Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift - Essay Example It is during this time that Swift wrote this famous article. In the article, Swift goes to great detail to propose that small babies can be used as food and nourishment. In this paper, he is seen supporting and endorsing infanticide as well as cannibalism. He meticulously describes how a baby can be prepared as a delicacy and eaten. Swift’s Modest Proposal was a satirical piece of literature that used extreme irony to critic the actions of the English landlords. Yet, through this satirical piece, he never takes time to renounce this view and leaves the reader to be the moral judge, a very dangerous thing because there is a high chance that the reader may take the ideas literally.As Gordon (59) says, irony can be very useful when presenting serious ideas becaue it stresses the importance. In this article, Swift, an Anglo-Irish priest uses extreme irony without taking caution to make sure that there are no misunderstanding (Biograpohy.com, para 2). What Swift does in this articl e is to write in an ironical way that does not explicitly point to the irony, thus making it harder for the reader to be able to detect the irony. Throughout the paper, Swift uses the persona in the article to forward the crazy idea of eating a baby. He even goes to great lengths to describe the logic behind eating a baby. For instance, he describes that since babies don’t eat much until they are about one year old, and only depend on their mother’s milk during this age, they should be kept until this age and be used as food to feed the rest of the population.

Take a position on the death penalty Assignment

Take a position on the death penalty - Assignment Example In the case of murder, it posits that the threat of death penalty will stop people from killing other people. b. Definition and consequence Capital punishment is the imposition of death penalty to those who have committed capital crimes against the state. Death as a capital punishment has many rationale as a basis as enumerated by Garry Willis in his article The Dramaturgy of Death that ranges from killing as an exclusion, killing as cleansing, killing as execration, killing to maintain social order, killing to delegitimize a former social order but the most feasible of these reasons for imposing capital punishment is killing to maintain social order (1-3). The imposition of capital punishment to maintain social order is as old as history itself beginning from Eighteenth Century B.C. in the Code of King Hammaurabi of Babylon, which codified the death penalty for 25 different crimes. The death penalty was also part of the Fourteenth Century B.C.'s Hittite Code, the Seventh Century B.C .'s Draconian Code of Athens, which made death the only punishment for all crimes, and the Fifth Century B.C.'s Roman Law of the Twelve Tablets. Death sentences were carried out by such means as crucifixion, drowning, beating to death, burning alive, and impalement (History 1). But admittedly, punishments of torture are seen as unnecessary cruelty and were forbidden by the Constitution retaining only the idea of taking the life of a criminal in a less painful manner. c. value The imposition of capital punishment to maintain social order depends on the principle of general deterrence that intimidating and threatening people with the certainty of death will make them refrain from committing crimes. Its value is thought that by imposing punishment such as death penalty through a clearly written law and sanctioned by the state, people will be deterred from committing crimes which includes murders and their acts will be shaped according to a desired behavior that will produce an efficien t society. The imposition of death penalty as an instrument of general deterrence theory against murder is also argued to depend on the premise that a man acts out of self-interest or as Beccaria would put it â€Å"the despotic spirit which is present in every man† (Beccaria, 1764, p. 94). Beccaria proposed that for deterrence to be effective, the punishment that will be meted has to be proportional according to the crime; the severest punishment to be meted to those who commit the most heinous of crimes and the minor crimes should be meted with the least painful punishment (Beccaria, 1764). II. Evaluation This theory, however, was questioned and doubted by several scholars on the field of criminal justice. Among them is Von Hentig, a former editor of the journal who dismissed the validity of death penalty as deterrence in reducing the incidence of murder. According to Von Hentig, death penalty will not work because the threat of punishment is not immediate and distant to the would-be offender. The danger presented by the punishment to the offender is perceived as remote and thus, can be readily offset by the immediate advantage of committing to the crime (1938). Von Hentig also critiqued the philosophical foundation of death penalty which is general deterrence that there are individuals who are immune from the threats of legal punishment. He cited those who are motivated by â€Å"maternal instincts, the young and women who tend to be impetuous, those motivated by ideology, the â€Å"