Utopian and Dystopian Political Thought in and after Thomas More’s "Utopia"

• In Event: Utopias/Dystopias: More to Orwell to Fukuyama

Abstract

In the early twentieth century, rival interpretations of Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) came into sharper disagreement with the rise of Soviet communism. Vladimir Lenin became so enthralled by Thomas More that he etched More’s name on one of the earliest reclamations of a Romanov statute for Soviet propaganda, the Alexander Garden Obelisk, in 1918. Karl Kautsky, a renowned orthodox Marxist, praised More in his book, Thomas More and His Utopia (1927), for inaugurating the age of socialism (Kautsky 1927, 1-3). Oscillating between Thomas More and Thomas Müntzer, Kautsky stressed the revolutionary elements of each thinker. He concludes the book by claiming that More’s influence and thinking “still lie before striving mankind,” a muted revolutionary call to arms. Ernst Bloch, a “warm-stream” Marxist philosopher, has developed the concept of the “Not-Yet-Conscious” as central to the utopian political imagination (Bloch 1954, 1955, 1959). His unorthodox Marxism that marries elements of Jewish mysticism to Marxist thought sits uneasily with the orthodox Marxism of Karl Kautsky. Nevertheless, both see the work of More not as pure Lucianic satire as found in More’s epigrams, but as the working out of genuine utopian thought. Utopia is first defined by the work itself to be “the best state of the commonwealth” (More 1516, 1) but also by its reception as “any place, state or situation of ideal perfection, any visionary scheme or system for an ideally perfect social order” (Gallagher 1964, introduction).

In opposition to the utopian camp of Kautsky and Bloch, the dystopian reading of Utopia has been always present in some form from its inception in 1516. Thomas More inhabited the humanistic circles of scholars on the continent which included Desiderius Erasmus, John Colet, and others who embraced satire as a means to instruct and delight. Nevertheless, the revival of this reading emerged with the magisterial work of R.W. Chambers’ Thomas More (1935). Mary Ahern at the New York Times praised this reading for not being superseded and correctly prophesying that it “will not be for a long time” (Ahern 1949, Section BR, 24). Loosely defined by Margaret Atwood as the opposite of utopian, the dystopian camp centers on Chambers’ reading of Utopia as a work of satire. Indeed, C.S. Lewis, a renowned Christian apologist and medieval scholar, states that Utopia is “not in the history of political thought” but “in that of fiction or satire” (Lewis in Nelson 1968, 66). This reading sees Thomas More as a Lucianic satirist who pokes fun at any attempt to actualize heaven on earth—to immanentize the eschaton. Providing much of the argumentative thrust is More’s interest in Augustine’s City of God. More lectured on Augustine’s text prior to writing Utopia, though unfortunately, there remains no evidence of the content of these lectures. By connecting More’s lectures on Augustine to his expertise in Lucianic satire, and uniting these to the context of More’s personal devotional faith, R.W. Chambers, R.S. Sylvester (1968) re-interpreted Utopia into a work of witty dystopian satire. A satire of actualizing the ideal republic, rather than a straightforward moral or political treatise that proposed a model of political paradise. In situating both camps, Quentin Skinner (1978, 1988), Eric Nelson (2001), Duncan Bell (2020), and Dominic Baker-Smith (2000) will play a central role.

I take a different approach to the work of More that does not ascribe wholly to the orthodox Marxist “utopian” reading nor the satirical “dystopian” reading of his signature work. In taking this approach, the paper attempts to explain what Frank E. Manuel and Fritzie P. Manuel call the “dialectical destiny” of Utopia (Manuel 1982, 149). Reformers, Marxist revolutionaries, and Catholic scholars claim the work of Thomas More for their own demonstrating Manuel’s so-called “dialectical destiny” (Manuel 1982, 149). The paper explains this dizzying destiny by marrying both readings together under the umbrella of education. Aligning More with his relationship to Plato’s Republic, I attempt to answer the following questions: Why do the disagreements over the reading of More’s Utopia play out along the lines of utopian and dystopian political thought? What explains the divergence between the two readings? How might seeing the work as an educational treatise illuminate the “dialectical destiny” of its polarizing readings? Similar to Gerard Wegemer’s excellent work on Utopia, I will argue that More attempts to educate the reader towards correct judgment through the work of the dialectic. Using the Republic as his guide, More encourages the reader to evaluate the characters for trustworthiness just as Morus judges Raphael Hythloday. In concluding the paper, I gesture towards an explanatory framework for the rise of utopian and dystopian political thought within modern Western political thought.

Author

• Chase B. Mendoza, University of Notre Dame