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Thinking Paths · Beta

Freedom & Government

Consent, rights, institutions, and the gap between ideals and practice.

Reading Paths

Promises of freedom

Ten readings on rights, institutions, and who can actually use a promised freedom.

10 readings

What you will practice: Distinguish a stated right from the institutions and opportunities needed to exercise it.

  • Declaration of Independence · Second Continental Congress
  • U.S. Constitution · Constitutional Convention
  • A Vindication of the Rights of Woman · Mary Wollstonecraft
  • Second Treatise of Government · John Locke
  • The Social Contract · Jean-Jacques Rousseau
  • A Vindication of the Rights of Woman · Mary Wollstonecraft
  • On Liberty · John Stuart Mill
  • U.S. Constitution · Constitutional Convention
  • U.S. Bill of Rights · First United States Congress
  • Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass · Frederick Douglass
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Reading Paths

Who gets a voice?

Follow the gap between a promised right and the education, allies, and institutions needed to use it.

10 readings

What you will practice: Support a judgment about participation with evidence about both formal rights and practical access.

  • The Narrative of Sojourner Truth · Sojourner Truth, narrated to Olive Gilbert
  • A Vindication of the Rights of Woman · Mary Wollstonecraft
  • Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass · Frederick Douglass
  • U.S. Bill of Rights · First United States Congress
  • Second Treatise of Government · John Locke
  • The New State · Mary Parker Follett
  • American Indian Stories · Zitkala-Sa
  • The Souls of Black Folk · W. E. B. Du Bois
  • Twenty Years at Hull-House · Jane Addams
  • On Liberty · John Stuart Mill
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Reading Paths

Law, conscience, and repair

Compare institutional rules with urgent harms, personal conscience, and ways to repair a system.

10 readings

What you will practice: Explain when a remedy answers the actual harm and when rules need revision or principled challenge.

  • The Narrative of Sojourner Truth · Sojourner Truth, narrated to Olive Gilbert
  • Second Treatise of Government · John Locke
  • U.S. Constitution · Constitutional Convention
  • Declaration of Independence · Second Continental Congress
  • Second Treatise of Government · John Locke
  • The Social Contract and Discourses · Jean-Jacques Rousseau
  • The Republic · Plato
  • Meditations · Marcus Aurelius
  • The History of Mary Prince · Mary Prince
  • On Liberty · John Stuart Mill
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