Wednesday, June 01, 2005

what is freedom?

A discussion with my sole faithful intermediate-level conversation student (I have two semi-regulars; the other was absent today) centered on this question: what is freedom? We covered Fromm's Escape from Freedom (which I haven't read; she explained some of it to me), movies like "The Matrix" and "Good Will Hunting," the difference between larger and smaller menus (i.e., whether more choices mean more freedom), individualism and Korean society, Gone with the Wind, slavery, and all sorts of other pithy topics I'd never be able to discuss with lower-level students. We did a whirlwind tour of Christian, Buddhist, and exisentialist takes on the freedom question, but didn't have more than ten minutes to cover the truly important thing: responsibility. At a guess, Fromm's book is about the refusal to take responsibility.

Pretty cool class, I thought.


_

No comments: