Premium
DEBATE A MODEST PROPOSAL FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM
Author(s) -
Allen Rodney,
Hunt Ian
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
australian journal of social issues
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.417
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1839-4655
pISSN - 0157-6321
DOI - 10.1002/j.1839-4655.2001.tb01314.x
Subject(s) - swift , outrage , pessimism , project commissioning , politeness , publishing , irish , government (linguistics) , law , sociology , media studies , history , art history , philosophy , political science , politics , theology , linguistics , computer science , programming language
The publication of Jonathan Swift's original Modest Proposal in 1729 caused outrage. His suggestion that, to survive, the Irish poor should make food of their own children (whether ‘stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled… in a fricassee or a ragout’) carried the logic of the government of his day to its brutal extreme. Polite society was not amused. But as the critic David Ward has noted: ‘Swift employs pessimism as a weapon to scourge away the smug credulity of most optimists, just as he employs the language of evil … to make us fear the worst in ourselves. ‘ In this piece Rodney Allen and Ian Hunt of the Centre for Applied Philosophy, Flinders University, find inspiration in Swift's pamphlet to make their own contribution to one of the the great debates of our day.