Enduring Questions: What Is Freedom?

FAIN: AQ-50011-09

City Colleges of Chicago, Wilbur Wright College (Chicago, IL 60634-1591)
Bruce Michael Gans (Project Director: November 2008 to October 2011)

The development of a course that would examine the question: what is freedom?

This proposed Enduring Questions course will explore the question:What Is Freedom? The course aims to equip students to construct their own definition of freedom by lending help in grasping the contrasting answers conceived over the millennia in immortal works in philosophy, psychology, political science, religion and literature. The course will employ reading, discussion, writing and ancillary activities to engage students in such questions as; to what degree is freedom a function of the surrounding world and to what degree a function of one's inner spiritual evolution and values? Works examined include the Exodus, Satyricon, Souls of Black Folks, Up From Slavery, the Apology of Socrates, Letter from Birmingham Jail, Bhagavad Gita, Schopenhauer's Wisdom of Life, Epictetus, Labyrinths of Solitude, Communist Manifesto and Civilization and Its Discontents. This course will make a profound impact because its target audience is inner city community college students.