Alexander, Cheriyan2019-09-252019-09-252014-02-2520149788189958794http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12424/201467Fans of Charles Dickens will vividly recall the scene from the early pages of his novel, Oliver Twist, in which Oliver, the young orphan inmate of the workhouse, shocks the entire institution by daring to walk up to the master with his empty porridge-bowl and ask, “Please, sir. I want some more.”1 Oliver is quickly pummelled to the ground and bundled off to be apprenticed to an undertaker. Such episodes from the novels Dickens wrote did a lot to raise public awareness about the horrible conditions prevalent in the social welfare institutions of Victorian England. For readers today, it brings into sharp relief the paradoxes inherent in attempts to institutionalize charity.Pages:293-316engWith permission of the license/copyright holderOliver TwistDickenspummelledPolitical ethicsReligious ethicsMethods of ethicsPhilosophical ethicsBook chapter