Tag: Utopia

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Thomas More, Utopia

Sir Thomas More (1478-1535),  who was executed in July 1535 for his resistance to supporting the separation of the Church of England from the Catholic Church of Rome, was a jurist, intellectual, statesman and Lord Chancellor of Henry VIII of England, who ruled from 1509 to 1547. A highly principled man of deep values, More disagreed with the monarch’s divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536), and especially with the promotion of Henry as head of the Church of England in place of the pope. Before his foray into politics, Thomas More was a renowned writer and scholar, and his most recognisable work today is Utopia, which presents a philosophical description of an ideal society set on an island.

Below, some passages from Thomas More’s Utopia will be discussed in the style of the Minerva Strategy Blog.

“There are no taverns, no ale-houses, nor stews among them, nor any other occasions of corrupting each other, of getting into corners, or forming themselves into parties; all men live in full view, so that all are obliged both to perform their ordinary task and to employ themselves well in their spare hours; and it is certain that a people thus ordered must live in great abundance of all things, and these being equally distributed among them, no man can want or be obliged to beg” (Thomas More, Utopia).

It is significant that Thomas More’s utopian society discards private vices: alcohol, prostitution, gossip, the underworld, and rather, citizens focus on honest work. This means that goods should be distributed equally, without great inequalities or the tale of the lazy grasshopper and the hard-working ant.

“Yet they do not place happiness in all sorts of pleasures, but only in those that in themselves are good and honest. There is a party among them who place happiness in bare virtue; others think that our natures are conducted by virtue to happiness, as that which is the chief good of man. They define virtue thus—that it is a living according to Nature” (Thomas More, Utopia).

Aristotle argues that the purpose of human beings is eudaimonia, a Greek term usually translated as happiness, human flourishing, or good life. This concept is linked to the exercise of virtues such as prudence or temperance. However, there are different conceptions of happiness and pleasure, which some positions unify. What Thomas More says here is that only good and honest pleasure leads to happiness. His life is an example of honesty and courage in dying for what he believed in, against his personal well-being. 

““They think it is an evidence of true wisdom for a man to pursue his own advantage as far as the laws allow it, they account it piety to prefer the public good to one’s private concerns, but they think it unjust for a man to seek for pleasure by snatching another man’s pleasures from him; and, on the contrary, they think it a sign of a gentle and good soul for a man to dispense with his own advantage for the good of others, and that by this means a good man finds as much pleasure one way as he parts with another; for as he may expect the like from others when he may come to need it, so, if that should fail him, yet the sense of a good action, and the reflections that he makes on the love and gratitude of those whom he has so obliged, gives the mind more pleasure than the body could have found in that from which it had restrained itself” (Thomas More, Utopia).

There are several levels of possible strategic interactions between human beings: a) Silver Rule: Reciprocate the response obtained from the other party. It is the biblical ‘an eye for an eye’ or TITforTAT strategy; b) Golden Rule as reciprocity expectation: Treat others as you would like to be treated, with the expectation that they will do the same to you in the future; c) Golden Rule as unlimited altruism: Treat others as you would like to be treated, as part of your philosophy, without expecting anything in return. It is known as love your enemy; d) Platinum Rule: Treat others as others would like to be treated. Here the aim is to go against the particularism of the Golden Rule, which can have its variants of reciprocity and unlimited altruism. 

What is interesting here is that More speaks, in relation to good deeds, of reciprocity of benefits and of conscience as two indicators of the moral rightness of an action. Which of the rules analysed was he referring to?

“Yet they do not place happiness in all sorts of pleasures, but only in those that in themselves are good and honest. There is a party among them who place happiness in bare virtue; others think that our natures are conducted by virtue to happiness, as that which is the chief good of man. They define virtue thus—that it is a living according to Nature” (Thomas More, Utopia).

Choosing the person with whom to share one’s life requires prudence and a proper assessment of several factors. Foremost among these are the character traits with which to deal with everyday conflicts. As Thomas More warns, it is somewhat inept that part of the nuptial ritual is to briefly show the future spouse naked.  Once again, the relevance between the substance and the form of a relationship, between what is important and what is superficial, is fundamental. 

“There was a Jester standing by, that counterfeited the fool so naturally that he seemed to be really one; the jests which he offered were so cold and dull that we laughed more at him than at them, yet sometimes he said, as it were by chance, things that were not unpleasant, so as to justify the old proverb, ‘That he who throws the dice often, will sometimes have a lucky hit.’ When one of the company had said that I had taken care of the thieves, and the Cardinal had taken care of the vagabonds, so that there remained nothing but that some public provision might be made for the poor whom sickness or old age had disabled from labour (Thomas More, Utopia).

The limits of humour in the age of political correctness have become controversial. Laughing at the ignorance or foolishness of the public can be an easy resource. One might expect humour to have a healthy function of social criticism, rather than a reinforcement of prejudices and stereotypes that are already ingrained. In the case posed by Thomas More, making humour about people with disabilities because of their condition is not justified as humour that is compatible with human rights, intelligent humour that makes us think, or humour that invites us to consider values for a more open, plural, and inclusive society, where there is room for everyone. 

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Tommaso Campanella, The City of the Sun

Tommaso Campanella (Stilo, Italy, 1568-Paris, 1639). Italian philosopher. In 1586, he entered a Dominican convent, where he studied Philosophy. With the impact of the works of Telesius’ naturalistic philosophy, Campanella became one of the critics of Aristotle’s ideas, as the scholastics presented it at the time.

In 1599, he led a rural insurrection with the aim of establishing a theocratic republic, for which he was subjected to several ecclesiastical trials and sentenced to life imprisonment, from which he was finally released in 1634 by the Pope Urban VIII. Campanella was imprisoned for 27 years, during which time he wrote his famous work The City of the Sun, in which he expressed his desire for a utopian communist regime. Campanella’s communist ideals were strongly influenced by Plato.

Below is a commentary of excerpts from Tomasso Campanella’s The City of the Sun in the style of the Minerva Blog Strategy.

Advantages of collective work

“They say, moreover, that grinding poverty renders men worthless, cunning, sulky, thievish, insidious, vagabonds, liars, false witnesses, etc.; and that wealth makes them insolent, proud, ignorant, traitors, assumers of what they know not, deceivers, boasters, wanting in affection, slanderers, etc. But with them all the rich and poor together make up the community. They are rich because they want nothing, poor because they possess nothing; and consequently they are not slaves to circumstances, but circumstances serve them” (Tommaso Campanella, The City of the Sun).

In the Platonic conception of society, guardians should not own “land, houses, and currency” (Plato, Republic, 417a) because these evils are greater. Against this approach, Aristotle, in his work Politics, defends private property based on several arguments. The first is generosity, since “doing a kindness and giving some help to friends, or guests, or comrades, and such kindness and help become possible only when property is privately owned” (Aristotle, Politics, 1263b40). He also argues that greater conflicts derive from common property and that, if it were really a good solution, it would not have gone so unnoticed.

Discussion about the community of women 

“Love is foremost in attending to the charge of the race. He sees that men and women are so joined together, that they bring forth the best offspring. Indeed, they laugh at us who exhibit a studious care for our breed of horses and dogs, but neglect the breeding of human beings” (Tommaso Campanella, The City of the Sun). 

This is one of the most controversial points of Plato’s approach: how he (does not) conceive of the family. For example, he asserts that the children of guardians are to be raised and educated by the State and has an ambivalent position on the status of women. From other assumptions, Aristotle defends the family and criticises the Platonic approach since “every citizen will have a thousand sons; they will not be the sons of each citizen individually: any son whatever will be equally the son of any father whatever. The result will be that all will equally neglect them” (Aristóteles, Politics, 1261b32).

Hospitality

“To strangers they are kind and polite; they keep them for three days at the public expense; after they have first washed their feet, they show them their city and its customs, and they honor them with a seat at the Council and public table, and there are men whose duty it is to take care of and guard the guests. But if strangers should wish to become citizens of their State, they try them first for a month on a farm, and for another month in the city, then they decide concerning them, and admit them with certain ceremonies and oaths” (Tommaso Campanella, The City of the Sun).

This is a precedent for the notion of hospitality that Kant invoked centuries later. Nowadays, it seems that elementary notions that are at the foundation of human rights are questioned and become target issues of political debate, locally and globally. One such issue of relevance is how societies welcome/integrate/accommodate their immigrants. Here we see how in the 16th-century utopia, Campanella provided an inclusive mechanism for acquiring citizenship. Does it still sound like utopia today?

Again, with more details on the election of magistrates, the government, and the Council.

“They do not use lots unless when they are altogether doubtful how to decide. The eight magistrates under Hoh, Power, Wisdom, and Love are changed according to the wish of the people, but the first four are never changed, unless they, taking counsel with themselves, give up the dignity of one to another, whom among them they know to be wiser, more renowned, and more nearly perfect. And then they are obedient and honorable, since they yield willingly to the wiser man and are taught by him. This, however, rarely happens” (Tommaso Campanella, The City of the Sun).

Leaving the most difficult choices to the randomness of a lottery does not seem the most appropriate. Although current trends advocate leaving some decisions to AI algorithms, which are biased, stereotyped, and not necessarily neutral in terms of human rights.

It is commendably “utopian,” in this City of the Sun, that top leaders decide themselves when to leave office and “willingly retire to those who are wiser than they are and learn from them.” It seems to be a carbon copy of the present times…

Laws and judgement 

“They have but few laws, and these short and plain, and written upon a flat table and hanging to the doors of the temple, that is between the columns” (Tommaso Campanella, The City of the Sun).

 The utopia in the legal world is that laws should be few, short, and plain. This would help to bring law and judicial decisions closer to non-experts. The great thing about the legal method is that it makes it possible to deal with various strategies of the parties in a process and to justify the final decision by means of legal arguments. Law is conceived as an interpretative activity, where the power of conviction of each party becomes relevant.

The City of the Sun, by Tommaso Campanella, aims to criticise its present and future through utopian rhetoric, based on ideas that cannot be found anywhere, yet their power of conviction is the horizon that we can focus on (or not) when you look in front of the mirror.