Change in the Perception of Utopia (original) (raw)
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'Suspicor enim eam gentem a graecis originem duxisse': Translating Utopia in Greek
Utopian Studies, 2016
Although More's Utopia is a work for which classical Greek language and literature are central, it was not until 1970 that the work was translated into Greek. During the sixteenth century, Greek scholars bypassed the fundamental texts of Renaissance humanism, clinging instead to the classical Greek past. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Greek intellectuals also ignored Utopia, partly because the nature of their Westernizing agenda did not attract them to a work embedded within the tradition of Catholic Latinate cosmopolitanism. By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when the term utopia entered Greek intellectual life, "scientific socialism" had also made its first appearance in Greek political culture, possibly preempting the desire to translate a work that would now appear to constitute the source of an already obsolete canon of "utopian socialism." Tellingly, the textual life of More's Utopia in Greek began during the military junta. Its first translation arguably deploys it as a text charged by the desire for egalitarian democracy while at the same time privileging its satirical and playful aspects, partially in order to avoid state censorship. Though there are important differences regarding the framing of More's text by the four extant translations in modern Greek, the overall tendency seems to be to receive Utopia as a 309 antonis balasopoulos and vasso yannakopoulou: Translating Utopia in Greek fundamentally political text, a text capable of inspiring thought, and perhaps action, during dire and challenging times.
Utopia in Renaissance Philosophy
Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy, 2021
The term Utopia in Renaissance philosophy originates from and refers to Thomas More's 1516 work: Libellus vere aureus, nec minus salutaris quam festivus, de optimo reipublicae statu sive de nova insula Utopia ("A truly golden little book, no less beneficial than entertaining, of a republic's best state and of the new island Utopia") (More T. In: Logan GM et al (ed) Utopia. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002). This literary sensation gave rise to a philosophical and artistic genre that would flourish in the late Renaissance and Enlightenment, extending into nineteenthcentury ideologies, namely utopian socialism. The term contains within itself an ambivalence of meanings that relate to its two possible rootsou-topos, meaning a nonexisting place, or simply no place; and eu-topos, referring to a good place. Calling upon ancient Greek philosophic and literary traditions, as well as the biblical model of the Garden of Eden, Renaissance utopias would often describe imagined, isolated (or geographically confined) political or religious communities that possessed clear attributes of perfection.
International Encyclopedia of Political Science, 2011
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Utopia and Utopias: a Study on a Literary Genre in Antiquity
Ancient narrative, 2006
This study aims to analize utopia as a literary genre in post-classical Greek literature. In Part I we have defined the concepts of utopia and utopianism. In Part II we have established the main features and topoi of utopia. As a literary genre, we define utopia as a fictional and intrinsically dialectic entity, which holds anthitectical elements: on one side, rationalism, on the other a mythical and poetic vision of the world. Part III is dedicated to the analysis of the two fictional texts which are traditionally considered utopian (Euhemerus’ and Iambulus’ accounts as described by Diodorus Siculus), as well as the description of Meroe in Heliodorus’ Aethiopica. Our aim is to ascertain to what extent they fit into the general normative presuppositions that define utopia’s literary model. Through the comparison of the above mentioned texts, we conclude that utopian literature illustrates the duality inherent to the human nature, which is akin to imagination and reason, dream and re...
In What’s New in the New Europe? Redefining Culture, Politics, Identity;. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego., 2019
Utopia is indiscriminately charged with pathologies such as teleology and stability in much contemporary political-philosophical literature. Yet, a closer conceptual examination of utopia shows that there is no compelling argument about utopia being intrinsically linked to such pathologies. Therefore, I argue, conceptions of utopia that justifiably invite such charges are projections of epochal, indeed, specifically modern, understandings of the notion. The static and teleological semantic contents of the term are in no way indispensable. In other words, if we ask again the question about what is and is not utopia and whether utopia is comprehensible and theorizable without predicates of teleology and stability, we will come up with a reconceptualization of utopia that challenges modern framings of the notion. In this paper, I deal with such questions and explore why utopia is not inescapably unrealizable, teleological and finalist, too determinate and, consequently, tyrannical. Drawing from relevant sources (I rely mainly on Marianna Papastephanou’s theory and I show its relevance to such conceptualization), I take issue with those thinkers who, in the effort to stave off bad utopianism, resort to defining utopia as empty of content or as exclusively processual. I side with those sources which consider a degree of determinacy important for conceptual, explanatory, justificatory and normative reasons.
2012
Aristotle always wished to provide his interlocutors, and posterity, with an account of how the good person should live, and how society should be structured in order to make such lives possible. The Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics, which are among Aristotle's books of practical philosophy, are straightforwardly concerned with such questions. Aristotle believes that a city state should have eudaimonia, happiness, as its goal, and considers the ideal constitution as one in which every citizen achieves eudaimonia. Sir Thomas More's Utopia, also, in its Book 2, gives an account of an ideal state. This essay will put Aristotle's Ethics and Politics under close observation and apply Aristotle's philosophical attitude expressed in these two works to Utopia in order to figure out: (a) are the Utopians happy in Aristotelian terms? (b) is the Utopian constitution an ideal one—in which every citizen achieves eudaimonia?