Final Project Reflection
Over the course of the semester, I have grown stronger in my ability to read and understand the concepts discussed in the essays assigned. In the beginning of the semester when we first read Mill’s essay, “On Liberty,” I struggled with being able to comprehend the way Mill wrote his essay because there were so many words and concepts that I did not understand. In my Medium post on Mill, I simply wrote a focused summary on Mill’s theory of individual liberty and the harm principle. In my Medium post (https://medium.com/@ddabrams/mill-on-liberty-1d5b1a7a4cb6), I focused more on the idea of one’s liberty rather than the concept of the harm principle. I understood the idea Mill was trying to portray about the government depriving citizens of their liberties, but I did not do enough digging to fully grasp the concept of the harm principle. As the semester went by, I became more interested in the essays we read because they all began to build on top of each other. Although the authors do not reference the other authors in the essays, their ideas layer on top of each other and gave me a better understanding of the normal diction and tone of essays in the future. I developed the ability to not only fully understand the ideas portrayed in the essays, but I grew as a researcher because I am now able to take what I read in the essays and apply that to the world we live in how. I have learned to make connections with the theories we read and apply them to what our criminal justice system looks like now and how it has changed over the years because of these theories. After reading Simester and Andrea von Hirsch’s essay on wrongfulness constraint, I realized I have already learned these ideas when learning about the history of prohibition, slavery, etc. but I never knew there was a theory behind all of it. In my Medium post on wrongful constraint (https://medium.com/@ddabrams/wrongful-constraint-50c4b0fe513a), I went into a deeper analysis by applying this concept to real case scenarios. Not only did I accurately summarize the concept of moral constraint, but I also further applied to the complexities of the world we live in today. This course has taught me how to research, identify references, and develop an understanding of the connections between texts and the real world. When I first began this class, I did not know how to make philosophical connections or write about concepts in my own worlds. This class has taught me how to better annotate and take notes as I read, draw connections as I am reading, and apply those connections to other theories.
