A religião nas narrativas utópicas

Abstract

Thomas More’s Utopia and the subsequent literary creations that belong to the same literary genre represent the affirmation of human initiative and its exclusive responsibility for the laws that rule the destiny of the City. This political autarchy points at an organisation of the society, so zealous of autonomy, that it seems to exclude from itself any divinity or religion. This is not, however, what we see in most of the utopic narratives, starting with the one by More that deals extensively with the religious issue. What statute and significance does religion have in the utopias? The answer can be attempted at three principal levels, which correspond to the same amount of ways of presence and articulation of the religious element in the described societies. There is, firstly, the consecration of Christianism as supreme religion in More’s Utopia. However, this consecration does not prevent the dimension of social criticism, characteristic of the utopic imagination, from applying also to the religious phenomenon. We have, then, the Christian reference to narratives in which the Christianism of origins appears as inspiration and model. Let us remember, for example, the «New Christianism» by Saint-Simon. Lastly, in the last two centuries, the horizon of Christianism tends to dissipate itself in narratives that advocate the implantation of a new social ethics. In this communication, we deal solely with the «Utopias of the Renaissance», the utopias of Thomas More, Tommaso Campanella and Francis Bacon.