introduction

First, you choose - or are assigned - an  established "Aristotelian topic": Aristotle's Doctrine of the Mean, let us say. Then you are given a "reading list" which catalogues a few articles and books on the topic (all in English, of course, and the more recent the better). You read some of these items, in which scholar X takes issue with scholar W, and scholar Y with scholar X. Glancing quickly at a passage or two in Aristotle, you try to decide whether X refuted W and whether Y finally got the matter  straightened out (of course he didn't); and you write your paper or essay. If you do this well enough, you will later publish it under the title "Y on Aristotle's Doctrine of the Mean",- you will become Z; and future students will try to decide whether Z finally got the matter  straightened out...