Utopia. Mark Stephen Jendrysik
Чтение книги онлайн.

Читать онлайн книгу Utopia - Mark Stephen Jendrysik страница 5

Название: Utopia

Автор: Mark Stephen Jendrysik

Издательство: John Wiley & Sons Limited

Жанр: Афоризмы и цитаты

Серия:

isbn: 9781509534944

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ the only thing that sets us apart from the animals. The organized struggle for power and authority conditions our lives and our societies. Second, if Aristotle is also correct that the good state is based on friendship (1996: 75), then politics becomes the art of working together and moving toward some realization of the common good. No state can be fully legitimate unless it is based on the actions of those who are equal, since true friendship is based in equality.

      The political animal, then, is an autonomous individual who is able to think and act freely as a person. The political animal is not an individualist, valuing personal goals above all else. But the political animal is able to think and act and, most critically, decide whether or not to accept the values and goals of an existing society. Obviously, the extent of an individual’s autonomy cannot be fixed. It will vary depending on many circumstances. But, to address honestly the central problem in utopian thought, the place of the individual in the perfected community, utopian thinkers must come to grips with the political animal.

      Utopia is a humanistic enterprise. It is based in the belief that society can be understood by human beings and changed for the better. Any utopian theory worth discussing must recognize the value of our fellow beings and our moral relation to them. Recognizing a common good extending beyond the self, the family, or a particular religious or ethnic community remains the greatest and most utopian aspiration of all.

      Utopianism might be described as a continuum. On one side, we see efforts at reform, exemplified by the “realistic utopia” advocated by the great philosopher of liberalism John Rawls (2001). At the other extreme, we find bold visions of the complete overhaul of society, first seen in Plato’s (possibly) perfect community delineated in Republic. Gregory Claeys says utopia “generally represents … a guided improvement in human behavior towards a substantially better condition, usually where society is considerably more equal and people are much better behaved” (2017: 265). The idea of a better, more just world seems to be a natural human aspiration. Utopianism is the desire to attain that better world here and soon, not in some distant future or after-death state.

      In all its many forms, utopia critiques the existing order and, in doing so, “contributes to the open space of opposition” (Moylan 2014: 1). Utopia can be ambiguous, questioning its own very possibility. Utopian writers can demonstrate the dangerous potentials of utopia in dystopian works. Utopian ideas contribute to feminism and queer theory. Utopia may be found in small spaces outside of social norms, as in the heterotopia described by Michel Foucault.

      Lyman Tower Sargent defines a utopia as:

      A non-existent society described in considerable detail and normally located in time and space. In standard usage utopia is used both as defined here as an equivalent for eutopia or a non-existent society described in considerable detail and normally located in time and space that the author intended a contemporaneous reader to view as considerably better than the society in which that reader lived. (2010: 6)

      Ruth Levitas provides a definition that helps explain the place of utopia in political thought:

      Utopia provides a platform to criticize our times and to work toward something better. Any utopian work or theory provides an alternative to present social, economic and political organiz­ation. The “Imaginary Reconstruction of Society” must be followed by efforts to really reconstruct society. It is not enough to criticize; we must also provide answers to our seemingly insurmountable problems. But simply reading More’s second book of Utopia, where he gives the reader a report on the close to perfect society of the Utopians, without reading the first book, where he delineates the injustice and imperfection of England in his own times, misses the point. The mixed critique at the heart of utopia remains its critical feature, even when, in the present, dystopian speculations seem to have replaced utopia. Utopian dreams still insinuate themselves into our current dystopias. As Lucy Sargisson has noted, contemporary works mix “eutopian and dystopian possibilities for the human race” (2012: 12).

      Krishan Kumar suggests that four primary elements constitute utopia. First, he says that utopia contains the “element of desire,” which he describes as an “escape from toil and suffering.” Second, utopia means “harmony.” In utopia, “everyone is at peace with himself and with other men.” Third, all utopias provide “hope.” Utopia is the “promise of a new dispensation” where “justice and freedom reign.” Finally, utopia is organized by self-conscious “design.” Kumar says that these four elements combine to give us “a map of quite different possibilities for speculating on the human condition” (1991: 18–19).