UTOPIA

Utopia by Thomas More

Utopia by Thomas More

To what extent, and in what ways, is Utopia a work intended to inspire the re-fashioning of sixteenth-century English society?

Introduction

Thomas Moore coined the word “utopia” for this book and simultaneously provided a noun to describe an ideal society and an adjective—utopian—to signify a hopelessly impractical approach to living. The word “utopia” derives from the Greek for “no place,” but it is also a pun on “good place.” With this play on words, Thomas Moore sowed the seeds of argument regarding his book: Was he serious? Was he a communist, a liberal, an autocrat? Was he an support of euthanasia and divorce?

Utopia is a state founded on compassion and altruism. No one wants for material goods. Health care is universal, though few get sick. Society gently encourages euthanasia when a mortally ill person suffers from great pain. All property is owned communally (More, 2001). Every ten years, a family exchanges its house, which is supposed to encourage people to take proper care for the next tenant. Even their eating takes place in a large hall that holds as many as thirty households.

Thesis Statement

Utopia is not so much interesting or original in itself as it is noteworthy because it stimulated discussion regarding “social engineering” as a remedy for society's ills.

Discussion

Utopia is a commentary on Thomas Moore's own society, a combination of monasticism and feudalism, but Utopia is founded on reason, not Christianity. Thomas Moore is pleading: If they can do so well without divine revelation, why can Europe not do better with it? It is impossible to believe that Thomas Moore meant Utopia as a blueprint for an ideal society. Elements that support this conclusion include the deadpan humor (Anider, a river, means “no water”; Utopians use gold in making chamber pots) and the contrast with Thomas Moore's own religious convictions (he persecuted heretics and chose execution rather than compromise his opposition to divorce) (More, 2001).

How to make a better world in which to live has enthralled the minds of thinkers in every age. From Plato to the present, persons have been thinking and composing about what the world would be like if people could conceive an earthly paradise. One of the most famous pieces of such thought and writing is Sir Thomas Moore's Utopia, a work so famous that its title has come to mean an ideal state. Originally in writing in Latin, the worldwide dialect of medieval and Renaissance Europe, the publication was broadly read, and as early as 1551 a transformation into English was made by Ralph Robinson, a London goldsmith (More, 2001).

The first part of Utopia does not deal with the legendary island; rather, Hythloday visits England, converses with Cardinal Morton, and suggests to that churchman (who was Henry VII's chancellor) some reforms that might benefit England. Among the reforms the fictional Hythloday suggests are the abolition of the death penalty for theft, the prevention of gambling, less dependence upon the raising of sheep for wool, discontinuance of use of mercenary soldiers, ...