INTRODUCTION
A utopia is a community or society possessing highly desirable or near perfect qualities. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt to create an ideal society, and imagined societies portrayed in fiction.
There are many books that are written utopian in the world. In this study, I aim to discuss about utopia from Utopia by Thomas More.
Every utopic books such as utopia are criticism of their time’s social and economic conditions. Utopias are usually on an island and they are not exposed to external impacts. Utopias are the ideal state that may exist on the earth. They are a place where is the end of dreams and criticism. Most obvious common feature is looking for people’s happiness. And a social
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Summarize the first chapter of utopia; Thomas More emphasizes that there is an overbearing king and a society in chaos. The environment where freedom of conscience and religious tolerance do not exist. It is the main idea of this part that only the upper layer benefits from the education, a small minority is rich and wealthy, and the majority is poor and scarce.
In the second chapter Rapheal (actually he is Thomas More) describe the Utopia in detail as if he had seen Utopia with his eyes and as if the Utopia is a real place.
In the following I will explain how the viewpoints of Utopia to executives, family and marriage, lifestyles, law, education, religion and war.
1. Executives
Thirty families elect a leader who is called Philarch every year. Ten phliarch with three hundred families are under the rule of somebody who is called head of philarch. Two hundred choose president from one of the four candidates with secret ballot. If the president do not be dictator, he will president until his death. Philarches are selected every year. And the other duties is annual. Head of philarch meet to president every three days and they discuss to country’s problems. Then they resolve
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In this study, I analyzed the book’s viewpoints of the state and society. While I analyze the book, I divide it to topics. I looked that how this book analyzed to family and marriage, executives, education, religion, law and rules, war, economy and people’s lifestyles.
In Utopia, people have to work six hours per day. The rest of time is for education or entertainment.
There is no private property in Utopia, with goods being stored in warehouses and people requesting what they need. There are also no locks on the doors of the houses, which are rotated between the citizens every ten years. Agriculture is the most important job on the island.
There are several religions in the Utopia: moon-worshipers, sun-worshipers, planet-worshipers, ancestor-worshipers and monotheists, but each is tolerant of the others. Only atheists are despised (but allowed) in Utopia, as they are seen as representing a danger to the state: since they do not believe in any punishment or reward after this life, they have no reason to share the communistic life of Utopia, and will break the laws for their own gain. They are not banished, but are encouraged to talk out their erroneous beliefs with the priests until they are convinced of their error. Raphael says that through his teachings Christianity was beginning to take hold in Utopia. The toleration of all other religious ideas is enshrined
A utopia is a place of ideal perfection. However, according to the Merriam-Webster, it is also an impractical scheme for social improvement. Though dating back to the earliest days of U.S. history, utopian communities became a part of American thought by the 1840s. Various groups that were struggling because of urbanization and industrialization, challenged the traditional norms of American society with a desire to create a world without capitalism, immigration, and the tension between communities. However, these attempts failed due to individualism, materialism, the lack of growth, and little balance.
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 world that the narrator imagines is uniquely utopian because it is not static. It is constantly trying to improve itself. Before discussion of how Utopia constantly improves itself, it is interesting to note that this statement implies that this Utopia is not perfect. This is acknowledged near the beginning of the book when the two men meet a traveler who questions the establishment and would rather there be buildings. He says; "[Buildings are] a mere rash. Why should we men play the part of bacteria upon the face of our Mother?"(116). Still this he is not separate from civilization, as he makes, "some considerable way above the minimum wage" (117). This man’s protest of the establishment is the first hint that this new world does not claim to be perfect. In fact, later in the novel, the Voice admits that "There is no perfection, there is no enduring treasure"
Every person has their own personal vision of utopia. My utopia may be filled with libraries and cats, while yours would probably look very different. In Frankenstein, Shelley gives us Victor Frankenstein, a man who envisions a world where he will never feel the pain of losing someone he loves again. He devises a way to cheat
Although comparing one society to another does not require them to be different in government or human behavior, it does necessarily weight one’s faults against its victories to render it better or worse than the other. This comparative structure, found between Thomas More’s two books of Utopia, poses the country of Utopia opposite the broader communities of world civilization. Despite the comparison of Utopia as distinct from and morally better than widespread society, in truth Utopia is, at best, an extension.
The term utopia is often coined as an ideal or perfect society. In Sir Thomas More “Utopia” such a society is presented. However, today’s reader can see that this ideal or perfect society is filled with many underlying problems that make it not utopic or even dystopic. To exemplify the society More’s mention puts a strain on the freedom and relationship the citizens have with its country in to question. Such an act is detrimental in creating a utopia because if the citizens are not happy with the freedom and rights they are given how can the society itself be presented as a utopia, it is instead like a prison.
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).
The concept of utopia is one which has many differing connotations and is therefore also one which cannot be confined to one interpretation alone. The term is commonly used to represent a community or society that, in theory, possesses highly desirable or near-‘perfect’ qualities; however, these encompassing ideals, which arguably place emphasis on egalitarian principles of equality, are implemented in a number of ways and are subsequently based on varying ideologies, thus insisting on varying views of morality. The word itself, which was first coined by Sir Thomas More in the early sixteenth century and used to describe a fictional island society in the Atlantic Ocean, was taken from the Greek οὐ (‘not’) and τόπος (‘place’), literally translating
Each person has their own vision of utopia. Utopia means an ideal state, a paradise, a land of enchantment. It has been a central part of the history of ideas in Western Civilization. Philosophers and writers continue to imagine and conceive plans for an ideal state even today. They use models of ideal government to express their ideas on contemporary issues and political conditions. Man has never of comparing the real and ideal, actuality and dream, and the stark facts of human condition and hypothetical versions of optimum life and government.
Thomas Mores Utopia has more of a community sense. People are forced to believe that the purpose for working is for the good of the public. No matter what a persons status or rank is, they must learn the basics of Agriculture during their childhood. As mentioned by Thomas More, “Every year of this family come back to town after
however, differ considerably. The goal of Utopia is to illustrate the maintenance of an “ideal”
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.
Utopia is a brilliant novel written by Thomas More. The idea of a utopia seems impossible, how can anyone live in a perfect place when perfection is in the eyes of the beholder? The Utopia in this novel is nothing more than abundant of already established ideas therefore it can’t not truly be a Utopia.
Each citizen of Utopia should value total and complete equality above all else. Total and complete equality encompasses social matters and governmental matters; no individual is above another in any capacity. This also applies to dealings with the structure of government: the needs of the individual are equal to the needs of the government because the government is the people. This is achieved through the elimination of social hierarchy. Man cannot think of himself as better than his peers if they are equal parts of a whole.