The Concept Of Freedom Is Important To American Thought And Culture

Introduction The concept of freedom and the issues surrounding it are important to American thought and culture. Indeed, these may be said to dominate the US self-perception and mentality “No idea is more fundamental to American’s sense of themselves as individuals and as a nation than freedom. ... The very universality of the idea of freedom, however, can be misleading. Freedom is not a fixed, timeless category with a single unchanging definition.” (Foner, preface p. xxiii). Because the concept of freedom is so important and variable, a great number of writers and theorists deal with it. For example, theorist Erich Fromm quite abstractly discusses two types of freedoms in his Escape from Freedom (1941), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau deals

This topic is dealt with by George Marsden in The Twilight of the American Enlightenment: The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief (2014) and Irene Thomson in "From Conflict To Embedment: The Individual–Society Relationship, 1920–1991." (1997). These studies, alongside George Tindall’s America: A Narrative History (1989) are all relevant to my paper in which I will be discussing the issues of freedom. With the use of Fromm and Rousseau’s theories on freedom, as well as Foley’s publication, I will argue that Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest portrays a contrast between freedom and control through the characters McMurphy and Ratched, who are located in a mental ward that represents the deindividuation of the 1950s US. This paper will use hermeneutic methods, which means that textual analysis and interpretation will be of high importance. The paper will close- read Kesey’s novel and use various secondary sources to supplement the analysis. Therefore, my approach will be based on practical criticism as well as

Like natural freedom, civil freedom is quite individualistic and low on external restraints (Simpson, p. 48). Here, individuals have the rights and powers to do what they please, as long as the sovereign agrees with their behaviors and does not see them as threatening. Therefore, one can argue that this type of freedom allows individuals to keep their free will to themselves and thereby does not except them to form a collective free will. It becomes clear that all of Rousseau’s freedoms contain a certain amount of order and control; individuals are never fully free. This makes sense as Rousseau’s publication is called On the Social Contract. Rousseau’s last freedom, moral freedom, is highly