Transcript Lecture - Utopias

Utopias
Alexander Watson
Ideas and Identities
6 February 2014
Introduction
• What is a ‘Utopia’?
• Thomas More’s Utopia
• Utopias in History
- The Anabaptists of the 16th
century
- The Russian revolution in the
1920s and 1930s
- ‘Flower Children’ in the 1960s
• Conclusion
Woodcut showing Thomas More’s
imaginary island of Utopia, from the
1518 edition of his book.
I. Etymology
‘Utopia’ (from Ancient Greek topos) = ‘noplace’ or ‘non-place’, i.e. place that does
not exist (yet)
Also pun on ‘eutopia’ = ‘happy place’
Definition
i) utopia [noun]
– 1. An imaginary island, depicted by Sir Thomas More as
enjoying a perfect social, legal, and political system.
– 2. A place, state, or condition ideally perfect in respect of
politics, laws, customs, and conditions.
ii) utopian [adjective]
– 1a. possessing or regarded as having impossibly or
extravagantly ideal conditions in respect of politics,
customs, social organization.
– 1b. Involving, based or founded on, imaginary or
chimerical perfection; impossibly ideal, visionary.
Classical Authors
Plato (Republic II.369b-372e) Aristotle (Politics VII.i-viii)
Method for designing an ideal commonwealth:
1. Determine what = happiest life for individuals
2. Derive from these the communal goals, the
attainment of which result in the happiness of
citizens
3. Determine what physical and institutional
components the commonwealth must include
4. Determine the particular forms that each
component should be given so that collectively
they will constitute the best commonwealth
II. Key Early Modern Utopian Text:
Sir Thomas More, Utopia
• Thomas More (1478-1535) –
Lord Chancellor, Humanist &
Martyr
• Published Utopia in 1516 in
Latin and 1551 in English
• Book I is about 16th century
England: attack on moral
values and behaviour
• Book II = traveller's account
of Utopia: description of the
‘best commonwealth’
• Comparison of morally
corrupt Christian society and Sir Thomas More (1527)
Portrait by Hans Holbein
laudable pagan society
III. The Anabaptists
• 16th century protestant sect in
German-speaking lands
• Among the heretical views of
some influential parts of the
sect was belief in Community
of Goods
Book title page: ‘The Description of
the severall Sorts of Anabaptists’
‘All the believers were one in
heart and mind. No-one claimed
that any of his possessions was
his own, but they shared everything they had.’
Acts 4, 32
The Anabaptists (2)
• Münster (Feb. 1534 – June 1535)
- Belief in Apocalypse (Easter 1534).
The ‘godless’ were expelled and
their property redistributed.
- Community of goods proclaimed.
Money economy and records of
dues & interest abolished.
• Hutterite Communities in
Moravia
Cages for Anabaptists hanging from
Münster Cathedral
- The Bruderhof (from late 1530s).
70 with c.40,000 people by
1590s.
- Community, not family households.
IV. The Russian Revolution
Soviet utopian propaganda:
‘Every day more and more joyful life!’
• Utopianism unleashed
by Russian revolution
• 1920s efforts to create a
rational & equal society
• Hardship & repression
within system
• Under Stalin (1928-53)
Myth of wellbeing,
iconography of
happiness and cult of
benevolent ruler
V. Flower People
Hippies attending the Pot Rally at Hyde
Park, London, 16 July 1967
• Hippies in the 1960s:
style, nature, pacifism,
music and esp. drugs
• 1967 – ‘Summer of
Love’ in San Francisco
• Flower power – form
of non-violent protest
• Communalism and antimaterialism
‘Hippies preach altruism and mysticism, honesty, joy and
nonviolence ... Their professed aim is nothing less than the
subversion of Western Society by “flower power”’
Time Magazine, 7 July 1967
‘Imagine’ by John Lennon (1971)
Imagine there's no heaven.
It's easy if you try.
No hell below us,
above us only sky.
Imagine all the people,
living for today...
Imagine there's no
countries.
It isn't hard to do.
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too.
Imagine all the people,
living life in peace...
You may say I'm a dreamer,
but I'm not the only one.
I hope some day you'll join us,
and the world will live as one.
Imagine no possessions,
I wonder if you can.
No need for greed or hunger,
a brotherhood of man.
Imagine all the people,
sharing all the world...
Conclusion
• Utopias today
- Bhutan and Gross National
Happiness
- Utopias and Dystopias
•Utopias’ attractions
for historians
- Reveal contemporaries’
concerns & grievances
- Testify to the outer limits
of the imagination for a
society
Bhutanese people at the Wangdi
Phodrang festival, 2004