Political philosophy personal statement example

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

My college does not teach philosophy, so my first proper encounter with political philosophy came from a battered library copy of Hobbes's Leviathan that I picked up because the title sounded dramatic. What kept me reading was not the sea monster but the method: Hobbes starts from claims about what people are like, and then argues that certain political arrangements follow. I had never seen an argument built that deliberately. In my Politics lessons we describe how the Commons works; here someone was asking why anyone should obey it at all.

Since then I have been drawn to questions about legitimacy and consent, and to how differently thinkers answer them from similar starting points. Reading Mill's On Liberty after Hobbes was useful precisely because both worry about conflict, yet Mill treats disagreement as something a society needs rather than something to be suppressed. I am not persuaded that his harm principle does as much work as he wants it to, since so much depends on how widely harm is defined, and that unresolved feeling is what makes me want to study the subject formally rather than only read around it.

What attracts me to a degree is the chance to be corrected. On my own I can follow an argument, but I cannot tell when I have missed an obvious objection or misunderstood a term of art. I want to read primary texts closely alongside people who will push back, and to learn the logic and history of political thought properly, so that when I say an argument fails I can say exactly where.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

History has been the strongest preparation. Studying the extension of the franchise meant reading arguments people actually made about who was fit to vote, which taught me that political ideas are defended with reasons and not only interests. I have become careful about evidence and about representing an opponent's position accurately before criticising it, a habit my teacher pushed hard in essay feedback and one I now apply to philosophical reading.

Government and Politics gives me the institutional vocabulary. Learning how judicial review works in the UK made abstract questions about rights and majority rule concrete: there is a genuine problem about unelected judges overruling elected governments, and I found that the textbook answers stopped just where the interesting argument began. English Literature has trained me to slow down over how something is written. Noticing that a writer has shifted from describing to prescribing turns out to matter as much in Rousseau as in a novel.

Because there is no philosophy option at my college, I have worked through free online lecture series on ethics and political theory and kept a notebook of arguments in premise-and-conclusion form, which forces me to be honest about gaps. I have read Plato's Republic, Machiavelli's The Prince, and parts of Rawls's A Theory of Justice, along with a general introduction to political philosophy to place them in context. Rawls's original position struck me as an elegant way of modelling fairness, though I still wonder whether people behind the veil would be as cautious as he assumes. I have also taken an A-level in Mathematics to AS standard, which helped my confidence with formal reasoning.

What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?

With two friends I started a lunchtime discussion group that meets in a college classroom every fortnight. We choose a question in advance, such as whether voting should be compulsory or whether prisoners should keep the vote, and I prepare a one-page handout with two opposing arguments so newcomers can join in without reading beforehand. It costs nothing but printing, which I cover from my wages. Attendance has settled at around eight people, including students from science courses who disagree with me productively. Chairing has taught me to keep a discussion moving without steering it towards my own view, and to notice when two people are arguing past each other because they mean different things by the same word.

My uncle asked me to help with the paperwork for our community allotment association, which has more applicants than plots. I keep the waiting list and take minutes at meetings. The committee has argued about whether places should go strictly by date of application, by need, or with some priority for people without gardens, and watching that unfold has made distributive justice much less abstract for me. Each position had a real argument behind it, and the eventual compromise satisfied nobody completely.

Saturday work at a garden centre has taught me patience and how to explain things clearly to people who are in a hurry. I also read a broadsheet's letters page most weeks, which is a good corrective to the assumption that opposing views are unconsidered. A degree in political philosophy would let me take the habits I have built informally and make them rigorous.

This example has 4,819 characters across the three answers. Use it for ideas and structure. Your own UCAS answers must fit within 4,000 characters in total, including spaces.

Review this personal statement

Latest reviews