IB Philosophy HL Internal Assessment Example

The student identifies the philosophical issue explicitly and immediately connects it to the stimulus, which gives the essay a clear governing question. This is effective because every later paragraph can be judged against the same issue rather than drifting into a general film summary.

The student justifies the stimulus–issue connection well by showing how control of water becomes a concrete example of domination. This works because the analysis does not simply mention the film; it explains why the scene raises a genuine philosophical problem about power and human motivation.

The essay is well structured around distinct positions, and this sentence makes the argumentative roadmap easy to follow. The student helps the reader by announcing the first view before moving into critique, which supports coherence throughout the response.

This paragraph opens with a clear topic sentence that signals the shift to Nietzsche, making the essay easy to navigate. The same pattern is repeated across the response, so the reader always knows whether the student is presenting a view, evaluating it, or moving to the next section.

The student’s summary of Nietzsche is too narrow here. Nietzsche’s will to power is not simply a desire to dominate other people; it also concerns self-overcoming, interpretation, and the expansion of strength. A fuller account would make the later critique more accurate and persuasive.

This misrepresents Rawls a little. The original position is a device for choosing fair principles of justice, not direct evidence that humans are naturally cooperative. The student should distinguish between Rawls’s normative argument and a claim about empirical human nature, because that distinction matters to the evaluation.

The student could strengthen the argument by clarifying exactly why abstraction makes Rawls unsuitable for the question. For example, distinguishing between what Rawls is trying to justify and what the student thinks can be learned about human nature would sharpen the philosophical precision.

This explanation is plausible, but it is asserted rather than demonstrated. The student should either support the claim with evidence from the film or soften the wording, because speculative psychological claims need more justification in philosophical analysis than narrative inference alone.

The student does more than describe Nietzsche here: the example is used to test whether a state-level conflict can really prove something about all individuals. That move shows analytical depth because it challenges the scope of the evidence rather than accepting the philosopher’s claim at face value.

This is a strong line of criticism, but it needs a more careful justification. The student should explain why the theory becomes unfalsifiable rather than merely flexible, because a theory being adaptable is not automatically the same as being logically impossible to test.

The student’s historical examples are too broad to carry the argument on their own. To improve the analysis, the student should qualify these claims or use more specific historical evidence, since simplified references to whole economic systems weaken the support for Marx’s position.

The student could make this evaluation stronger by naming the specific weaknesses of the essentialist objection before dismissing it. Briefly explaining why the objection fails would turn a conclusion into a more convincing piece of critical analysis.

This judgment is too quickly stated. The student should explain why Nietzsche’s interpretive suspicion counts as a fallacy rather than a methodological challenge to self-report, because otherwise the evaluation risks sounding like assertion rather than reasoned critique.

The student evaluates an alternative interpretation rather than simply listing it, which is a real strength. This sentence shows that the argument is being tested against a rival account of how human nature could be understood, rather than being left as a one-sided summary.

The conclusion is clear, but it would be stronger if it more explicitly weighed the three philosophers against each other before settling on Marx. The student should briefly summarise why Marx succeeds where Nietzsche and Rawls do not, so the final judgement feels fully earned.

What would the argument look like if Max’s choice were explained not as a lack of domination, but as a different form of agency or self-interest? Exploring that possibility would help the student test whether the conclusion really rules out domination, or only certain kinds of domination.