utopian thinking

Critics often condemn utopian thinking as deluded or disconnected from the “real world.” In defending the utopian approach to social solutions, provide arguments which show that the utopian faith in human reason is not incompatible with human nature.

This essay received a mark of 75
Please read the tutor’s assessment of why it deserved the mark: “An incredibly strong and well researched essay. You have marshalled the evidence with considerable skill to produce to produce eloquent and well considered piece of work.
This essay contained a strong central argument around the need for laws in utopia because they are good rather than perfect societies. The structure of essay ensures this point is never lost and every sentence is connected to assessing the validity of this hypothesis. I was particularly pleased that you used the standard definition of utopia as a means to expose the dilemma of all utopian writings, in that they remain imbedded within their culture and society, thus imagining a perfect society is not possible. By stressing the importance of context, especially around More, you demonstrate how what may appear to be primitive forms of punishment were actually quite sophisticated at that time. This of course enables us to see utopian writing as incipient forms of proto-socialism prior to the historical materialism of Marx. As such Owen’s utopian proposals around general education could be more practically significant than Marx’s economic model.
The essay is very well-written and you have a nice writing style in which you can express complex arguments in straightforward language.
Overall a very good piece of work. Well Done!”
Q: If a utopia is supposed to be a perfect place, why do utopian places always include laws?
Whenever the word ‘utopia’ is encountered, whatever the context, the image of a perfect society springs to mind. Within this perfect society, all forms of human vice and social disorder have been eliminated leaving nothing but positivity, stability and wellbeing for every citizen regardless of their character. We may therefore find ourselves labelling this a ‘perfect society’, free from structural dysfunction and the many imperfections of the past. However, if we consider the etymology of ‘utopia’, and, more importantly, if we critically assess Utopian texts, we cannot accept this label of a ‘perfect’ place since this was never the intended definition and, more frankly, it has never been the outcome. Utopias are not characterised by their ‘perfection’ as such, but rather by their portrayal of idyllic social conditions in relation to the detestable conditions existing at the time the text was written.

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In the 16th century, when Thomas More formed this neologism from the Greek ‘Ou’ (meaning ‘not’) and ‘Topos’ (meaning ‘place’), it was with the intention of describing ‘no-place’ or, more literally, ‘nowhere’. Even if we were to consider Utopia as a homophone (meaning ‘good-place’ from the Greek prefix ‘Eu’), it would still not describe a ‘perfect-place’. Indeed, what he was proposing in his novel was, in his view, an ideal view of how society should be structured and ran, but in no way was it perfect. Living in Tudor England, Thomas More was faced with many conditions which he saw as unfit for the people and damaging to society, yet he also envisioned many ways that the status quo could be improved for the general public. Utopia belongs to an extensive genre of political writings concerned with an ideal commonwealth, a form of writing which can be traced back to its initiation with Plato’s Republic (Logan, p.7). With the publication of More’s bestseller a trend in literature began to ensue, resulting in a range of works we have since come to label ‘Utopian’.
Legislation in Utopian texts is generally reflective of the era in which they are written. For instance, in Thomas More’s time, there were a multitude of laws in place, many of which strictly regarded property and most of which were not intelligible to the uneducated masses. Until fairly recently in human history, many actions have carried the death sentence as a punishment. Property theft in More’s England, for example, was punishable by death. This legislation attempted to protect the wealthy since possessions were thought to be equivalent in value to human life or, rather, human life was less sacred than material acquisition and retention. These stringent laws continued to be established and enforced until they finally came to be known, in retrospect, as the ‘Bloody Code’, and one could find themselves at the gallows at the pinch of a hat, so to speak (Oldbaileyonline.org, 2014).
Many Utopian thinkers have held the view that crime in society, on the most part, is a direct result of poverty and property laws, and in their utopias they have set out to fix this via the abolishment of private property and the equal distribution of wealth. Therefore, we find in Utopia that theft is no longer treated in such a Draconian way. More, through the character of Raphael
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Hythloday, asserts that the death penalty as a punishment for thieves ‘is very hurtful to the weal- public’. He explains that sending such individuals to the gallows does not address the motivating factor – their poverty. ‘It is too extreme and cruel a punishment for theft, and yet not sufficient to refrain and withhold men from theft’. More also criticises the vastness and complexity of legislation in his time, likening men of the law to ‘evil schoolmasters, which be readier to beat than to teach their scholars’ (19). Likewise, in a collection of essays entitled A New View of Society and Other Writings, Robert Owen attacks the idea that many ‘criminals’ act out of malevolence. He argues that the vast, contrived and ambiguous nature of legislation results in citizens who ‘acquire no other knowledge than that which compels them to conclude that those actions are the best they can perform’ (Owen, 22). Taking a tabula rasa approach to human nature, Owen’s ultimate contention is that humans

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