What's Wrong with the WorldG. K. ChestertonOmniClassics · Literature
What's Wrong with the World
G. K. ChestertonSocial criticism begins by asking what a community should be for before deciding how its arrangements ought to change.
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About the book
Chesterton argues that diagnosing social problems requires an account of the human good being defended, not merely confidence in a fashionable mechanism of reform. His discussion moves through property, domestic life, imperialism, women's roles, and education, repeatedly returning to the household as an important space of independence. Paradox and homely examples challenge claims made in the language of efficiency or inevitable progress. The book's defence of domesticity includes restrictive views of gender that remain central to its argument and open to disagreement. Its interest is therefore not a set of neutral conclusions, but a forceful attempt to connect public policy with a particular vision of ordinary life. Readers can examine both the acuity of an objection and the assumptions about family and authority that give it direction.
- Social ideals
- Home and property
- Reform and authority
Why read it
For an energetic challenge to reform without an explicit human purpose, together with the debatable domestic ideals behind that challenge.
Social criticism · English text