Develop an essay response to ONE of the following questions. You may use your text but DO NOT COPY directly as this constitutes plagiarism and such responses will be discounted. You should paraphrase text-related material and properly cite the text, or any other material used.
Your essay should double-spaced, using a 12 pt. font.
You may answer in a holistic way incorporating each part of the question into one essay divided into appropriate paragraphs or you may break up your response into parts designated as “a,” “b,” “c,” etc.
OPTION A: BELOW THERE ARE TWO STATEMENTS, EACH EXPRESSING A DIFFERENT VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE. DEVELOP AN ARGUMENT WHICH CONTRADICTS EACH ONE OF THESE CLAIMS. YOU MAY USE THE TEXT OR ANY OTHER SOURCE TO SUPPORT YOUR POSITIONS BUT YOU MUST CITE THOSE SOURCES OR FORFEIT ALL CREDIT FOR THE RESPONSE. AVOID MERE OPINIONATING. YOU SHOULD SUPPORT YOUR POSITION WITH REASONS. REMEMBER, YOU ARE REFUTING BOTH STATEMENTS, NOT JUST ONE.
[STATEMENT 1]: “Man is a free agent who is essentially responsible for everything he does. We are bound to the reality of our intrinsic freedom and cannot escape the daily, even the momentary need to make choices throughout our lives. We do not have the luxury of passing guilt for our failures on to other people or the circumstances in which we find ourselves. We cannot whine our way through life and plead that we have been helpless victims of a cruel and unsympathetic world. We are at the center of our own lives and we are, as one philosopher claimed, ‘Condemned to freedom.’ Like it or not, my life is mine to shape!”
[STATEMENT 2]: “Man is devoid of free will. No person has control over his behavior since we are designed by nature to obey the fundamental natural laws that govern all of reality. A human being is nothing but a “cog in the wheel” of the grand universe. To think that we have the ability to make independent decisions or to think that we can make choices which are not secretly driven by forces at work within the deepest recesses of our being, is to be naïve and simple-minded. The trick played on us by nature is that we think we have free will, we have the grand illusion of being self-governing, but the truth is that we are slaves to our circumstances. Each of us is deluded into thinking that we can run our own lives but the basic truth is that we are nothing more than leaves being blown around by the force of the wind that surrounds us. Each individual finds him or herself where the forces randomly take us.”
Sample Solution
