"Have the slaves been consulted? Has their will been counted as any part in the estimate of collective volition? "
Nut. Kook. Whackadoodle.
______________
That is a most telling -- and damning -- admission. Mill asks the question we'd expect anyone with eyes, ears, and a brain to ask, the question we'd expect Socrates or the real Diogenes to ask, essentially, "What about the slaves? Don't they have a say in this?" and DiogenesLite finds it crazy, nuts, on par with today's transgender talk.
Mill was something of a philosopher, and if we paid philosophers, we'd be paying them to ask difficult questions like that, questions that those who believe that some people are born slaves by nature and have no rights don't want asked.
Speaks volumes about who you are and where you're coming from and how seriously anybody should take you, DL.
As I’ve said here before the flame in Ol’ “Lampsters’’ light went out a long time ago.
The entire premise of slavery is that slaves do not have any rights, least of all to make their opinions on slave policy known. You are judging the man's point by contemporary mores. I am judging the man's point by the mores of that era. By the mores of that era, J.S. Mill is a liberal kook.
But this brings up another point that I often encounter in these discussions. It is this constant effort to judge the past by today's beliefs and attitudes. It seems as if many of you have no ability to put yourselves into the zeitgeist of that period, and see things as the people of that time saw them.
By the mentality of that time, it is axiomatic that a slave owner would not concern himself with the opinions of a slave about slavery. It is a virtual certainty that the slave will be opposed to it, and if the slave's opinion had any weight in the first place, there would be no slaves. Do you think any would volunteer?
Mill was something of a philosopher, and if we paid philosophers, we'd be paying them to ask difficult questions like that, questions that those who believe that some people are born slaves by nature and have no rights don't want asked.
It was at the time a matter of serious economic interest, and nobody was going to indulge philosophical questions on the matter. I'm pretty sure their attitude was "There is too much money to be made, and philosophy be D@mned."
But for what it's worth, as a philosophical matter, Thomas Prentice Kettell puts forth some very interesting philosophical arguments in his book "Southern Wealth and Northern Profits." You should read in that book where he describes the history of Slavery in Europe, (feudalism) and how it gave way to free agency. He put forth some ideas that I had never really considered before, and as a matter of philosophy, I still can't put my finger on how his argument is wrong, though I feel it is.
Speaks volumes about who you are and where you're coming from and how seriously anybody should take you, DL.
Don't make this into an ad hominem. Yes, i'm a horrible person because I note that there is more to the story than we have been led to believe. I should just accept the official narrative of the forces of good conquering the forces of evil, and call it a done deal.