Society In Thomas Morus’s Utopia

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INTRODUCTION

HUMANISM AND RENAISSANCE

Humanism is a movement of European thought during the Renaissance which is characterized by a return to ancient texts as a model of life, writing and thought. The term is formed on Latin: in the sixteenth century, the humanism, humanista is concerned with humanities, studia humanitatis in Latin – it teaches languages, literatures and Latin and Greek cultures. More broadly, the term humanitas is taken in the Ciceronian sense and represents "the culture which, completing the natural qualities of man, makes him worthy of the name." Humanism, in the sense of literary and philological study of ancient culture, coincides with this extended meaning throughout the period and still today in historiography.

A movement of thought born in Italy in the 14th century, it originated in the rise of the secular culture that hatched at that time in the Italian cities. Touching different arts from that time (painting, sculpture, literature), it evolves rapidly and also touches on philosophy and religion afterwards.

It was with Petrarca (1304-1374) that humanism was born in Italy. The poet begins by collecting the inscriptions on the old stones of Rome and continues in the manuscripts his quest for the Ancients. He found letters from Cicero, resuscitated thus a writer banned by the schools. Based on ancient documents, he also detected a false document for the benefit of its sovereign. Lorenzo Valla (1407-1457) also traces the historical truth, advocating the philological study of texts and the return to classical purity. Having left Italy, the humanist movement is spreading throughout Europe.

The initial location of humanist culture is northern Italy, where the state cities generate a cultural explosion due, in part, to their openness to the world and their rivalries.
The Italian literary community is experiencing an abundance of literary activities, mostly historical, partly due to scholars who are not professionals. Numerous notaries, chancery scribes, judges, doctors, merchants, bankers, began to write stories of their cities, to boast of their merits. These people also write their lives, build up their successors, and include in their narratives philosophical and religious reflections.

Florence knew many prose writers, such as Ricordano Malispini, Dino Compagni or Filippo Villani the Younger. Venice had Martino Canal or Andrea Dandolo, Asti had Ogerio Alfi, Padua had Rolandino.

Several personalities also begin before the trecento to translate poetry into the vulgar language. In the court of Palermo of Frederick II, several poets try to restore courtly love in a Sicilian mingled with Latin and Provencal dialects. At the beginning of the trecento, the school of the Dolce Stile Novo also sings love and woman, mixing their texts with philosophy and moral considerations. Composed mainly of Guido Cavalcanti, Guido Guinizelli or Cino da Pistoia, they count Dante among their young pupils. At the same time, another movement began to take up ancient poetry in the process of rediscovery. Born in Padua in the second thirteenth century around the figure of Judge Lovato Lovati, it continued with Albertino Mussato in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.

In an environment where intellectual work in the vernacular is increasing, Dante Alighieri is the first "to have elevated the vernacular speech of his fellow citizens into an authentic literary language". Without being the only person to work for this purpose, the Florentine poet is the one who accomplishes a major revolution, notably with the Divine Comedy.
Dante is fully a humanist both by the liaison between his personal state and the condition of man in general, but also by the lyrical, pathetic, powerful intonations permeating his work.
After the founders of the movement, Petrarca and Boccaccio, many scholars studied ancient authors in a new and truly humanist way. Philological criticism and contextualization of the authors strongly distinguish this intellectual movement from earlier medieval rebirths. Another novelty is the birth of a teaching of Greek and Hebrew in Europe.

Petrarca and Boccaccio, despite their different backgrounds, are the archetypes of the Renaissance humanist. Brilliant manipulators of the vulgar tongue as well as Latin, tireless researchers of ancient texts that they exhume and diffuse, they write texts touching many genres: tale, history, philosophy, biography, geography. The two, finally, are bridges between classical culture and the Christian message. Very well known and celebrated with their living, they support many other humanist scholars, disseminating their knowledge and method.
The radical novelty common to all these scholars is not to seek, exhume and disseminate ancient texts, such undertakings having been carried out during the Carolingian period or in the twelfth century. But indeed the criticism of the scholars bears on these texts. They are aware of the two discrepancies inherent in the texts which he reads from antiquity: the context and the distortion due to copies. They thus endeavor as much to find the original text in its most correctness by philological research, as to find the context in which it was written, in order to understand its original meaning.

Moreover, a teaching of the Greek language is developing in many cities. Made possible by the exodus of many Byzantine scholars before and especially after the Turkish conquest of the Byzantine Empire, it allows rediscovering many ancient authors from the original texts. The first of these is Plato, whose philosophy conquers Europe. But Thucydides, Xenophon, Herodotus, Ptolemy, Strabo, Aristophanes, Aeschylus are discovered, and then translated into Latin.
Before his rereading in the text, in the Middle Ages, Plato is hardly known.
The learning of Greek leaves Italy to spread throughout Europe, scholars then tackle the re-translation of major works in order to regain their original meaning. Thomas More publishes the Dialogues of Lucian of Samosata in 1506, Erasmus proposes a new translation of the New Testament in 1516.

The term humanist comes from the Latin umanista, the professor who teaches "humanities", that is to say, grammar and especially Latin and Greek rhetoric. This acceptance goes back to ancient and medieval education.

A century after the beginnings of humanism, the diffusion of texts was facilitated by the development of printing, which was developed around 1455 by Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz. The number of books put into circulation increases and books at lower cost are printed from the beginning of the sixteenth century. Over fifty years, humanists have improved the methods of publishing ancient texts by using collation, comparing manuscripts, and the discussion begun in 1480 on the comparative merits of the correction ope ingenii and of the correction ope codicii rages throughout the next century. New trades appear, linked to teaching, publishing or reflection on social life. Artists are inspired by these new ideas. The movement spread throughout the continent in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries through what is called the Republic of Letters.

The term humanistic is also used in a very different sense: it refers to a cultural, philosophical and political current which proposes a "human model" defined as a synthesis of the intellectual, social and affective qualities characteristic of "human nature". Humanism is an idealistic and optimistic current of thought that places Man at the center of the world, and honors human values.
Humanists are passionate about ancient civilizations, Roman and Greek, but also Aramaic and Near Eastern. The humanists publish (in the scientific sense) and explain the texts, confining themselves to a philological approach that differentiates them from philosophers who, at the same time, reflect on the texts, take up myths and legends by charging them with new meanings; it is the time for a nascent specialization in the field, and others become "antique dealers", that is, historians, or geographers. Erasmus criticizes the "barbarous language," that is, the bad Latin of the scholastics, their ignorance of letters and languages. Erasmus writes in Antibarbares that only culture linked to ancient texts can transform savages or "men of stone" into civilized people and honest manners: only the mastery of Latin and Greek makes it possible to make an honest man. Studies on language allow humanists to put an end to the supernatural explanation of the diversity of languages, namely the myth of the Tower of Babel.

For the humanists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, pedagogy is a particularly important field. The child must be trained in a continuous and progressive way, from birth to adulthood, and even beyond, to become a man in conformity with the ideal professed by the humanists. The specific environment of man is the world of culture and not of nature.
Rabelais denounces in Gargantua the traditional education with its religious dogmatism which admits no evolution since it is based on divine precepts. The humanistic ideas in education led to the creation of new schools throughout Europe, where the new administrative elite of the states was formed: Deventer in the Netherlands or Saint Paul in London, Corpus Christi College in Oxford, The Strasbourg Gymnasium of Sturm, the Trilingual College of Louvain (Latin, Greek and Hebrew).

The new thought gives a first place to experimentation. The dogmas, even those derived from the Greco-Roman bibliography, are questioned, and must pass through the test of fact. Thus a critical thought is developed, in which scientific experience allows us to derive knowledge free from prejudices. Artists and scholars are embarking on the construction of modern knowledge. Leonardo da Vinci, for example, is interested in anatomy and produces several dissections, as shown by his drawing books. Copernicus designs the heliocentric model, in reaction to the geocentric model of Ptolemy and Aristotle. Rabelais gives in his Gargantua the example of an ideal and universal education, adding to the ancient languages ​​the knowledge of mathematics, astronomy and natural sciences.

Humanists advocate the moral and intellectual values ​​contained in Greco-Latin literature and their adaptation to new needs. As a result some scholastics accuse them of paganism. They reject Greek as the language of orthodox schismatics, and Hebrew as the language of Jews. For the humanists, Greek philosophy has prepared the world for the Christian religion, that of the Gospel, the Epistles of St. Paul, and the Fathers of the Church.

Erasmus is one of the most fervent supporters of Christian humanism. He makes the conjunction between religion and freedom in his book of 1503, Enchiridion militis christiani. To a religion based on a soulless ritualism and obligations he opposes a religion of man addressing himself directly to God. As such, the humanists are partly at the origin of the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century introduced by Martin Luther in Germany and Jean Calvin in Geneva.

Humanists are generally pacifist and cosmopolitan. Sometimes they send letters or dedicate their works to a sovereign to try to exert a salutary influence on their political decisions. They readily propose political reforms like Erasmus in The Praise of Folly in 1511, Thomas More in Utopia in 1515-1516, Rabelais in Gargantua in 1534. In Florence, throughout the fifteenth century and even at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the great humanists of the city are also the Chancellors of the Republic: Leonardo Bruni, Angel Politien, Nicolas Machiavelli.

The English Renaissance

The 16th century English witnesses the advent of the Tudors. This dynasty retains power from 1485 to 1603, marking the dawn of modern times in England: the Renaissance. In the national popular mythology, the Tudors reigned with a prestige whose only equivalent will be the Victorian age. It is true that the Tudors benefit from favorable factors.
England opens up to the world also thanks to the acts of navigation which encourage maritime exploration. In the reign of Elizabeth, characters such as Sir Francis Drake, who traveled around the world between 1577 and 1580, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Hawkins and Thomas Frobisher criss-cross the seas by spreading English influence Similarly, the establishment of the first English colonies in North America dates back to this period.

The society remains rural, but the process of urbanization leaves the country with a specific architectural style. The population of London increases from forty thousand to two hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants. Intestine conflicts can be summed up in religious dissensions.

The first laws for the poor appear under the reign of Elizabeth: they are moving towards a widespread public assistance.

The influence of the court will not stop at the social: it will also promote cultural and artistic development by engaging in patronage. The nobles were to sponsor authors who prospered under their protection. Queen Elizabeth herself will protect a theatrical troupe. This tendency did not stop with the Stuarts' accession to the throne.

In addition to technical and scientific advances, the import of the press to Westminster by William Caxton in 1476 allowed the development of books and woodcuts. The period saw mostly the dissemination of religious works, while English literature was still marked by the flow of translations (influence of humanism). Some texts are finally made accessible in England: Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Plutarch's Lives, Montaigne's Essays on the Bible. Playwrights and poets will draw from the classic sources themes and styles that they will first adapt. They will develop a fantasy and rhetoric of their own.

Political Context

The Tudor dynasty began in 1485 with the accession to the throne of Henry VII after his victory over Richard III. This victory puts an end to the bloody war of the Two Roses which opposed the rival families of the Lancaster and York for thirty years. England, exhausted by this intestine war, was then a country of little importance in the midst of the great dynasties of the Habsburgs and the Valois. During his twenty-four years of reign, Henry VII gave him solid economic foundations, while succeeding in restoring the powers of the traditional monarchy which he imposed on the powerful barons. This class had become accustomed to consider itself the equal of the king and fomented coups d'etat to dethrone him or at least to destabilize him. Henry VII laid the foundations of a centralized monarchy.

The influence of the following monarch, Henry VIII (1509-1547), is considerable.
During his reign, he will continue the movement initialized by his predecessor: the monarchy will become omnipotent. He was to lead the country to withdraw from the Catholic tutelage of Rome by adopting the Protestant doctrines of the German Martin Luther: it was the Reformation which settled in 1535 when he proclaimed himself head of the Church of England in place of the Pope. The Crown then holds temporal and spiritual powers. This choice is based more on personal and political considerations than on religious beliefs. Catholicism forbade divorce, and his wife, Catherine of Aragon, daughter of the King of Spain, had not given him any son. He was also in love with his mistress, Anne Boleyn (whom he had executed after three years of marriage). Moreover, the Church possessed goods that aroused her lust. Changing religion allowed him to change his wife and to appropriate the property of eight hundred monasteries after their dissolution. But Catholic in heart, this ambiguous character only flouted pontifical authority for his interests, while preserving the principles of the Catholic religion which he defended against the Lutheran heresies.

The importance of the Reformation is considerable in several respects: besides this separation consummated with Rome which will allow the full expression of national and religious identity, the English language will also experience a certain development, since it will come to replace Latin, the traditional medium of faith among Catholics. The liturgical works will now be in English. At the time, there were the first translations of the Bible into vernacular. This foundation of English will strengthen the pride of belonging to a sovereign nation that manages to get rid of foreign tutelage.

The young Edward VI (1547-1553) continues in the religious path borrowed by his father, but in a more radical way: the Anglican liturgy is fixed during his reign, redacted from Catholic elements like the cult of images or the doctrine of transubstantiation.
Unfortunately, during her five years of reign (1553-1558), Marie Tudor continued to want to restore Catholicism, persecuting and burning nearly three hundred Anglican "heretics", while the malaise gained the population. "Bloody Mary" is the infamous nickname that history has left her with.

She dies in 1558 without having an heir and her half-sister, Elizabeth the First was twenty-five years when she is crowned in 1559. Her coming is lived as liberation. It will make it possible to restore order and cohesion by consolidating the achievements of the Reformation. The one who will be nicknamed "the Virgin Queen" has an open mind and authority. It soon became the object of a cult, "Gloriana", as evidenced by the long poem of Edmund Spenser, the Queen of the Fairies, the royal iconography which enumerates many portraits of the sovereign or the name of "Virginia" given to an English colony in North America.

The political stability it introduces brings with it a serenity which explains the considerable development of the arts (painting, miniatures) and literature: it is the aesthetic "golden age" in England. At the end of his reign, the country gained unprecedented economic and political power, and the genius of all time, Shakespeare's fine flower, flourished during this time.
James VI of Scotland succeeded Elizabeth in 1603 and become James I of England, thus sealing the union of the two countries: it was the beginning of the Stuart dynasty and of social and religious dissensions.

The Elizabethan literary genres are very varied:

philosophical and political writings that are anchored in the humanistic tradition, for example, Thomas More (1478-1535) and his famous work Utopia;

religious prose with sermons, pamphlets, and especially the translation of the Bible into English in 1525 by William Tyndale (1494-1536);

and finally, a poetry strongly influenced by the sonnets of Petrarch and Ronsard, including the pastoral composition of Edmund Spenser (1552-1599), the sonnets in love with Philip Sidney (1554-1586) and those of Shakespeare.

It is, however, the theatrical genre that is experiencing the most significant growth.

The notion of calling this period "The Renaissance" is a modern invention, having been popularized by the historian Jacob Burckhardt in the 19th century. The idea of the Renaissance has come under increased criticism by many cultural historians, and some have contended that the "English Renaissance" has no real tie with the artistic achievements and aims of the Italian artists (Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Donatello) who are closely identified with Renaissance visual art. Whereas from the perspective of literary history, England had already experienced a flourishing of literature over 200 years before the time of Shakespeare, during the last decades of the fourteenth century. Geoffrey Chaucer's popularizing of English as a medium of literary composition rather than Latin occurred only 50 years after Dante had started using Italian for serious poetry, and Chaucer translated works by both Boccaccio and Petrarch into Middle English. At the same time William Langland, author of Piers Plowman, and John Gower were also writing in English. In the fifteenth century, Thomas Malory (author of Arthur’s Death), John Lydgate, and Thomas Hoccleve were notable figures. For this reason, scholars find the singularity of the period called the English Renaissance questionable; C. S. Lewis, a professor of Medieval and Renaissance literature at Oxford and Cambridge, famously remarked to a colleague that he had "discovered" that there was no English Renaissance, and that if there had been one, it had "no effect whatsoever".

Other cultural historians have countered that, regardless of whether the name "renaissance" is apt, there was undeniably an artistic flowering in England under the Tudor monarchs, culminating in Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

THOMAS MORE – LIFE AND WORK

Thomas More, Latinized in Thomas Morus – born on 7 February 1478, London – died on 6 July 1535, London – was a jurist, historian, philosopher, humanist, theologian and politician. A great friend of Erasmus, a scholar, a philanthropist, he fully participated in the renewal of thought that characterizes that period, as well as in humanism, of which he is the most illustrious English representative.

He was appointed "Ambassador Extraordinary" and then "Chancellor of the King" by Henry VIII. He disavowed the King's divorce and refused to endorse the authority that had been arrogated to him in religious matters. He resigned his office in 1532. Persistence of his attitude, he is imprisoned and then executed as a "traitor".

In 1886, Sir Thomas More was beatified by the Roman Catholic and canonized as Saint Thomas More – in 1935. He is the patron saint of government officials and politicians since 2000.
Thomas More is the son of London lawyer John More (1451-1530), probably an attorney or magistrate, and Agnes More. He studied at the University of Oxford from 1492, then in a law school, New Inn, and Lincoln's Inn; among his masters, John Colet and Erasmus would become his friends. He joined the bar of lawyers at the age of twenty-one, and taught law until 1510. He became the lawyer of the city's merchants and was elected judge (under-sheriff) in 1510 by the inhabitants of London.

He made a long retreat to the Chartreuse in 1503, and then married Jane Colt in 1505, of which he had three daughters and one son. According to Erasmus, "He preferred to be a chaste husband rather than a shameless monk". On the death of his wife in 1511, he remarried with Alice Middleton, widow and mother of two children. He will be renowned for the high-level education he gave his children, girls and boys.

Member of Parliament from 1504, he rose against the taxes demanded by King Henry VII for the war of Scotland. The king imprisoned John More; Thomas More retired to France (1508).

The advent of Henry VIII in 1509 marks the beginning of a brilliant political career. The king took Thomas More as master of petitions, then at his Privy Council, and sent him to diplomatic and commercial missions to the Netherlands (1515), where he wrote Utopia and then to Calais (1517). He was appointed treasurer of the Crown in 1521, and in 1525 Chancellor of Lancaster, that is to say, councilor and minister without portfolio. He is part of the delegation which negotiates peace with Spain in 1529.

He was elected in 1523, against his will, speaker of the Parliament. In the same year, he began to participate in the controversy against Luther's theses, for which his friend, Bishop Tunstal, mandated him in 1528: he would write seven books in English until 1533.

In 1529 he joined the highest office, that of Chancellor of the Kingdom, first layperson appointed to this post. As Chancellor, he made imprison forty people acquired to the ideas of Luther. In 1531 he enforced the sentence rendered against Richard Bayfield condemned to be burned alive at Smithfield; five other convictions follow.

But the King's wish to marry Anne Boleyn, whom he fell in love in 1527, was confronted with the Pope's refusal to cancel his marriage with Catherine of Aragon, which led Henry VIII to break the liaisons with Rome. This schism is at the origin of the Anglican Church.
In 1530 More refused to sign a letter from the religious leaders and the English aristocrats asking the Pope to cancel the marriage of Henry and Catherine. In 1531 he unsuccessfully presented his resignation after being obliged to take an oath declaring the King Supreme Chief of the Church of England "as much as Christ permits". In 1532 he again asked the king to relieve him of his duties, claiming that he was ill and suffered severe pain in his chest. This time, Henri accepted his request.

In 1533 More refused to attend the coronation of Anne Boleyn as Queen of England. In practice, it was not an act of treachery: More had written to the king, acknowledged the royalty of Anne and expressed his desire to see the king happy. But his friendship with the former queen, Catherine of Aragon, keeps him from attending the triumph of Anne, which is interpreted as an insult to her.

Shortly afterwards, More was accused of accepting bribes, but in the absence of any evidence, charges were quickly abandoned. In 1534 he was accused of plotting with Elizabeth Barton, a nun who had issued prophecies involving the King's divorce. More produced a letter in which he ordered Barton not to interfere in the affairs of the State.

On April 13 of the same year, More was summoned before a commission to swear allegiance to the Act of Succession of Parliament. More recognizes the right of Parliament to declare Anne legitimate Queen of England, but refuses to take an oath because of an anti-papal preface which affirms the authority of Parliament in matters of religion and denies the authority of the pope.
Four days later he was imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he wrote his Dialogue of Comfort in Tribulations. On 1 July 1535, More was introduced to judges, including the new Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas Audley, as well as the father, brother and uncle of Anne Boleyn. He is accused of high treason for denying the validity of the Act of Succession. More thinks that he cannot be found guilty unless he explicitly denies that the king is at the head of the Church. He therefore refused to answer any question asking his opinion on the subject. Thomas Cromwell, then the most powerful of the King's advisers, asked the Solicitor General, Richard Rich, to testify that More had in his presence denied that the King was the legitimate leader of the Church. Although this testimony is clearly a perjury, the jury declares More "guilty of treason" (Treason Act 1534).

Before his sentencing, More speaks freely of his belief that "no temporal man can be at the head of spirituality." He is condemned to be hanged, dragged and eviscerated, but the king commits this sentence in decapitation.

The execution took place on 6 July. When he came to the foot of the scaffold, he said to the officer present: "Please, Lieutenant, help me to go up; for the descent, I will manage … ". He declares on the scaffold that he dies as "a good servant of the King, and of God first". The body of More is buried in the Tower of London, in an anonymous tomb of the chapel St. Peter. His head was exhibited on the London Bridge. His daughter Margaret Roper recovered it, probably by bribing some soldier, before it was thrown into the Thames. The skull is believed to lie in the tomb of the Ropers in St. Dunstan's Church in Canterbury, but researchers believe that it might be in the tomb he had erected during his lifetime at the old church of Chelsey. However, it is more likely that More's head lies with his daughter.

Thomas More is also known for his political and social essay Libellus vere aureus nec minus salutaris quam festivo de optimo statu rei publicae deque nova insula Utopia. The latter, however, is only one element of a considerable written work: translations of Greek, Latin epigrams, poetry, treatises, but also works which testify to a profound spirituality. His Dialogue of Confirmation in Tribulations can be cited in this regard. His Complete Works in English represent 17 volumes published by Yale University.

He is the only person venerated by the Catholics (Saint Thomas More) and prominently among the precursors of socialism on an obelisk at the foot of the Kremlin in Moscow.

3. UTOPIA

Utopia (word forged by Thomas More, from the Greek οὐ-τόπος "in no place") is a representation of an ideal and flawless reality. It is a kind of apologue translated in the writings by an ideal political regime (which would perfectly govern men), a perfect society (without injustice, for example, like Plato's Callipolis or the discovery of the Eldorado in Candide) or a community of individuals living happily and in harmony (the Abbey of Theleme in Gargantua of Rabelais in 1534), often written to denounce the injustices and drifts of their times.

Utopians generally place their writings in imaginary places to avoid political or religious censorship: a distant and mythical country (The Adventures of Telemaque, Book 7, Fenelon, 1699), an island unknown for example (Slave Island, Marivaux, 1725).
A utopia can also denote a reality that is hardly admissible: in this sense, to qualify something utopian is to disqualify it and to consider it as irrational. This double semantic of the word, which varies the definition of the term between a literary text with a political vocation and an unrealizable dream, attests to the struggle between two beliefs, one in the possibility of reflecting on reality by fictional representation, the other on dissociation radical of the dream and the act, the ideal and the real.

3.1. Origin of the term "utopia"

The term utopia is a Greek neologism forged by Thomas More in 1516 to designate the ideal society he describes in his work (in Latin) Utopia.

This term is composed of the Greek negative preposition or and the word topos which means "place". The meaning of "utopia" is therefore, approximately, "without place", "which is not found anywhere". In the heading of the Utopia 1518 Basel edition, Thomas More uses, exceptionally, the term Eutopia to designate the imaginary place he designed. This second neologism no longer rests on negation or on the prefix eu, which is found in euphoria and which means "good". Eutopia therefore means "the place of the good".

Only the first of these two terms has passed into posterity, but they are none the less complementary to describe the originality of the Utopia of More. This work is, on the one hand, a narrative of travel and the description of a fictitious place (utopia) and, on the other, a plan for the rational establishment of an ideal society (eutopia). These two aspects of Thomas More's text led us to call utopia very different works.

3.2. Definitions

Utopia (utopia) is the description of an ideal society. It stems from a tradition that is traced back to The Republic of Plato. More specifically utopia (utopia) is a literary genre similar to the travel narrative but with the framework of imaginary societies.

These two definitions are not mutually exclusive: Thomas More's Utopia, Tommaso Campanella's The City of the Sun, or Francis Bacon's New Atlantis fulfill these two conditions and are both narratives and descriptions of original societies.

However, as early as the seventeenth century, many authors seized on this new literary genre and developed the novel and satirical aspect to the detriment of the political project. For example, works such as Jonathan Swift's Journeys of Gulliver (1721) were described as utopias in their day.

Thomas More invented the literary genre of utopia, he had the ambition to widen the field of the possible and not the impossible as this word is synonymous today.

In his essay on the first utopias, before the stories of More or Tommaso Campanella, Régis Messac gives a restrictive definition of the term Utopia: "The word of Utopia, forged by Thomas More, and of a proper name that has become generic, is commonly used to designate literary works which, in a fictitious and narrative form, offer us the image of an ideal state, where all the evils and the faults of the present society are cured and rectified. … This literary genre […] was for a long time the main vehicles of reforming ideas, but these writings are repeated a great deal, one hundred times the same banalities, 100 times the same lacunae or the same errors ". (My translation)

Régis Messac considers utopia to be a purely romantic, necessarily progressive work composed of two elements: "the framework, that is to say, the narrative of fantastic or fantastic adventures, the marvelous or geographical novel; The content, that is, the representation of an ideal society". However, one does not go without the other, but "one or the other of the two elements can predominate". (My translation) For Messac, it goes without saying that the works in which the second element, the content, that is to say the representation of a perfect or at least perfected society, cannot be regarded as true utopias.

This is why Messac does not recognize the Republic of Plato or the Cyropedia of Xenophon as belonging exactly to the utopian genre; he considers these works to belong to the category of political treatises similar to those of Felix Bodin, Nicolas Machiavelli and Montesquieu.

According to Régis Messac, utopian narratives respond to a social need. He writes: "It is doubtless permissible to say, on the whole, that it is the periods of uncertainty, of anxiety, and even of suffering, which are especially favorable to the appearance of accounts of this kind. When many men, the majority of men, perhaps, are forced to withdraw into themselves, they seek in their imagination what reality refuses them, and flourishes the utopias.” (My translation)
The French philosopher Michel Foucault defines utopia as a "place without a real place" which maintains an analogical relationship with reality and which tends towards the other side of society or towards the improvement of society. It is opposed, in its theory, to heterotopia.

Theodore Monod, for his part, writes: "Utopia is not the unrealizable, but the unrealized."

3.3. History of utopia

a) The precursors of utopia

Plato is the first great idealist of Western thought. It is possible to bring Utopia (in the modern sense of the term) closer to the concept of Plato's idea.

The thought of Plato is set forth in the classic work The Republic, whose very title is a program. Plato endeavored to draw up the broad outlines of what was to be a city organized in an ideal way by castes. It was this desire to constitute an ideal city, making Plato the great founder of the concept of idea, which was later taken up by nineteenth-century Utopians (notably Fourier, Saint-Simon, and Etienne Cabet).

Even though Plato reflected on economic questions, his thoughts were not as well developed on this theme as those of his successor, Aristotle, who is credited with a book devoted to economics.

The true history of Lucian of Samosata is related to the genus of imaginary fantasy. However, in its journey to the confines of the phantasmal universe of the period (2nd century), it also presents many literary and thematic characteristics of utopia: thus utopia, in literature, offers not only the reading of a perfect archetype of organization, it also proposes, sometimes through fantasy, a critical interpretive grid of the institutional, political and social structures of the regime.

In 10th century Al-Farabi, wrote From the Opinion of the inhabitants of the Ideal City.

b) Genesis of the genus: Utopia of Thomas More

The text of More, published in 1516, borrows in part its form from the travel stories of Vasco de Gama or Magellan. The discovery of the New World in 1492 brought the Europeans into contact with other peoples and allowed More to imagine an original civilization situated on the boundaries of the known world. More generally, his project for society is part of the philosophical trend of the Renaissance.

The first book of Utopia reports a conversation between the narrator and several other characters, including Raphael Hythodee a navigator who discovered the island of Utopia. The discussion focuses on the injustices and defects of society, the injustices to which Raphael Hythodaeus opposes the wise customs of the country of which he made the discovery. The second book describes Hythodee's description of Utopia. This detailed description deals with the island's laws, customs, history, architecture and economic functioning.

Utopian society is fundamentally egalitarian and ignores all private property. It describes a society that has often been called a communist, or more precisely an "isonoma" (insonomy – equality of political rights), seeking the perfect equality of all before the law. It is also based on a set of laws and on a very rational and precise organization. It is presented as the most successful of civilizations.

This work is understood above all as a critique of English (and European) society of the sixteenth century. The virtues of Utopia are, in a way, answers to the injustices of the real world: they emphasize them in contrast (the equality of all Utopian citizens, highlights the extreme misery of many English peasants without lands) and show that the evils of England may not be fatalities, since the Utopians have resolved them. Utopia, which presents itself as a work of fiction, nevertheless affirms that man has the possibility of influencing his destiny and is therefore the bearer of the concept of history. More refrained, however, from presenting his utopia as a political program. He sees the achievement of such a society as desirable but claims not to even hope for it.

Thus, the literary genre created by Thomas More is based on a paradox. It is, in fact, a work of fiction unrelated to reality: the name of the island (let say "Nowhere ") but also of the river that crosses it (Anhydrous, meaning without water) or the navigator Hythlodee (which means: skillful in telling stories) are there to recall it. However, the utopian refuses to resort to the marvelous or the fantasy and the happiness that is supposed to reign in Utopia rests only on the coherence of the project. No paradisiacal climate, no divine blessing, no magical power has contributed to the realization of perfect society. It is therefore a fiction whose value rests on the coherence of discourse.

c) The Utopias of the Renaissance

The Utopia of Thomas More, 1516. This work bears the proven marks of humanist culture as well as the taste of the Renaissance. The utopia of this book exposes a project of deep social regeneration.

The Abbey of Theleme in Gargantua de Rabelais, 1534. The book echoes the ideological debates born of the progress of humanism. Gargantua is a parody of contemporary historiography. The Abbey of Theleme is founded at the end of the novel, and has as motto "Do what you will".

The New Atlantide of Francis Bacon, late 16th century, early 17th century. The book describes a philosophical society.

d) The Utopias of the Classical Period

The City of the Sun by Tommaso Campanella, 1623. This totalitarian utopia describes, with great precision, a society of prison – freedom where well-being exists without desires or passion.

The Criticon by Baltasar Gracián, 1651-1657. This work is an allegorical novel composed of three parts. The Criticon recalls the Byzantine romance style through its many adventures and reflects a satirical vision of society.

Comic History of the States and Empires of the Moon of Cyrano de Bergerac, 1657.

The Southern Land Known to Gabriel by Foigny, 1676.

History of the Sevarambes by Denis Vairasse, 1677-1679.

The Adventures of Telemaque by Fénelon, 1699.

e) The Utopias of the Enlightenment

Voyages and Adventures of Jacques Massé by Simon Tyssot de Patot, 1714 (fictional date 1710)

Libertalia in General History of the most famous pyrates by Daniel Defoe, 1724.

Slave Island and The Colony of Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux, 1725.

Journey to the land of Houyhnhnms, of the Voyages of Gulliver, by Jonathan Swift, 1726.

The Kingdom of the Felicienes of the Marquis de Lassay, 1727

The Eldorado in Candide (chapters XVII and XVIII) of Voltaire, 1759.

The Truth, or the True System of Light by Marie Deschamps (Ca. 1750-1760)

Journey of Robertson to the Southern Lands, anonymous, Amsterdam, 1766

The Land of Gangarids in The Princess of Babylon of Voltaire, 1768. In this perfect place, everyone is at peace with his neighbor and himself. Through pacifism this people healed even a king of the Indies who came to invade the country. The latter comes out "careful" and pacifist.

The Australian Discovery by a flying man, or The French Dedalus, a very philosophical work, followed by the Letter of an Ape, by Nicolas Anne Edme Restif de la Bretonne, Paris, 1781

The Year 2440, the dream of Louis Sebastien Mercier, 1786 (2nd edition).

Paul and Virginia by Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, 1789.

The Isle of the Philosophers of the Abbot Balthazard, Chartres, 1790

The island of Tamoé in History of Sainville and Léonore of the Marquis

de Sade, 1795

f) Utopias in the nineteenth century

New Christianity by Claude Henri de Saint-Simon, 1825

The Phalanster of Charles Fourier c. 1830

Travel to Icaria by Étienne Cabet, 1840

The Five Hundred Millions of the Begum, by Jules Verne, 1879

Looking Backward (1888), translated into Hundred Years or the Year 2000 by Edward Bellamy

News from Nowhere or An Epoch of Rest by William Morris, 1890

Hygeia: a city of Health, by Benjamin Ward Richardson, 1890

The Mysterious Island (1874) Jules Verne

g) The Utopia in the 20th Century

A modern Utopia by Herbert George Wells, 1905. Two Alpine resort tourists are projected on a planet similar to the Earth (to the point of finding their duplicates), governed by a utopian world state.

The Visit of Captain Storm in Mark Twain's Heaven, 1909. The novel tells the story of Captain Elie Storm's journey after his death, his mistaken guidance that leads him into a non-human sky, and his discovery of an unexpected paradise.

Gestures and opinions of Dr. Faustroll, of Alfred Jarry, 1911.

Utopolis by Werner Illing, 1930. Karl and Heinz, two sailors from Hamburg, fail on the coasts of Utopia, a world without social classes, nor titles of property. Karl and Heinz have the mission of helping the Utopians to defend their solidarity world against the throes of individualism and the lure of profit.

Us, The Living by Robert A. Heinlein, 1938 (published in 2003). Perry Nelson, a natural engineer from 1939, drives his car when an explosion occurs, slips down the cliff and wakes up in the year 2086.

The Hermann Hesse’s Glass Beads Game, 1943.

Aldous Huxley’s Island, 1962.

The world of Gondawa in René Barjavel's The Night of Times, 1968.

The Invisible Cities of Italo Calvino in 1972.

The Annares Planet in The Dispossessed Ursula K. Le Guin, 1974.

Ecotopy by Ernest Callenbach, 1975

Farewell to the proletariat, by André Gorz

The Island of the left-handers of Alexander Garden, 1995.

The Ants by Bernard Werber, 1996.

h) Utopias in the 21st Century

Saint-Pantel by Xavier Tacchella, 2003.

The Island of Tranquility in Us the Gods of Bernard Werber, 2004.

The Possibility of an Island by Michel Houellebecq, 2005.

The Butterfly of the stars by Bernard Werber, 2006.

The Second Earth of Mario Salerno, 2004

On the road to the Utopias of Christophe Cousin, 2007.

4. DYSTOPIA

4.1. Etymology of the word dystopia

The word "dystopia" comes from the English dystopia, which was formed by the association of the prefix dys- and the radical of Greek origin, τόπος (topos: "place"). This association was conceived to recall the term utopia, to which it opposes.

The prefix dys- is borrowed from the Greek δυσ-, and means negation, malformation, bad, erroneous, difficult. It has above all a pejorative value. It is thus clearly opposed to utopia which comes from the Greek οὐ-τοπος "in no place", which is a representation of an ideal and flawless reality. "Utopia" is indeed a kind of play on words: the English pronunciation of the period does not distinguish the pronunciation of the prefixes εὖ- ("happy") and οὐ- ("negation", "non-existence"). Utopia is thus etymologically a happy place and a non-existent place. From an etymological point of view, dystopia therefore means "bad place", "harmful place", a place in any case connoted negatively. On the other hand, the end of the nineteenth century saw the birth of dystopia (or counter-utopia), closer to science fiction, and the best known example of which is 1984 by G. Orwell (19484). In dystopia, the utopian project is presented as realized: good laws are applied and everyone is therefore supposed to be happy. But this realization is not, as in utopia, presented by the eyes of the sage or the rulers. It is experienced daily by locals who undergo these laws, whose suffering it is then noticed that they are not as good as the official discourse claims. This reversal of the point of view passes through the revolt of a hero, who regains lucidity and self-consciousness, usually after an encounter with love (evidently forbidden).

The staging of this revolt in the context of a narrative, the vicissitudes of the struggle make these texts close relatives of science fiction, especially since these dystopias lie in the future, as can be seen with 1984 (written in 1948) or A. Huxley's Brave New World (1932), which is in the year 2500. The same is true of R. Silverberg's novel The Urban Monads (1971), in which a historian of an overcrowded future looks at our present to rethink what intimacy is.
The first use of the term dystopia is usually attributed to John Stuart Mill, in a speech of 1868 to the British Parliament.

4.2. Dystopia, counter-utopia and anti-utopia

There is no broad consensus on the critical terminology of dystopia, and the terms "dystopia", "counter-utopia" and "anti-utopia" are often used interchangeably. Except perhaps in the restricted environment of science fiction criticism, where the term "dystopia" is the most used. Some critics however use several of these terms simultaneously to make finer distinctions. The purpose is generally to distinguish narratives painting dark futures from narratives aimed at rejecting utopian thought. The pairs of opposing terms are very variable. For example: dystopia and counter-utopia • dystopia and anti-utopia • counter-utopia and anti-utopia. The question of the relations between dystopian and utopian genus remains a matter of debate. This lack of consensus, complicated by the English origin of the word "dystopia", partly explains the terminological divergences existing in the critical literature.

4.3. Points common to utopia and dystopia.

The utopian and counter-utopian universes have in common the fact they are not simply imaginary worlds. They are the result of a political project. This project aims to make possible an ideal: the ideal of equality in the collectivist utopia of Thomas More or that of Campanella, ideal of absolute power in 1984, ideal of order and rationality in Us, The Others. The ideal of happiness is perhaps a little more ambiguous. It is defined as the suppression of all suffering in the Best of the Worlds, and as security and stability in an unbearable happiness. The societies described in utopias as well as in counter-utopias have the characteristic of "Perfect", but always with a small "fault." Their perfection lies in the fact that, on one hand, they perfectly realize the ideal which they have assigned to themselves (perfect equality in More, perfect oppression in Orwell and perfect happiness in Huxley) and, on the other hand, unalterable. Indeed, a perfect world cannot be threatened or temporary and must be, in a relative way at least, eternal. The main challenge posed to the utopist consists in preventing any possibility of going backwards.

4.4. Passage from descriptive to narrative

The numerous utopias created since the Renaissance (Campanella's Sun City, Thomas More's Utopia, New Atlantis by Francis Bacon and many others) are descriptive, even philosophical, texts. They begin quite often with a short narrative part where a traveler tells how he approached the unknown lands which he then describes in detail. There is no action in a utopia, which is quite natural because what could happen there. Conversely, counter-utopias are novels or narratives. The world of 1984 or of Us Others only appears to us through an intrigue and characters. Most often, the real nature of the universe of a counter-utopia, as well as the deep intentions of those who direct or create it, appear only very gradually to the reader. The sense of counter-utopia, as a genre opposed to utopia, resides more in this change of textual type than in the nature of the universes described. With the notable exception of 1984, which describes an evil world by its very project, the counter-utopian universes differ little from their utopian counterparts: both are also motivated by the search for happiness of all. Only the point of view changes.

4.5. Passage from the collective to the individual

The classical utopias look at the social, political and cultural construction as a whole. The case of individuals not finding happiness in such a world, or refusing to follow its rules, is considered a marginal problem. Thomas More considers, for example, the possibility that citizens of his island would refuse to comply with the common rules and propose that they be condemned to slavery. However, he does not consider this impossibility of integrating everyone into his perfect society as a major fault in his system. Conversely, counter-utopias are novels whose main characters are precisely the unsuitable ones who refuse or cannot blend into the society in which they live. The counter-utopia is therefore not so much an evil utopia as a classical utopia seen from a different angle: that of the individual.

5. THE PURPOSE OF THIS STUDY

This study aims to explain the great influence that Thomas More’s Utopia had on literature, philosophy and political thinking, both in Renaissance and Modern times.

The study also seeks to reveal the connections between Utopia and other significant works and authors having an important impact in further development of social, political thinking and acting.

By analyzing Utopia we’ll try to answer the question: Is Utopia dead?

CHAPTER I

UTOPIA: A TWO SIDE MEDAL

THE ISLAND OF THE UTOPIANS

In its middle part (it is its greatest breadth), measures two hundred miles; it is hardly narrower elsewhere; it gradually becomes thinner at the two extremities, which curve to draw a new island arch circle of five hundred miles in circumference and give the whole island the Utopia aspect. The waters of the sea penetrate between the horns of this crescent, more or less eleven miles distant, and spread in an immense gulf, surrounded on all sides by hills which stop the winds; they form a sort of great lake, where calm is seldom disturbed by the tempest, and make from the bosom of this earth almost a harbor, which the ships crisscross in all directions, for the greater profit of the inhabitants. The gully, due to shoals on one side and rocks on the other, is extremely dangerous. Near the middle of the passes stands a rock. The other reefs are hidden and treacherous; only the defensive inhabitants know the channels; so it is rare that a stranger dares to penetrate the wilderness of the island. A tradition, moreover confirmed by the configuration of the ground, indicates Utopia, clearly shows that formerly this country was not surrounded by the sea on all sides. Utopus, by his victory gave his name to the island – formerly called Abraxa. Having gained the victory at the first attack, he caused the fifteen miles of an isthmus which connected the island with the mainland to be excavated, and brought the sea all round the territory.

In this engraving of 1518, the initiatory character of Utopia is definitely asserted. The caravel is ready to carry away the sage for the inner adventure, the skeptical soldier for the military conquest; The gesture of Hythodeus, initiates the utopian movement and draws the disciple into the spiral that leads to the eternal.

UTOPIA – AN OVERVIEW

Utopia is a masterpiece that exposes real life in England and Europe during the time of Henry VIII, an era of reform and religious wars. It described a marvelous place where a society without robbery, without misery and without taxation prevails, for the writer firmly believes that an ideal society must be an institution of freedom. For him, the ideal society is Utopia. In order to achieve the perfect harmony, society does not have money, everyone takes to the market what he needs. Idleness is forbidden. In Utopia, there are no housewives, beggars, valets, priests or nobles. The working day is 6 hours and each has to do a 2 year agricultural service. The time of freedom is devoted to common leisure such as chess or learning letters. The Utopists take their meals together at fixed times while music plays; however, each meal is preceded by a moral reading. Here, everyone lives in great peace of mind. The houses do not have lock and it is obligatory to move every 10 years to not take root. To defend themselves from the assailants, the inhabitants use mercenaries: the Zapoletes. Adulterers and those who make an attempt to flee the island will no longer be regarded as free citizens but as slaves.

England, assailed by war and misery

This book of Thomas More is subdivided into two distinct parts. The first part of the masterpiece is an indictment against English social and political injustices, while the second part illustrates a description of the island of Utopia, a positive image of England, if better governed. In the first part, the author recounts his imaginary discussion with a Portuguese sailor-philosopher Raphael Hythodee whom he met on a diplomatic journey to Antwerp. The explorer highlights the dark and realistic life of England at that time. Thomas More, through Raphael, makes various criticisms, notably concerning unjust laws, poverty, royal ambitions, war, but also court life. He analyzes numerous political phenomena while trying to find a solution, notably on poverty and explaining its causes, on the reasons which cause the inhabitants to fly. In this narrative, the sailor asks himself questions such as the law reprimanding the thieves of the death penalty, saying that the law is absurd since it does not respect the value of life and punishes the thief and the criminal in the same way. It is also useless, as it does not diminish the number of thieves. Poverty is also very much taken into account in the book. Its cause is clearly identified: private property, because power is always in the hands of those who are economically strong by oppressing the weak.

The new form of government of Thomas More through his book "Utopia"

The second part is a kind of monologue of Raphael Hythodee. The latter portrays the life of the inhabitants in an imaginary island: Utopia. The island of Utopia is a communist society because private property is not known. In this society everything is perfect: laws, political morals, morality. We also see that everyone is equal and there is a great freedom of religion. For the author, women and men are equal and families live in clans run by the elders. To protect its population from external influences, the island is lined with natural barriers. The imaginary island is headed by a Senate with 162 members who gather each year in the capital of the island, Amaurot. It has about 50 cities and each is administered by an elected council. It is an institution composed of 100,000 inhabitants. Citizens are grouped in 50 families. Each family is governed by a chief, named syphogrant. The syphogrants form a council which elects a prince from a list of 4 candidates. For full transparency, political affairs solved through public discussion. The basic activity of the Utopians is agriculture. They have no specific religion and the law punishes those who persecute individuals for religious reasons. However, the city is not an atheist. The population of Utopia has two doctrines to choose from: the immortality of the soul and the government of the world through divine providence. Those who do not apply to these dogmas can withdraw from the community without being beaten or killed.

Utopia Thomas More greatly astonished his learned friends, as Erasmus, Pierre Gilles, and Busleiden; they wondered in particular how this man succeeded in thinking and writing when he was torn from all sides by his political, social and family commitments. Thus it would be difficult to find a thinker and a man whose work and life are better suited to a fruitful reflection. The Utopia of More has been written right: "At the dawn of the Renaissance, when the world takes on unknown dimensions until then”. Certainly, Utopia obliges the reader to rethink his relation to politics. This does not mean that the structure is easy to access. "The masterpiece of More, Utopia, fascinates by its power of incantation but defeated by its elusive character. No effort should therefore be neglected to facilitate its understanding." Those who seek to understand Utopia must remember that Thomas More was a disciple of Plato. Not that it is necessary at all costs, in order to grasp the essence of this brilliant work, to read the Republic or the Laws, to find in More's text reminiscences of Plato, or to compare the ideas of the Athenian to those of the Englishman by endeavoring to detect influences. This kind of approach, which is very useful elsewhere, leaves the work itself in the dark; what is important is that More hoped to touch the hearts of his contemporaries and awaken their intelligences. This first observation on the intellectual descent of More to Plato can only be fruitful if we draw the conclusion that the reading of Utopia must be dynamic since the text itself is dynamic. By this we mean that reading must be attentive both to the author's words and to the reality he is trying to describe through his work and in it; by dynamics I mean that the reader must reflect, while he reads, to filter the text, to comment it, to converse with its author. We hear that the text allows the hidden intellectual drama to be felt, which is the almost imperceptible and often disturbing background noise of any discussion, no matter rhetorical and serene it may be.

Let us add a more fundamental remark: if the Renaissance was, as constantly repeated, a rediscovery of the Ancients and an attempt to recreate for Europe of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the charm and depth that had belonged to Rome and Athens, if we must assert categorically from the start that More was a man of his age and Utopia a work of his time; we can conclude that the rediscovery of man and his work would be a curative treatment for our time, often so poor in charm and depth. In short, it is to be hoped that the study of a work of the Renaissance will bring to life a spirit of rebirth; for it is a law of the spiritual life that where there is no rebirth, death cannot be far. If the re-reading of Utopia makes us a little more sensitive to this truth, it will have already reached its goal, or almost.

THE FIRST BOOK

This analysis will be started with an observation that might be considered either prosaic or significant, even a capital one. Utopia has two books, but two books which form a very unequal pair, in which the units cannot be added according to the mathematical equation, but must be either separate and distinguish one from the other, or melt and lost first in the second. For the initial impression that comes from reading is that there are two different books to the point of hardly forming a single text, or that the first book is nothing more than an introduction to the second most important book: Utopia is either a dialogue followed by a monologue or the revelation of the existence of the island and the utopian regime, prepared by a pure and simple description of the circumstances surrounding the spread of this good news. This observation is sustained by Erasmus's letter to Ulrich Hutten (23 July 1519): “He first wrote the second book at leisure; then, improvising, he added the first book. Hence there is a certain inequality of style.” Despite Erasmus's first aesthetic commentary on the first book, there are good reasons for paying particular attention to it and comparing it to the second book. For it is in the first book that More presents the characters who will speak and listen later, that is to say, he openly gives the most important indications as to the weight to be given to the words, opinions and judgments of the second book. It is in this first book that we find the problem-context in which the response of Hythlodaeus's story must be placed. The importance of these two types of elements will appear better by recalling an obvious fact which is not always sufficiently taken into account. Let us point out for the moment the problem most naturally presented to our mind: the title. Utopia means no place, which does not exist. One might suppose that this is another evidence, and that little will be done by adding truisms to other difficulties, even if they were the fruit of careful observation. But this is not the opinion of More. In a letter to Pierre Gilles, who accompanied his wonderful novel of anticipation, he wrote: “I do not pretend that if I had determined to write about the commonwealth and had membered such a story, I should have shrunk from a fiction, by which the truth, as if smeared with honey, might more pleasantly flow into men’s minds. But if I wanted to abuse the ignorance of common folk, I should certainly have been careful to prefix some indications for the learned to see through my purpose. Thus if I had put nothing but the names of prince, river, city and island such as might suggest to the learned that the island was nowhere, the city a phantom, the river without water, and the prince without a people, this would not have been hard to do, and would have been much wittier than what I did; for if the faithfulness of an historian had not been binding on me, I am not so stupid as to have preferred to use those barbarous and meaningless names, Utopia, Anyder, Amaurot and Ademus”.

“Utopia,” of course, means nowhere (or no-place), as “Amaurot” means phantom, “Anyder,” without water, and “Ademus,” without a people. In other words, More has done exactly what he claims he has not, and is, in fact, quite “careful to prefix some indications for the learned to see through my purpose.” So, if one wishes to forget the tricky problem of falsehood that is raised unexpectedly, More wants the wise people to understand that Utopia does not exist. Who could have been the fool of the pleasant fiction of the soon Chancellor of England? It is to forget that More spoke in a first letter to Pierre Gilles, who preceded Utopia, of a priest who would have taken the mirage of the ghostly island for a certain reality; is to forget the letter of Beatus Rhenanus to Pirckheimer, also edited with the main text, which tells how certain courtesans-theologians denigrated the work of More precisely because he had only reported the words of the imaginary Raphael; it is to forget, then, those few cases of fine tricks, which, it must be confessed, may be only another example of the savage humor of the Renaissance scholars.

It remains that the title and, in general, the names invented and chosen by More lead us to ask in what sense Utopia does not exist: is it something that did not exist but could emerge, or is not only absent but also strictly impossible? Is it the putting into words of a dream that one hopes to see realized, for the advent of which one must work concretely and perhaps in a fierce way, or is it the confession of a monstrous fantasy, more crazy than Chimera, whose advent it would be wrong to desire, because it is contrary to human possibilities and therefore practically and concretely, evil and even perverse? If one wants to be able to answer these questions, one must read, and read respectfully, the first book; because the second book is almost all occupied by the description of the marvelous island. It would no longer be a question of examining an entrance into a matter recognized as sumptuous or charming according to the tastes, of dissecting an ancillary introduction which serves only to enable the eyes of the mind to become accustomed to shadows or images presented to him; the reader should begin by acknowledging that he is before pages full of meaning that can condition all his understanding of the text, and even which may be the only part he can truly understand, the drama of individuals and the dialogue between them being naturally more proportionate to our intelligence than abstractions and inventions too unusual. The least that should be said is that the first book presents with the context of the discussion, which ends in the long soliloquy of Hythlodaeus, the qualities of the interlocutors, and that these accessory considerations may fail to throw additional light on the difficult and problematic second book. The characters aside from John Clement, a student and servant who, silently accompanied his master, a certain Thomas More, the characters of the dialogue are Pierre Gilles, Raphael Hythlodaeus and the said More. The humble, silent person must never be forgotten; it must never be forgotten that this is a fiction, and therefore that the More who speaks in it may be only a personage, that is to say, he is probably near the author, without necessarily identifying in all aspects with him. The portrait of Pierre Gilles is direct and cannot be praised enough. In More’s opinion, it would be difficult to find a friend as complete as this young man. It is to Pierre that More addresses his text, which seems to be nothing other than the realization of the promise to put in writing the conversation which took place a year before at Antwerp; it is Pierre who would have caused the encounter between Raphael and More; it was he who, by suggesting to Raphael that he should occupy himself with political affairs, would have led to the discussion which occupies almost entire first book, and of which the second book, the description of Utopia, will be the organic continuation. Yet his interventions are, materially, of small scale. In order to make a complete list of them, it is necessary to recall the one which almost ends the first book: Pierre could not believe that a better organized republic could be found in the new world than those of Europe, because they are older and have been able to benefit more from the human labor and discoveries that fortune has allowed. After being promptly rebuffed by Hythlodaeus, he too is silent for the rest of the story.

Thomas More never makes his homonym a proper portrait. But the text is stuffed with remarks that allow the reader to juxtapose the name and the person. Perhaps it would be summed up by saying that More is a man “in flesh and bones” and therefore occupied: he is on mission for the English kingdom; he is attached to his family and to his country, even if he is physically far from all that is dear to him; he is a practicing Christian; it is he who receives Raphael and Peter; it is he who suggests that the conversation should be ended first for lunch and then for dinner. When one considers these clues, one is not at all surprised to hear him take the defense of things as they are against the revolutionary remarks of his interlocutor; in short, his words are in harmony with his actions. Raphael, as his name indicates, is an angel, that is to say, hardly a man, detached in every sense of the word. His detachment, however, is not frivolous or cynical, since it is eventually an exclusive attachment to one thing: Utopia, the kingdom of heaven on earth, the republic of Plato here and now. He is a great traveler, and he has every appearance of it; he never speaks of his own, except to affirm categorically and somewhat cavalierly that he has already fully fulfilled his duties towards them, that he no longer owes them anything; he despises all that is European; he praises the liberty of the intellectual; like Erasmus, More's great friend, he is abrupt and shattering, a little intimidating, as are so often those who have had the happiness of seeing what others refuse to see. One should not be surprised to see him as the apostle of communism. The problem, the purpose of the first book is only to present a dialogical framework for the second book. To recapitulate the words of More himself: "It is my intention this time to relate what he related about the morals and institutions of the Utopians, but to precede him with the discussion which led us to the mention of his republic (that is, the republic of Hythlodaeus)”. In this way, it was immediately understood, More cut off from his remarks all that could be a direct criticism of the European regimes or the political lessons that one would have evidently drawn from the remarks of Raphael: “Maybe we'll talk about it elsewhere … so he presented a good number of examples to correct the mistakes of our cities, nations, peoples or kingdoms, but as I said, I'll have to talk about it elsewhere”. Now it is clear that Utopia in general and the first book in particular are quite contrary to what More says they are, since Raphael, who speaks most in the first book and who speaks alone in the second, is only criticizing the European peoples and regimes and offers Utopia as an example of infamous justice for corrupt Europe. Those who remember the deceit of the names mentioned above will scarcely be scandalized by this flagrant contradiction; rather than say that More says a lie, they prefer to say that he has not been perfectly transparent or that he will have used the so common turn of the pretext. It is because they will have immediately grasped why he hesitated to emphasize in words the revolutionary side of his text: had he not to leave his beloved England in 1507 because he had criticized publicly, as was his right and duty as a deputy in the Parliament of England, certain measures of taxation of Henry VII. The recall of this fact from the biography of More makes it possible to feel the harsh necessities which led to the creation of the character Raphael: Utopie thus becomes a report rather than a dissertation, the real author of the narrative and the one who would attract the first thunderbolts of a possible royal anger not being More, but a man of another country whom the author has met only once by chance outside England, and whom he cannot denounce. Very weak stratagem, it will be said.

But when one feels the need to say truths, while knowing well the possible unpleasant consequences, one disdains no protection, even rudimentary. If, however, the first book is more than what More admits, is it not then necessary to ask the question of the true role of the first part, of its real subject or of the fundamental problem may be highlighted. A little reflection leads us to this: the subject or the problem of the first book is the question of the wise man's commitment to the kings or, more generally, to every citizen in the mixing of political things. There is also the question of any moral commitment whatsoever; but since it is almost completely obscured by the text, it is doubtless more prudent and more conformable to More's intention to leave it in its original shadow. On this first problem, capital if any, two positions confront each other in the first book, or rather two men clash: More who argues in favor of commitment and Raphael who does not want to know nothing about. For after Peter, astonished by the sagacity of the stranger, expressed a desire to see him at the side of one of the kings for the good of the state and for his private good, after Raphael answered him with a certain rudeness that he preferred his freedom to all these dreams of effective action, More entered the debate. The options everyone presents one of the two options that were offered, and which are still available, to men of talent, even to all the members of a society. More affirms that gifted people (and he takes the trouble to remind Raphael of his many qualities) must, by a spirit of generosity and philosophy, engage with the great, even if this supposes some inconvenience; for Christ has said that one cannot bury one's talents, one must profit from it for oneself and for others. Clearly, More replies that freedom cannot be the goal pursued by a sage. Given the immense good which he can accomplish by placing himself at the very source of political good and evil, commitment becomes for him an absolute duty. Raphael's reply was not long in coming. He cleverly parries the compliment that More has done to him: he is not as talented as the other has said. Then he plainly asserts that a wise man would be of no use in a king's council, since the councilors are already perfectly satisfied with their own enlightenment, and consider political wisdom as their preserve; consequently, enlightening them would be painful loss. To prove what he is saying, he relates what happened to him once at the house of Cardinal Morton, formerly Chancellor of England. More is not at all impressed by the example given to him by Raphael, except that he is, he admits, touched by the painting that he made of the house and the manners of his first master. He quotes Plato, "tuus Plato – your Plato", and concludes once more that Raphael should venture on the uncertain sea of ​​active politics. Hythlodaeus replies in the first place that the philosophers have already done all that is necessary and possible when they have written their books (cannot Utopia find a place among them?).

In addition, Plato's life and especially his experiences with Dionysius the tyrant of Syracuse are eloquent testimonies of what happens to philosophers who meddle in giving their opinion to kings: the wise are ignored, at the best; at the worst, they are punished and risk losing their skin. The reason for this is simple: the council chambers of kings are incarnations of injustice, fraud and impiety. At this moment he gave two imaginary examples to support his position: he put More, Pierre Gilles and the still silent John Clement in the midst of an assembly where the King of France was preparing for the invasion of Italy; then he transports them all to an anonymous king, who might be Henry VII., to show how a king robs his people; he proves that the wise counsel of the sages and the experiments which inspire them would be very poorly received.

Each time he demands that More confirms his conclusions before Pierre Gilles and this dear John Clement; one would think that More did not do it willingly. He is thus obliged to confess that the political reality is very similar to what Machiavelli described in his shocking book, Il Principe, almost at the same moment. Nevertheless, More does not abandon the struggle: he proposes what he calls "philosophia civilior – a more moderate philosophy." Since men are not perfect and they will never be perfect, instead of directly addressing injustice and ignorance, the sage should proceed "obliquo ductu – by an oblique path", correcting the bad as he may. In short, to be effective the philosopher must make concessions to his interlocutors. Raphael does not want to hear anything of this.. But, of course, rather than supporting his decision on preferences linked to his temperament, he pointed out to More that he rejected any form of falsehood, especially since this oblique route could be as ineffective as the more straightforward, more honest path he advocates. Finally, he objected, not without some plausibility, it will inevitably lead the wise to endorse injustices and at the same time to conceal them by the splendor of his virtue, instead of leaving them without excuses, naked and open to the sight of all. It was then that he proposed for the first time the example of the Utopians. The argument of More rests, it has been pointed out, on the principle that one cannot have a good state and good citizens; but Raphael knows by experience that this is not the case: since he saw Utopia, since he met the Utopians, the very basis of More's argument collapsed. Or rather crumble, when the traveler has provided his precious testimony on this land previously unknown in Europe, until then only imagined by Plato.

With Cardinal Morton before he came to the core of the opposition between More and Raphael as to the viability of the Utopian regime, he would go back a little and reconsider the most circumstantial and concrete example, even the most historical, of the inefficiency of the wise in the advice of the great. It will be remembered that More had not found it probative. We shall soon understand why. The example of the court of Cardinal Morton is given to illustrate the thesis that the advisers of a king are rather vain flattering than real and true advisers: vain because they cannot suffer to appear to learn from another, flatterers because they seek above all to please their master. And the example is very effective on the rhetorical level, although it does not prove that it is always the case. But it should call for reflection for far more serious reasons.

First of all, it must not be forgotten that Morton was an advisor to King Henry VII. Nevertheless, Raphael makes a magnificent tribute of him. He therefore implicitly confesses that not all councilors are despicable characters. Then, according to his own narrative, he would have succeeded in touching, even for a moment, the cardinal-counselor; because at the end of the interview it seems clear that the latter recognized the value of Hythlodaeus' suggestions; it seems that it is only a matter of time before they are carried by this same cardinal in the meeting of the king's council. And if they have not borne fruit – as the history of the reign of Henry VII shows beyond a shadow of a doubt – it may hold, if we return now to fiction, a thousand causes and accidents, but certainly not to the obtuse and proud mind of Morton. There is more. The example categorically contradicts the position it must serve to support. For Raphael shows himself giving advice, which he said he would not do. Within the framework of the drama created by More, it can be answered that this was done when he was younger, before he saw the perfection of Utopia and concluded to the vanity of political commitment. We are then led to imagine that, as it is presented in Utopia, it has had to evolve with time, moving from an attitude of desire for reform to that of a profound contempt for European political institutions. At the same time, it will be recognized that if Utopia is not as beautiful and reasonable as he says, as the More character will support him through the work, his experience there has been harmful, in the final analysis, it has diverted a skilful man from the difficult and dangerous political labor to take refuge in a proud solitude. So, it is not only private property that can feed pride and make it inhuman. These remarks show that not the historical, but philosophical, status of Utopia will have to be examined sooner or later.

There is also a problem in the position Hythlodaeus takes during the discussion. He categorically condemns the death penalty, not only in the name of political effectiveness, but also in the name of Christianity. Christ carried in Europe a message of love that is irreconcilable with what is ultimately an assassination. He argues: if the Mosaic law did not allow murder as a punishment for theft, Christian law, the law of a Christian state, let us add, the law that is applied by a Christian pastor, as is Cardinal Morton, certainly do not allow punishment for theft by murder. And now he is flying away in the description of the manners of the Polylerites, certainly sweeter, perhaps more human, than those of England and Christian countries. This passage increases the discomfort felt earlier about the intervention of Raphael. For, contrary to what one might have expected, the death penalty is not eliminated in Polyleria or in Utopia. Would his appeal to the authority of Christ be rhetorical? Moreover, it is clear that the forced work life sentence to which the thieves are condemned is far from being very pleasant and can easily become as horrible as death. Applied in England, for example, the punishment of imprisonment and slavery would doubtless enable the nobles to employ a crowd of disadvantaged for public works, to hear for their own ends. Finally, one of Raphael's most striking reasons for condemning the death penalty was that it encouraged crime: the penalty for theft and murder being the same, a thief would normally be tempted to kill his victim to avoid being discovered. But is not there a very similar situation, not to say identical, in Polyleria: plotting to escape from prison is punished exactly as an attempt to escape and the spies are rewarded for having played Indicators that open the door to lies without foundation forged to shorten the penalty and attempts to escape realized simply by having been imagined and maybe whispered in the ear of a brother in suffering. A further analysis would reveal yet further flaws in the polylerite legislation presented by Raphael at the time, from which two conclusions can be drawn: they show that the political solution, if there is one, cannot be found in partial legislation, but in a total education or re-education of the human soul; at the same time, they warn against the ideal legislations which seem to feast on the interlocutor of More.

In short, the reader has to examine more carefully the Second Book, where the radical, total and final solution of the political problem is offered. For or against Utopia it is now time to visit Utopia. The options for political action, presented above, are transformed into two options facing Utopia; they are offered to the reader by approaching the island conquered by the good king Utopus, and then presented to him at the end of the narrative of Hythlodaeus: with Hythlodaeus and Utopia or with More and against Utopia. For once again, it will be more consistent with the author's intention More to go through the opinions of the characters he created. There is therefore on the one hand the one who has seen Utopia and who consequently refuses to get involved in the often fatal political game. Then there is More who has not seen it; the utopia of Thomas More is a man who believes or at least wishes to believe that the action of the wise, though not perfectly effective, is still valid. Perhaps because of the requirements of frame fiction, the problem cannot be that of the physical existence of Utopia: Hythlodaeus, of course, believes in it and More never doubts the truth of his narrative. That is why the excellence of the regime is the controversial issue around which their fundamental debate will henceforth be articulated.

If Utopia is really like the title of the first and second books says "optimo reipublicoe statu – the best form of republic", then Morus' option is invalidated by the very fact; it only remains for him to scour the world, or return to England to sing the praises of Utopia, refusing to become involved in the world of action if not for make this new world known.

We see that the second book is very well introduced by the conversation presented so far; to such an extent that one is entitled to wonder whether it is not this second book with these presentation and description of Utopia that would be secondary and which would be an appendix to the substantive discussion of which one has the account in the first book. Clearly, would the second book not be the ground of a struggle whose antagonists, causes and perhaps the outcome have been fixed long before?

THE SECOND BOOK

It will probably be done for the better by studying the narrative of Raphael in the light of the criticisms that More makes. For the examination of the first book has made manifest the intellectual opposition between these two interlocutors. But More's criticism focuses on three elements of the Utopian political structure:

economic and social communism;

military institutions and,

religion.

However, it is on the first point that his criticisms are the clearest, the most firm and the most spontaneous: from the first time Raphael describes Utopia, More objects to the communism that would be found there; at length, after patiently listening to the Portuguese traveler's complete story, he repeats his objection, but only to his readers, adding the two other subjects in which he sees political impossibilities. Moreover, in his view, communism is "the foundation of their whole regime", a point on which Hythlodaeus perfectly agrees, although his judgment on the viability of Utopia is diametrically opposed to More's.

Putting us to his school, we shall begin by a critical analysis of this first element, and then pass, but more briefly, to the last two difficulties. It would be bad-advised to discredit these last two parts on the pretext that these points are quite secondary to More, his attention having been almost exclusively confined to communism; for although the two latter criticisms are quantitatively less important and philosophically less articulate than the criticism of communism, More nonetheless judges that military art and religion in Utopia "seemed to have been instituted in an absurd way". In short, in the judgment of More, these elements are decisively equally unacceptable.

Communism and its Price

The criticism of Utopian communism found in the first book is the most complete; that of the second book merely repeats it in part. "How can the products be sufficient, where everyone withdraws from work … especially when one removes the reverence for the magistrates and their authority; I cannot even imagine what rank they can hold among men among whom there is no distinction”. One could bring More's remarks back to one: the island, where property has been abolished, is unable to survive either economically or strictly political. The narrative of Raphael can therefore be read first of all in this dual perspective.

In response to the first point of criticism, let us mention the various mechanisms of close supervision which exist in Utopia, the most insidious of which, because it is omnipresent and infinitely benevolent, is the family. The Utopian family (there are even two: the town family and the family) has very little to do with the family as it is usually conceived. For example, the number of adults may vary from one group to another, to ten to sixteen in a city family, but at least forty in a rural family; only the previous, unlike rural families, may include children (what are the two-year-old child parents assigned to field work who have to leave their children in the city?); The father and mother of the families clearly have no blood relationship with most members of their families:

– the father of the urban family is only the oldest among a group of ten to sixteen craftsmen;

– children are transferred from one urban family to another according to demographic requirements as impersonal units in the accounts of a director;

– the girls, become women, leave their families to mingle forever with that of their husband;

– an artisan, dissatisfied with his art, may leave his family to be part of another family whose profession he likes more;

– families are transplanted from one end of the country to another or even out of the country according to political needs.

Whatever may be thought of these differences, it remains an undoubted fact: this institution does not exist spontaneously to be a natural barricade against the State; on the contrary, it is a political creation and instrument, used to supervise and supervise individuals even in their private lives. For example, meals are less moments of intimacy and difference or family originality than another highlight for the homogenizing state: thirty families meet three times a day under the supervision of the phylarch: conversations are controlled and serve both as moral lessons for young people physically mentored by old men, and for examining their qualities and defects. In short, if the name Utopia is revealing, the family name is rather a veil that Hythlodaeus uses to hide a deeply new and deeply troubling institution. One can imagine how the character More had to judge this element, which was torn by "the desire to see again his country, his house, his wife and his children".

When one adds to this impressive means of control, the facts, among others, that no Utopian can travel without prior permission granted by the state, that all are strongly encouraged to follow the courses given by the class of intellectuals from whom the political leaders of the island are drawn, that all must, for all practical purposes, attend the religious ceremonies which have been evidently put to the service of Utopian nationalism "By these prayers he recognizes that God is the cause of creation and providence and of all other goods, and thanks for all the blessings he has received, especially from being born by divine favor in the happiest republic and having received the religion which he hopes to be the most true." The underlines, of course, are not in the original.; then one takes into account all this data, it is certainly permissible to speak of utopian totalitarianism.

Rather than indignantly condemning More, or even distorting the analysis of the text by suggesting that there is an anachronism (as if we had not been able to imagine and think of totalitarianism before our Century), it would be useful to see that the exposition of these control measures are, so to speak, Raphael's answer to More's initial criticism.

In Utopia there is no shortage of goods because the people work, and the people work because they are closely watched, persuaded and constrained by a thousand means to participate always and at all times in the common activity . Or as Hythlodaeus himself says: "Since the eyes of all are present, they must do ordinary work or have a leisure which is not dishonest."

Generalized virtue is acquired and paid for by omnipresent supervision and overpowering education. In addition, the Utopians are rather sober or temperate, which ensures that consumer goods are not wasted by a few or by the entire population. It is as if the ordinary effects of the imagination had been effectively neutralized in this imaginary land: the Utopians seek some pleasure or pursue the good, because it is true, and not because the opinion has made it the “object of cupidity”. There is a striking example of this clairvoyance in the famous episode of the Anemolian ambassadors; the glossator emphasizes it by writing in the margin: "Elegantissima fabula – Most elegant fiction ".

One learns that in Utopia even children see what the great men of other countries do not know how to see: that gold and jewels have little value in themselves. However, it must be admitted that this insight is the result of utopian education; it is therefore fair to ask whether the Utopians are actually wiser than other peoples.

Several passages in the narrative of Raphael attest that important intellectual differences between human beings exist in Utopia as elsewhere. That is to say, if they were not led to see, almost obliged to see, things as the ruling class wants, ordinary people would be subject to the illusions found everywhere. Better yet, most of the Utopians, when they despise gold and silver, are not free from public opinion; on the contrary, they convey an opinion which has been inculcated since their childhood; unconscious, they bear the fruit of the wisdom of another. Thus, in the episode analyzed, the mother cannot explain to her son why the Anemolian ambassadors carry gold chains; it is thus that the Utopians mock foreign peoples because they slavishly respect a metal which they have been conditioned to despise.

It is perhaps significant that the chapter of the second book which speaks of utopian thought is entitled "De peregrinatione Utopiensium – Journeys of the Utopians". He begins by explaining in a long and wide manner that the free trips, like those which would have made possible the admirable political discovery of Hythlodaeus, are forbidden in Utopia. Is it not a commonplace that travel is a form of education that frees the individual from his prejudices? Utopie gives an inverted illustration. In any case, official education is all the more necessary as Epicureanism is the national philosophy. On two occasions and only there, the narrator distances himself slightly from Utopia, because, he says, the inhabitants are perhaps a little too inclined to the attitudes and opinions of the Epicureans. One can understand his uneasiness: there is almost no philosophical sect that has attracted more unanimously the criticisms of other schools. Moreover. Hythlodaeus tries to show that their Epicureanism is ennobled by Stoicism and by the dogmas of a national religion which postulates life after death and the individual judgment of persons.

Nevertheless, the reader would be puzzled to know why More, the author, was anxious to imagine a perfect republic in which the inhabitants explained their actions according to enjoyment or pleasure. The hypothesis that a disciple of Plato may secretly be an ally of the Epicureans will undoubtedly be dismissed from the back of his hand. Among other things, there remains the possibility that the incompatible philosophical option of the Utopians is another invitation to examine with suspicion the whole of Hythlodaeus' narrative. There is only one difficulty: the More character, too, does not breathe a word on this question.

A reflection on these long pages devoted to Utopian philosophy and education leads to the second problem inherent in communism. Apart from the common people, there are apparently three other classes in Utopia: politicians (syphograntes, tranibores, princes and ambassadors), educators and priests. We soon realize, however, that these distinctions are largely artificial; for it is from this class of men of letters that they choose their ambassadors, their priests, their tranibores, and finally their prince. Consequently, the whole political life of a city of several thousand souls (internal affairs, education, religion, external affairs) is forever in the hands of five hundred citizens, few of whom are women. It is therefore necessary that the sign of the capacity to rule, the sign sought by the people who elect the statesmen and even the priests, is intellectual superiority. It is perhaps better to understand one of the meanings of the objection that More has presented above: how can there be respect for the laws, where magistrates cannot bear on their persons distinctive, evident and moving signs of their social role? The answer of Raphael seems to be the following: gold does not count in Utopia, for the alienating cult of metal has been replaced by universal respect for souls of gold. Even for a fervent man of letters as was More, this answer is far from satisfactory. For there is no natural human quality that is less visible than intelligence or wisdom; in the political field visibility is everything. For lack of gold, strength, confidence, passion are certainly more visible, more impressive and therefore more effective. Or More objects that even these qualities cannot effectively move crowds and invigorate the often anemic majesty of the laws by giving glory to the magistrates. The answer that the Utopians are virtuous is not worthy here, since it is a matter of finding the foundation and cause of their political virtue: the moral force of the laws, and above all of the Utopian magistrates. As stated above, it cannot be answered either that the Utopian people would be more perspicacious than the other peoples that the earth carries. At the end of this examination of utopian communism, it would be just and equitable to abandon the point of view of his censor to take up again that of his apostle. Even if we admit that the criticisms which have been advanced by More and developed here, at least in part, have a definite weight, it must not be inferred that the narrative of Hythlodaeus is only another dream to be added to the too long list of grotesque human fantasies. It would certainly be to ignore the intention of More by writing his fictitious dialogue; it would be to forget that if the character More refuses to grant Utopia the title of optima respublica, on the other hand he expresses only very briefly his denial and exhibits only very discreetly his reasons; in two words, it would be to ignore the dramatic circumstances of the work. Moreover, no one can remain indifferent to the fact that the astonishing island described by Raphael makes vibrate, even today, certain sensitive cords of the human heart.

Despite the many practical and other difficulties that may be raised against Utopian institutions, the description of an almost magical place where abundance, peace, equality, strength and virtue reign, gives us nostalgia painfully vivid for a something beyond this low world. This feeling, nourished by the vision of the Utopian world, gives vigor to the always necessary criticism of things as they are. It is not a coincidence that Hythlodaeus, after finishing his narrative, violently attacks social injustice, and if he makes war on prides, this infernal serpent who "does not measure his prosperity in the light of its advantages, but in the light of the disadvantages of others". The consciousness of utopian Utopia will protect the reader from certain purely negative and nihilistic outbursts; however, this consciousness must not at the same time harden it against the present misfortunes which must be denounced and, if possible, relieved.

Military art

We shall be brief in analyzing the military institutions of Utopia. Car More, himself, is really too laconic: he only registers his disagreement without the motivation: to the attentive reader and assiduous to find what could have left him unsatisfied. Let us forget simply the question of women soldiers; there are too many signs in the text that sexual equality in Utopia was more in words than in facts. "Tell me what cause to die and I will tell you what makes life worth living”. This paradox is applicable mutatis mutandis to international politics: the motives which, in the minds of a people, justify a war reveal much about the deep values ​​of this people. So the question becomes: Why do the Utopians declare war? The section on military affairs begins with a proper description of the causes of war: they do not engage blindly in a war, unless to protect their frontiers, or to drive away enemies who have invaded the lands of their friends, or, taking pity on a people oppressed by tyranny (which they do by humanity), to release it by force of arms of servitude, and of the oppression of the tyrant. After applauding these motives of the purest justice, one might wonder whether all the regimes, in the eyes of the Utopians, are not tyrannies. Certainly, if we questioned Hythlodaeus, there is only one righteous nation on earth; by the same indication, it allows itself to attack all the countries of the world. Would immoderate justice be the mother of unlimited expansionism, that is, the dream of world tyranny? But this reflection will probably be labeled as injustice or excessive finesse. It is therefore better to return to the text.

A decision which allows us to notice that Raphael immediately adds that the Utopians also make war to avenge an insult to their allies; this insult may be merely a commercial fraud perpetrated by the enemies of the friends of the Utopians. Further, it is learned that the Utopians declare war also if one of their citizens has been killed or wounded in another country and the authorities concerned refuse to make justice. The causes of war are multiplying and widening. Though the legitimacy of most of them can be recognized, it remains that we are disappointed to see that Utopia can be a land as confrontational as Europe slashed by Hythlodaeus. Unfortunately, we must add a last cause of war which, why surprise us, is not found in the appropriate section. In the first pages of the second book, it is learned that during an emigration due to demographic pressures, the Utopians wage war against any people whose territories they annex, and who refuse to live according to the laws of the mother country. One would be tempted to speak again of imperialism; I am inclined to remember the fate of certain native tribes in the time of the political triumphalism of Europe. In addition, and above all, we cannot leave without comment the sad fate of the people of the Zapoletes. Assuming that a similar people could ever have existed, this part of Raphael's account is disturbing; the reader cannot get rid of the impression that the Utopians use the Zapoletes as cannon fodder. It is perfectly justified, since one reads that they would think themselves justified "if they could purge the whole earth of this bunch of disgusting and criminal people." A single expression can do justice to the feeling which these human beasts inspire in the Utopians: contemptuous hatred; but at the same time their attitude causes us certain disgust. These men, who humanely treat slaves and criminals, who exhibit exemplary toleration in religious matters, and a moderation without fault in all passions, would like them to be a little more sensitive to the misfortunes of these almost beasts. It is to be believed that one is always the tyrants of someone, even when one lives in an exemplary democracy. Hythlodaeus, in the first book, had asserted that he was interested in the arts of peace, and that as such it could only be of very little use to European kings. With this remark in mind, the reader is surprised to see the details of his considerations on the war in Utopia. All the more so because the utopian tactics resemble the means condemned without appeal then: the Utopians spread mischeif in the enemy territory, plot conspiracies, form alliances with less just peoples, try to buy their enemies when they do not buy their allies, reward the traitors. Although such strategies are covered with the veil of praise that the cunning have acted "as no animal except man can act, that is, by the force of intelligence," the reader feels torn sometimes, if not constantly, by the obscure but powerful feeling that utopian tactics lack loyalty. It would be more satisfactory to learn that they feel somewhat embarrassed by the exigencies of war rather than seeing them celebrate their victories acquired by all these subterfuges. It is probable that these three difficulties, if any, are the possible imperialism of the Utopians, their insensitivity to the fate of the Zapoletes, and the Machiavellism of their military tactics, are the strands of a single rope. Do they not all go back to a single source: national pride? We shall forget here the question of whether this pride is justified in order to examine only the secondary effects of feeling. If we can estimate the force of the nationalism of an average Utopian enough from that of Hythlodaeus, who is only a naturalized Utopian after five years of residence, we must conclude that this is a love-passion without condition, which disdains all that is not like the object loved. It is indisputable that Utopian nationalism, a desirable drug and even necessary for the well-being of the people and the leaders, is morally morbid. In this sense, Hythlodaeus is an image, on an individual scale, of the regime he loves so much.

Religion

Despite what he believes to be the obvious superiority of Utopia, Raphael admits to having contributed to three major advances: printing, learning the Greek language and discovering several ancient authors, and better yet, the revelation of Christianity. The first two novelties were quickly integrated into Utopian life. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the third. It is not merely a question here of the episode of the new convert, too zealous, who devoted his former fellow citizens to the fires of hell. The fact the Utopian authorities did not prohibit Christianity offers a sure measure of their sense of tolerance and perhaps of their spontaneous sympathy for the Christianity of the Acts of the Apostles. Nevertheless, one can easily imagine that they felt the need to watch closely a religion, so popular, that in a short time could unbalance a citizen. But again, there is not the problem. Much more significant is the inevitable conflict between the Utopian practice of euthanasia and the traditional Christian attitude toward suicide. As soon as Raphael suggests, Christians will form the majority in Utopia, this practice must cease: the perfect Utopia will change to become even more perfect.

It is permissible to ask, however, whether the latent conflict on this issue is not a sign of a more fundamental difference between the two. For example, is suicide permissible and encouraged in certain situations, precisely because the Utopian citizen has no real practical reference to an out-of-state criterion? On the other hand, is suicide defended in Christendom because the individual does not belong to himself, and still less to the state? If the answer to these two questions should be yes, there is much to fear that the integration of Christianity into Utopia is more difficult than Raphael has suggested.

Let us note in passing some other points of friction: the Utopians elect their priests and seem to hold to the most complete autonomy with regard to a foreign religious power; women may be elected priestesses; the public ritual is universal enough to avoid any belief ranging from polytheism to monotheism and sometimes strange opinions are tolerated and do not cut the heterodox of the communion of the faithful.

THE HOLY SAGE

If the problem of the relation between faith and reason had not been suggested by the conversion of the Utopians, it would have been the life and especially the death of Thomas More who would have done so. Because More is, without a shadow of a doubt, both Sir Thomas More and Saint Thomas More. Some want to see and hear only the politician and the scholar, the man of the world who amazes his age and enlightens our own; they relegate to the oblivion of history his pious works of a vibrant sincerity and all his writings devoted to the vigorous, not to say aggressive, defense of the Roman Catholic Christian faith. The others only want to look and listen to what is pious or religious about him; consequently they endeavor to forget that he was the intimate friend of a less than holy Erasmus, and then to silence the sometimes scabrous histories of which their model regaled his friends, and that he even went so far as to publish, and finally to block from their memory the undeniable fact that this great Christian plunged with all hands into all that makes life pleasant, resembling in this respect his Utopians who were inclined a little too towards Epicureanism. A saint he was, no doubt, but a strange saint. To put it as Erasmus in his famous letter to Ulrich Hutten, cited above: More will always be a stumbling wedge for those who think "Christianos non inveniri nisi in monasteris – that Christians are found only in monasteries"; living outwardly as an ordinary person, he was, nevertheless, indifferent to the flatteries and praise. And in truth, Christianity is a matter of interiority. Thus More was detached from all these inferior possessions, he would have said, of which he had the opportunity of enjoying almost at will.

After reflection, it would no doubt be more accurate to say that the Utopians can accept Christianity only on the condition that the latter accepts to play the political game as it has always been played in their hemisphere. For it is clear that in Utopia the world is upside down in more than one way: religion in Utopia is eminently civil, since the Utopians are religious as they are good citizens and not good citizens. The rule of Christ, to give to Caesar what is Caesar and to God what is God, cannot be understood as a kind of egalitarian sharing of fields of expertise; Every Christian understands that this sentence means that, in the final analysis, the things of the kingdoms of this world are of little importance in relation to those of the kingdom of heaven; and everything indicates that this political and vital option would be unacceptable to a Utopian.

It is clear that religion in Utopia is part of the social fabric. But there is more: religion is a part among others of a whole which is governed by considerations of public order, or anthropological, or natural. In the end, it must be acknowledged not only that the priests are the supporters of the Utopian regime and that they form one of its centerpieces, but also that they are, strictly speaking, the creation of the system of which they are the gate their legitimacy, in the eyes of the Utopians at least, coming to them from the regime and not directly from God. Conclusion: what seemed to be only an incidental but important practical problem, for example the opposition between the revealed character of Christianity and the natural one of the Utopian religion, is ultimately the sign of a radical opposition between the spirit of Christianity and of Utopia. But how to forget then that it is Hythlodaeus who presents and defends Utopia. And how can he forget what he says: "I have described to you as exactly as I could the form of the republic, that I think it is not only the best, but also the only one who is entitled to claim the name of republic.” Now it is manifest that Hythlodaeus has only praises for Utopia. If he has hard words, it is for the Christian religion. For no one is fooled when, in the second book, he states splendidly: "However, in Europe, and especially in those parts where the faith and religion of Christ prevail, the majesty of treaties is everywhere sacred and inviolable, justice and kindness of the princes, partly because of the reverence and fear that is carried to the Sovereign Pontiffs … " And if the first book of More's own text were more than sufficient proof that Raphael ironically maligned here, it would suffice to recall that the episcopal throne had been occupied for several successive decades by men of the caliber of a Francesco da Savona (Sixtus IV), a Roderigo Borgia (Alexandre VI), a Giuliano della Rovere (Julius II), a Giovanni de Medici (Leo X). It is therefore clear beyond all suspicion that Raphael never criticizes Utopia but penalizes the Christian religion.

One final point. At the very beginning of the work, More had taken the trouble to mark that the person who bears his name came out of the divine office celebrated at Notre-Dame church when he met Pierre Gilles; it is certain that he had fulfilled his duty as a Christian. However, let us note, one does not say a word about the practical piety of Raphael. Be that as it may, it is beyond doubt that More, the emulator of Plato, prefers to present a discussion which takes place after the religious worship, and not, as in the Republic, a discussion which stretches so late in the night.

CONCLUSION OF THE CHAPTER

As a conclusion it will undoubtedly appear that my analysis has led to a triple dead end: the position of More, the author, is uncertain about of political commitment, about the viability and even the legitimacy of the Utopian regime and, more seriously, about the source of the moral greatness that was unquestionably his. The title page of Utopia does not speak of a mixture, hardly conceivable, of optimism and happiness. It is a matter of knowing the two sides of the medal of human possibilities. One can always decide the debate clearly and take a position either with Hythlodaeus or with the character More: the author More, one would assume, would use as exclusive spokesperson one or the other of his protagonists. One would argue from the obvious proximity between the author and his fictitious look-alike to conclude with him for the Christian faith and political commitment and against Utopia. Or else one would argue from the undoubted fact that Raphael is the main character of the work, the one who speaks most abundantly and most vigorously, in order to conclude with him quite otherwise. But it is undoubtedly not the science of More's thought. And there are some who, in spite of all their efforts, can never completely silence the other argument and who, in all honesty, will never fail to feel the plausibility of the other interpretation.

Perhaps this is the most enduring message of Utopia. Perhaps this is the first lesson that More wanted to teach to men, Christians or not, of his time and who has reached, weakened, our century with murderous ideologies? In any case, it is the conclusion to which this reading will stop for the moment. If there is an anthropological, moral and epistemological human certainty to be inferred from Utopia, it is because conversation is of true humanity. In any case, in Utopia, I believe, More asserts that the individual and collective self-fulfillment of man is measured and simultaneously nourished by the vigor of his desire to converse with another. If this suggestion is correct, the last lines of Utopia, which announce a resumption of the debate between More and Hythlodaeus, must be read not as a confession of failure but as an example of the only possible behavior to man and his first political and moral duty. Eventually, we shall respectfully close the admirable book of More, we will reflect for a moment, and open it again to recommence our conversation with the author, a conversation which will inextricably intertwine with that which took place one day between a certain Raphael Hythlodaeus, a Portuguese traveler and adventurer, and a certain Thomas More, English lawyer and politician, in the presence of their common friend Pierre Gilles of Antwerp and the servant of More John Clement.

CHAPTER II

MACHIAVELLI AND HIS PRINCE

MACHIAVELLI – A BIOGRAPHY

Born in , in a noble family, Nicolas Machiavelli is the son of Bernard Machiavelli, Pontifical Treasurer in and Doctor of Law, and Bartolomea de 'Nelli.

After completing his studies, he was a candidate for a post in the Florentine administration, on 19 February 1498, but was not chosen. After the condemnation of Girolamo Savonarola, he was appointed secretary of the second chancellery and officially took up his post on 19 June 1498. In this capacity he led diplomatic missions, both in and abroad, forging an opinion on the political morals of his time. He draws up diplomatic dispatches, gathered under the title Diplomatic Relations, as well as reports (Report on the Things of , Report on the Things of ).

In 1502, Machiavelli was sent to the camp of Caesar Borgia, Duke of Valentinois, then in Romagna. The writer admired the combination of audacity and prudence, the skilful use of cruelty and fraud, duke’s confidence in himself, his desire to avoid half measures, the use of local troops, and the rigorous administration of the conquered provinces. Machiavelli later considered that Caesar Borgia's conduct in the conquest of provinces, the creation of a new state from scattered elements, and his treatment of false friends and dubious allies, was worthy of recommendation and deserved to be imitated scrupulously.

The Medici returned to power in Florence following the defeat of Prato in 1512. Machiavelli was suspected of having participated in the conspiracy fomented by Pietro Paolo Boscoli, imprisoned, tortured and then forbidden to leave Florentine territory for one year, retired then to his property of Sant'Andrea in Percussina. He began his Discourse on the first decade of Titus Livius, where, speaking of antiquity, he actually painted a critique of the Italian political situation of his time.

The following year, Machiavelli interrupted the drafting of the Discourses in order to continue writing in 1513 his most famous work, The Prince, to be read in parallel with his Discourse on the first decade of Titus Livius, exploring the conditions of edification in Italy of a republic and the reconstruction of a united Italy, in the light of the example of Rome.

The Prince, dedicated to Laurent II de Medici, is for Machiavelli an attempt to regain a place in the political life of . In this book, as he writes in his dedication, he "dares to give rules of conduct to those who govern"

Machiavelli is a politician above all, who, by being far from the business of his country, feels completely useless. The Prince, therefore, is interested in the republican theories which he has concealed between the lines of this appeal for the reunification of to the Medici. The Prince, apparently simple in reading, is a work of great density in which are stated strong and new theories.

Returning to in 1514, Machiavelli wrote a comedy, La Mandragore, in 1518. At the request of Cardinal Iulius de Medici he wrote The History of Florence in 1520 (completed in 1526). It was a new disgrace for him at the accession of the Republic in 1527, when he was accused of compromising with the Medici. He died that same year in .

THE PRINCE AND UTOPIA

Stellar political coincidences founded modern history. On December 10, 1513 Machiavelli wrote to Francesco Vettori that he had composed a pamphlet De principatibus, a "lucubration" on "what sovereignty is, how many types of sovereignty exist, how one acquires it, how one keeps it, why one loses it." In December 1516, in , it was published Utopia by Thomas Morus. Contemporary, then, The Prince of Machiavelli and Utopia of Morus. Together they are modern politics. The ex-Florentine secretary and the future chancellor of draw, from the beginning, two faces for the reviving body of politics. At that time, between the and the , there was still reasoning about how to re-establish the relationship between people in a society, according to what political modalities, under what forms of state. In both cases, the discourse is propositional. And so it will be for political thought: involved in the immediate practice of action, using and referring to it the examples of the past and the images of the future, it will pay the price on two levels: the very existence of the thinker, and the consistency of his thought. In the end, Machiavelli and Morus will both be condemned. As for the work, it must ultimately sacrifice rigor to efficiency, depth to style, and the truth of research to the utility of discourse. It is the supreme grandeur of these political thinkers who know that this is their destiny and are not afraid to accomplish it.

I think that the two texts are of paradoxical complementarities. Opposite concepts approach and meet without fusion, expressed by human figures of thought. Parallel lives of the modern. And here is the example of how a spark occurs in the contact between a beginning and an end: with the intermediate time left to the researchers. The link between realism and utopia is built at the beginning of the sixteenth century. It is not true that Machiavelli alone dictated, with The Prince and the Discourses, the entire paradigm of modern politics. The other dimension, the , is essential to complete the framework. The unprejudiced description of modern political action has reminded Morus of the imaginary prescription of an alternative world. Then the two sides slowly moved away, in the dichotomous scheme that presided over the construction and conservation of modern societies: realism to the ruling classes, utopia to the lower classes. The proof that the labor movement has been a great subject of modern politics: it has succeeded in understanding in it again, at least from Marx's scientific work, the two separate, contradictory and alternative sides of the realistic reality and the utopian impulse towards the future. Each on their own account, both sides attempted mediation and synthesis, at the time of the bourgeois revolution and at the time of the proletarian revolution.

Realism is not about ideologies but the facts of power. Here is the great synthesis of what became a judgment in Machiavelli's reflection. Such a firm belief is unquestionable. Moreover, because of the singular coincidence of Zeitgeist, the two main political works of the Florentine Secretary were written in an almost absolute contemporaneity with Thomas Morus's Utopia, the golden booklet that would be exalted to the eponym of modern utopia. A temporal coincidence that produced an opposite acting. Machiavelli and Morus have become the archetypes of two fundamental forms of modern culture: realism and utopia.

Furthermore, in confirming the prevalence of Machiavelli’s portrait in a gallery that goes from Tucidide to Tacitus to Adam Schmitt, in recent decades the dominant note of historiography on the Florentine Secretary, beyond its immense vastness and plurality and contradiction, was the right empowerment of the theme of conflict in the Florentine’s prose. And conflict is a distinctive feature of political realism.

On the other hand, in a stunningly optic view, Thomas Morus has benefited of a simplest identification with utopia, understood as a type of reality at astronomical distance from reality its self, or worse, as a precursor of the totalitarian societies of the twentieth century, the black prophecy of a closed and asphyxiated society, which escalated every individual's freedom and, therefore, in exact antithesis to liberal society. Indeed, in spite of the persistence of difficult stereotypes, Machiavelli was often given the title of master of totalitarian tyrannies, even by brilliant minds, and to have written books on which the politics would be exemplified by Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin.

Well, these reconstructions have nothing to do with history and are slipping into anachronisms that are easy to denounce.

As for Morus, there are mixed practices of the social discipline of the beginnings of the modern state with totalitarian preconceptions and it is forgotten that his utopia is not like the nostalgia of the golden age or of the dream country of the world. Quite the contrary. It is the constitution of an order, of a socially and politically defined form, which is celebrating a conquest of technique for the benefit of the community. Just to make a quotation, Rafael Hythloday recounts that the founder of Utopia, Utopus, as its first founding act, decided to cut the Isthmus, which united his city to the continent. Namely, to keep its inhabitants, in a sort of geographical implementation of the immune paradigm, from any contamination coming from other peoples. And it is certainly not a case that such isolation from world history and evils would be replicated in Sun City and New Atlantis.

And, as far as Machiavelli is concerned, to emancipate him from a false image of a prophet of totalitarian dictatorship, just remember his profound republican spirit, his commemoration of the civil conflicts set by the law, and his aversion to tyrannies, despite the stating, both in the Prince and in Speeches, the necessity of a prince-legislator, when it is necessary to found or re-run a res publica. Still, the totalitarian practice of power management overlaps with some of the tips of Machiavellian acute realism, which alluded to political behaviors that were very widespread and very acute in the wars of Italy.

I will not seek to overcome the dichotomy between realism and utopia respectively in Machiavelli and Morus's work, or to present and illustrate possible textual confluence of Utopia in some of the works of the Secretary. But I would just like to propose some cross and non-collating readings with respect to the antinomy between the Florentine and English writer, and suggest a mere complex confrontation between the two thinkers.

In the first instance, it is evident to those who want to set up a comparison between Morus and Machiavelli, that both were primarily concerned with active life, though in different contexts and with very different functions. Thomas Morus carried out his political activity in England in the first half of the sixteenth century, which, with Henry VIII, began to become one of the major European monarchical powers, through a detachment from the Church of Rome, which would mark the tragic destiny of the great humanist in Europe. In this reality, Morus assumed major political positions. After being one of London's most brilliant and trustworthy lawyers and playing the role of judge, he was called by the king in his council to become Lord Chancellor.

Machiavelli, on the other hand, lived and watched Europe from a city, capital of culture, which was visited by many intellectuals like Morus who started the great humanistic epoch in England. Florence was the center of European intellectualism, but suffering from an endemic institutional precariousness whose problems were sharply investigated by Machavelli. In addition, Machiavelli was never appointed for Prime minister in Florentine politics, although he was distinguished for his expertise as Secretary of the second re-established Republic.

But the two great writers were also divided by their cultural formation. That of Morus, patronized by his father, also famous lawyer, typical of those who wanted to specialize in forensic practice and legal studies, and greatly influenced by a humanistic apprenticeship, led by dearest friend Erasmus, allowing him to master the two classical languages and to write much of his works in Latin (which Machiavelli did not do for any of his writings), as well as being an excellent writer in English in his Richard III. Not much is known about Machiavelli's intellectual formation; the information, little as they are, can be obtained from his father's precious diary (homo totus impoliticus, in contrast to his son), in which he remembers Nicolo’s apprenticeship at one of the great humanities teachers of the late-fifteenth century, Paolo Sassi of Ronciglione. Such education allowed the future Secretary to exercise and refine his literary passion, to know the most important classical authors, but not learning the Greek, whom he could only access through humanistic translations. Still, Machiavelli did not graduate. His dominant and devouring vocation was politics, accompanied by love for poetry, while Morus, also a lover of verse writing, as evidenced by his epigrams, distinguished himself by his juridical acuteness and ingenuity and for his “Christian humanism”, which deeply tied him to Erasmus and was supported by profound religious sensibility, which did not allow him to back down even facing the supreme sacrifice.

Now, it is precisely his political commitment and his Christian faith to be severely discussed in the first book of Utopia, which was written in 1516, one year after Morus had composed what was the true description of the happy island and that it would became the second book. The first book is of decisive importance for the exegesis of Utopia. Even before, the letters accompanying Utopia in the three editions from 1516 to 1518 help us to better understand a text that is easy to read but offers a multidimensional prospective that cannot be reduced to a unique interpretation. The complex and multifaceted volcanic volume must be evaluated in a dialogue between the major European humanists, who intertwine an ironic confrontation with the work. And, in fact, irony is a dominant note of the pages of the Morus and, beginning with the name of the protagonist, Raphael Hythloday, which refers to one of the archangels, but which means in the Greek etymology "charlatan".

Indeed, as I presented in previous chapter, it is imagined that dialogue takes place in Antwerp, where Morus was sent by the sovereign for a mission concerning trade agreements between Flanders and England, and is conducted between the same Morus (which, therefore, doubles as author and character), Pieter Gilles – secretary of the city, and Raphael Hythloday. The latter is presented by Gilles as a sailor who had followed the explorations of Vespucci, a new Ulysses, but also a philosopher. The first book, which is a very strong denunciation of the evils, which at that time afflicted England and Europe, beginning with the frequent and devastating wars, continuing in a condemnation of the infamous nobility, avid of power and riches, which, by the privatization of common lands had caused the misery of many peasants. Again, Hythloday stigmatizes the English penal system, which stipulates the capital punishment for small offences, without worrying about the social reasons that cause them. It is a realistic analysis, endowed with an economic and social examination, culminating in a dialectical opposition (but without any composition in a synthesis) between Hythloday and the same Morus. It is in this context that an overwhelming difference intervenes between the character-author Morus and Hythloday, the traveler to Utopia. Morus, in fact, invites Hythloday, whose wisdom has led him to accurately diagnose some serious diseases of English society, to participate in the council of a sovereign, namely to put his knowledge in the service of power. Take note: the dilemma before which the same will be placed Morus a few years later, before accepting to be part of council of King Henry VIII. Hythloday runs into an intransigence, which no argument of Morus can scratch. Hythloday repudiates any invitation to cooperate with the power, because this would inevitably lead to the cancellation of his principles and a betrayal of his Christian faith. Power destroys any ideal, forcing it to adapt to the will of the sovereigns and to adapt to contingent situations. Between transcendent and immanent, between his philosophical, religious and political ideas no bridge can exist. No mediation is possible. There is nothing to hide from the utopian narrator, demonstrating, before even entering the king's service, to be well-informed on the roughness, contradiction and ambivalence of political reality. And that interdicts any univocal and unilateral attitude, even in the name of the highest and pure beliefs. Morus deduced a clear refusal of his interlocutor's argument. The conflict between the two dialoguers was condensed around the name of Plato, with which the work was inaugurated:

[Morus] “Only if you could overcome your aversion to the courts, you would be able to bring great benefits to the community with your advice, because this is the first duty of a gentleman of your cast. If it is true that what your Plato is supposed to say, that the states will finally be happy the day the philosophers will be made kings and the kings will give themselves to philosophizing, where the happiness will end, if philosophers even disdain to give their advice the sovereigns?"

[Hythloday] “I'm not unhappy at this point," he replied, "not to do it very well, and many I did through published books (in 1516 Erasmus published the “Institutio principis cristiani”, dedicated to the future Charles V), only that the holders of power were willing to accept the good advice. Certainly Plato assumed that unless the kings were personally dedicated to philosophy, it would never have happened that they, imbued from infancy and contaminated with distorted ideas, embraced without reservation the suggestions of philosophers”.

To the firm statement of Hythloday, that "there is no place for philosophy near the princes," given their obtuseness in wanting to hear any wise advice, Morus replies with a very realistic consideration, that turns the aces of Raphael's speech: “This is true – I replied – but only with regard to that academic philosophy, that anything can fit anywhere. But there is another philosophy that is more suitable for political life, which knows its stage and can adapt itself, sustaining its part in the drama that it plays […] indirectly takes and commits all your strengths to conduct things with grace, so as to minimize evil when you cannot turn it into good. Whatever goes on for the better, it will only be obtained when all are good, only than we could to give up for years to come.”

But Hythloday affirms that it is impossible in perfidious courts of sovereigns to overcome, regardless any strategy of the philosopher, through that indirect and concealed "oblique ductu": “That way of yours through indirect means is not clear to me and I would not know where to go, nor how should we strive, if we cannot turn everything to good, to conduct things with grace, so that evil is reduced to the minimum as much as possible”. Finally, he concludes his reasoning by appealing again to Plato and his advice "that the sages must keep themselves away from public office" There is no possible compromise between Hythloday and Morus. It is not really a dialogue. Their speeches are logos. Hythloday despises and disproves a controversial policy, such as that of the promise, of the attainment of at least the "quam minime malum", which was exactly what Machiavelli observed in those same years, considering the impossibility of turning everything to the good. But the break up between Morus character and author, and Hythloday explodes at the end of the second book, which is largely a monologue in which Raphael explains the life, customs and institutions of Utopia, visited by him on four trips. It is a description of a happy city characterized by absolute equality, resulting from the abolition of private property, a life often in common, with the division of time between intellectual activities and manual work, the denial of material wealth. The life of Utopians is strongly influenced by the humanist ideals of the author, exemplified by a natural order, which is t the same time a rational order. Following nature means following the reason. Humanistic inspiration is also proven by the recognition by Hythloday of a genealogy of the utopian population, which, moreover, enthusiastically welcomes the classical authors in their library. Humanity's ascension is also confirmed by a large religious tolerance, but not to the point of not believing in God and Providence. This would undermine that natural-rational order on which the utopian discourse of Hythloday is founded.

In this entire narrative of the utopist city, presented in the previous chapter, the author casts a subtle ironic plot, made up of desecrating Greek etymologies. In fact, just to make a few examples, the irony is performed in the very title of the book: the city that is not. And it is a non-existence that echoes in the name of the capital of the island: Amaurot. This means both evanescent and lying city. In fact, in the Princeps edition of 1516 its name, derived from a Latin etymon, was Mentira. Moreover, the river that crosses it is the Anyder, that is, the river without water. It is as if the author himself intended to deconstruct the message of Hythloday, discovering its unrealistic inconsistency. But why is it unrealistic? Raphael Hythloday explains it at the end of the work, recalling the first book of the Bible and the dogma of the original sin induced in the earthly paradise by the infernal serpent: “As far as I am concerned, I have no doubt that the whole world, considering the personal interest of each one, and the authority of Christ the Savior […] would have adopted the Utopian ordinances without difficulty, unless the opposition and the resistance of a single monster – the pride – mother and lady of all calamities […] Hell, which is wrapped around the human heart, impels and drags it like a hoax to prevent him from taking the road leading to a better life. And because pride is too well contagious in man to be able to easily divulge it, it is comforting me to know that at least the Utopians have touched this form of state, which I would very much like to wish for all”.

Through this detachment from his happy city, Hythloday express, firm in his conviction, the deep gap between polis and philosopher; his conviction is consolidated by the Morus character, in words that seal the work, making it explicit: “Meanwhile, though I cannot possibly agree on all the points with a man of a very different nature, which is out of the question, and of the great experience of human affairs, however, I recognize in good faith that many aspects of the State of Utopia I would like to see being set up by our parties, even though I have a little hope.”

The text expresses an inner aspiration that reason finds very difficult to implement, thus denying it to hope. In the end both, Hythloday and Morus (both the character and the author) are two discouraged political realists. Their divergence only arises from the intellectuals’ commitment to the city or from an intransigent rejection of any contamination and involvement of the philosopher in political reality. Utopia, in this way, proves to be a double shadow mirror.

There is a deep anthropological pessimism at the bottom of the reflections of both Morus and Machiavelli. Also for Machiavelli, every political discourse must indicate that men are bad or need to be presumed bad. But that does not mean that in Machiavelli there is no utopian connotation. It is evident by reading the opening page of Chapter VI of the Prince. It is a central chapter because Machiavelli illustrates with several classic examples, from Romulus to Tasso to Cicero, and biblical examples, like Moses, his idea of ​​a new prince, who thanks to his virtue gains power and becomes the legislator of a state, and gives it an institutional and regulatory form. It is the founding act of res publica, the most uncertain and demanding one, in which the greatest difficulties are concentrated and therefore requires "very excellent" principles, "great examples": “It is not surprising that if, in speaking of entirely new principalities as I shall do, I adduce the highest examples both of prince and of state; because men, walking almost always in paths beaten by others, and following by imitation their deeds, are yet unable to keep entirely to the ways of others or attain to the power of those they imitate. A wise man ought always to follow the paths beaten by great men, and to imitate those who have been supreme, so that if his ability does not equal theirs, at least it will savor of it. Let him act like the clever archers who, designing to hit the mark which yet appears too far distant, and knowing the limits to which the strength of their bow attains, take aim much higher than the mark, not to reach by their strength or arrow to so great a height, but to be able with the aid of so high an aim to hit the mark they wish to reach.

Machiavelli always mentions great examples as a stimulus to a great policy for a new, unusual and difficult reality, overwhelmed by the disastrous situation of the wars of Italy, a true historical nightmare for the author, constituting the background and the tragic watermark of all his political thoughts. For Machiavelli, the consciousness is acute that new principles of great virtue are needed, but also very fine peoples, like the ancient Roman, because it is his rooted and repeated conviction that, after the foundation act and the constitution of a form of "mixed body," it is necessary that power pass from the hands of the prince to those of the people, to avoid any degeneration in tyranny. Passing power to the people, what a utopia, isn’t it?

The utopian tension of the Secretary's work is evidenced by the frequency in the Machiavellian lexicon of the word "duty" and the expression "the prince must".

But it is a very different task than the stigmatized one at the opening of Chapter XV of the Prince, where Machiavelli blamed the writers and princes, who, instead of pursuing the "real" truth, intended to refer to men as they should be and not really as they are, by conceiving imaginary republics. On the contrary, a duty that arises from the very harsh reality of things is a duty that crosses the "need" of the events and situations that take place in politics. It is a necessity, for which the prince must "not to diverge from the good if he can avoid doing so, but, if compelled, then to know how to set about it".

It is the same necessity, for which Romulus, cited not only in Prince – Chapter VI, but often in his work, is scandalously justified by Machiavelli in Discourses Chapter IX: “But this must be assumed, as a general rule, that it never or rarely occurs that some Republic or Kingdom is well organized from the beginning, or its institutions entirely reformed a new, unless it is arranged by one (individual only): rather it is necessary that the only one who carries it out should be he who on whose mind such an organization depends”. Such a necessity imposed on Romulus the duty of killing his brother. Machiavelli, subverting a condemnation of the founder of the first city for that fratricide that reiterated the primordial act of Cain, explained that never a wise genius will reject any of the extraordinary action that, to order to constitute a kingdom or a republic would help it.

“Those who by valorous ways become princes, like these men, acquire a principality with difficulty, but they keep it with ease. The difficulties they have in acquiring it arise in part from the new rules and methods which they are forced to introduce to establish their government and its security. And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them. Thus it happens that whenever those who are hostile have the opportunity to attack them does it like partisans, whilst the others defend lukewarmly, in such wise that the prince is endangered along with them”.

CONCLUSION OF THE CHAPTER

Politics may be the Prince armed with a concrete utopia, even when, and especially when, it expresses itself in collective forms, as a state, as a party, as a movement. Without this, a new way of doing politics is not inaugurated, but the modern era of politics is simply closed. That these things are our old things is a research choice that wants to oppose an anti-modern intention subtly hidden in so many rediscoveries of classical politics. It was Machiavelli's choice, which, as a point of reference, teaching, discourse, took the policy of the Romans and not the policy of the Greeks, the history of the republic and not the myth of the polis, civil struggles Roman and not Athenian democracy. In politics, realism is , utopia is . From one keeps the nostalgia.

Good and evil in politics are inseparable, which is often repeated by Machiavelli, necessary complementarities for the "state’s health", that manifests the tragic and diabolic dimension of human affairs. Consequently, politics has its own asymmetric figure. For Machiavelli, as for Morus, the leader can only pursue the lesser evil. It is the osmotic nature of the Machiavelli and Morus epistemic system.

CHAPTER III

THOMAS MORUS AND THE UTOPIA SIGNIFICANCE

UTOPIAN SOCIALISM

Utopian socialism has its roots in the various social utopias written over the centuries, of which the most famous, is that of Thomas Morus.

The term utopian socialism refers to the doctrines of the early nineteenth-century of European socialists (such as Marx and Engels) but also Robert Owen in Great Britain, Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, Étienne Cabet and Philippe Buchez in France. This current is influenced by humanism and often by social Christianity. It is originally part of a perspective of progress and faith in man and technique. It knew its peak before 1870, before being eclipsed, within the socialist movement, by the success of Marxism. The notion of utopian socialism was conceived by Friedrich Engels and taken up by the Marxists (who oppose it the notion of scientific socialism); the term utopian, joined to socialism, was thus born of a polemical intention before being subsequently consecrated by the use. The doctrines embraced by utopian socialism are no more utopian than any other doctrine for the realization of an ideal society which has never existed (including the Marxist doctrines which announce the advent of a classless society).

Utopian socialism is characterized by the desire to set up ideal communities according to various models, some governed by very restrictive regulations, others more libertarian; some communists, leaving a greater share in individual property. Utopian socialism is characterized mainly by its method of transforming society which, on the whole, is not based on a political revolution, nor on a reformist action promoted by the State, but on the creation, through the initiative of Citizens, of a socialist counter-society within the capitalist system itself. The multiplication of socialist communities must gradually replace capitalist society.

Thousands of experiments in the creation of socialist communities in the thread of utopian socialism can be found throughout history. Like the family created by Godin in 1854 in Guise, which is directly inspired by the phalanstery of Charles Fourier, which counted as many as 1,748 people in 1889, and which functioned permanently until 1968, "Utopian" has led to the creation of many social projects on a human scale, sustainable and realistic. The idea that "utopian" socialism would have achieved only limited experiments (communities of a few hundred at most) and of generally limited duration is a viewpoint on the history of socialism which is strongly influenced by Marx.

Some, however, consider Friedrich Engels (Utopian Socialism and Scientific Socialism, 1880) to be the origin of it. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels describe their own theory of scientific socialism as opposed to "utopian socialism" which, according to them, does not have a methodical and rigorous character in the analysis of capitalist society.

The early socialists among the utopian socialists are:

Saint-Simon (1760-1835), followed by the socialist branch of the Saint-Simonians represented by Saint-Amand Bazard. Saint-Simon also influenced reformist socialism and positivist capitalism.

Robert Owen (1771-1858) in the United Kingdom, the entrepreneur considered to be the first to put his ideas into practice with the creation of a working community in Great Britain and the United States in the years 1810-1820 . He is considered the pioneer of the trade union and cooperative movement in Britain.

Charles Fourier (1772-1837), phalanstery theorist.

Étienne Cabet (1788-1856), promoter of Icaria.

Utopian socialism declined after 1870 when Marxism imposed itself as the major ideology of socialism. It has, however, continued through:

The cooperative movement,

and numerous community experiments to which we must relate the libertarian "free circles", more or less durable, more or less organized around work, personal development, moral values. The many but often ephemeral hippie communities (1967 in the United States) constitute the recent form of former utopian socialism.

Also, the analytical approach and certain propositions may sometimes remind certain traits of ecological thought.

THOUGHT AND DOCTRINE

Utopian socialism differs from other socialism by its method. It generally does not advocate revolution, and does not trust the action of the State. Beyond the many theories, he advocates the immediate practical implementation of small-scale socialist societies (communities) on the basis of "private" or "citizen" initiatives. The main challenge was the sustainability of the communities, their ability to survive in a capitalist world, to endure in spite of the personal development of the founders. The ideal of large-scale social modification through the dissemination of communities and their federation at the global level remained at the stage of mere dreams.

Utopian socialism does not intend to make a distinction between different social classes; it is addressed to all, whether rich or poor, and does not plan to rely on one human group more than another in its strategy of transforming society. Philanthropists, the utopian socialists turn all their criticisms of capitalism around its harmful consequences on the development of man. Man is above all the product of his family and social conditions but also of his environment: society made the man.

Despite the theoretical edification of ideal societies based on successful economic and social systems (the Fourier phalanstery, the colonial communism of Robert Owen), they pragmatically regard as a priority the struggle against the hardest consequences of the capitalist economy. They advocated, among other things, the reduction of working time. In general, improving the living conditions of workers is the best way to combat social ills such as drunkenness or the need for private charity. In an ideal society, police, prisons, trials and public assistance are no longer necessary. This elevation of the proletariat to the level of human dignity passes especially for the youngest through the existence of an efficient educational system. Utopian socialism rests on a very optimistic vision of man: man is good by nature, which implies that one can trust his reason to evolve society and culminate in a civilization of reason and well-being.

The construction on paper of these ideal societies has resulted in complex and complete intellectual constructions. Experiments of "primitive communism", that is, a community of harmonious social organization and the pooling of wealth and means of production, have been carried out and experimented in some colonies in northern America. This kind of social organization has not been realized, except perhaps in a somewhat different form through the Jewish kibbutzs of the Middle East.

UTOPIAN SOCIALISM EXPERIMENTS

The experiments of classical Utopian socialists Saint-Simon and the "phalanstery" of Ménilmontant

The disciples of the French Comte de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) formed the Phalanstery of Ménilmontant (founded in 1832), composed of Saint-Simoniens. It was closed by the police.

Owen Owen and the model factories (1820s)

The British industrialist and philanthropist Robert Owen (1771-1858), founder of co-operatives and trade unions in Britain, founded two communities:

• New Lanark in Great Britain (1813-1828).

• New Harmony, Indiana, USA (1824-1829): 20,000 acres of land purchased from a sect. The community has 900 members in 1825. It attracts many personalities and visitors. But it fails because spontaneous return to privacy. So New Harmony became a city like the others.

The followers of Robert Owen founded many communities in Great Britain and the United States.

Charles Fourier and the Phalansteres (1830-1840)

The French Charles Fourier (1772-1837), the phalanstery theorist, inspired many achievements in Europe and America, especially in the 1840s. Among them it was the phalanstery of Scâeni, Romania (1834-1835). Community of 400 families lived on land loaned by a young boyar. But the community was repressed by the army in 1835. The young boyar was deported.

Utopian socialist experiences period 1870-1950

During this period, in which Marxism becomes the major and structuring ideology of the socialist movement, utopian socialism finds its expression through the libertarian communities (the term is due to Joseph Déjacque, born of utopian socialism).

On the level of ideas, two major evolutions occurred:

Some authoritarian tendencies of utopian socialism, sometimes imposing very precise modes of functioning on members of communities, disappear definitively in favor of the idea of individual freedom (probably in reaction to the highly structured Marxist organizations). This leads in particular to experiments with respect to habits.

Faith in material progress is often called into question in favor of a return to a more natural and simpler life. Hence the first attempts at ecological life, vegetarianism and naturism arised. This was influenced in particular by the American Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) in the United States and Count Lev Tolstoy (1828-1910) in Europe.

Utopian socialism and hippie communities (1966-1975)

The hippie movement born in 1966 in San Francisco represents the last spectacular resurgence of utopian socialism. For the hippie, it is a matter of fleeing capitalist society to build a libertarian and communitarian counter-society based on equality, fraternity and freedom. Ronald Creagh, who worked on these libertarians, utopian laboratories in the United States, places the community movement in a much longer history that begins with Owen or Fourier movements. It had two phases of blooming communities, one before 1860, the other after 1960. The hippie movement will claim its connection with Utopian socialism: Patrick Rambaud acknowledges: “Communities were not born in the 1960s in the United States, and in France in 1970. They existed in the nineteenth century with Fourier, Cabet who leaves for Florida to found Icaria, and even the pirates of the sixteenth century!”

In the United States, in 1967, the material life of the San Francisco (Haight-Ashbury) hippie neighborhood was handled by a group called the Diggers, referring to a 17th century utopian communist movement. The links are sometimes even structural between utopian socialist communities and hippies such as Joan Baez, who was said to have been raised in the Ferrer Colony in Stelton, New Jersey. The texts of Charles Fourier advocating sexual liberation are reissued in 1967

From the begining, in the United States as in France, in the years 1971-1972, the community movement is shifting in every direction, misleading its own observers and zealots: rural communities (more radical) and urban communities, combat communities (oriented towards political action) and communities of ruptures (more concerned about reinventing life), working communities (medieval model of companions), religious communities (Lanza del Vasto and its community of the Ark were soon annexed by the mystical bizarre people: they have disappeared, the Ark still exists).

The movement will be as spectacular as it is ephemeral:

In France: 1971, 1972 and 1973 will be the great years of the communities in France, there would be up to 50,000 communards in the summer; a permanent population of 5 to 10,000 hippies and other marginalized people have been confirmed in their choice of another society.

The largest European experience will be the Free Community of Christiania (Denmark) in Copenhagen (in September 1971 and still existing today.)

Utopian socialism today

The idea that economic liberalism would be "unavoidable", utopian socialism is not dead. The spirit of utopian socialism, the idea that social change can come from citizen initiatives, from the grassroots, inserting within the capitalist society in order to reduce its influence and eventually replace it, continues. And contemporary solutions are the heirs of communitarian experiences and cooperatives of nineteenth century.

The Utopian socialism continues through:

Part of the social economy (associations, social security funds, cooperatives, foundations) term covering both real socialist attempts (small cooperatives, etc.), and large organizations playing the game of capitalism. • new forms of community within the alternative movements, squats, self-management experiences, communitarian places of life, ecovillages, etc. as also in India with experience of Auroville.

CONCLUSIONS

The issue of the contribution of utopias to the enrichment of philosophical and social-political thinking deserves all the attention; their examination will bring almost unexpected gains.

The first contribution to be made is the broad critique, often very lucid and penetrating, which utopian thinking does in many cases. It shows that utopias are the reflex of strong social tensions, which they try to remedy, thus consecrating their critical-normative vocation. Thus, utopian literature is a contribution to shaping the consciousness of a society. In this respect, we should remark that all writers who followed Morus's model were critics in two ways: the first concerns the criticism of the existing order in the space and the time they lived; the other meaning, more importantly, is that utopia was the way (humanist we emphasize) to reject that notion of "original sin" that looked at natural human virtue and reason as frail and fatally altered faculties.
The whole classical utopia represented an attack against the radical theory of original sin; and thus it has become a picture and measure of the moral altitude that man can achieve by using only his powers.

Secondly, utopian literature as a whole enriches the meaning of human possibility. By criticizing what exists in comparison to what it must be, the revelation of the contrast leads to the enrichment of the perspective, to the education of the sentiment of the alternative, of some obscure human qualities, capable of new possible experiences. Finally, due to the global character of the Utopian renewal project, many of the papers that are part of the utopian tradition have the form of comprehensive sociological visions that can stimulate understanding of social relationships in their interaction.

From all this it follows that utopia – in the sense that we accept – cannot be reduced to a simple mental exercise, to a simple myth, or some reform plan to a state of mind "disagreeing with the state of reality in which it occurs".

Utopias appears as a form of reflection that devotes itself to the description in a detailed or simple sketched way to a ideal society, therefore imaginary, in which citizens live in political and social conditions that the author regards as the best, consequently the most desirable. What is meant by the notion of utopia presupposes a structure, a "city" in which are profound political, economic, social, pedagogical, religious transformations, etc. In this sense, any utopia involves a vision (if not a critical analysis of the present, which finds its remedy in the "design of experimental communities ), even though the "experiment" remains an imagined construction.

Renaissance is what brings into the field of social and political thinking an extremely important element: the birth of utopian socialism. The work of Thomas Morus "The optimum republicae statu deque nova the Utopia Island, analyzed in the present thesis, exerted an overwhelming influence on posterity. Morus introduces into the philosophical-political literature a new method, the utopian method, a specific way of critical reporting to contemporary social and political realities and design in a fantasy, the non-existent world of a social-political ideal that acquires the character of a rational plan to rebuild society. This is a subtle social and political critique as well as an expectation.

The "fantasy description" fulfills this double role, replacing both the scientific analysis of reality and the decryption of the lines of future development through scientific prediction. This substitution can be considered an inventive response to the unmet social-economic conditions and, at the same time, to the lack of possibilities of scientific analysis generated by the epoch. The utopian method will, as is known, serve to develop a vigorous social-political literature dedicated to the reorganization of society in the spirit of equity and social justice.
Of course, not all the utopian literature of the Renaissance is of socialist orientation: Robert Burton and Kaspar Stiblin have developed the anti-egalitarian utopias, and the materialist philosopher Francis Bacon maintains in "New Atlantis" the private property and imagines a world in which science is supreme value, what determined to be mentioned among the immediate precursors of technocracy.

There are authors who stated that the first originality of the Renaissance utopias was their profoundly religious character. But this is not true for all utopias of the Renaissance. Where religious elements appear, they are largely outward, being an extension in the form of the medieval way of debating secular, political problems in religious clothing; especially when directed against the church. Morus's "Utopia" therefore establishes a new direction in social-political thinking.

Of course, in order to understand it in all its aspects and intentions, the opera must be placed in the social context of its time. We can only account for the contradictory complexity of this 16th European century, which is the origin of the entirely unusual flourishing of political philosophy, and which gave Morus the fertile soil for its innovative enterprise. Because England of the period of primitive capitalism is the object of its criticism, pushed in some aspects to a particularly significant degree of generalization, and all England is the island that he would like to see the new order installed in. The contemporaries saw in the "Utopia" a school of excellent teachings and useful tips from which states will take their institutions and adapt them to their needs, a book that gives governors prescriptions for how to govern their states.

The intention really corresponded to the spirit of the age proven by the multitude of “manuals” for prices and kings that appeared in those years (see Erasmus and Machiavelli). The work can also be deduced from the text, in which it is shown that you cannot "put your mind and skill in the service of public affairs" in a different way "than as a counselor of a leading prince". Under the conditions of the absolute monarchy, the belief that "from the prince, as from a sour spring, I start all the good and the evil of a people" could not be an exception. Hence the most utopian element of the entire Morus’s construction: the new order is introduced into the island by an enlightened prince, Utopus, after conquering it. Utopian socialism has thus – since its beginnings – seen the weakest side in the inability of the land to develop the ways of the transition to the new society, that is to say, the elaboration of political means to overcome the limits of the society criticized by them.

Morus's goals are modern; the mode of production of the age could offer a remarkable spirit the possibility of understanding its tendencies, but it was not yet developed enough to offer it the means to overcome these tendencies. Morus's contemporaries also saw the combined influences of Plato and Augustine in the Utopias; the later commentators exaggerated the Platonic influence until it was considered a Christian version of Plato's Republic adapted to a new social order. Generally, the historiography of political ideas has exaggerated the filiations between Plato and Morus – with all the frequent references in the work to the founder of the Academy. But neither the fundamental content nor the method are inspired by Plato's model. Rather, it can be traced – in terms of the social substance – the influence of the Hellenic Chronicle of Euhemeros and the State of the Sun of Iambulos (which will also inspire the title of Campanella's work).

Morus's critique of the realities of the times often goes beyond them, targeting the system. We no longer insist on Morus's genius analysis of the process of primitive accumulation of capital in which the profound revelation of the causes merges with the lucid penetration of the consequences, with particular emphasis on the increase of the gap between the rich and the poor, the increase in the number of the poor.

It is notable here the idea – which will take a great amplitude in the 18th century in the movement for the reform of the penal law – of the necessity of the proportionality of the punishments in relation to the degree of real danger of the crimes, and especially the penetrating the social causes of growth; penal law remains too severe as long as nothing is done to liquidate the structural social causes. From here he reaches a revealing understanding of the social nature of the state and the social-political function of law. The most flourishing states are "nothing but a scheming of the rich who, in the name and under the protection of the state, only see their affairs and their gains, they cram and think of all means and all the tricks they reach, And secure the unchallenged possession of a fortune by measures of unrestrained means, and the second to buy at the lowest price the work and sweat of the poor, and to profit from their misery. And these intrigues, they decided to be established in the name of the people, in the name of the poor, gaining power by law.". That is why the state of Utopia is not "only the best, but the only one that would have the right to sow for itself the name of state, that is, the state of the community". But a state could not become a "state of the community," as long as it is based on social inequality and will continue to be the instrument of its preservation. This is the fundamental, truly revolutionary idea, perhaps most clearly expressed in all the literature of utopian socialism. Based on this principle, Morus's vision of utopian society will establish a certain direction in the development of utopian socialism. First of all, he reserves to the state a very special role in the conscious regulation of the citizens' life, a role that essentially derives from the fact that the whole society is conceived as an economic unit. The fundamental productive unit is the family, conceived as a handicraft workshop, a medieval guild system that puts its mark on its vision. The conditions of the epoch are also evident in the fact that the sufficiency of all – by a distribution according to needs, reduced to a level of simplicity or even austerity – becomes possible not due to technical progress (an idea alien to Morus but present at the beginning of the 17th century, at Campanella) but through the generalized provision of a six-hour daily work; through the liquidation of social parasitism and the introduction of compulsory labor. Agriculture is not a profession; agricultural work is compulsory, by rotation, by all citizens. Here, for the first time, the principle of the alternation of tasks appears, although at the time the productive activity was specialized, organized in relatively closed corporations and especially distinct from the rural environment. Thus, although in a rudimentary form, it is expected to remove the contrast between town and village. Only a small number of scientists are exempted from physical work, considering that their training requires special skills and efforts; but their circle is not closed, citizens who prove themselves to have special qualities for their intellectual activity may be included in their ranks; also the reverse way is considered. Here is a new vision that tends to eliminate the rigid, immutable division between intellectual and physical labor. And civil servants are exempt from physical labor on the sole basis of the general social utility of their work. However, in Utopia there are "slaves": they are entrusted with "unpleasant work", being recruited from the ranks of the convicts – from inside and outside – and prisoners. Utopian "slavery" is regarded as a morally (and socially) positive alternative to the inhumane cruelty of court judgments in England, but also as a consequence of the absence of technical progress in the Morus’ scheme. The focus on the common meals, on alternate housing, on the type of social education aims at the complete elimination of individualism, as a possible source of disturbance in the mechanisms of social repartition and inter-human relations. But we also find here a revolutionary element that targets the tendency of women to emancipate, at least in part, of the care of domestic households in the direction of ensuring gender equality. The political organization of Utopia gives us the image of a patriarchal democracy, led by an elective monarch, where all the social functions are carried out by a hierarchy of public officials on the basis of proportionate representation at all levels. In Morus' conception, the abolition of class antagonisms leads to the "numbness" of political functions, the role of authorities of any kind in this system, summing up, apart from settling inter-individual conflicts, almost exclusively to the leadership and organization of production and distribution as well as to the supervision of the other social, cultural, educational conditions designed to ensure the happiness of the inhabitants. Particularly significant is the attitude towards the war, which he severely condemns as a brutal habit. His conception of righteous and unfair wars is true – the righteous war being mainly the defensive or the liberation. Remember his conception of religion. He, who will then remain faithful to Catholicism, against the Reformation, in Utopia not only anticipates it, but far exceeds its claims. The tolerance of all beliefs brought him closer to the eighteenth century; the power of punishment is reserved exclusively to the prince and the clergy, the subordination of the activity of the clergy to the commandment of serving and strengthening the community – as well as other envisaged aspects – approaches him to consider religion as a particular matter. Utopia "was not only revolutionary about a distant future, but also about the most ardent problems of its time”. It attacked not only the private property, the policy of Princes, the ignorance and the comfort of the monks, but even the dogmas of religion. The genesis of this attitude lies in his rationalism, the same rationalism that made him believe in the force of persuasion of his ideas and manifested mistrust or even hostility to the popular movements or to the overthrow the existing order through violence. But ultimately “which holds attention to More, is not his limitations but the extent to which he has succeeded in overcoming them, not the fact that his tolerance has its own boundaries, but that the principle of tolerance has been exposed by him so clearly, not the casual reactionary features of his Utopia, but its economy, generally based on communist principles, not his fear of popular action, but the understanding of the causes of poverty and his sincere desire to remove them."

And Utopia is also a vigorous testimony of the qualitative superiority of Morus' humanism to that of the age in which he lived. If bourgeois humanism in political thought has found the most faithful embodiment in the era of Machiavelli, it can be said that social humanism is in germ (in a quasi-fantastic form and framed by inevitable limits) in Morus's work, their essential distinctions being incipient from now on.

The words ending Utopia, "that at the Utopians there are a lot of arrangements that I wish more than I hope to see in our states", express in fact, beyond a prudent reserve meant to mitigate the consequences of the violent and bold criticism which the book contains, his relative pessimism. They reveal all the tragedy of the genius, who pulls out of his epoch the core problem it carries before the material conditions for the development of this problem are given, all the tragedy of a character who feels compelled to resolve the problem of the epoch, to uphold the right of oppressed against the pride of their masters, even if he is certain that his enterprise is devoid of any chance.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

BOOKS

Foucault, Michel, Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias

Machiavelli, Nicolo, Discourses

Machiavelli, Nicolo, The Prince, translated in English by W. K. Marriott

Messac, Regis, Propos D’un Utopien, Edition Ex Nihilo, Collection hier & demain

More, Thomas, Libellus vere aureus, nec minus salutaris quam festivus, de optimo rei publicae statu deque nova insula Utopia (Utopia)

Prévost, André, L’Utopie de Thomas Morus, Marne, Paris, 1978

Trăsnea, Ovidiu, Filosofia politică, București, Ed. Politică, 1986

Trăsnea, Ovidiu, Știința Politică, București, Ed. Politică, 1970

ARTICLES

Gerardin, Daniel, Théodore MONOD – " Le chercheur d'absolu "

WEB RESOURCES

http://documents.irevues.inist.fr/bitstream

Thomas More to Peter Giles

http://tudorhistory.org/monarchs/

http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/21cc/utopia/utopia.html

http://www.comp.dit.ie/dgordon/Lectures/Hum1/

http://www.constitution.org/mac/prince.pdf

http://www.e-litterature.net/publier2/spip/

Renaissance Humanism

http://www.iep.utm.edu/humanism/

http://www.shmoop.com/english-renaissance-literature/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dystopia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Renaissance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Tudor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_Machiavelli

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_humanism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_More

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopian_and_dystopian_fiction

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopian_socialism

Sir Thomas More: Biography, Facts and Information

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Rambaud

https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_utopic

https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Morus

https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/foucault1.pdf

https://www.academia.edu/

https://www.biography.com/people/thomas-more-9414278

https://www.britannica.com/art/English-literature/The-Renaissance-period-1550-1660

https://www.constitution.org/mac/disclivy.pdf

https://www.constitution.org/mac/prince.pdf

https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/vatican/humanism.html

https://www.marxists.org/subject/utopian/

https://www.thomasmorestudies.org