Friday, November 18, 2016

Essential Thinkers #16 Thomas More: Utopia's Vision


Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), friend and supporter of Erasmus (refer to previous Thinker), led a dangerous but incorruptible political life which would earn him the death penalty from the same King who once knighted him, Hendry VIII. Unimpressed by Henry’s solicitations, More’s determined adherence to Catholic orthodoxy prevented him from recognising either Hendry’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon or his subsequent self-appointment as head of the English Church in order to marry Anne Boleyn. Fortunately for the history of Western thought, More managed to complete his most important philosophical work, Utopia in good time, 1518 in fact, before Hendry took his head in 1535.

In More’s Utopia, a traveller brings back tales of an island in the South Seas where everything is organized in the best possible way. The book takes the form of a dialogue, in which the traveller, Raphael Hythloday, divulges the wise ways of Utopia as he found them in the five years he spent there. More’s vision of Utopia is a kind of Christian communism, in which there is no personal property, internal commerce or personal ambition. Each member of society works six hours a day regardless of their job. This, says More, is entirely satisfactory in terms of providing enough labour. For other societies only require the poor to work long and exhausting days because of the existence of the idle rich.

The Utopia provides for its citizens by means of a system of farms, each consisting of at least forty workers. There are intellectuals and governors in More’s visionary society, but these are chosen by merit and only remain in their jobs so long as they prove satisfactory. There is also an elected Prince who acts as head of state, but can be removed in case of tyranny. Interestingly, More does not rule out slavery in his ideal society. So-called ‘bondsmen’ are given the distasteful jobs that More does not want his happy citizens to partake in, such as slaughtering the livestock and serving up communal dinners. The bondmen are people serving penal sentences for the breaking of any of the Utopian laws, such as virginity before marriage and chastity during wedlock. Bondmen are also drawn from other societies from among those who have been condemned to death.

Whilst More’s Utopia possesses some admirable liberal qualities, it is also, aesthetically oppressive in the same way as Maoist and Cambodian regimes have been in the real world. More expects all his citizens to wear the same plain, undifferentiated dress. Architecturally it is unremittingly dull. Each of the fifty-four towns are built according to an identical plan. The streets are all twenty feet across and every home is exactly alike. The residents swap homes on a regular basis according to the law to discourage the idea of private ownership, although since all the houses are alike this seems somewhat pointless.

Like The Republic of Plato, it is doubtful that More’s utopian vision could provide the basis for a realistic model of any society, let alone the transformation of an existence one. Nevertheless, the value of Utopia lies in the articulation of certain social and socialistic ideals in an age very far removed from such philanthropic concerns. Bertrand Russell probably sums up the problem with More’s vision, when he says, “If in More’s Utopia, as in most others, would be intolerably dull. Diversity is essential to happiness, and in Utopia there is hardly any.”
[Summarized from Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers by Philip Stokes, 2012]

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