The Tyranny of Freedom

May 2nd, 2007

One-night paper on Beauvoir, Calvin, Augustine, freedom, predestination, and more existentialist ethics than I wanted to handle.

I wanted to make it a proper critique (of Beauvoir in terms of Augustine and Calvin; the other way around wouldn’t be as interesting). Unfortunately, considering how little research I could do — and, let’s face it, the fundamental assumptions of the persons involved — it would be a very uneven debate. How one is supposed to defend theological doctrine when one can’t assume that God exists is way beyond the scope of this paper. (Way beyond me, in fact.) So I just… did comparison and analysis. Not sure of anything, except that I managed to finish it without inserting random nonsense such as “we are beings unto being in being!” or chickening out and looking for another article.

Please do not yell at me for anything I said, I am not in a defensible position right now and all I want to do is sleep. Besides, I really don’t think debate would yield anything much here, since they’re coming from very different contexts, etc etc.

The Tyranny of Freedom

Entry Filed under: academics, writing