Utopia

Title

The title De optimo rei publicae statu deque nova insula Utopia literally translates to "Of a republic's best state and of the new island Utopia."

It is variously rendered as any of the following:

On the Best State of a Republic and on the New Island of Utopia

Concerning the Highest State of the Republic and the New Island Utopia

On the Best State of a Commonwealth and on the New Island of Utopia

Concerning the Best Condition of the Commonwealth and the New Island of Utopia

On the Best Kind of a Republic and About the New Island of Utopia

About the Best State of a Commonwealth and the New Island of Utopia

The first created original name was even longer: Libellus vere aureus, nec minus salutaris quam festivus, de optimo rei publicae statu deque nova insula Utopia. This translates to, "A truly golden little book, no less beneficial than entertaining, of a republic's best state and of the new island Utopia."

Utopia is derived from the Greek prefix "ou-" (οὔ), meaning "not", and topos (τόπος), "place," with the suffix -iā (-ίᾱ) that is typical of toponyms; the name literally means "nowhere", emphasizing its fictionality. In early modern English, Utopia was spelled "Utopie", which is today rendered Utopy in some editions.

In fact, More's very first name for the island was Nusquama, the Latin equivalent of "no-place", but he eventually opted for the Greek-influenced name.

In English, Utopia is pronounced the same as Eutopia (the latter word, in Greek Εὐτοπία [Eutopiā], meaning "good place," contains the prefix εὐ- [eu-], "good", with which the οὔ of Utopia has come to be confused in the English pronunciation). That is something that More himself addresses in an addendum to his book: Wherfore not Utopie, but rather rightely my name is Eutopie, a place of felicitie.

Contents

Preliminary matter

The first edition contained a woodcut map of the island of Utopia, the Utopian alphabet, verses by Pieter Gillis, Gerard Geldenhouwer, and Cornelius Grapheus, and Thomas More's epistle dedicating the work to Gillis.

Book 1: Dialogue of Counsel

The work begins with written correspondence between Thomas More and several people he had met in Europe: Peter Gilles, town clerk of Antwerp, and Hieronymus van Busleyden, counselor to Charles V. More chose those letters, which are communications between actual people, to further the plausibility of his fictional land. In the same spirit, the letters also include a specimen of the Utopian alphabet and its poetry. The letters explain the lack of widespread travel to Utopia; someone had coughed during the announcement of its exact longitude and latitude. The first book tells of the traveller Raphael Hythlodaeus, to whom More is introduced in Antwerp, and it also explores the subject of how best to counsel a prince, a popular topic at the time.

The first discussions with Raphael allow him to discuss some of the modern ills affecting Europe such as the tendency of kings to start wars and the subsequent loss of money on fruitless endeavours. He also criticises the use of execution to punish theft by saying that thieves might as well murder whom they rob, to remove witnesses, if the punishment is going to be the same, the abstract principle being "never to make it safer to follow out an evil plan than to repent of it." He lays most of the problems of theft on the practice of enclosure, the enclosing of common land, and the subsequent poverty and starvation of people who are denied access to land because of sheep farming.

More tries to convince Raphael that he could find a good job as a royal advisor, but Raphael says that his views are too radical and would not be listened to. Raphael sees himself in the tradition of Plato: he knows that for good governance, kings must act philosophically. He, however, points out:

Plato doubtless did well foresee, unless kings themselves would apply their minds to the study of philosophy, that else they would never thoroughly allow the council of philosophers, being themselves before, even from their tender age, infected and corrupt with perverse and evil opinions.

More seems to contemplate the duty of philosophers to work around and in real situations and, for the sake of political expediency, work within flawed systems to make them better, rather than hoping to start again from first principles.

Book 2: Discourse on Utopia

Utopia is placed in the New World and More links Raphael's travels with Amerigo Vespucci's real life voyages of discovery. He suggests that Raphael is one of the 24 men that Vespucci says he left for six months at Cabo Frio, Brazil in his Four Voyages of 1507. Raphael then travels further and finds the island of Utopia, where he spends five years observing the customs of the natives.

According to More, the island of Utopia is …two hundred miles across in the middle part, where it is widest, and nowhere much narrower than this except towards the two ends, where it gradually tapers. These ends, curved round as if completing a circle five hundred miles in circumference, make the island crescent-shaped, like a new moon.

The island was originally a peninsula but a 15-mile wide channel was dug by the community's founder King Utopos to separate it from the mainland. The island contains 54 cities. Each city is divided into four equal parts. The capital city, Amaurot, is located directly in the middle of the crescent island.

Each city has not more than 6000 households, each family consisting of between 10 and 16 adults. Thirty households are grouped together and elect a Syphograntus (whom More says is now called a phylarchus). Every ten Syphogranti have an elected Traniborus (more recently called a protophylarchus) ruling over them. The 200 Syphogranti of a city elect a Prince in a secret ballot. The Prince stays for life unless he is deposed or removed for suspicion of tyranny.

People are redistributed around the households and towns to keep numbers even. If the island suffers from overpopulation, colonies are set up on the mainland. Alternatively, the natives of the mainland are invited to be part of the Utopian colonies, but if they dislike them and no longer wish to stay, they may return. In the case of underpopulation, the colonists are recalled.

There is no private property on Utopia, with goods being stored in warehouses and people requesting what they need. There are also no locks on the doors of the houses, and the houses are rotated between the citizens every ten years. Agriculture provides the most important occupation on the island. Every person is taught it and must live in the countryside, farming for two years at a time, with women doing the same work as men. Similarly, every citizen must learn at least one of the other essential trades: weaving (mainly done by the women), carpentry, metalsmithing and masonry. There is deliberate simplicity about the trades; for instance, all people wear the same types of simple clothes, and there are no dressmakers making fine apparel. All able-bodied citizens must work; thus, unemployment is eradicated, and the length of the working day can be minimized. The people have to work only six hours a day although many willingly work for longer. More does allow scholars in his society to become the ruling officials or priests, people picked during their primary education for their ability to learn. All other citizens, however, are encouraged to apply themselves to learning in their leisure time.

Framework

The story is written from the perspective of More himself. That was common at the time, and More uses his own name and background to create the narrator. The book is written in two parts: "Book one: Dialogue of Council," and "Book two: Discourse on Utopia."

The first book is told from the perspective of More, the narrator, who is introduced by his friend Peter Giles to a fellow traveller named Raphael Hythloday, whose name translates as "expert of nonsense" in Greek. In an amicable dialogue with More and Giles, Hythloday expresses strong criticism of then-modern practices in England and other Catholicism-dominated countries, such as the crime of theft being punishable by death, and the over-willingness of kings to start wars.

Book two has Hythloday tell his interlocutors about Utopia, where he has lived for five years, with the aim of convincing them about its superior state of affairs. Utopia turns out to share many of the features of (what would come to be called) a socialist state.

Interpretation

One of the most troublesome questions about Utopia is Thomas More's reason for writing it. Most scholars see it as a comment on or criticism of 16th-century Catholicism since the evils of More's day are laid out in Book I and in many ways apparently solved in Book II. However, other scholars point to the fact that many of the solutions of Book II contradict those beliefs actually held by More the author, who never advocated for the truth of a perfect Utopian society. Instead, it is likely that the fictional island was simply a progressive step away from the world in which he lived.

Raphael's sentiments in Book I can be read as anti-monarchist, reflective of the internal debate that More later grappled with. England had recently (1513) conquered the region of Tournai in modern-day Belgium, and Henry VIII was adopting increasingly imperialist and absolutist statements in his contentious letters with Pope Leo X, which alarmed several of his courtiers. More, who lived nearby and visited Tournai at the time, responded in Book II with the ideal of a republic: "an elected prince, hedged by a council of Syphogrants, in order to make tyranny impossible;" without any notion of sovereignty.

Recent scholarship has also attempted to provide a new way in which to explore the questions surrounding More's intent by shedding light on the complicated ways in which Utopia handles the humanist principles that had grown popular by the 16th century. Building on the earlier work of J.H. Hexter, who argued that Utopia is to be read as an example of More's critique of Christian humanism, modern scholars have suggested that Utopia is actually an example of More's criticism of the humanist principles advanced by his contemporary and friend, Erasmus. Classical scholar Giulia Sissa claims that Hythloday is a parody of Erasmus further arguing that Utopia was meant more as a satirization of Erasmus' In Praise of Folly which Utopia does seem to mimic structurally. This, along with other implicit details of Utopia, present an argument against the notion that Utopia was meant to be understood as More's suggestion of a serious political theory. However, the understanding of Utopia as a parody of Erasmus is perhaps made more complicated when considered alongside the fact that Erasmus is known to have read the second book of Utopia prior to its publication and was even inspired to write a poem to be included in the work.

Also, the puzzle is that some of the practices and institutions of the Utopians, such as the ease of divorce, euthanasia and both married priests and female priests, seem to be polar opposites of More's beliefs and the teachings of the Catholic Church of which he was a devout member. Another often cited contradiction, as noted by scholars, including Leland Miles, is that of the religious tolerance of Utopia contrasted with his alleged persecution of Protestants as Lord Chancellor. Similarly, the criticism of lawyers comes from a writer who, as Lord Chancellor, was arguably the most influential lawyer in England, but who had championed the introduction of the new legal principle of equity into English law. It can be answered, however, that as a pagan society Utopians had the best ethics that could be reached through reason alone; or that officers of the Crown, as servants of the law and King, must do things they personally disagree with; or that More changed from his early life to his later when he was Lord Chancellor.

Historical context

Utopia began while More was an envoy in the Low Countries in May 1515. More started by writing the introduction and the description of the society that would become the second half of the work, and on his return to England, he wrote the "dialogue of counsel." The work was completed in September 1516 and was given to Desiderius Erasmus. In the same year, it was printed in Leuven under Erasmus's editorship, and after revisions by More, it was printed in Basel in November 1518. It was not until 1551, sixteen years after More's execution, that it was first published in England as an English translation by Ralph Robinson. As noted in a study by David Weil Baker, which was discussed by William T. Cotton, there was a second translation by Ralph Robinson in 1556. Gilbert Burnet's translation of 1684 is probably the most commonly cited version.

During the English Renaissance, many writers and scholars (including More) had a deep interest in ancient Greek and Roman literature. As a result, many English scholars identified with Humanist philosophy, a school of thought drawing from antiquity that is interested in the individual human experience, human potential, and the power of logic and reason. More's Humanist ideas and knowledge of texts from antiquity, specifically Plato, is a widely accepted influence of More's socialist society in Utopia. The intended audience for Utopia would have been More's intellectual peer group, a society of Northern Renaissance Humanists.

Raphael and More's debate in Book I about the duty of philosophers likely mirrors issues that More himself was contemplating in his real life. In Thomas More on Statesmanship, Gerard Wegemer writes that during More's time lecturing under the direction of William Grocyn, More was forced to "confront all the hopes and dreams of the Renaissance, at a time when [More] was trying to decide whether he should work in the city or leave that city to join a monastery." Additionally, More spent several years as a Carthusian monk, followed by working as a reader at Furnival's Inn for three years, all the while contemplating his commitment to a lifetime of active service to the commonwealth or contemplative service to the Church.

More also worked for a brief time as an English merchant during the infancy of England's participation in the European capitalist market. More saw first-hand the effects that the rising demand for wool had on farm workers, such as people getting expelled from their land, increasing poverty, and rising crime rates. Karl Kautsky theorizes that this caused More to develop a critical attitude toward capitalism, reflected in the socialist ideals of Utopia.

Influence

The word 'utopia', invented by More as the name of his fictional island and used as the title of his book, has since entered the English language to describe any imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect. The antonym 'dystopia' is used for hypothetical places of great suffering or injustice, including systems that present or market themselves as utopian but actually have terrible other sides to them.

Although he may not have directly founded the contemporary notion of what has since become known as Utopian and dystopian fiction, More certainly popularised the idea of imagined parallel realities, and some of the early works that owe a debt to Utopia must include The City of the Sun by Tommaso Campanella, Description of the Republic of Christianopolis by Johannes Valentinus Andreae, New Atlantis by Francis Bacon and Candide by Voltaire.

Utopian socialism was used to describe the first concepts of socialism; connections can be drawn between Marx's writings and the ideas presented in Utopia. Similarly to More, Marx equates private property ownership to class oppression and calls for its abolishment in The German Ideology. Both would have agreed on the importance of the communal ownership of land in addition to owning the means of production. Additionally, Marx likely would have held related views regarding sheep enclosures in England. He wrote that landlords of this period were "transformed into the captain of industry, into a capitalist," referring to the exploitation of tenant farmers by landowners. Marx and More both disapproved of capital punishment and saw the possibility of fulfillment and contentment for individuals living in a society in which property is communally owned. However, later Marxist theorists tend to see More's ideas as too simplistic and not grounded on realistic principles.

Some theorists argue that More created Utopia as purposefully idealistic, similar to Plato’s Republic or Laws, which are major sources More draws from in Utopia. The specificities of More’s idealistic versus pragmatic approach to socialism has been debated by many scholars.

An applied example of More's Utopia can be seen in Vasco de Quiroga's implemented society in Michoacán, Mexico, which was directly inspired by More's work. This began with the Hospitals of Santa Fe, which served as a safe-haven for Indigenous people. Quiroga's society mirrored Utopia in a few obvious ways: the lands of the "hospital towns" were regarded as communal property, inhabitants were encouraged to learn a manual trade alongside the main trade of agriculture, workdays were only six hours long, and profits were distributed equally among the people.