Single-Author Book
Elshtain, J. B. (2003). Just war against terror: The burden of American power in a violent world. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Multiple-Author Book (Fewer than Four Authors)
Malless, S., & McQuain, J. (2003). Coined by God: Words and phrases that first appear in the English translations of the Bible. New York, NY: Norton.
Works in an Anthology
Weil, S. (2015). Equality. In M. Austin (Ed.), Reading the world: Ideas that matter (pp. 575-78). New York, NY: Norton. (Original work published 1940)
Single-Author Journal Article (Paginated by Volume)
Weinberger, J, (2003). Pious princes and red-hot lovers: The politics of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Journal of Politics, 65, 370-375.
Multiple-Author Journal Article (Paginated by Issue)
Weaver, C., McNally, C., & Moerman, S. (2001). To grammar or not to grammar: That is not the question! Voices from the Middle. 8(3), 17-33.
Scholarly Edition
Austen, J. (2001). Sense and sensibility (C. Johnson, Ed.). New York, NY: Norton.
Magazine Article—Monthly
Hawass, Z. (2003, January). Egypt's forgotten treasures. National Geographic, 203. 74-87.
Magazine Article—Weekly
Samuelson, R. J. (2004, October 18). The changing face of poverty, Newsweek, 144, 50.
Newspaper Article
Farenthold, D. (2005, October 9). Town shaken by lobster theft. The Washington Post, p. A3.
Article from an Electronic Database
Moore, K. D. (2005). The truth of the barnacles: Rachel Carson and the moral
significance of wonder. Environmental Ethics, 27(3), 265-277. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.
Work that Appears Only Online
Nasr, S. H. (2007, May 5). The meaning and concept of philosophy in Islam. Retrieved April 23, 2009, from http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ip/ nasr-ipi.htm
Gross, D. (2009, 24 January). The quitter economy. Slate. Retrieved from http:// www.slate.com/id/2209617
Online Work also in Print
Dowd, M. (2002, April 7). Sacred cruelties (Electronic version). New York Times Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/07/opinion/07D0WD.html
SAMPLE DOCUMENTED ESSAY (MLA FORMAT)
Porter 1
Clarissa Porter Professor Croft English 101, Section 10 February 13, 2015
Human Nature in Mencius and Hsun Tzu Mencius and Hsun Tzu were both Chinese scholars living during the Period of Warring States. They were both self-professed Confucians, and they both believed that rites and rituals were necessary in order to perfect human beings. Both Mencius and Hsun Tzu gave a lot of thought to questions of human nature, but, as many writers and scholars have pointed out, they came to very different conclusions. Mencius believed that human beings were inherently good, and that they only act in evil ways when their natural goodness is perverted. Hsun Tzu, on the other hand, believed that human nature is inherently evil and must be corrected by strict religious observances. These differences, however, have often been exaggerated. Mencius and Hsun Tzu have certain theoretical differences about the abstract concept of human nature, but their view of what humans should do is nearly identical.
The differences between Mencius and Hsun Tzu have been the subject of substantial commentary. In China's Imperial Past, for example, Charles O. Hucker asserts that
Whereas Mencius's conception of the essential goodness of human nature has led some specialists to characterize him as a tenderhearted idealist, it is universally agreed that the last great Confucian thinker of the formative age, Hsun Tzu, was an unsentimental, ruthlessly tough-minded rationalist. His characteristic intellectual approach was "Humbug! Let's consider the facts." (82)
Porter 2
Hucker's characterization here is backed up by the authors themselves. Mencius argues that "human nature is inherently good, just like water inherently flows downhill. There is no such thing as a person who isn't good, just as there's no water that doesn't flow downhill" (79). Hsun Tzu directly contradicts this. "Mencius," Hsun Tzu says, "states that man's nature is good, and that all evil arises because he loses his original nature. Such a view, I believe, is erroneous" (86). Even the title of Hsun Tzu's essay, "Man's Nature Is Evil," betrays his fundamental difference with Mencius.
The difference between the two Confucian scholars is fundamental, but is it important? Some scholars believe that the differences between them stem from different views of morality but that, in the words of David E. Soles, "they are in substantial agreement as to the empirical facts of human nature" (123). Soles believes that the differences between Mencius and Hsun Tzu are real, but that these differences are not the result of the two considering sets of facts about human behavior. Both philosophers acknowledge that human beings sometimes act morally and sometimes immorally. They differ drastically in what they see as the root cause for this behavior—Mencius believes that people are immoral when they deny their natures and Hsun Tzu believes that they are immoral when they do not. Amazingly, though, these differences do not result in any practical differences in the behavior that they recommend.
Like Confucius, Hsun Tzu believes that we must all shape our characters through an elaborate series of purifying rituals. These rituals, he believes, turn inherently evil people into moral beings:
Mencius states that man is capable of learning because his nature is good, but I say that this is wrong. It indicates that he has not really understood man's nature nor distinguished properly between the basic nature and conscious activity. The nature is that which is given by Heaven; you cannot learn it, you cannot acquire it by effort. Ritual principles, on the other hand, are created by sages; you can learn
Sample Documented Essay (MLA Format)
Porter 3
to apply them, you can work to bring them to completion. That part of man which cannot be learned or acquired by effort is called the nature; that part of him which can be acquired by learning and brought to completion by effort is called conscious activity. This is the difference between nature and conscious activity. (85) Conscious activity is just as important to Mencius, who, according to the online edition of the Stanford Encyclopedia, "regarded the transformative power of a cultivated person as the ideal basis for government. In addition, he spelled out more explicitly the idea that order in society depends on proper attitudes within the family, which in turn depends on cultivating oneself." Mencius believed that people should engage in ritual self-cultivation through the very same Confucian rituals advocated by Hsun Tzu.
700
For Hsun Tzu, Confucian rituals are necessary to change human nature into something good. For Mencius, they are necessary to cultivate raw human nature, which is already good, into the polished attributes of a gentleman. Their philosophical views could not be farther apart, but in the end, the behavioral norms that they expound are very similar, and their dedication to Confucian rituals is identical. Their enmity is limited to the realm of the abstract. In practice, they would have us do the same things, albeit for very different reasons.