Cantabria PAU History of Philosophy common mistakes
Cantabria PAU History of Philosophy · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Writing the text commentary as a paraphrase of what the passage says, sentence by sentence, without identifying the author, work, or philosophical problem the fragment belongs to.
Candidates treat the commentary as a reading-comprehension exercise because that is what they practised in earlier school years, and they fear that naming the author wrongly will cost marks. The result is a summary that never enters the conceptual level the exam rewards.
What to do instead
Before writing, spend five minutes on a fixed identification card: probable author and work, the philosophical school, the specific problem (e.g. the criterion of truth, the relation of soul to body, the origin of ideas), and the thesis defended in the fragment. Open the commentary by stating that card, then devote the body to reconstructing the argument's premises and conclusion and to explaining the technical terms in the passage. Close with the fragment's place in the author's wider system and its significance for later thought.
Quoting or invoking Plato's theory of Ideas as a single flat doctrine, without distinguishing the argumentative routes by which he reaches it (recollection in the Meno, the hypothetical method in the Phaedo, the divided line and sun analogies in the Republic) or the criticisms raised within the dialogues themselves.
Study summaries compress Plato into a doctrine plus the cave allegory, so candidates memorise conclusions and never see the arguments. Under exam pressure they reproduce the summary rather than the reasoning, and cannot answer a question that asks how or why Plato posits separate Forms.
What to do instead
For each Platonic topic build an argument map: which dialogue, which question, which premises, which conclusion. Practise stating in two or three sentences why the sensible world cannot supply stable knowledge and how the theory of Ideas is meant to solve that. Keep the Parmenides' self-criticisms (the third-man problem, participation) available, because questions on the limits of the theory are common.
Explaining Aristotelian concepts such as form, matter, potentiality, and the four causes by giving one-line definitions, then failing to apply them to a concrete case (for example, explaining change, the soul as form of the body, or the difference between natural and violent motion).
Aristotle's vocabulary is easy to memorise as a glossary, and candidates assume the exam only asks for definitions. But the exam typically asks for the conceptual work the terms do, and a list of definitions cannot show that.
What to do instead
For every pair (matter/form, potential/actual, substance/accident) prepare one worked example and one contrast with Plato. Be able to say precisely why the hylomorphic account of the soul avoids both dualism and reductionism, and why the four causes together answer the question 'why is this thing what it is?' rather than four separate questions.
Treating Augustine and Aquinas as interchangeable 'Christian Platonism' or 'Christian Aristotelianism', and answering questions about grace, evil, or natural law with generic religious commonplaces rather than the specific argumentative structure each thinker uses.
Both are taught quickly as bridge figures between antiquity and modernity, so candidates learn labels (illumination, analogy of being, five ways) without the arguments behind them. When asked to compare, they produce vague harmony instead of precise contrast.
What to do instead
Memorise one core argument per thinker in premise-conclusion form: Augustine's argument that evil is privation of good and that the will's disorder explains sin; Aquinas's argument from motion or contingency to a first cause, and the distinction between essence and existence. Then prepare a comparison table on three axes: how knowledge of God is possible, what the will is free for, and how nature relates to grace. Use it to answer compare-and-contrast prompts.
Presenting Descartes' method of doubt as general scepticism or as a psychological exercise, and then reciting 'cogito ergo sum' without explaining why the cogito survives the doubt or what exactly it establishes.
The cogito is the most quoted line in the syllabus, so candidates assume quoting it is enough. They also confuse the hyperbolic doubt (a methodological instrument) with the conclusion of scepticism, which inverts Descartes' intention.
What to do instead
Reconstruct the sequence explicitly: why the senses are doubted, why the dream argument and the evil demon are stronger than ordinary doubt, what is indubitable at the end, and why the cogito is an intuition rather than a syllogism. Then state what still needs proving (God's existence and veracity) to guarantee clear and distinct ideas, and why that move is the weakest link for later critics.
Answering Hume questions with slogans ('no impressions, no ideas', 'reason is slave to the passions') without explaining the copy principle, the distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact, and how causation is analysed in terms of constant conjunction and custom.
Hume's phrases are memorable and easy to deploy as decoration, but the exam asks for the argument that connects them. Candidates who only have slogans cannot explain why the negation of a matter of fact is conceivable while the negation of a relation of ideas is not.
What to do instead
Learn the fork with two examples each, then the causal argument in order: we never perceive a necessary connection, we infer effects from custom, and the belief in necessity is a feeling projected onto the world. Be ready to state the consequence for induction and for the self as a bundle of perceptions, and to say what Hume does not conclude (he does not deny that we reason causally in practice).
Using Kantian terms (a priori, synthetic, transcendental, noumenon, category) as labels without being able to say what work each does, and failing to explain the Copernican turn as an answer to a specific problem posed by Hume and by rationalist metaphysics.
Kant's vocabulary is dense and candidates often learn it by translation into everyday words, which erases the technical distinctions. Without the problem situation, the doctrine looks like arbitrary terminology.
What to do instead
Frame Kant as answering two questions: how are synthetic a priori judgments possible, and how can metaphysics be a science? Then define each term by its role in that answer. Practise explaining why space and time are forms of intuition rather than concepts, why the categories apply only to possible experience, and what the distinction between phenomenon and noumenon forbids us from claiming. Work through one example judgment (e.g. '7+5=12' and 'every event has a cause') to show the synthetic a priori in action.
Reducing Marx to economic determinism or to a moral denunciation of capitalism, and Nietzsche to 'God is dead' as a slogan or to relativism, without reconstructing the arguments about alienation, ideology, the fetishism of commodities, the will to power, ressentiment, and the revaluation of values.
These authors are often taught through political sympathy or antipathy rather than through their texts, so candidates absorb a caricature. Exam prompts that ask for conceptual analysis then expose the gap between the caricature and the argument.
What to do instead
For Marx, separate the early alienation argument from the later critique of political economy, and be able to explain base and superstructure, ideology, and commodity fetishism with one concrete example each. For Nietzsche, distinguish the diagnosis (nihilism, the death of God as a cultural event), the genealogy (master and slave morality, ressentiment), and the proposal (revaluation, the overman, eternal recurrence). Practise stating each author's strongest objection to the other so you can handle comparison prompts.
Treating Ortega y Gasset as a source of quotable phrases about 'I am I and my circumstance' or the 'mass man' without connecting them to his critique of rationalism and realism, his idea of vital reason, and his account of perspectivism and the historical dimension of truth.
Ortega is often studied through short anthologies and journalistic summaries, so the systematic side of his thought is under-represented in candidates' notes. They then produce impressionistic essays that lack the argumentative spine the exam expects.
What to do instead
Build Ortega's position as a response to two extremes: abstract rationalism (Descartes' cogito as pure reason) and naive realism (the thing as independent of the subject). Show how 'vital reason' and 'perspectivism' mediate, and how the mass-society analysis in La rebelión de las masas follows from his account of the modern individual and technique. Anchor each claim to a specific work and, where possible, a short paraphrase of a passage you know well.
Writing the essay question as a list of everything you know about the author, with no thesis, no argumentative structure, and no explicit conceptual analysis of the key terms in the prompt.
Time pressure and the fear of leaving out content push candidates toward exhaustive dumping. Marks, however, are awarded for a defended thesis, coherent argument, and precise use of concepts, and a list cannot demonstrate any of these.
What to do instead
Spend the first five minutes producing a one-sentence thesis and a three-part outline (state the problem, reconstruct the strongest position, evaluate or compare). Define the prompt's key terms in the introduction. In each paragraph make one claim, support it with a textual or conceptual reason, and connect it back to the thesis. Reserve the last paragraph for a critical evaluation and a short conclusion that answers the question as asked, not the question you wish had been asked.