Everyone has his eye on you, so you’re practically forced to get on with your job, and make proper use of your spare time.” There are also no wine-taverns, no ale-houses, no brothels, no opportunities for seduction, no secret meeting-places. More writes: “You see how it is – wherever you are, you always have to work. Instead, in Utopia, there is a class of bosses – called the Syphograuntes – who look out for work-shy slackers.Īnd citizens are constantly being watched. Forget free love and lying around doing nothing. His vision of a perfect society was a long way from the sensual self-indulgence dreamt of by the peasants in Cockagyne. More writes of the Utopians: “They think that the contemplation of nature, and the praise thereof coming, is to God a very acceptable honour.” However, like a good modern politician, More also emphasises that Utopia is a land of hard-working families: “idleness they utterly forsake and eschew, thinking felicity after this life to be gotten and obtained by busy labours and good exercise.” First published in Latin in 1517, the book Utopia means “no place” in Greek some scholars have said that it may also be a pun on “happy place”. More coined the word to describe an island community with an ideal mode of government. This concept would shape books, philosophies and political movements as varied as Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Mahatma Gandhi’s doctrine of passive resistance and the founding of the state of Pennsylvania. ![]() Today, though, we may know More best for his invention of a word – and for his development of an idea that would be exported around the world. An establishment figure, he was also an enemy of the Protestant Reformation and is known today as a Catholic martyr, having been beheaded by King Henry VIII. Born in 1478, he was progressive in some ways (he educated his daughters to a very high level) while also clinging to archaic customs (he wore hair shirts). A graduate of the London School of Economics, he is also the author of 50 Economics Classics (2017) and 50 Politics Classics (2015).An English lawyer, statesman, writer and saint, Thomas More was a strange character. TOM BUTLER-BOWDEN is Series Editor of the Capstone Classics series, and has provided introductions for Plato's Republic, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, Machiavelli's The Prince, Florence Scovel Shinn's The Game of Life and How to Play It, and Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet. His most recent book, A Little History of Economics, was published by Yale University Press in 2017. He holds a PhD in economics from the University of Warwick and has taught economic history at the London School of Economics. NIALL KISHTAINY is a writer with interests in economics and in the history of ideas. More's Utopia contrasts the squalor and brutal politics of the England of his time with a picture of a peaceful and prosperous society. His brilliance made him an advisor and friend of King Henry VIII. SIR THOMAS MORE was a rising intellectual star of Renaissance Europe. Part of the bestselling Capstone Classics series edited by Tom Butler-Bowdon, this edition features an introduction from writer, economist, and historian Niall Kishtainy. * Appreciate the postmodern possibilities of Platonic dialogue * Peer inside the enigmatic mind of the man who dared stand up to Henry VIII * Early communist tract or a defense of medieval values? You decide. * Explore the issues like feminism, euthanasia, and equality through Renaissance eyes Claimed as a paean to communism (Lenin had More's name inscribed on a statue in Moscow) as often as it has been seen as a defense of traditional medieval values, Utopia began the lineage of utopian thinkers who use storytelling to explore new possibilities for human society-and remains as relevant today as when it was written in Antwerp 500 years ago. In the form of a Platonic dialogue, Utopia explores topics such as money, property, crime, education, religious tolerance, euthanasia, and feminism. Written by Sir Thomas More (1477-1535)-then a rising intellectual star of the Renaissance and ultimately the advisor and friend of Henry VIII who was executed for his devoutly Catholic opposition to the king-Utopia is as complex as its author. ![]() As the traveler describes the harmony, prosperity, and equality found there, a dramatic contrast is drawn between the ideal community he portrays and the poverty, crime, and often frightening political conditions of 16th century Europe. Utopia-which could mean either "good-place" or "no-place"-gives a traveler's account of a newly discovered island somewhere in the New World where the inhabitants enjoy a social order based purely on natural reason and justice. In 1516, a book was published in Latin with the enigmatic Greek-derived word as its title. What we can learn from a Renaissance nowhere
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