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 f ricassee or a ragout') carried the logic of the government of his day to it s brutal extreme. Polite society was not amused. Bur as the critic David Wa rd 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 Alien and lan H unt of the Centre for Applied Philosophy Flinders University, find inspirat ion in Swift's pamphlet to make their own contribution to one of the the gr eat debates of our day.