Rationalism has long been the rival of Empiricism, the doctrine that all knowledge comes from, and must be tested by, sense experience. As against this doctrine, Rationalism holds reason to be a faculty that can lay hold of truths beyond the reach of sense perception, both in certainty and generality. In stressing the existence of a “natural light,” Rationalism has also been the rival of systems claiming esoteric knowledge, whether from mystical experience, revelation, or intuition, and has been opposed to various irrationalisms that tend to stress the biological, the emotional or volitional, the unconscious, or the existential at the expense of the rational.
Make your first sentence a really shocker, something that grabs their attention...so don't start with trying to come up with such an important feature. Write the body of what you know you need to say. Then tack on the great first sentence and a super summarizing concluding sentence and you'll take first prize!
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Rationalism has long been the rival of Empiricism, the doctrine that all knowledge comes from, and must be tested by, sense experience. As against this doctrine, Rationalism holds reason to be a faculty that can lay hold of truths beyond the reach of sense perception, both in certainty and generality. In stressing the existence of a “natural light,” Rationalism has also been the rival of systems claiming esoteric knowledge, whether from mystical experience, revelation, or intuition, and has been opposed to various irrationalisms that tend to stress the biological, the emotional or volitional, the unconscious, or the existential at the expense of the rational.
Make your first sentence a really shocker, something that grabs their attention...so don't start with trying to come up with such an important feature. Write the body of what you know you need to say. Then tack on the great first sentence and a super summarizing concluding sentence and you'll take first prize!
A paragraph can't be an essay...
If my essay wins, do I get the prize?