Erich fromm disobedience as a psychological and moral problem

English 200 Argumentative Synthesis

Length: 3—4 pages, formatted according to MLA style

Due: September 10, 2014—First Rough Draft, thesis paragraph of which to be submitted separately (paper copies of both)

September 12, 2014—Second Rough Draft, reverse outline of which to be submitted separately (electronic copy of draft—and paper copy of reverse outline)

September 17, 2014—Final Draft

Points: 100

Audience: College-level reader general familiar with Erich Fromm’s “Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem”

Purpose: This assignment requires you to use skills fundamental to academic writing—summarizing and analyzing. Using these skills will also help us to begin to understand our theme, the tensions and complexities involved in the struggle obedience and authority.

As you write, remember that effective summary briefly and accurately restates a main point or points of a reading. In this assignment, successful analysis will demonstrate concise and clear discernment of the key ideas/principles set forth in Erich Fromm’s essay “Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem.”

Assignment: In this assignment, your argument rests on determining how relevant Fromm’s ideas are to your own life. Analyze one of your relationships founded on elements of obedience and authority in light of Fromm’s ideas. In your analysis, you may find the relationship on which you are focusing validates many, some, very few, or none of Fromm’s ideas about obedience and authority.

☼ Regardless, using Fromm’s ideas as guiding principles will help to give your essay coherence and focus.

☼ However, do not attempt to tackle every idea in Fromm’s essay—instead, select those ideas or sections of his essay that you find most relevant to the personal relationship about which you have chosen to writer. At the same time, try to select from his essay in such a way that you remain fair to Fromm—that is, avoid misrepresenting Fromm’s ideas, also termed “quoting out of context.”