Charles Mills vs. John Locke

The Introduction While analyzing John Locke’s philosophy through the eyes of Charles Mills, some fundamentals on both philosophers’ worldview must be considered.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Charles Mills vs. John Locke specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More First of all, it should be pointed out that Mills is incapable of analyzing Locke’s conceptions from different perspectives. In other words, one can conclude that his reasoning seems to be unambiguous. For instance, Mills is of the opinion that Locke’s views on civilizations development are all influenced by race. However, the fact that Locke speaks about all men in his Second Treatise of Civil Government is totally neglected by Mills. Both of the philosophers – Mills and Locke are deeply concerned about moral equality; although they consider the issue in different ways. The thesis statement Charles Mills criticizes John Lockeà ¢â‚¬â„¢s theory, relying on racial liberalism. He is unable to suppose that racial prejudices can be regarded separately from the social contract. According to him, Social Contract Theory cannot exist without racial injustice. It is evident that Mills interprets Locke’s arguments in his own way.Advertising Looking for essay on philosophy? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More The body Mills’s viewpoint on human moral equality To prove that Mills’s position is wrong, one is to read Locke’s arguments on the state of equality. Thus, according to the philosopher â€Å"all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another; being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions† (Locke 1-2). It seems to be unclear why Mills accepts the expression all men as the white population. There were probably Mills’s considerations o n racial injustice, which he decided to analyze on the basis of human moral equality. As far as Locke’s work is closely related to the time when the basic principles of moral equality were established, it becomes evident that Mills decided to justify his positions relying on some general conceptions concerning human rights. Mills’s comparative approach towards Locke’s arguments Taking into account the fact that Mills associates racial inequality with slavery, genocide, etc., one can state that his vision of Locke’s arguments is distorted by a variety of themes political philosophy is based on. Thus, one can notice that Mills does not consider Locke’s The Second Treatise of Civil Government in detail; moreover, he does not provide readers with an opportunity to trace back the points which formed his position in relation to Locke’s argument. On the contrary, his reasoning on racial inequality is based on the so-called comparative approach: he compares racial issues of the modernity with those ones, which appeared in times, when the concept of moral equality was formed. The method seems to be rather doubtful, as no appropriate evidence is introduced. Some basic points on the State of Nature Generally, it is necessary to keep in mind the time period Locke lived within. According to the philosopher, a person’s right to be free can be regarded as one of the basic principles of the State of Nature. However, it should be noted that the issue of freedom is considered to be of pre-political origin.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Charles Mills vs. John Locke specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More As far as people â€Å"are assumed to be equal to one another in such a state, they, therefore equally capable of discovering and being bound by the Law of Nature† (Friend par. 17). It is the Law of Nature, which determines morality. Locke states that all pe ople are equal before God. Keeping in mind Mills’s interpretation of the expression all people, what, according to him, means the white population, one can conclude that Mills accepts the sentence as The white people are equal before God. In other words, Mills’s attempts to criticize Locke’s views are preposterous. Logically relevant arguments vs. conditional statements In my opinion, Locke’s arguments are logically relevant. The philosopher states that people are free to start war, if other persons want to make them slaves. Mills, in his turn, considers the position from his own perspective. According to him, great atrocities involve slavery; and slavery involves racial injustice. Thus, Mills just continues to develop Locke’s idea from his own perspective and cannot accept it in a proper way. He neglects the correct meaning of the statement and tries to find in Locke’s words some signs of racial prejudices. According to Social Contract Theo ry, to form civil government, people’s moral and political duties are to be established. What seems to be interesting is that Mills associates the process of people’s obligations establishment with the time when racial injustice appeared. So, one can probably notice that all Locke’s arguments are analyzed by Mills on the basis of racial issues.Advertising Looking for essay on philosophy? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Mills recognizes that according to Social Contract Theory, moral equality Locke highlights is to be based on the just polity; although he cannot admit even the thought of the society where people’s rights are not disrespected. Mills’s arguments are conditional. Locke’s arguments are affirmative. Mills’s opinions are based on assumptions (what if, it would be, etc.); Locke’s views are concrete. Mills tries to criticize Locke’s position relying on racial liberalism; however, his arguments are rather controversial. For instance, Mills says that â€Å"Racial liberalism, or white liberalism, is the actual liberalism that has been historically dominant since modernity† (1382). The issues described by Locke are not related to modernity; so, Mills did not take into account certain historical concepts depicted by Locke. One can notice that Mills relies on some autobiographical data from Locke’s life. For instance, he states that Locke à ¢â‚¬Å"invested in African slavery, justified Native American expropriation, and helped write the Carolina constitution of 1669, which gave masters absolute power over their slaves† (1382); but in his Second Treatise of Civil Government, Locke pointed out that people can keep under control certain things harmful to them, in order to preserve mankind in general. Keeping in mind the Law of Nature, one can conclude that investment in slavery is considered to be one of the ways to protect one’s property. Locke stated that those who failed to utilize certain resources, etc. couldn’t possess any property. For this reason, slaves seem to have no legitimate claim to any property. In other words, Locke clarifies that the protection of property is one of the key issues the society cannot function without. An explanation is quite reasonable; but Mills charges Locke with The Whiteness of his political philosophy. Some important aspects of Social Contract Theory Mills consider s racial exploitation as an internal process of Social Contract Theory; although Locke does not say any word about a contractual violation of people’s rights. Locke clarifies that people’s desire to raise their children is determined by the State of Nature. Such voluntary agreements between individuals are considered to be moral, but not political as one can think. Those people who form political societies have a moral right to punish individuals who break the Law of Nature. Thus, the will of the majority is recognized to be the linchpin of the social contract. Still, Mills analyzes the position from his own perspective, and interprets the major points of social contract on the basis of racial liberalism. As far as Locke’s arguments can be applied to all men, one can conclude that the issue of equality is also related to the colored minority groups. To disprove Mills’s arguments, one can rely on the method he uses to accuse Locke of his ignorance toward r acial problem. So, Locke does not underestimate the rights of minorities; he explains that all people have a right to self-defense. Therefore, â€Å"when the protection of people’s rights is no longer present, or when the king becomes a tyrant and acts against the interests of the people, they have a right, if not an outright obligation, to resist his authority† (Friend par. 21). For this reason, it becomes evident that according to the statement even slaves (who also belong to the category, which is determined as all men) have a right to resist the authority of the whites. In other words, minorities as well as the whites are equal in their rights. The Conclusion For Mills the racial contract is considered to be the synonym of the social contract. According to him, the establishment of a political society is to be based on racial liberalism. However, as far as most of Mills’s arguments are conditional statements, one can suppose that his assumptions can be regar ded as unreliable. Works Cited Friend, Celeste. Social Contract Theory, 2004. Web. https://www.iep.utm.edu/soc-cont/#SH2b. Locke, John. The Second Treatise of Civil Government, New York: Prometheus Books, 1986. Print. Mills, Charles. Racial Liberalism, 2008. Web. This essay on Charles Mills vs. John Locke was written and submitted by user Maxx Bates to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.

How to Self-Publish a Book on Amazon [With Tools and Resources]

How to Self-Publish a Book on Amazon [With Tools and Resources] How to Self-Publish a Book on Amazon [With Tools and Resources] How to Self-Publish a Book on Amazon [With Tools and Resources] By Ali Hale Fifteen or twenty years ago, self-publishing was looked on as a last resort option for books that a publisher wouldn’t want to take on. It was also an expensive and time-consuming way to get a book out there. Self-publishers had to pay for a whole print run – maybe 1,000 or 2,000 copies – and they had to market it. During the past decade, though, there’s been a huge rise in the popularity of self-publishing. Print-on-demand technology has made it possible to print just one copy of a paperback at a time, and e-readers like the Kindle have made ebooks far more popular than they once were. There are also many more options for marketing a self-published book – for instance, authors can pay to advertise on Facebook or Amazon, carefully targeting an audience who they think will be interested in their book. The low cost of self-publishing also means it’s suitable for authors who are working on a book as a hobby – for instance, perhaps they’re writing a family memoir that they want to print for their grandchildren. If you’re thinking about self-publishing a book, you might be wondering how to even begin! In this post, I’ll take you through the basics you need to know – and give you plenty of links to further information. Are You Publishing a Print Book, an Ebook or Both? Before we go further, you need to think about whether you want to self-publish a paperback (or even a hardback) book that you can physically hold in your hands, or an ebook that can be downloaded onto a device. You may well want to publish both a print and an ebook edition of your book. But for some authors it makes sense to only do one or the other (or at least to start with just one). For instance: If you want to print a book to give to family and friends, or to sell in person at events, then you may only want to produce a print version. If your book is designed to be written in (e.g. a workbook or planner), again, it might make sense to only produce a print version. If your book is a mass-market novel that you want to sell cheaply and you don’t anticipate many people wanting to buy a printed version, then you may only want to bring it out as an ebook (which saves time/money on formatting and cover design). However, you might decide that you want to work on both the ebook and print version at the same time – which can help ensure that you prevent errors creeping in. It’s up to you how you go forward, but don’t feel that you have to do both ebook and print unless it makes sense for you. Where Will Your Book Be Sold? One way to publish an ebook would be to create the appropriate file formats and sell them directly from your own website. Most authors don’t do that, because it makes more sense to sell their ebook through a major online store – like Amazon, or the iBooks store. This is easy and familiar for readers, and it also means that the retailer will deal with any issues like returns and refunds. Amazon has the largest market share, and some authors choose to only publish their ebook with Amazon. Remaining exclusive to Amazon in this way has some benefits (chiefly, that your book is eligible to be enrolled in the Kindle Unlimited (KU) program, meaning readers signed up for KU can borrow it for free; you’ll receive a small fee each time it’s borrowed). If you want your book to appear in other ebook stores as well, you can distribute it to multiple retailers, such as the iBooks store and the Barnes Noble store, through third-party sites like Smashwords and Draft2Digital. With print books, again, you could sell them directly through your own site, but most authors don’t do that – you’d have to keep a stock of books at home, then package and send them out yourself whenever orders came in. Amazon is, again, the most popular retailer – but other online book stores also stock self-published books. Of course, you can also try to get your book into physical bookstores and libraries: if you’re keen to go down that route, it’s best to use Ingram Spark to print your book, as they can offer trade discounts. Further Reading: Selling Out: Going Wide or Going Exclusive to Amazon, David Kudler, The Book Designer Smashwords vs Draft2Digital Review, Dave Chesson, Kindlepreneur How to Self-Publish a Print Book, Joanna Penn, The Creative Penn How to Sell Your Self-Published book to Bookstores, Ingram Spark How to Publish an Ebook: A Simple Ebook Publishing Guide to SELL, Bella Rose Pope How to Prepare Your Completed Manuscript At this stage, I’m going to assume you have a finished, edited, proofread manuscript. Many self-publishing authors advocate hiring an editor to ensure that your book is as good as it can be: if that’s not affordable for you, then see if a few friends would be willing to â€Å"beta read† the book and offer feedback. At the very least, you’ll want to get someone else to read through and look out for typos – it’s tough to proofread your own work, as you know what you think you wrote! For your manuscript to look like a â€Å"real† finished book, whether ebook or paperback, it’s important to format it in the right way. Here are some general pointers for both ebooks and paperbacks: Include a title page. This is a page at the start of your book, with the title in a large font and centred, and your author name below this (probably in a smaller font). Look at the first page or two any paperback you own, or look at the start of an ebook, to see what a title page looks like. Include a copyright page. You can see examples of these in any book or ebook, and you may want to base yours on those examples (they’re generally very similar to one another in wording). Consider including a table of contents. If your manuscript has been created in Word or a similar program, use the in-built â€Å"Table of Contents† feature to automatically create a table – this will then be linked to the different chapters within your book, if you’ve set those up using heading styles. Which leads me on to Use heading styles for your chapters titles. If you normally write â€Å"Chapter 1† then highlight the text and manually set the font size, that’s not a good way to set things up. Instead, use the â€Å"Heading 1† style in Word for each chapter title. You can use â€Å"Heading 2† for subsections within the chapter. This saves you time, as it means you can reformat all the chapter headings with a few clicks, by changing the Heading 1 style. The next two tips apply particularly to ebooks that you’ll be publishing on Amazon, but they’re also good ones to follow when you’re formatting your manuscript for a print book: Don’t use the â€Å"tab† button or multiple spaces to indent paragraphs. These won’t work well when your book is converted into an ebook format, and it’s easy for them to end up looking inconsistent. Instead, edit the â€Å"Normal† style in Word to set a first line paragraph indent. This should change all your text automatically. (You’ll need to remove any tabs or extra spaces that you’ve included, though: the quickest way to do this is using Find and Replace.) Don’t use the â€Å"enter† or â€Å"return† key to bump text down onto a new page (e.g. at the end of a chapter). Remember that in the ebook version, the length of each â€Å"page† will be determined by the reader’s device settings – so those big gaps could end up appearing in the middle of a page. Instead, use a â€Å"page break†. You can either enter these manually each time, or set up the Heading 1 style so that there’s always a page break before each bit of Heading 1 text. These final two tips apply to print books: Make sure that â€Å"page 1† of your book will appear on the right-hand side of a double-page spread and that your subsequent chapters also start on the odd numbered pages (if you look in any print book, you’ll see what I mean)! This may mean inserting a â€Å"blank page† into your manuscript at some points. Always use the template provided by the company who’ll be printing this book (and make sure you’ve downloaded it in the right size for your finished book). This means that things like the margin (the space around the edges of the page) and gutter (the bit in the middle of a double page spread) will be set correctly for you. Further Reading: The Self-Publisher’s Guide to the Copyright Page (with Template), Reedsy Smashwords Style Guide, Mark Coker A Quick Guide to Formatting Your Microsoft Word Manuscript for Amazon’s Kindle, Ali Luke, Aliventures Getting a Cover for Your Book If you’re publishing in ebook form only, you’ll need a front cover: this is the image that appears for your book on Amazon and in other e-retailer’s stores. It should be a flat, rectangular image (not a stylised 3D one that looks like a book). If you’re going to publish a paperback, you’ll need a front cover, spine and back cover. These are normally supplied as a single image that wraps around your book. Cover design makes an enormous difference to how people perceive your book. If you create the cover yourself, chances are, it’ll end up looking a bit amateur. Readers will inevitably assume that the quality of the cover says something about the quality of the book (even though your book might be brilliantly well-written). So, if possible, do budget for a cover designer. There are loads of companies and individuals out there who offer cover design – you might want to ask around to see who other authors are using. I use Design for Authors for my novel covers: their prices are very reasonable and they do great work. Further Reading: How to Design a Fiction Book Cover in Canva, Ihor Tureh, Kindlepreneur The e-Book Cover Design Awards series, Joel Friedlander, The Book Designer (scroll down for links to each month’s post) Mastering Book Cover Design, G2 Pricing Your Book What should you charge for your finished book? If it’s a print book, this will be determined in part by how much it costs to produce the book – if it costs you $6.50 per book, you’ll want to charge more than that so you make a profit. You won’t want to charge so much, though, that people don’t buy it! With ebooks, pricing can be a little tricky. Your costs per book sold are negligible so should you charge as little as possible and hope for lots of sales, or charge more to get more profit per book? This is further complicated by Amazon’s royalty system. Amazon pays: 35% royalties on books priced between $0.99 and $2.98 70% royalties on books priced between $2.99 and $9.99 35% royalties on books priced at $10 or more This means that you’ll probably not want to price your ebook over $9.99, even if it’s a complex piece of non-fiction or several novels all in one. Some authors find that pricing at $0.99 or $1.99 results in sufficient extra sales to make up for the lower royalty rate; others think it’s better to price at $2.99, $3.99 or $4.99. With non-fiction, you may well want to go higher than this $7.99 or $8.99 are not uncommon. Further Reading: Pricing Books And The Use Of Free, Joanna Penn, The Creative Penn The Price Is Right: 6 Secrets to Pricing Your Ebook, David Kudler, The Book Designer How to Publish Your Book Online Whether you use Amazon or another service to publish your book, you’ll need to have certain information to hand – both about your book and about you. You can create your account here on Amazon, or you can use your existing Amazon(.com) account. It’s then a step-by-step process to upload your manuscript and enter information about your book – like the title, author name, pricing, and so on. You’ll have the option to preview your manuscript. Do check that everything in the preview appears the way you want it. You can always adjust and re-upload your manuscript if you need to. Once you click the button to publish your book, it may take up to 48 hours to appear on Amazon’s online store. If you’re using Draft2Digital or Smashwords to publish your book, they’ll have a different process, and it may take longer for your books to appear in stores. With print books, the process can take a little longer as you’ll probably want to order a physical proof to examine and approve, before putting your book live for people to buy. However you’re selling your book, at some stage, you’ll need to enter your bank account details and your tax information. You don’t always need to enter these in order to publish a book, but you will need them before you can receive money. Further Reading: Getting Started: Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, Amazon How to Publish with Draft2Digital, Draft2Digital Theres a LOT to think about when self-publishing a book – and plenty of details that we haven’t had space to cover in this post but will do in subsequent ones. You may also want to join the Alliance of Independent Authors, a worldwide organisation that offers lots of help and services for self-publishing authors: I’ve been a member for several years now and, again, highly recommend it. Best of luck with your book! Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Fiction Writing category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Has vs. Had20 Pairs of One-Word and Two-Word Forms1,462 Basic Plot Types

Problems Faced to Accomplish Effective Speech and Writing Skills Essay

Problems Faced to Accomplish Effective Speech and Writing Skills - Essay Example This remains a reality that many people have to go for education purposes to strange lands where speech and writing rules may differ hugely from the ones socially practiced in their native lands. This is where myriad ambiguities enter the scene and plague the minds of many confused students who might have travelled much to get education in a certain college. Foreign students, unlike native ones, are mostly seen as individuals exposed to strange norms and complex behaviors, some of which may be quite hostile as well. Both writing and speech activities are heavily influenced by good communication skills and foreign students should know how to use those skills in unfamiliar academic territories for their own academic benefits. The reality of the immense difficulty faced by foreign students in practicing new speech and writing skills in unfamiliar academic territories is further strengthened as research study done by (McCarthy) identifies that foreign students perceive themselves as stra ngers in strange lands. Once enrolled in a certain foreign institution, students belonging to different cultural backgrounds and more familiar to their native languages, have to make great efforts to adapt themselves to new speech situations as a result of which developing close understanding with appropriate styles of communicating and writing which can be applied in new academic territories with great facility becomes inevitably important. A student â€Å"has to invent the university by assembling and mimicking its language while finding some compromise between a personal history and the requirements of convention† (Norgaard). Those students who make painstaking efforts to maintain close interaction with their professors even after the lecture hours finish are seen as individuals taking good grades and rapidly achieving a secure job once their educational periods end. In contrast to such highly interactive students, many foreign students feel shy to communicate with their p rofessors due to myriad underlying reasons which may be of cultural, lingual, intellectual, or psychological nature. Teachers can play a major role in making such students familiar with the rules of writing and speech in a language they consider alien. The research study done by (Delpit) identifies that teachers should understand that such students deliberately choose not to learn sometimes, rather â€Å"choosing to maintain their sense of identity in the face of what they perceive as a painful choice between allegiance to them or us† (Delpit). Foreign students may also face hesitation in interacting with the learned scholars at colleges because of the great fear that they may be looked down upon or mocked by fellow students if they happen to make any grammatical or pronunciation mistakes while trying to interact in foreign language with their teachers. Students should be transformed by their teachers in such a way that they would stop considering English as an alien language which somehow plays a role in furthering their oppression. Teachers should make those students, who are not already accustomed to the features of mainstream learners, learn how to carry on an effective discourse in the foreign language. â€Å"Teachers must acknowledge and validate students’ home language without using it to limit students’ potential† (Delpit). Now, developing good communication skills in English language is not an easy task, especially when it comes to foreign learners who find