Thomas More’s Hermeneutic Politics (original) (raw)
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Literature & Beyond Contextualising More's Utopia
This article attempts to foreground More’s Utopia against the Renaissance backdrop of complex and unprecedented transformations both on the individual and the collective plain. It investigates the text as a literary artefact produced as much by its author as by the age imbibing the multifarious ambiguities and uncertainties of a transitional era. Located within the tradition of humanist social criticism, it posits an ideal state that is simultaneously absolutist and radically progressive, inclusive in format yet elitist in dissemination. A vehicle for self-cancellation and self-transference for More, Utopia thrives on the paradox and ambivalence resulting from an uneasy miscegenation of practical humanism and nascent bourgeois ideology. The contradictory strains of empirical objectivity and empire building; playful intellectual exercise and serious intent make More’s ‘no-place happyland’ a site of ideological contestation which effectively establishes the linkages between a literary artefact and extra-literary considerations. To illustrate this process, the article begins with an extended comparison between More’s Utopia and Erasmus’s The Praise of Folly as complementary productions by two friends with close intellectual affinities who deploy multiple hedging strategies to circumscribe and safeguard their humanist critique of existing authority and their reformist impulse. Since context invests specificity of intent upon a text, the article further engages in a scrutiny of the first vernacularisation of Utopia by Ralph Robinson in 1551, which undertakes the perilous task of assimilating the work of a renowned Catholic martyr within a Protestant context by disjuncting More’s “wilful and stubborn obstinacy” in religion from his work which “containeth [matter] fruitful and profitable ... style pleasant and delectable.” While this facilitates the dissemination of the work in its native land and insulates the translator, it draws attention away from Utopia’s self-referential character that is heavily invested with the polyvalent aspirations and roles of its creator. The emphasis on work-ethics, regimented society and on the royal genesis of Utopia ─ it is created by King Utopus ─ facilitate the dream of a new England under Henry VIII. The work has also been viewed as an imaginary fulfilment of thwarted colonial aspirations of early Tudor monarchy. However, Utopia’s promise of providing material comfort ‘here, not hereafter’ by excluding private property from social precincts and by re-structuring the self through purely collective signifiers is definitely irreconcilable with notions of hegemonic containment. Prefixed to the vision of an ideal society (Book 2) is a trenchant critique of specific English maladies engendered by administrative mismanagement enclosures, depopulation, hierarchic exploitation and unemployment (Book 1). Despite the authorial precaution of limiting audience reception through linguistic alienation, such dangerous juxtaposition of the existing English commonwealth which is nothing but a conspiracy of the rich to exploit the poor, with the Utopian vision of social levelling provides fertile ground to the susceptible mind for a revolutionary agenda. The inevitable paradox of a text with a broad mass-based concern directed at an extremely limited and elite audience; of an author whose class connections and private interests conflict with his ideological vision; of the craving for a communist commonwealth fostered at least partially by nascent imperialism is symptomatic of a deeply rooted ambivalence that could reduce Utopia to an “empty signifier” and undermine its potency as a diagnostic tool for social analysis. The article focuses on the text’s structural format, the genetics of composition, the extensive use of parerga, its secular yet hegemonic orientation, its insistence on commonwealth, abolition of money economy, and the continuous process of self-cancellation and self-assertion to suggest that despite radical ambivalence, More’s Utopia, signals a transition of the English literary apparatus for critiquing social systems from adolescence to adulthood.
What Means Utopia to Us? Reconsidering More's Message
Hope and the Longing for Utopia: Futures and Illusions in Theology and the Arts
This paper attempts to consider Thomas More's Utopia on its own terms, apart from the utopian literature genre it inspired. In doing so, I argue that More's book present not a model of the good life for readers to reconstitute but a model of good living for the readers to practice.
Thomas More in the History of Political Ideas: Utopianism
2023
Nowadays we all say utopias are excellent, albeit impossible. The word “utopia” was invented to designate an imaginary island whose society is, at first glance, almost perfect and whose citizens are wholly virtuous. The genre to which utopian fantasy belongs, however, was not new. On the contrary, it was typical of ancient political philosophy. Plato, Aristotle and Cicero, among others, tried to define the best regime (one could even argue that this is the central theme of classical political philosophy) by portraying a chimerical, imaginary society that is put to the test not by deeds, but by words, so to speak. For the classical utopian theorists the best regime was not necessarily a perfect society. It was not a blueprint to implement, a program to create a real city, but a thought experiment. These ancient “utopias” were indeed invented to reveal the outermost limits of what we could possibly expect from political life—at the very least, this was Cicero’s description of the genre. Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s ideal politeia in Politics VII-VIII and Cicero’s own Republic were instances of this genre—although in the latter case, the best regime is an idealized version of the Roman Republic of old. A kind of utopian dream was the very soul of their political philosophy, which had the primary and guiding purpose of revealing the nature of the best “regime.” They were searching for whatever civil order was most in accordance with the natural order and, at the same time, was fostered by and based on the virtue of its citizens. A key point about this classical utopianism was that it had no illusions about the feasibility of its aim. It was a call to aiming politically for something very probably outside the reach of human achievement, but not impossible or contrary to human nature. It depended on contingent circumstances whether the political project could ever be produced—and even here, no wagers were cast. But insofar as this political ideal constituted a pinnacle of achievement and fulfillment, it was something to strive after by any virtuous person or anyone who was in pursuit of human perfection. But this call required tempering confidence in the particulars of any political project, because none of the activities or institutions that were proposed for the city were without imperfection. The ancient utopia continually descends to earth, to the sometimes brutal, imperfectly just, “common justice” found in real cities. This is why common justice needs to be completed or corrected by considerations of equity or mercy. Given the practical impossibility of achieving any sort of utopia, traditional philosophy resorted to giving advice, making exhortations and even delivering moving sermons, to move rulers to supplement harsh common justice with mercy—as is manifest in the “mirrors of princes” Genre. In light of this we can see how the ancient form of utopian thought was in conflict with Machiavelli’s new and less-than-rosy mirror of The Prince. Given the fact that this genre thrived in Antiquity and Middle Ages, we can hardly find it surprising that someone of Machiavelli’s sensibilities would ridicule and mercilessly attack this ancient kind of utopianism as the work of useless dreamers. This great transformation catalyzed by Machiavelli’s writings was so radical that it changed utopianism; for later thinkers were no longer dreamers. They had the intention of designing perfect societies that could be implemented. Henceforth, in order to be realistic, no political organization should be devised counting on the virtue of men, under penalty of being but “cities in the sky”. These cities did not require wholly virtuous men, for they were cities on the ground. The old morality was shorn from the new political reality, and the stage was set for something new.
The New World and Thomas More's Utopia
Thomas More’s seminal story about the Commonwealth of Utopia was not a political or philosophic statement, a program for social progress or even the description of a perfect, and therefore unattainable, form of society in the author’s mind. So what was it? Perhaps a search for personal orientation in a world subject to, or on the point of being tossed by, tempestuous and as yet barely understood forces. When Utopia was published in Louvain in December 1516 the outbreak of the Reformation was only ten months away and six years after that a violent social revolution would erupt, prompted by the rebellion of German peasants and lower nobility. The situation in which the poor and landless agrarian classes of England, then in the vortex of an inflationary spiral, found themselves was hardly better. Apart from all that the widely circulated ‘letters of Amerigo Vespucci’ fired the popular imagination with the notion of ‘a new world.’ There can be no doubt that passages in Utopia touched on highly sensitive matters, such as the harsh punishment meted out for lesser crimes and misdemeanors, the death penalty no less for theft or felling a tree. How could More get away with bringing up such a politically touchy issue? Here we should recall the fact that Utopia could not be construed as a personal declaration or manifesto, for the first person narrator relays to his readers the traveller’s tales of a strange character by the name of Raphael Hythloday, a mariner who claimed he had accompanied Amigo Vespucci on explorations of a strange new world that had just been recognized as a continent between Europe and Asia. We know from Goethe and Robert Browning how useful dramatic personae can be as a means of avoiding censure and blame for an expression of personal sentiments. Even More, the first person narrator, is not to be flatly equated with Thomas More as a private individual. True, the dropping of names belonging to Cardinal Wolsey and Cardinal John Morton the Archbishop of Canterbury, people with whom More was personally acquainted, injects a note of apparent factual accuracy into a fictional narrative. True ‘More’ meets Hythloday in the Netherlands, the actual location at which Utopia was written and published. Even so ‘More’ is a fictional character no less than Raphael Hythloday. However, fictional characters can sometimes speak the truth more freely and directly than those who speak in propria persona. if we come close to hearing the true voice of More himself this possibility is granted by words imputed to Raphael Hythloday in occasional comments and reflections as when he appeals to our sense of fairness and decency by inveighing against the exploitation of the labouring classes by those who derive their wealth from the product of enforced labour, a fact that was not overlooked by later Utopian socialists such as Robert Owen.
Ania Boguska, Verena Adamik, Peter Stillman, rafal szczerbakiewicz, Łukasz Stec, Marcello Messina, Maja Wojdyło, Miłosz Markocki, Iwona Sowińska-Fruhtrunk, Anna Bugajska, Eleni Varmazi, Tomasz Szymański, Mariusz Finkielsztein, Michał Kłosiński, Krzysztof M Maj, Anna De Vaul
Kraków: Facta Ficta Research Centre, 2016
The twenty-six essays which compose this collection cover a substantial range of both historical and theoretical themes, indicating at the least that the utopian idea thrives today across a number of disciplines as well as in domains (like computer games) which are themselves of recent origin and which indicate that utopia can also be addressed as an aspect of the internal psychic fantasy world. There is some consideration here of the lengthy and complex historical relationship between utopian ideals and religion. There is some effort to reconsider practical efforts to found actual communities which embody utopian ideals. Several authors revisit the emotional substrata of utopian aspiration rendered accessible through music in particular. Literature is here nonetheless the chief focus, in keeping with the form of Thomas More’s original text and that of the tradition which has imitated and satirised it. The themes represented here mirror in literary form the dystopian drift in the external world discussed above. Many of the leading authors of post-totalitarian dystopian fiction are included here, notably (to name but a few) Margaret Atwood, Robert Heinlein, J.G. Ballard, David Foster Wallace and, most recently, Michel Houellebecq. Within these treatments, the possibilities are explored that dystopia may emerge from or assume the form of racist regimes, environmental destruction, corporate dictatorship, or religious fundamentalism, or some combination of these factors. Such potential outcomes of modernity need, the authors of this volume also assure us, to be balanced against the utopian promise which bodily remodelling entertains, and the possibility of longevity which scientific and technical advances encapsulate as the epitome of modern individualist utopianism.
"More’s 'Epigrams' and 'Utopia': Journeys in Intertextuality".
Moreana 51, 195-196: 131-151., 2014
Despite controversial interpretations still existing about More’s expressing (some of) his own opinions in Utopia, the comparison of it with the content of several of his epigrams allows finding certain similarities regarding to the possible political and ethical thought of the author. The paper will show these similarities from the analysis of the lexicon used by More in both works. The particular use of concepts such as princeps, tyrannus, rex-regnum, respublica, ciuis, populus, bellum-pax and other words may be shown as an accurate interpretation key. Keywords: Thomas More, Utopia, epigram, political-ethical thought, tyranny