La Rioja PAU History of Philosophy common mistakes
La Rioja PAU History of Philosophy · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Writing the author's biography and historical context for most of the essay before addressing the actual question, so that the philosophical thesis appears only in the final paragraph.
Candidates memorised a standard 'introduction' template and believe context earns marks; the exam's rubric rewards conceptual exposition of the problem and its arguments, and context is only useful if it explains the position.
What to do instead
Reverse the proportion: one or two sentences of situating context, then state the thesis explicitly in the first paragraph. Structure the body around the question's key concepts, and use context only where it explains why the author argues as he does (e.g. Hume's empiricism against rationalist metaphysics).
Using technical vocabulary as decoration, writing phrases like 'Plato's dialectic overcomes the ontological duality' without defining dialectic, idea, or participation in that specific text.
Revision is done by memorising glossaries rather than by practising definitions in context; candidates fear that defining terms looks elementary, when examiners are testing whether the term is genuinely understood.
What to do instead
For every technical term used, write one clause defining it as the author uses it and one clause showing what it excludes (e.g. 'idea, in Plato, is not a mental content but an intelligible paradigm that is; it is not a concept in the mind'). Practise this on a fixed list: idea, participation, substance, accident, a priori, synthetic, alienation, perspectivism, vital reason.
In the textual commentary, paraphrasing the passage line by line and then adding a separate 'context' section, without identifying the argumentative function of the passage or reconstructing its premises and conclusion.
Candidates treat the commentary as a comprehension exercise. The exercise actually asks for explanation of the text, analysis of its argument, and evaluation, and candidates do not know how to move from paraphrase to argument.
What to do instead
Use a fixed three-move routine: (1) locate the passage in the work and name the problem it answers; (2) extract its premises and conclusion in your own words, including what the author is arguing against; (3) assess one premise. Never let a sentence of the passage go unanalysed while adding material not in the text.
Confusing Plato's theory of ideas with Aristotle's criticism of it, attributing to Aristotle the separation of ideas or to Plato the hylomorphic compound of matter and form.
Both authors are studied as a single 'ancient unit' and the contrast is memorised as a slogan ('Aristotle was more empirical') rather than as a set of precise disagreements about separation, immanence, and the cause of change.
What to do instead
Build a two-column comparison on four exact points: separate vs. immanent form; the Third Man argument as Aristotle's objection; the four causes as Aristotle's replacement for participation; and the different roles of sensible substances. Write each point as a sentence with a named text (Phaedo, Metaphysics Z).
Presenting Kant's Copernican turn as the claim that 'we create reality' or that 'everything is in the mind', collapsing transcendental idealism into subjective idealism.
The slogan 'the mind imposes forms on experience' is remembered without the distinction between appearances and things in themselves, and without the a priori/a posteriori and analytic/synthetic distinctions that give it sense.
What to do instead
State the doctrine precisely: space, time, and the categories are a priori conditions of possible experience, not psychological contents; things in themselves are thinkable but not knowable. Then test your formulation against Berkeley: if your sentence would also be true of Berkeley, it is wrong.
Answering a comparison question (e.g. Hume and Kant on causation, or Marx and Nietzsche on modernity) by writing two separate summaries joined by 'however', with no point-by-point engagement.
Revision is organised by author, so the exam's comparative demand is met with two monologues; candidates lack practice in identifying the exact point of divergence.
What to do instead
Choose two or three axes in advance (for causation: origin of the idea of necessary connection vs. the category as a condition of experience; for modernity: economic alienation vs. moral genealogy) and write one paragraph per axis containing both authors in the same sentences.
Treating Nietzsche's critique of morality as a general rejection of all ethics, or his perspectivism as the claim that all views are equally valid.
Provocative aphorisms are quoted out of context and the argumentative structure of the Genealogy is skipped; candidates mistake rhetorical force for the thesis.
What to do instead
Distinguish slave/master evaluation, the genealogy of the moral concepts, and the affirmation of life as the criterion of evaluation; note that perspectivism is a claim about the conditions of knowledge, not an equal-validity thesis. Quote one aphorism and reconstruct its argument rather than summarising its tone.
In the Ortega question, reducing 'yo soy yo y mi circunstancia' to a slogan about environment and failing to connect vital reason to the critique of both rationalism and vitalism.
Ortega is often revised from short summaries; the formula is memorable but its function as a mediation between abstraction and mere life is not understood.
What to do instead
Explain the sentence as a rejection of both Cartesian disembodied reason and purely biological vitalism, then show how 'razón vital' makes life the ground and the problem of reason. Link it explicitly to his diagnosis of the modern crisis of foundations.
Writing an essay with no argumentative structure, so paragraphs list correct information but no thesis is defended and no objection is considered.
Candidates prepare content, not writing; under time pressure they reproduce notes in the order they were memorised, and the exam explicitly assesses argumentative writing.
What to do instead
Plan for two minutes: one sentence thesis, three numbered reasons, one anticipated objection with a reply. Write signposting sentences ('The first reason is...', 'Against this one might object...'). Practise on past-style prompts with a strict time limit so the structure becomes automatic.
Mixing up Augustine and Aquinas on the relation of faith and reason, or the Renaissance/modern transition, attributing to Descartes positions belonging to scholastic Aristotelianism (e.g. that the soul is the form of the body).
The medieval unit is compressed in revision, so authors become labels; the distinctions between illumination, analogy of being, and the Cartesian cogito are never stated sharply.
What to do instead
Anchor each author to one text and one formula: Augustine's 'crede ut intelligas' and interior illumination; Aquinas's analogy of being and the harmony of natural and revealed truth; Descartes's method of doubt and the cogito as the first indubitable truth. Contrast each formula with the one it replaces.