Analysis Of The Negro Question And John Stuart Mill

Carlyle and Mill And Their Differences Of Opinion On Nature, Agriculture, and Humanity Thomas Carlyle’s Occasional Discourse On The Negro Question and John Stuart Mill’s responding essay, The Negro Question, primarily deal with the implications of a liberated black population in the West Indies. However, the texture of their respective arguments lends itself to rhetoric of nature and agriculture. Carlyle and Mill could not see humanity’s relationship with nature more differently. Due to different understandings of humanity’s relationship with nature, Carlyle and Mill’s evaluation of agricultural productivity varies, thus informing their representation of blacks in the West Indies. Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill†¦show more content†¦Instead, Mill derives satisfaction from nature’s action, citing its â€Å"spontaneous activity† as the source of his enjoyment. In this sense, it could be suggested that Mill sees the betterment of humanity as tethered to the betterment in nature, as increased action from nature provides increased satisfaction to humanity. Unlike Carlyle, this sets up humanity’s relationship with nature as mutual, if not subservient. To Mill, it is essential that humanity aids and works with nature, rather than extract from it. The differences in Carlyle and Mill’s understandings of nature reflect themselves in their represented approaches to agriculture in Occasional Discourse On The Negro Question and The Negro Question, respectively. Carlyle sees agriculture as the system capable of producing items that are valuable to humans. Mill, on the other hand, recognizes agriculture as an ongoing and hopefully mutually beneficial relationship between earth and human. Their differences in opinions are best represented in their respective treatments of commodities and land use. Throughout the Occasional Discourse Carlyle harps on the shame of cultivating pumpkins. In fact, there is a moment in the text when Carlyle uses the phrase â€Å"merely pumpkinish† as a means to belittle the efforts of the West Indies farmers. Instead of pumpkins, Carlyle seeks commodities of bright, blaring, obvious value from the West Indies. He emphasizes that â€Å"TheShow MoreRelatedRacism And Slavery During The 19th Century2451 Words   |  10 Pagescultures and nationalities? Racial epithets such as nigger certainly existed in the nineteenth century but were applied to a much larger portion of humanity than those who had African ancestors. These were the questions that Norman asked that Gretchen didn’t. Gretchen wanted to answer the questions that Norman asked however it still left a hole in history, why did this racism come about. Gretchen tried to answer that by stating it was to replace the issue of slavery for those who couldn’t comprehendRead Moresecond sex Essay13771 Words   |  56 Pagesfunctioning as a female is not enough to define woman, if we decline also to explain her through the eternal feminine, and if nevertheless we admit, provisionally, that women do exist, then we must face the question: what is a woman? 1 Franchise, dead today. 2 To state the question is, to me, to suggest, at once, a preliminary answer. The fact that I ask it is in itself significant. A man would never get the notion of writing a book on the peculiar situation of the human male.2 But ifRead MoreRastafarian79520 Words   |  319 Pagesmusic recording business in the late twentieth century, its apparatus of cultural formation was controlled fully by the elite who, to a large extent, ran the educational apparatus and the economic system. But much of the country was beginning to question in earnest the structure of colonial society by the early 1930s. The emergence of Rasta during that period corresponds with so much that was happening around the world. Rastas could tell that social unrest in Jamaica was going to lead to a movement