“I prithee, honest friend, lend me thy hand / To help me up; as for my coming down, / Let me alone, I'll look to that myself,” says Thomas More to his executioner while mounting the scaffold on July 6, 1535. We are reading from Sir Thomas More (act 5, scene 4), that complicated text that testifies to the collaborative nature of Elizabethan drama. Supposedly written by Anthony Munday and Henry Chettle, and benefiting from the contribution of Thomas Heywood, Thomas Dekker, and William Shakespeare, the play celebrates Thomas More's sense of humor—a facet that is sometimes forgotten but which Marie-Claire Phélippeau, in her new biography of the English humanist (Thomas More, 2016), intentionally highlights. Phélippeau must have felt the huge responsibility of publishing a biography of the saint in the year commemorating five hundred years since the publication of Thomas More's Utopia, mainly because it was not the first time that the life of the English humanist was being disclosed to the public: in fact, Phélippeau's was the twenty-first biography of Thomas More published in France.1 Looking at the titles of some of the biographies previously published by French authors, one can understand the angles from which More has been presented: Le bienheureux Thomas More (The Blissful Thomas More, 1904), by Henri Bremond; Le Chancelier Décapité (The Beheaded Chancellor, 1935), by Edmond Privat; Un Résistant Catholique: Thomas More (A Catholic Resistant: Thomas More, 1948), by Léon Lemonnier; Un Intellectuel sans Vanité: Thomas More (An Intellectual Without Vanity: Thomas More, 1958), by Georges Hourdin; Thomas More ou la Sage Folie (Thomas More or the Wise Folly, 1971), by Germain Marc'hadour; Sir Thomas More, Humaniste et Martyr (Sir Thomas More, Humanist and Martyr, 1984), by Louis Bouyer; Thomas More, l'Homme Complet de la Renaissance (Thomas More, the Complete Man of the Renaissance, 2002), by Elisabeth-Marie Ganne; Thomas More. La Face Cachée des Tudors (Thomas More. The Hidden Face of the Tudors, 2012), by Bernard Cottret; and Thomas More (1478–1535): Au Risque de la Conscience (Thomas More [1478–1535]: At the Risk of the Conscience, 2012), by Jacques Mulliez.A scholar, translator of Thomas More's works into French, specialist in the Renaissance, and editor in chief of Moreana—a quarterly academic journal dedicated to publishing articles on Thomas More, his work, his life, and his time—Phélippeau wrote this new biography with a true intellectual passion for More's work, offering a vivid picture of the man; emphasizing the way he actively engaged with his epoch, the city of London, and its inhabitants; describing his diplomatic missions, his friendship with Erasmus, his work in the service of Henry VIII, his genuine concern for the good of society and specially for justice, and his religious beliefs; and disclosing, at the same time, the importance of his writings besides Utopia. Articulating the facts of Thomas More's life with his work and his choices, Phélippeau contributes to a better understanding of this man of paradoxes, as the positive portrait that she offers the reader of the man of law, of letters, of the state, and of God never intends to mask the facet of the persecutor, who in the end was persecuted.In 2016, a new edition of Thomas More's Utopia was published in France, even though the translation was not new at all. In fact, the Librio publishing house decided to republish a book that first came out in its present format in 2013, showcasing the translation Victor Stouvenel had published in 1842 (using as source text not the Latin text but a translation into English), the notes and amendments that Marcelle Botigeli had made in 1982, and the preface Claude Mazauric had written in 2013. The new edition of the best-known French text of Utopia until the end of the twentieth century, in spite of the many errors and omissions identified by commentators, no doubt resulted from a willingness to meet the demand for More's masterpiece that commemorating the five hundredth anniversary would predictably foster.However, surprisingly, the anniversary year did not result in anymore publications focusing exclusively on Thomas More. Lettres à Thomas More sur son Utopie: Et Celles qui nous Manquent (Letters to Thomas More and His Utopia: And Those that We Miss, 2016), by Thierry Paquot, provides a good example of the interest that the masterpiece of the humanist aroused in France: a reconsideration of the issues that Thomas More dealt with, within the framework of our contemporary anxieties. As the author notes, questions such as “What is a good government?” are still lacking a good answer today. According to Paquot, utopia is still a workable concept—the tool that allows us to explore new paths.French philosophers have paid consistent attention to the concept of utopia over the past decades. However, only a few have been translated—such as Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, and Paul Ricoeur—and are known by English-speaking academics. This has resulted in the development of a parallel tradition of utopian critique in France and the United Kingdom/United States. For an external observer—as is my case—who can read both in French and in English, it is striking how both traditions could benefit from dialogue. It is a pity, for example, that the solid work that has been published by French philosophers such as Edgar Morin, Henri Maler, Miguel Abensour, and Michel Maffesoli is not taken as the basis for a healthy dialogue between the two traditions. One knows how fruitful these encounters can be, of which the translation of Louis Marin's Utopiques: Jeux d'espace (Utopics: Spatial Play), first published in French in 1973 and translated into English in 1984, is a good example. It is time we surpass this reticence that has affected critical thinking about utopia published in different national languages and contribute to a wealthier, wider, and more informed reflection on the concept.2In this context, it is worth mentioning Miguel Abensour's (1939–2017) last book on utopian thinking: L'Histoire de l'Utopie et le Destin de sa Critique (The History of Utopia and the Destiny of Its Critique, 2016), where the author contests the way Marxist critiques of utopia have been interpreted. According to Abensour, the real Marxist critical matrix is not the antinomic pair of utopia/science but, rather, the opposition, discovered in 1843, between total and partial revolution. Elaborating on the difference between the concept of utopia for Proudhon, on the one hand, and Fourier and Owen, on the other hand, Abensour argues that Marx should not be seen as the grave digger of utopia, as he managed to perform a transcroissance (growing over) of utopia into communist critique. In this groundbreaking book, Abensour proposes three forms of utopia: Utopian Socialism, neo-utopias, and what he calls the new utopian spirit that has prevailed from 1848 until the present day.A philosophical analysis of utopia is also offered by Laurent Plet in Essai sur la «Dialectique Negative» d'Adorno: Matérialisme Critique et Utopie (Essay on the “Negative Dialectics” of Adorno: Critical Materialism and Utopia, 2016), where the author shows how and why, despite its claimed failure, the utopian potential for critical thinking, along with the rescue of liberty and reason, demands rigorous comparison with the tradition of German idealism, starting with Kant and Hegel. On the other hand, in Paul Parin: Voyage au Bout de l'Utopie (Paul Parin: Journey to the End of Utopia, 2016), Christophe Solioz examines the work of the French surgeon, neurologist, psychoanalyst, ethnologist, and writer Parin, revealing how he articulated psychoanalysis and politics and how he spent his life striving to understand the nature of hope, which in fact is utopia disguised as a horizon but without illusion.In Que Signifie Changer le Monde? (What Does It Mean to Change the World? 2017) the French philosopher Alain Badiou reflects on the concept of change. This reflection is not surprising, given his previous works discussing other concepts, such as being, truth, events, and the subject. The author argues that today's very common aspiration to “change the world” does not really reflect what needs to be done, as to start with, the verb change itself is misleading. In an inspired essay, Badiou invites the reader to reconsider the idea of a need for change beyond traditional disruption resulting from a revolutionary call that would completely alter the order of things and that goes beyond the concept of reform, which entails endless innovation within continuity. An active participant in political discussion about the future of French society, and also known for his left-wing ideals, Badiou substantiates in his books the need for an “oriented” change.The last book in this group, L'Utopie entre Idéal et Réalité: Peut-on Résister au Totalitarisme? (Utopia Between the Ideal and the Real: Can We Resist Totalitarianism? 2016), by the French philosopher Florent Bussy, reminds us that we need to be aware of the ambivalence of the term utopia, in that it fosters both clarity and obscurity. However, although Bussy denounces links between utopia and totalitarian regimes, he stands for the idea that utopia is needed more than ever. It is a tool that allows human beings to overcome the disillusionment of the reality they experience and strive for a better and more humane world.The next group of publications applies the concept of utopia to the fields of literature, education, and the environment. Utopies Noires, Utopies Roses: Politiques au Temps des Lumières (Black Utopias, Pink Utopias: Politics in the Enlightenment, 2016), edited by Annie Ibrahim, invites the reader on a journey with Diderot and Chambers and discusses the light and dark dreams of Lesing, Dom Deschamp, and Sade, exposing the way utopia turns to the strength of creativity to fight established political forces. In Une Utopie Nécessaire: Le Système Universitaire Face au Défi Économique (A Needed Utopia: The University System and the Economic Challenge, 2016), Geoffroy Lauvau advocates for utopia as both a method and an ideal for the organization of a system of higher education capable of meeting the demands of a globalized economy. Examining challenges that are specific to our age, such as the massification of higher education and the lack of capacity for attraction among courses in the field of the humanities, the author shows that the university has never been apart from the real world. To prove this thesis, he uses examples from the Middle Ages, Victorian England, and the German and American models, demonstrating that moments of crisis are also moments of opportunity for change and the betterment of society.Another collection of essays, Inégalités Femmes-Hommes et Utopie(s) (Man-Woman Inequalities and Utopia[s], 2017), reminds us of the relevance of the idea of utopia for feminist studies. The volume, edited by Guyonne Leduc, who is in charge of the collection “Des Idées et des Femmes” (Of Ideas and Women), offers seventeen essays on a variety of subjects, ranging from the place of women in British utopias of the seventeenth century to gender issues, discussed regarding utopian and dystopian literature and feminist heterotopias. What the essays have in common is the idea that utopia is a privileged place to interrogate possibilities for the emancipation of women and to try to overcome the difficulties posed by ideas of the duality of the sexes and the equality of the genders. Utopia, as the French political philosopher Franck Lessay says in the preface to the volume, is indeed to be explored, as it is a nonplace for the representations of the men-women relation: the way it is and the way it should be.Climate change and the environment are the topics of the next two books. In Le Changement Climatique Va-t-il tout Changer? Quelle Utopie Concrète pour Demain? (Is Climate Change Going to Change It All? What Concrete Utopia for Tomorrow? 2017), Arno Münster employs the old idea that times of crisis are times of opportunity and argues that since climate change is forcing us to adopt a radical new way of living, it will eventually lead to a change in our civilization, where notions of production, growth, and consumerism will not exist. According to the author, it is a unique opportunity to stop extreme right-wing politics and to establish a secular and fraternal republic, based on true respect for the environment. Écologiser l'Homme: La Nature du Futur et le Futur de la Nature (Ecologizing Man: The Nature of the Future and the Future of Nature, 2016), in its turn, offers the reader a compilation of a selection of texts by Edgar Morin on what he calls “political ecology,” which, from his point of view, should surpass the defense of animal rights or an exclusive focus on climate issues, reflecting instead on the fundamental truth that human beings need the Earth and the Earth needs human beings. This important work by Morin, one of the most influential contemporary philosophers in France, confirms the author's faith in utopia and in our capacity to transform our lives and the ways we live in society.Although most of the events that took place in France displaying the term utopia in the title during the year 2016 were related to activism, citizenship, and political change, the outcome, regarding publications, was not impressive. In fact, only four books came out in that year (and none in 2017), and two of them were written by academics.In Adieux au Capitalisme: Autonomie, Société du Bien Vivre et Multiplicité des Mondes (Goodbye to Capitalism: Autonomy, the Society of Good Living, and the Multiplicity of Worlds, 2016 [2014]) the historian and activist Jérôme Baschet combines theoretical reflection and projection with knowledge of real situations of social and political experimentation to propose strategies for the creation of a “real utopia,” based on a radical democracy where self-government prevails and where quality of life and collective experience are seen as the main aims. Arguing for the despecialization of activities, for a nonproductivist society, and for non-Eurocentric globalization, Baschet dismisses the old revolutionary recipes that brought about dystopian events in Western societies in the twentieth century and suggests practical ways of organizing a totally different way of living. On the other hand, French researcher Thierry Long proposes that money be banished from our societies. In Un Monde sans Argent: “L'utopie,” Cinq Siècles Après Thomas More (1516) (A World Without Money: Utopia Five Centuries After Thomas More [1516], 2016), Long revisits and updates for our age the arguments put forward by Thomas More in favor of a humanist world based on a cooperative, coherent, and sustainable system, in the hope that ours will be a “world of utopias.”The profile of Sandrine Roudaut is very different: after a very powerful TED Talk with thousands of views, where she announced that the only salvation for our planet is utopia—not the unrealizable but the unrealized—the founder of Alternité, a publishing house engaged in the promotion of sustainable companies, published Les Suspendu(e)s: Utopistes, Insoumis, Désobéissants, ils Écrivent Demain et s'Accomplissent (The Suspended: Utopists, Rebellious, Unruly, They Write of Tomorrow and Feel Fulfilled, 2016). According to Roudaut, the “suspended” are the people who choose to stand for their utopias of justice and fraternity. Our times, she claims, are at once tragic and sublime: tragic because of the variety of challenges we need to face and sublime because of opportunities for the creation of a better society. Roudaut is mainly interested in understanding how our minds work—what makes us accept authority, what leads us to conformism, but also what makes us strive for utopia and to inscribe our private projects into a wider collective project, thus contributing to radical change.Pascal Chotard's book Un Monde sans Chômage: Réalité ou Utopie? (A World Without Unemployment: Reality or Utopia? 2016) is also about radical change, to which the author contributes by suggesting a radical strategy. Grounded in the fact that inactivity entails a cost for society that is far greater than the cost of work, as well as in the idea that only activity is capable of creating wealth and ensuring the maintenance of our social model, Chotard advocates for the eradication of unemployment.Unsurprisingly, the year in which we commemorated the five hundredth anniversary of the publication of Thomas More's Utopia also fostered discussion on the effects of globalization and on the political organization of Europe, two utopias that turned out to be dystopian in their effects. Mondialisation, la Mort d'une Utopie: Essai (Globalization, the Death of a Utopia: An Essay, 2017), by Fouad Khoury-Helou, invites us to examine the outcomes of worldwide free trade, established in 1944 by the Bretton Woods Agreement. Claiming that the initial idea that everyone would benefit from the agreement was subverted, resulting in political, social, and economic inequalities, the author, a Franco-Lebanese academic but also an accomplished economist and business manager, describes the deep crisis we are facing today, no doubt augmented by Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. The book is, above all, a denunciation of the failure of the project of “happy globalization” and an urgent call for intervention, so that the negative effects of globalization are corrected while there is still time to do so: signs of revolt are already visible, and social and political contestation (in particular in France) should not be ignored.L'Europe, Réalité ou Utopie? Est-elle Notre Ennemie? (Europe, Reality or Utopia? Is It Our Enemy? 2016) is isolated with regards to the books on utopia published in the period under consideration, as it is presented as a nonacademic and nonactivist publication, with pedagogical and nonpolitical objectives. In fact, the aim of Matthieu Noirot is to offer a citizen's reflection on the history of Europe, on its singularities and the factors that put its existence in danger. On the other hand, Europe et Culture: Un Couple à Réinventer? Essai sur 50 ans de Coopération Culturelle Européenne (Europe and Culture: A Couple to Be Reinvented? An Essay on Fifty Years of European Cultural Cooperation, 2016) by Anne-Marie Autissier offers an academic perspective on the future of the European Union, drawing our attention to the relevant role culture has in ensuring mutual understanding between nations. Arguing that after decades of neoliberalism it is time to offer Europeans “breathing space” and “sharing space,” she proposes policies aimed at facilitating the mobility of artists and cultural professionals across countries, hoping that by engaging Europeans in creative, popular, and cultural practices, cultural diversity will be fostered.The book Éloge de la Culture en Temps de Crise (Praise of Culture in a Time of Crisis, 2017), by Jean-Michel Le Boulanger, is also worth mentioning, as it no doubt resulted from the author's political conviction that only by promoting culture will we be able to reinvent our society. Besides being an academic, Le Boulanger has been very active in the political life of the administrative region of Brittany where he lives, acting as its vice president and adviser for culture since 2010. In this book, the author calls for the instauration of a real state of emergency in support of artistic creation, as culture alone is capable of reenchanting the world and reenchanting the future. It is noteworthy to add that the book was published within the framework of the presidential campaign in France, where, according to the author, the due importance of art and culture did not seem to be recognized.Two books were published on utopia and religion, although on radically opposed faiths. In Daech, la Dernière Utopie Meurtrière (Daesh, the Last Killing Utopia, 2016), Saida Douki Dedieu and Hager Karray examine the way that Daesh has succeeded in attracting youngsters to a utopia that promises them salvation. After a brief reference to literary utopianism, the authors provide a description of a series of “killing utopias” that have cast a shadow on a number of countries, from Germany to Cambodia, from Armenia to Rwanda and Serbia. They then reveal what these destructive utopias have in common: an obsession with purity, the elimination of intellectuals, the prohibition of pleasure, and the recruitment of younger generations. Philippe Aubert, in his turn, in Gabriel Vahanian: Penseur de l'Utopie Chrétienne (Gabriel Vahanian: Thinker of the Christian Utopia, 2016), examines the work of the French American theologian Vahanian, demonstrating how, on the one hand, he used utopia as a method of analysis to prove that secularization does not invalidate Christianity while highlighting, on the other, the creative force of utopia, capable of establishing a dialogue that repudiates traditional religious discourse seeking to order the world according to the concepts of the sacred and the profane.Reminding the readers of important utopias of the past is always an effective way of promoting utopian thinking. Two books were published in 2016 about two utopian achievements. In L'Utopie en Héritage: Le Familistère de Guise: 1888–1968 (The Utopia as Inheritance: The Familistère in Guise: 1888–1968, 2016), Jessica dos Santos examines the history of the industrial and residential community established by Jean-Baptiste Godin, a French industrialist and political theorist and follower of Fourier. Dos Santos focuses, in particular, on the period after the founder's death, when workers inherited the cooperative, having to prove that the principles on which the community had been erected were sustainable. L'Utopie Citoyenne: Une Histoire Républicaine de la Ligue de l'Enseignement (A Citizen's Utopia: A Republican History of the Teaching League, 2016), on the other hand, reminds us of a citizen movement that still persists 150 years after it was established, counting almost two million members. The author, Jean-Michel Djian, seeks to bring to the fore this aspect of French history that is barely known and which began in 1866 when the French journalist Jean Macé founded a movement for the establishment of compulsory, free, popular education, founded on the Republican ideal of a secular state. The author pays particular attention to the way the movement grew over the years—not only in geographic terms but also with regards to artistic education and education for citizenship.Surprisingly, although in 2016 we were commemorating five hundred years since the publication of Thomas More's Utopia, not many books on More or his masterpiece were published. More's legacy seems, in fact, to be more visible at the instrumental level: utopia as a tool for critically analyzing society and for creatively imagining alternatives. The commemorative year fostered a variety of publications that testify to the importance of utopian thinking: from reflections on the concept of utopia put forward by French philosophers, whose work still needs to be acknowledged by academics who cannot read French, to radical proposals to change the world; from concrete examples of realized utopias to cautionary essays on the dark sides of utopia and its possible dystopian outcomes. But the publications, one way or another, all validate utopian thinking for our times and the construction of our future.