Seminar Paper on Jonathon Swift's 'A Modest Proposal'

Seminar Paper:

Jonathan Swift: A Modest Proposal for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick.

Jonathan Swift is an eighteenth century Irish writer who wrote a satire about the economic situation of the poor in Ireland in 1729. In it he offers a solution to the problem in the form of selling the children of Ireland as food for the rich.

    He starts off in a very serious manner by describing how all the poverty stricken women and children are having to steal and beg to try to survive. This very sincere introduction serves to then shock the reader when Swift suggests cannibalism as a means to push the nation out of poverty.

    One of the chief targets for attack in this article appears to be the ‘can do’ attitude of the public who were devising completely illogical methods for addressing the poverty situation. For example, the idea of running the poor through a joint-stock company was proposed at the time as a serious solution. Swift attacks this with an even more ridiculous suggestion, ‘I do therefore humbly offer it to publick consideration...twenty thousand may be reserved for breed...the remaining hundred thousand may...be offered in sale to the persons of quality and fortune.’

    A modern day example of the style of satire used by Swift in his ‘Modest Proposal’ can be found in the animation series ‘South Park’ written by Matt Stone and Trey Parker. This TV show has a very similar style of humour. For example, in the episode ‘night of the living homeless’ the problem of the ever rising numbers of homeless people is exaggerated and a ridiculous solution proposed in suggesting they should all be shot in the head.

    Swift displays a definite dislike for the wealthy in Ireland for thriving off the poor (despite being wealthy himself), when he writes ‘a well grown, fat yearly child, which roasted whole will make a considerable figure at a lord mayor’s feast’. His implication here is that the rich use the poor for their own benefit by making them work for long hours at an incredibly young age and for such a small amount of money that it doesn’t even cover their living costs thereby amplifying the problems of the nation.

    The English had introduced a number of acts e.g. the navigation acts (only English ships could be used to export goods), the cattle acts (no cattle, sheep’s or pigs could be imported) and the woollen act (which forbade Ireland from exporting their woollen products) which were devastating for the Irish economy. Swift criticises these English policies with his comment that, ‘I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious and wholesome food’. Here he is highlighting the injustice and the callousness of the selfish mercantilist strategy employed by the English which effectively crippled the Irish economy for its own gain.

    Swift also draws attention to another big issue for Ireland at that time - the religious divide in the country. The protestant minorities united with the English in order to force through laws which essentially broke up large Roman Catholic estates: ‘It would greatly lessen the number of papists, with whom we are yearly over-run, being the principle breeders of the nation, as well as our most dangerous enemies...’ I believe it was Swift’s intention to use sarcasm strongly in this paragraph in order to outline the ludicrousness of the Irish siding with the English.

Questions...

What effect did Swift’s ‘modest proposal’ have on politics at that time?

Was the sole purpose of this article to make people aware of the economic situation in Ireland or simply just a comedic article used for entertainment?

Who were the target audience for this article?

Socrates...

Socrates was an ancient Greek philosopher connected to the aristocratic party who from as far as I can tell studied mainly Greek ethics. He was born in 469 BC, was an Athenian citizen and he taught philosophy to a multitude of people including Xenophon and Plato from which a lot of knowledge about him was derived from. Bertrand Russell’s brief chapter on Socrates is incredibly vague so I have only been able to extract a small amount of knowledge of him, some of which could well be lies. One of the main things Bertrand Russell writes about is the apology.

The apology was the speech written by Socrates before he was condemned to death and executed in 399 BC. He was accused of introducing other new divinities opposed to worshipping the gods, and teaching these to the young.

 From this speech you can learn a lot about what kind of person Socrates was. Firstly he did not believe in death as a bad thing. Obviously he was aware of the initial physical pain but he believes whatever came after was nothing to fear. The men responsible for his death however will invoke more pain in themselves than Socrates will receive because ‘a bad man is not permitted to injure a better than himself’ and they will have to live with the sleepless nights and torment created from the act of execution. He had a somewhat delusional egotistical view of himself as being more intelligent and generally a better person than most around him.  ‘Clear thinking is the most important requisite for living.’ He appeared to resent a lot of people for their lack of knowledge.

Bertrand Russell brings up a very interesting point when he talks about Socrates being liable to cataleptic trances. He also confesses in the speech to being ‘guided by a divine voice’, and believing that the voice is god speaking to him. Maybe in ancient Greece this was not considered ‘crazy’ but anyone in the present century surely would start to think that he was a bit insane. Russell says that Socrates would just stop in ‘a fit of abstraction’, on his own even when walking alongside others lost in his mind for hours.

Socrates made many enemies by searching for genuine intelligence in the various types of supposedly intellectual men. He approached politicians, poets and artisans to finally conclude that only god has true intelligence, and ’the wisdom of men is worth little or nothing.’ Socrates concluded from this that he knows absolutely nothing. Therefore the only reason he is wiser than others is the fact that he knows he knows nothing. When expressing these views to other people it instilled hatred for him for obvious reasons. He still believes the Search for knowledge is important and not impossible.

He focused more on Ethical philosophy, opposed to scientific philosophy, ‘I have nothing to do with physical speculations.’ He believed that knowledge is the reason for all sins, and purely that once that knowledge is attained; a person will learn why it is wrong and why they shouldn’t sin. ‘No man sins wittingly and therefore only knowledge is needed to make all men perfectly virtuous.’  Russell writes that most of his Platonic dialogues are all ethically focused e.g. the charmides which focused on temperance or moderation, the lysis, which focused on friendship and the laches which focused on courage.

The last unusual thing to note about Socrates was his astounding ability to cope with his senses. Whilst attending military service he was supposed to of dealt very comfortably with lack of food or the cold. ‘He was the perfect orphic saint: in the dualism of heavenly soul and earthly body. He had achieved complete mastery of the soul over the body’. I don’t believe that he had this mastery over his senses and was merely a kind of ancient Greek propaganda about Socrates. I definitely believe it was more fiction than fact in order to ascend him into some kind of immortal being who spoke on behalf of the gods. 

David Hume!

David Hume (1711-76)

David Hume was an 18^th century Scottish philosopher who is widely regarded by the general intelligent population to be one of the smartest men to come out of the British Isles. He had imperialistic ideas which synthesise both philosophy and journalism. David Hume had many views, a lot of them where drawn from John Locke and dealt with proving the existence of pretty much anything. He was an un-renounced Atheist but thought the idea of a god was ridiculous.

 Empiricism is a philosophical term which in laments terms means that all knowledge is derived from the senses; He considered Human experience as close as we can get to the truth and understanding of everything in existence.

Hume’s causation theory refers essentially to the mind being the root of all things which exist, therefore everything is possible as it is created internally known as sense data.

Skepticism, in philosophy is the epistemological position that true knowledge is completely unattainable; the real world, if there is one is unverifiable. This was mainly John Locke’s belief and David Hume merely expanded on his theory in intense detail.

Bundle theory formed from the expansion of John Locke’s theory; no object actually exists, only its feature or properties. E.g. a world cup football is round, shiny and makes a thumping sound when you kick it. Take all of these properties away and you are left with nothing... merely things envisioned by our human mind and senses, therefore it unverifiably exists due to our unverifiable collaboration of the mind and our senses. Because of this bundle theory it is even unverifiable that we, ourselves even exist.

Induction; all science is based on a logical fallacy. You cannot assume that something is going to happen or something is going to be the same. You may be held to the ground with gravity one minute, but that doesn’t mean to say that the next minute you will be.

Hume’s arguments against scientific theory are pretty interesting as well. He believes that even though scientists can provide a lot of evidence due to the re occurrence of situations for example, a high number of smokers eventually ending up with some form of cancer does not actually prove that smoking is the cause of it. It just shows what has happened and can’t be used in order to predict future inevitabilities. This theory of David Hume’s I do not agree with as I feel (along with the majority of the intelligent population) a high number of statistics can pretty much ascertain a nearly certain outcome.