SO: I finished the paper for this conference yesterday, and sent it off. Now that I am doing work under my own name (I don't really count seminar papers, which are either responses to someone else's prompt, or more like sketches for paper ideas)--the prospectus, this conference paper, and another later in the fall--the writing process looks to me like a constant exercise in humility. I think that's a good thing: ego will overtake you if you're not careful, so it's good to be reminded, every once in awhile, of how much farther you have left to go.
Every paper has an ambitious beginning (the pile of books I set aside for this paper was ridiculous. most of them remain in that original pile), but the goal eventually switches to become presenting something good, with a plausible claim that you think you can defend. The paper itself is just a time-slice in the history of an argument.* I accept I will think somewhat differently about Rorty and Rawls by the time I present the paper. Some progress occurs, even with the onset of humility: I feel a little more capable of making claims that are distinctly mine than I did even a year ago, and hopefully that will continue.
*I unintentionally went to Robert Nozick in Anarchy, State and Utopia here
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
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