Sir Thomas More Research Paper

How would you feel if your dreams were crushed. This is what happened to a man named Vivien Thomas. Vivien Thomas was an African American man. He was saving up to go to college by doing carpenter jobs after school ever since he was 11. In 1930 Thomas was graduating from collage when the great depression happened.He lost his job. So he looked for work els ware.

In Thomas More’s book, he describes the ideal place to live. In the society he describes there is no greed, war nor corruption. More’s book implies that greed is the source of all evil and without it, we would live in Utopia. If I were to write a Part 2 of Utopia, I would include three new ideas. In addition to More’s descriptions, I would add a few of my own. It would be a place where there was no one suffered from mental illness, no hate, and crime did not exist.

In his book Utopia, Thomas More examines a society that seems to be the ideal living situation for human beings. The main thesis of Utopia is his solution to many of the problems that are being faced in English society in the early 16th century.

The sloth of governments abroad have led Utopians to pursue lives of group work rather than personal property. In Book I, Hythloday confronts the wealthy as "rapacious, wicked, and useless, while the poor are unassuming, modest

“Ideas shape the course of history”- John Maynard Keynes, Economist. History has a way of always changing things. We get these ideas of how to the make the world better, how to make a country better, how a make a city better. All of these ideas of what would make the perfect place to be in. We all envision a perfect place for us to live in. We envision what the government would look like, how the government would look like. But it is not just the government we envision our own perfect way. Economic structures, religious beliefs, social customs, and legal systems, we envision these things to be perfect, according to our own wants and desires. In Sir Thomas More’s Utopia that is exactly is happening. Utopia is defined as an imagined place or

Freedom in a utopian society is considered to be impeccable. Freedom was given to all and force by other people wouldn’t be necessary for this perfect place. But, during the Gilded Age, freedom wasn’t for everyone. People like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller (or the captains of industry) had more freedom than the workers of the time. Workers during this age had less freedom for the fact that they didn’t have nearly as much money as the Captains of Industry. With the low wages of this era, it was pretty much impossible to make money, unless your business became profoundly popular to the point where you could then call yourself a robber baron. For example: while workers and other middle-lower class people were at their jobs, high-class and other citizens with money were out and about doing things that they please. This was mainly for the fact that they could because they had the money to do so. So, in the reality of that time freedom was most definitely not for everyone. Now on to another ideal that should be honored in a utopian society.

In Thomas More’s Utopia, the elimination of property and money has all citizens working for the commonwealth. It is “where every man has a right to everything. They all know that if care is taken to keep the public stores full, no private man can want anything. For among them there is no unequal distribution so that no man is poor, none in necessity and though no man has anything, yet they are all rich” (More 81). More’s Utopia also encourages a balance of power within society. It is where an individual, in a position of power, is not “as idle as drones, that subsist on other men’s labor” (More 7) It is where that individual gives “more regard to the riches of his country than to his wealth” (More 21).

There are different opinions towards inequality, some people are accepting of it while others dislike the whole idea of inequality. Is it okay to let the wealthy have more control than the poor? Should their ideas matter more than the non-wealthy? And most importantly should the poor be okay with this, if not what must they do? In “Gospel of Wealth” by Andrew Carnegie and “The Communist Manifesto” by Karl Marx, both Carnegie and Marx expose their thoughts behind inequality and its traits. They both focus and touch upon the poor (proletarians) and the rich (bourgeoisie). They bring up the pros and cons about inequality, capitalism, and communism. Inequality was in Carnegie 's view. In his opinion progress required the processes of competition. Making capitalism an engine of progress. Carnegie believed that there is good to inequality while Marx begs to differ. Marx had his own view on capitalism, he believed that it would eventually result disastrous. Marx believed communism was the best solution to keep both the proletarians and bourgeoisie in an equal place. Both of these socialists have much to say about capitalism and communism and also for economic inequality. They both share different points of view, neither wrong or right. Their opinions are based towards their life experiences and this essay will be noting the differences between they share on inequality, the means of production, and capitalism.

The new idea of equality led to a very different political theory in Utopia. More stated Plato when writing: "a happy state of society will never be achieved, until philosophers are kings, or kings take to studying philosophy" (More 57). In Utopia, it is obvious that philosophical thought created their government. Citizens of Utopia have no private property, for everything is based on communal ownership. A form of democracy is established by electing officials and a Mayor of each settlement. The government does not dominate, but guides society to flourish. Respect for human rights and equality indeed play a role in the government, and the well being of its people is the goal, not money, land or capitol goods.

"The vast majority of Utopians "¦ believe in a single power, unknown, eternal, infinite, inexplicable, far beyond the grasp of the human mind, and diffused throughout the universe, not physically but in influence. Him they call father, and to him alone they attribute the origin, increase, progress, change, and end of all visible things; they do not offer divine honors to any other. "¦ (Utopus) left the whole matter (choosing a religion) open, allowing each person to choose what he would believe. The only exception was a positive and strict law against anyone who would sink so far below the dignity of human nature as to think that the soul perishes with the body, or that the universe is ruled by blind chance, not divine providence. "¦ Therefore a man who holds such views is offered no honors, entrusted with no offices, and given no public responsibility, he is universally regarded as a low and sordid fellow"� (pp.516-518 This excerpt shows the ambivalence that More has about human nature. He sees man as essentially good but whenever an individual has ideas of their own they are regarded as inferior. This creates another

Over centuries the idea of GNI came up repeatedly. In the last decade, however this idea has become the subject of a fast expanding political discussion due to growing social problems. Some see it as a crucial remedy for poverty and unemployment, others denounce it as utopian and impossible. In the beginning of the renaissance, the task of looking out for the welfare of poor people was almost an exclusive right of the Church and charitable individuals. Some of these so-called humanists started planting the idea of minimal income in the form of a public assistance. Thomas More (1478-1535) the author of Utopia was one of the first to argue for an income granted for the poor and declared that “No penalty on Earth will stop people from stealing, if it is their only way of getting food.

In the Prince, Machiavelli writes that it is "better to be both loved and feared." (The Prince) Machiavelli describes how it is important to be seen as powerful to your subjects, but you should not be so evil that your subjects may actually want to rebel. In Utopia, More wants a government where the leaders try to do their best to bring happiness to all of the country. The Prince comes from the notion that you must have complete psychological control over your people to really be able to have power. In Utopia, the leaders' important goal is for everybody to be happy and satisfied. Only this would bring a peaceful and prosperous society.

John Watson pioneered a new approach to viewing psychology. By making known an underutilized approach to studying psychology, John Watson opened a whole new door to researching how and why people behave the way they do. John Broadus Watson left a huge impression on the world of psychology with his new and unconventional approach of behaviorism and his Little Watson experiment.

A utopian community would be a world without oppression, discrimination or social hierarchy—essentially, an ideal place to live. However, does a perfect society really exist? In Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, More flirts with the concept of a utopian community with regard to geography, city structure, labor, government and religion. Considering these aspects, the community depicted in Utopia is primarily a success, with limited failures.

Thomas More, Niccolo Machiavelli, and Thomas Hobbes offer models for the relationship between the sovereign and the people in their works Utopia, The Discourses, and The Leviathan. Each argues that ensuring the common good of the people should be the primary goal of the sovereign. However, they differ in the specifics of their descriptions of this relationship and in their explanations of the sovereign’s motivation for valuing the prosperity of the people. An examination of the specified passages in each of these works will clarify the comparison of their models for this relationship.