Galicia PAU History of Philosophy / Historia de la Filosofía CIUG common mistakes
Galicia PAU History of Philosophy / Historia de la Filosofía CIUG · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
In the textual commentary option, the candidate summarizes the passage author's doctrine (e.g., rewrites the allegory of the cave or the first Meditation) without identifying the thesis, the premises, and the argumentative move the fragment is actually making, so the commentary reads as a topic summary rather than an analysis of that specific text.
Secondary-school habits reward 'explaining the author', and past-paper drilling often trains memorized author summaries; candidates also fear that close reading will leave them with too little to say, so they pad with general doctrine. The CIUG commentary asks for structure and argument, not biography of ideas.
What to do instead
Before writing, produce a three-line skeleton: (1) the fragment's central claim in one sentence, (2) the steps the author uses to get there, quoted by line, (3) what the author is reacting against. Then write one paragraph per step, anchoring each claim to a quoted phrase ('cuando dice...', 'al afirmar que...'). Any sentence that could be pasted into an essay about a different fragment should be cut.
In the essay/argumentation section, the candidate answers with a list of authors and '-isms' ('Plato defended the world of Ideas, Descartes defended rationalism, Kant made a synthesis') without constructing a defended thesis, so the response describes positions instead of arguing for or against one.
The syllabus is organized by authors and periods, so revision naturally produces inventories. Candidates also confuse 'demonstrating knowledge' with 'arguing', and a list feels safer than committing to a contestable claim.
What to do instead
Open with an explicit thesis sentence ('Sostengo que...'), then two or three arguments each with a premise, a supporting reason and a possible objection you answer. Use authors instrumentally: each named author must appear as a premise in your own argument, not as a heading. Finish with a paragraph stating what would have to be true for your thesis to fail.
The candidate attributes to an author a position the author explicitly rejects, most often reading Plato's Ideas as mental contents ('what we imagine'), Aristotle's form as separable from matter, Hume as a dogmatic sceptic who denies causation exists, or Kant as claiming we cannot know anything at all.
Key terms are polysemous across periods (idea, form, substance, experience, transcendental) and candidates carry modern meanings back into older texts. Compressed textbook glosses ('Hume: scepticism', 'Kant: phenomenalism') reinforce the shortcut.
What to do instead
Keep a one-page glossary per author recording the author's own definition and one textual locus (work, book, section). When revising, test each position against a counter-formulation: 'does this author say the opposite anywhere?' For the four cases above, memorize the corrective sentence: Platonic Ideas are extra-mental realities; Aristotelian form is the what-it-is of a composite; Hume questions the rational justification of induction, not the occurrence of causal expectation; Kant denies intellectual intuition, not experience.
When comparing two authors, the candidate writes two separate monologues joined by 'sin embargo', without stating the precise point of disagreement, the shared question, or what each would say about the other's key premise.
Exams frequently ask 'compare A and B', and candidates treat this as two short essays glued together because it is easier to retrieve two blocks than to construct a relation. Time pressure encourages dumping prepared material.
What to do instead
Use a fixed comparison grid: shared question → each author's answer in one sentence → the premise where they diverge → the consequence of that divergence. Write the divergence as a single sentence of the form 'X aceptaría la premisa P de Y, pero negaría Q, porque...'. Then add one paragraph on what follows for the rest of each system.
In Kant questions, the candidate uses 'trascendental', 'trascendente', 'a priori', 'categoría' and 'fenómeno' interchangeably, writing that the categories are innate ideas or that the thing-in-itself is an object of possible experience.
Kantian vocabulary is the densest in the syllabus and superficially resembles earlier rationalist vocabulary; candidates memorize labels without the distinctions that give them content, and the Spanish 'trascendental/trascendente' pair invites confusion.
What to do instead
Drill four contrast pairs until automatic: trascendental (condition of possibility of experience) vs trascendente (beyond experience); a priori (independent of experience, but for Kant only valid of possible experience) vs innato (Descartes); categoría (a priori concept that constitutes objectivity) vs idea innata; fenómeno (appearance constituted by intuition plus category) vs cosa en sí (thinkable, not knowable). In any Kant answer, define each technical term the first time it appears.
The candidate names a philosophical current or school (Sophists, Stoics, Scholasticism, empiricism, Frankfurt School, postmodernism) as if the label itself were an explanation, without naming a representative author, a specific thesis, or a text.
Syllabus headings and exam wording group authors under movements, so labels become the unit of recall. Labels are also low-risk: they are rarely outright wrong, so candidates do not notice they have said nothing testable.
What to do instead
Apply a rule: every movement mentioned must be followed by at least one named author and one specific claim or work. Replace 'los sofistas defendían el relativismo' with 'Protágoras sostiene que el hombre es la medida de todas las cosas, lo que implica...'. In revision, build movement cards listing two authors, one thesis each, and one objection each.
In Hume and Berkeley questions, the candidate presents empiricism as a single doctrine and misses the internal disagreements, for example treating Berkeley's immaterialism as a version of Locke's representative realism, or presenting Hume's analysis of personal identity as a defence of a substantial self.
Empiricism is taught as a sequence (Locke → Berkeley → Hume) and candidates smooth the sequence into one position, losing the critical moves that make each author examinable. The exam often targets precisely those ruptures.
What to do instead
Learn empiricism as a chain of objections: Locke's representative realism → Berkeley's objection that resemblance to an idea can only be borne by another idea, hence esse est percipi → Hume's objection that the self is never perceived, only a bundle of perceptions. For each link, be able to state the objection in one sentence and the reply it invites.
When explaining an argument, the candidate paraphrases the conclusion and calls it the argument, e.g., 'Descartes duda de todo para llegar a una verdad indudable' or 'Marx dice que la religión es el opio del pueblo', with no premises, no inference step, and no discussion of whether it holds.
Exposition feels complete once the conclusion is stated, and candidates have limited practice in reconstructing premise–conclusion structure. The exam's argumentation component rewards exactly the step candidates skip.
What to do instead
Practice reconstructing five arguments per author in standard form (P1, P2, ∴ C), then add one line identifying the inference type and one line on the weakest premise. In the exam, write the reconstruction explicitly before evaluating; the numbered premises also give you the structure for the evaluation paragraph.
The candidate fills the answer with biographical and historical context (Descartes' life, the Thirty Years' War, the French Revolution, Nietzsche's illness) and treats the philosophical content as a concluding remark.
Context is easy to memorize and feels like required 'introduction'; candidates also use it to absorb time when they are unsure of the doctrine. But CIUG-style questions are scored on conceptual accuracy and argument, and context earns little.
What to do instead
Impose a one-sentence limit on context and place it after the thesis, only where it explains the problem being answered. Spend the saved space on definitions, distinctions and objections. If you cannot state the author's central problem in one sentence, that gap, not the historical background, is what needs revision.
The candidate runs out of time or misallocates it, writing a long commentary and leaving the essay question answered in three lines, or answering only one of two required options because the instructions were skimmed.
Commentary feels more concrete and is attempted first; candidates also do not rehearse the paper under timed conditions, so they have no sense of how long a full essay takes. Skimming instructions under stress leads to missed options.
What to do instead
Rehearse full papers with a clock and a fixed budget (e.g., ten minutes planning, proportional writing time per section, five minutes checking). In the first two minutes, underline every instruction verbatim, including the choice structure and any required comparison. If time is short, write the essay in skeleton form with thesis, three premises and one objection rather than abandoning it.