Ad Salutem Publicam: public health and pastoral government in More’s Utopia

Abstract

ABSTRACT Discourses of health and disease pervade More's Utopia. The text insistently plays upon the ambiguities of salus, a term with a wide semantic range including spiritual salvation, the physical health of the individual body, and the wider welfare of the commonwealth. More's text draws on this network of metaphors of health, disease and medicine to transfigure forms of Christian pastoral government in a radical experiment in state governmentality. The Utopian hospital is a microcosm of the Utopian project, yet its prominence in the spatial structure of the ideal republic reveals tensions between individual and collective forms of care. More's text can be productively put into dialogue with Foucault's analysis of the Christian pastorate as a significant precursor to liberal governmentality and modern medical institutions. More and Foucault illuminate the long pastoral legacy of medical institutions, including the hospital as a governmental space with utopian and dystopian possibilities.