Conceptions of Utopia's from Antiquity to Modernity - Research Proposal Example

Conceptions of Utopias from Antiquity to Modernity There have been quite a number of definitions for the word utopia overseveral centuries and the most common of these is that it is a society where the individuals within it possess and practice those qualities which are not only desirable, but also perfect. This word was coined by Sir Thomas More in the sixteenth century as a title for his book which described a fictional island society in the Atlantic Ocean and this term has come to be used to describe those communities which have attempted to create the ideal society. In addition, the term utopia has also come to be used to describe those fictional societies that have the ideal life and has been a source of further discussion concerning whether such a society can indeed been achieved. The concept of utopia has had a long history which spans from the works of Plato during the Greek classical period. The first proposal for such a society was made in the works of Plato, specifically in Republic, which was mainly based on conversation, and fictional depiction. This was a policy proposal where there would be a rigid categorization of the society where the classes would consist of golden, silver, bronze, and iron classes (Chaskes 241). According to this proposal, the members of the golden class would have to undergo a rigorous educational training lasting some fifty years so that they could develop into benevolent rulers, whose rule would be guided by their philosophy. Plato proposed that the wisdom of these rulers would ensure the development of a just society, where the resources would be fairly distributed among all the people of society thus ensuring that all forms of poverty and deprivation were completely eliminated. However, the details concerning how the rulers from the golden class could achieve such a feat remain unclear since Plato did not expound on them. In Plato’s Republic, there is the proposal that the ideal society should be one where there are few laws, resulting in lawyers not being a necessary part of the judicial system. In addition, Plato proposes that in such a society, the people would rarely go to war and when the need for war arose, it would hire mercenaries from its more warlike neighbors to fight its battles. This was done to ensure that by deliberately sending members of the warlike communities around them into dangerous situations, the ideal society would achieve the objective of having a peaceful environment since the warlike communities would have been weeded out. The development of Plato’s utopia would have meant the destruction of all the warlike communities that surrounded the ideal society since their continued existence would have been a direct threat to it. Plato’s ideal society seems to be in contradiction with his teachings since he stated that there should be constant equality for all the people within a state (Prescott 596). However, in his proposition of the ideal society, he fails to address this equality since he proposes that the society be divided into the classes named above. The golden class would have formed the elite of the society, who would have been philosophers much like Plato himself. The silver class would have consisted of warriors or guards, whose main purpose would have been to ensure the defense of the society as well as of the rulers. The last two classes, the bronze and iron, would have consisted of regular citizens as well as laborers whose main task would have been to feed the society. According to Plato, the ideal government needs to lie in order to keep it people happy and complacent and in order to achieve this, the government has to use the myth of fate. The myth of fate states that whenever individuals are born, they are given a metal by the Supreme Being so that those who were destined to be rulers were given gold, those destined to be guardians silver and so on. The acceptance of this myth would not question it and would accept their place as having been assigned to them by God, meaning that they would be the ideal society. Another means that Plato proposes for maintaining loyalty to the state in an ideal society is for there to be a complete change in the family system and how it works. He proposes that the best way to do this is to ensure that all the marriages that take place are not done for love but for the benefit of the state. In this ideal society, it is the responsibility of the state to choose the marriage partners of each of its citizens and this is with the intention of ensuring that there is the creation of a new generation of strong and clever children. All the mentally challenged and physically deformed children who are born to these state sanctioned marriages are taken away from the society so that only the best children remain. Plato also proposes that men marry many women and vice versa and that all the children who are produced from these marriages are taken away from their parents and brought up by the state. The removal of children from their parents is done so that none of the parents know who their children are and the children do not know who their parents are. The result of such a situation is that all the people in the society are not distracted from their responsibility and love towards the state. In addition, it also means that all the subsequent generations show considerable respect for their elders as well as everyone else in the society because they do not know their relationship to each other; where they are their father, mother, brother et cetera. Aristotle, who was a student of Plato, in his The Politics is highly critical of the latter’s view of the family stating that in Plato’s ideal society, the respect between individuals would spread too thin since no one would truly love someone who did not consist of his or her immediate family. Plato’s stance is quite similar to that taken by Karl Marx centuries later since Marx was of the belief that family is a basic unit of production and that the nuclear family is often promoted by capitalist states so that the society can be kept producing and consuming while the elite gets richer. Plato seems to be attempting to achieve the ideal society by breaking up the regular family structure where all production is done for the benefit of the family, and replacing it with production whose main beneficiary is the state. Furthermore, the ideal society that he proposes is one where there is a culture of gentleness between its various members. Plato proposes that there be censorship of some forms of literature and music and he stresses the need to censor the major key harmonies of the people of Lydia and Ionia because he believes that they express too much emotion, which he considers not to be necessary. Plato further proposes that there be a censorship of loud laughter and for there to be no poets in the society. In his ideal society, Plato feels that there is no need for drama because if it were to exist, all of the actors would have to play heroes; thus the need to ban it. There would also be no need for doctors since all the foods that cause diseases such as meat, fish, and sauces would be banned from the society. The ideal society does not have any need for change because its people would not be individualistic but would all work for the benefit of the state. In order to achieve the removal of all change, there would be a ban on all the arts and sciences, subjects which promote individual thinking, thus change. The reward of all the individuals in the society would be happiness since all that they do would be for the good of the society. There would be no need for currency in such a society since it promotes wealth and poverty, both of which would be harmful to the society. When members of such a society go to war, it would be extremely easy for them to gain allies because none of their allies would want any share of the spoils that are gained from the war. In the sixteenth century, Thomas More in his book Utopia made some proposals concerning the ideal society which is still considered to be a realistic depiction of a proper working society by some socialists. There are some, however, that Moore’s work was developed more for the purpose of entertainment than as a blueprint for the restructuring of the society. Those who consider Utopia only as a work of fiction believe that it is meant to be a satire of the English society in which More belonged and that it is not meant as a means of achieving the ideal society. However, More based his work on the ideas made by Plato in his Republic and it is these ideas which play a prominent role in Utopia. More’s Utopia is based on the fictional existence of an ideal society where all the people in the society are treated as equal with there being none above all the others (Prettyman 338). The society is made up of some two hundred cities each of which is divided into four sections and having a population made up of some six thousand households. The people in the cities of the island of Utopia choose princes through a secret ballot and the individual who is chosen rules his city for life unless he is removed from office due to any suspicion of tyranny. This state is one where there is no private property with all the resources of the state being distributed equally among the citizens. All the food in the society is stored in public warehouses from where the citizens receive only as much food as they require. In the book, it is stated that locks do not exist on the doors since theft of any kind does not exist in this society. The population of the state is heavily regulated to ensure that there is no overpopulation and this is done in such a way that whenever a household has more than sixteen members, the surplus number is distributed among those households that have fewer numbers. Similar to Plato’s ideal society, More’s Utopia also has very simple laws which all its citizens follow unquestioningly, and this ensures that the society does not need any lawyers. In addition, war is virtually nonexistent in this society since all the conflicts that arise are solved through peaceful means. This society is averse to bloodshed and whenever it is forced to go to war, the warriors prefer to capture their opponents rather than kill them because it is upsetting to Utopians when they achieve victory through bloodshed. The concept of utopia has come into the modern world and has been quite influential in the development of theories, in many subjects, concerning the development of the ideal society. One of the subjects of importance in the modern world that has come to be immensely influenced by the concept of utopia has been ecology. The utopian thought in ecology attempts to propose ways through which human society should relate to nature and this is mainly due to the reaction towards the widening gap between the modern way of life that is harmful to nature, and the pre-industrial life, which was in harmony with nature. Some modern philosophers, such as Marius de Geus state that green political movements should be inspired by the development of ecological utopias, where man lives in harmony with nature instead of taking actions that are detrimental to it. The idea of ecological utopias has come to be a basic part of fiction, where novelists in their works attempt to promote the idea of man existing side by side with nature. One such work of fiction is Rumfuddle, by Jack Vance, which is a story about the development of an ecological utopia. The main character in the novel invents paratime travel and in this way provides all the people in the world with an alternate-earth wilderness where they can spend their vacations (Phillips 299). This act effectively makes him the ruler of the earth and with such power in his hands, he requires all the people in the world to work cleaning up the earth to ensure that it returns to its former pristine state. Utopia has also come to have an effect on some of the ideas and theories that have been proposed in the field of economics. In the early nineteenth century, there developed such utopian ideas as the belief that the changing social structure and the disruption that accompanied it were as a result of the development of capitalism. These ideas were developed mainly because of the belief that human beings were moving from the more traditional life, where individuals lived amongst large extended families as equals, to one dominated by industrial capitalists, which promoted individualism and the breaking of family ties. The proponents of an economic utopia are normally grouped together into the utopian socialist movement whose main aim is to ensure the egalitarian distribution of goods, and the complete abolition of any form of currency. In addition, this movement advocates for all individuals in the society being allowed to do work which they enjoy and this is to be done for the common good. As a result of doing what they enjoy, the individuals in such a society would have enough time in their hands to cultivate the development of the arts and sciences. Examples of such a utopia include Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward as well as William Morris’ News from Nowhere, the latter which was written as a critical response to the former’s bureaucratic nature. While utopianism had a profound influence in the development of the socialist movement, as this movement continued to grow, it tended to move away from it. Among the harshest critics of the close relationship between early socialism and utopianism was Karl Marx, who would later develop his own ideas concerning socialism (Giesecke 198). The theories espoused by Marx attempt to make a connection between the developments of social classes to the various modes of production. In this respect, Marx makes specific references to particular historical events, such as the French Revolution, which ultimately culminated in the development of communism which was based on social equality. It is noted that while Marx was a critic of utopianism, his concept of the development of a communist society was based on it; hence he seems to have contradicted himself. The ideal society which Marx espouses is one based on utopian principles and therefore, one would conclude that utopianism has had a profound influence on Marxist thought to the present day. James Harrington, in his work The Commonwealth of Oceana was inspirational in the development of English country party republicanism. In addition, this utopian work was also influential in the development of the governments of several English colonies in America, the most notable of which is Georgia. The theories disseminated by Harrington were the basis upon which the idealistic nature of the principles of the American Founding Fathers was formed. The colony named above is one of the few English colonies of America that premeditated their societies along utopian lines. They integrated the physical, economic, and social designs of utopian life into their way of life and this was with the aim of developing a society that was based on equality and idealism. An example of this was the plan that was developed for Georgia where there was a concept of agrarian equality in which all the land that was allocated was allocated equally to all the individuals in the colony. Furthermore, it was the basic principle of Georgian society to ensure that there was no additional acquisition of land either through purchase or inheritance. This society has therefore come to be considered to have been a development towards the yeoman nation that was afterwards projected by Thomas Jefferson, which was based on the total equality between all the members of the agrarian community. Much later, in the twentieth century, especially in the 1960s, there was the development of communes in the United States whose main aim was to improve the way human beings lived together in groups (Duarte 98). The utopian life inspired the rise of such associations as the back to the land movement as well as hippies. These resulted in many individuals opting to live in tranquility and concord on either on farms, distant areas, or setting up new forms of government among themselves. Moreover, as a result of these movements, intentional communities were developed all over the world with the individuals involved in them hoping that they were creating more perfect ways of human beings living together in harmony. While many of these utopian communities came to fail, there have been some which have continued to thrive and among these have been the Twelve Ethnic groups that started in the United States. In the twentieth century, the philosopher Herbert Marcuse also came up with his own utopian theories especially through his book Eros and Civilization. In this work, he argues that history is not based on class struggle, but is instead based on the fight by human beings against the repression of their instincts. The book, whose main theme is the social meaning of biology, argues that modern capitalism, which is based on industries, is the reason why human beings are not able to achieve a non-repressive society. Marcuse’s ideal society is one which is based on essentially different experience of being, a necessarily different relation between man and nature, and deeply different existential relations. There is the contention that Freud is mistaken when he states that repression is a basic need of civilization since Eros is liberating and constructive. Marcuse begins with a critical analysis of conflict as propagated by Freud in hid Civilization and Its Discontents, where there is a struggle between human instincts and the sense of right and wrong concerning repression, known as the superego (Ashcroft 10). It is the superego which represses itself when it tries to pursue the customs and values of the social order. It was Freud’s belief that the clash between Eros and civilization is what brings about the repressive history of human beings, since this conflict was based on the suppression of human instincts. It is sex which is responsible for the production of human energy and sexual urges are repressed so that whatever energy that is produced is channeled towards progress. However, the price which has to be paid for progress is the feeling of guilt among human beings instead of happiness over the progress that they have made. According to Marcuse, it is the idea of progress which prevents human beings from living a happy life because it gives the excuse for the continuation of the system of repression where the happiness of individuals is sacrificed in the name of achieving progress. One of the arguments made by Marcuse is that diametrically opposed conflict is not based on work, which is existence without freedom, and Eros, which is freedom and enjoyment. Instead, this conflict is between alienated labor, which is economic stratification, and Eros, so that sex is only allowed for the elite, namely the capitalists, and for workers only when it occurs after they provide the needed economic services. It is Marcuse’s belief that the ideal society would be one based on socialism where there would be no need for the performance of the poor as well as the strong suppression of the sexual drive. The socialist society would be able to replace alienated labor with what he terms as libidinal work and this would result in the ideal civilization where the natural instincts of human beings would not be suppressed in the service of others. The arguments made by Marcuse concerning his ideal or utopian society are based on the assumption that the instincts of human beings can be shaped by repression (Harvey 334). He suggests that the troubles which plague the society do not arise as a result of biological repression on its own but through the increase of such repression which is the result of existing in the contemporary society. One would therefore conclude that Marcuse’s philosophy is a merger between the concepts developed by Freud and Marx since it contains elements from these two philosophers with a dash of eroticism. Throughout its long history, the various conceptions of utopia have been developed as a means of coming up with solutions to the vast inequalities that exist in human societies. Among the most common aspects of human societies that utopian scholars seek to address is inequality which is a very common state that can be found among most of the world’s people and countries. The most utopian beliefs throughout utopian history on the causes of inequality are that the people themselves are to blame because they have allowed themselves to be repressed. Furthermore, governments are also blamed for pursuing policies that actually harm the successful development of their people into the ideal society which is desired by all human beings. Nineteenth and twentieth century scholars such as Marx and Marcuse believe that there are deeper causes of inequality which are rarely discussed because their effects are mostly indirect because of the advent of capitalism. Behind the belief in a better life promised by capitalists those decisions, economic policies and practices which are typically influenced or formulated by the rich and powerful. When one considers Plato’s teachings on the ideal society, one will find that he is highly critical of those leaders who do not have sufficient knowledge concerning all the aspects of life affecting their people. This can be compared to the modern situation where officials make resolutions about things or places that are foreign to them, lacking adequate familiarity about the circumstances to devise valuable and suitable policies and agendas to facilitate the development of their people. The moral dishonesty of leaders is what accompanies their attainment of power because they are not held responsible by the people they serve and it inhibits development. The individuals, who lead the various human societies, have throughout history helped themselves to government funds and rewarded their friends and allies with those resources that would otherwise have been used for the development of their societies into utopias. However, the realization of utopias might not be feasible in most human societies mainly because of the culture of exploitation that has become a basic part of life. Works Cited Ashcroft, Bill. 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"Critical Utopia as Critical History: Apocalypse and Enlightenment in Kim Stanley Robinsons the Years of Rice and Salt." Extrapolation (pre-2012) 52.3 (2011): 338, 364, 277. Read More