DEBATE A MODEST PROPOSAL FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM

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.