Assignment: Human Freedom and the News

1. Identify a current event or contemporary social issue that involves human freedom. Your issue must be broad enough to sustain deep philosophical analysis and must have relevance to your community. A good choice of issue is one that (1) involves a decision that must be made, (2) includes with various available options about which reasonable minds can disagree, (3) concretely affects people's lives, and (4) might be influenced by external and internal factors such as social norms, oppression, personal beliefs, socially-imposed constraints (such as laws), and physical limitations. Issues that only affect a few people or have only a minor impact are probably too narrow. Issues that you are not open to examining with an open mind will also not work well for this assignment. For some topic suggestions, you might want to browse some recent episodes of PBS's Frontline series or the website of a reputable news organization.

2. Identify at least two news articles on your topic located using the South University Online Library and/or reputable news outlets. Make sure that the articles you choose present at least two different perspectives on the issue or event you choose and include information that you can use to develop your arguments and analysis. If you cannot locate two news articles on your topic, or if all of the articles share the same perspective, you should choose another topic. You should cite the two articles using correct APA citation.

3. Explain at least one theory of human freedom from your assigned readings. Cite support from the primary text selections in the chapter as well as authoritative secondary sources such as the course text and online lectures.

4. Analyze the issue using a theory of human freedom.

Contrast this analysis with the approach a second theory would take. For instance, you might contrast traditional determinism with compatibalism, or indeterminism and existentialism.