy the machinery that the exam question actually asks about (e.g., why we believe in necessary connection).
What to do instead
Build a small table you can reproduce from memory: impressions/ideas (force and vivacity, copy principle), relations of ideas/matters of fact (demonstrative versus experimental), and the analysis of causation (contiguity, succession, constant conjunction, and the custom-generated feeling of necessary connection). For any Hume question, name which distinction you are using before you use it, and illustrate with one example such as the billiard balls.
Reducing Kant's Copernican turn to 'we cannot know reality' and confusing the phenomenon/noumenon distinction with Berkeleyan idealism or with skepticism.
The phrase 'things in themselves are unknowable' is quoted in isolation, and the technical vocabulary (a priori, synthesis, categories) is unfamiliar, so candidates substitute a familiar-sounding conclusion.
What to do instead
State the turn as a claim about the conditions of possible experience: space, time, and the categories are forms contributed by the subject, so objects of experience are constituted by them; the thing in itself is thinkable but not knowable. Add the test question: 'Does this sentence describe something given in intuition, or only a condition of intuition?' and use it to distinguish Kant from Berkeley (who denies the thing in itself) and from Hume (who denies a priori synthesis).
In Marx, explaining alienation and historical materialism as moral complaint or as a conspiracy theory of greedy capitalists, rather than as a structural analysis of how relations of production shape consciousness and how labour's product confronts the worker.
Political rhetoric around Marx is more available in students' environment than the texts, and the ethical vocabulary of 'exploitation' invites a moralizing reading.
What to do instead
Define each term functionally: forces of production, relations of production, base and superstructure, and alienation as the fourfold estrangement (from product, from activity, from species-being, from others). For any claim, ask 'what structural mechanism does this name?' and write it as a mechanism sentence ('because the worker sells labour-power, the product belongs to another, therefore...'). Keep normative evaluation in a separate final paragraph.
In Nietzsche, quoting 'God is dead' as an atheist slogan or attributing to him a simple relativism ('everything is interpretation, so anything goes'), without the diagnosis of the collapse of values and the problem of nihilism it creates.
The aphorism is famous and detached from its context in The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and the provocative tone is easier to remember than the argument.
What to do instead
Always pair the phrase with its consequence: the death of God means the highest values have devalued themselves, so the question becomes whether we can create values or sink into passive nihilism. Distinguish passive from active nihilism, and note that Nietzsche's perspectivism is a claim about the limits of knowledge, not a licence for arbitrary opinion. Prepare one paragraph linking the madman passage to the revaluation of values.
Treating Ortega y Gasset as a slogan ('I am I and my circumstance') without explaining perspectivism, the distinction between ideas and beliefs, and the historical crisis of reason that his philosophy of vital reason responds to.
The single famous sentence circulates in exam-preparation summaries, and Spanish candidates often assume familiarity with the author replaces the need to reconstruct his arguments.
What to do instead
Write out the chain: life is the radical reality, given as a problem to be solved; reason must be vital (razón vital) and situated in a perspective, and perspectives are partial but complementary, not mutually exclusive; beliefs are the substratum on which ideas rest. Then connect to a concrete text (Meditaciones del Quijote, El tema de nuestro tiempo, La rebelión de las masas) and to the historical diagnosis of the crisis of modernity. Practise explaining the maxim in three sentences that each add a new concept.