“WHAT FREEDOM MEANS TO ME”

1ST PROJECT PAPER

Ground rules for writing the paper:

A.    Do not include or reiterate a dictionary definition of freedom.

B.    Do not write a research paper.

C.    Be autobiographical. Draw on your own experiences, feelings, and insights about the topic of freedom. Also, please feel free to draw on relevant insights shared in the assigned readings.

D.    Write a reflective paper that is about 4-5 pages in length (typed and double-spaced). 

When writing the paper, be sure to address the following questions:

1) What is freedom?

2) Are you free? If so, how are you free? 

3) How is your freedom limited or constrained (especially by social factors)?

Quotes from philosophers that might be helpful to you in thinking and writing about freedom:

“Liberty consists in the power to do what one wants to do, or in the power to want what can be got.”                                                  

--Leibniz

“There is no subjugation so perfect as that which keeps the appearance of freedom...”

--Jean-Jaques Rousseau

“Order is the first requisite of liberty.” 

“Freedom is the will to necessity.” (In other words, freedom is wanting to do what you ought to do.)                                           

                                                        --G.W.F. Hegel

“You are free and that is why you are lost.”

--Franz Kafka

“The greatest gift which humanity has received is free choice. It is true that we are limited in our use of free choice. But the little free choice we have is such a great gift and is potentially worth so much that for this itself, life is worthwhile living.”

--Isaac Bashevis Singer

“The sole end for which mankind is warranted, individually and collectively, in interfering with the liberties of action of any of their number is... self-protection.. The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.” 

--John Stuart Mill

“[A person] is free, as I conceive the matter, but it is an organic freedom, which he works out in co-operation with others, not a freedom to do things independently of society. It is teamwork. He has freedom to function in his own way, like the quarterback, but in one way or another, he has to play the game as life brings him into it."

--Charles Horton Cooley 

“Freedom means joining with others, not just to develop my own distinct, individual talents, but to undertake common goals and enterprises as well... It means having real opportunities to develop my fullest potential and to participate with others in making our society better.”

--Frances Moore Lappe

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