Renaissance Utopias Research Articles

Insights on health policies from a political philosophy perspective

Health policies play a crucial role in shaping people’s well-being. While public health often relies on evidence-based policy to improve health outcomes, many non-scientific factors determine the health policy-making process....

On the borderlands of utopia and ideology - Yuval Noah Harari through a critical lens

The world-famous popular science author, Yuval Noah Harari makes use of the technical language of the natural sciences, while engaging in social science. However, Harari?s work goes beyond the scope of anything like scientific description or scientific objectivity. ?his article claims that Harari actually presents what is already represented by modernity itself as a cultural-historical meta-narrative. Differently put, Harari exemplifies a certain ideology. The goal of this article is an exercize in ideology critique, directed at the unsaid presuppositions and implicit philosophy of history underlying Harari?s works. The cult of technological utopia is as old as the development of modernity. The first significant work in this vein was a Renaissance utopia, namely Francis Bacon?s New Atlantis. Even today, there are ?technognostic?, scientists and philosophers who assume that through technology, humans can become capable of achieving a more-than-human condition while overcoming the limits of human knowledge. The basic formula is simple: through the use of technology, humans can make themselves smarter, more virtuous, and even more moral. Authors such as Harari, who regards his own materialistic world?view as being practically synonymous with a ?scientific? and ?objective? view of the world, forget to reflect time and time again on thier own philosophical and ideological presuppositions, such as the contingent and historically overdetermined nature of their own worldview, as well as the problems and philosophical criticisms surrounding materialist epistemology.

Social and technological aspects of the European utopia of Modern times

The subject of the study is the social and technological aspects of the European utopia of Modern times. The European utopia was influenced by the most iconic images and plots of the ancient and Renaissance utopia. It embodied and reinterpreted the images and plot elements of the famous "State" of Plato, the utopias of T. More and T. Campanella, the model of the ideal Christian state presented in the treatise "Description of the Christianopolitan Republic" by I.V. Andre (1586-1654). The article gives a general description of the New European Utopianism based on the concepts of F. Bacon, S. de Bergerac, S. Fourier. If in the Middle Ages social inequality and injustice were considered an expression of the natural order of things or a consequence of the imperfection of human nature, then in later periods of history people begin to try to improve the life of society through changes in the political, economic and social structure. The scientific novelty of the research topic is due to the correlation of European Utopianism with the most pronounced socio-cultural characteristics of the era. In the Renaissance, the social utopia was considered by the authors in an inextricable relationship with the architectural and urban aspects of the formation of the human habitat. In the Modern era, social utopianism correlates with technological utopianism. The conclusions of the article include the characteristics of the utopia of the XVIII century, when the utopians' attention is most focused on the legislative and political organization of society, as well as the XIX century, when the optimal economic structure is considered the key to social well-being.

New Books across the Disciplines

New Books across the Disciplines

El sol del Renacimiento que alumbra las utopías: un estudio comparativo de la teoría política de Moro, Campanella y Bacon

Renaissance utopias belong to a period when Modernity was being built within political thinking, which turns them into a nexus between classical antiquity and the Enlightment, thereby preserving for posterity a series of critical issues, such as democracy, a radical version of natural law or the need for distribution of goods. Christian humanism is also present and, together with Plato’s concept of justice, it enables these utopias to set a different course from that followed by other Renaissance political theory options, founded either on political realism (Machiavelli) or on jus naturale as a justification of an authoritarian state (Bodin). Thus utopia spreads its wings not only announcing Modernity but also the 20th century socialist horizon

Egy ezeréves műfaj születése: antik hagyomány a Cinquecento olasz utópiáiban

Ever since Thomas More’s “golden little book” was published in 1516 in Leuven, every notion of social theory and every theory of state which has projected an ideal social system to a non-existent place has been called utopia. Utopias pursuing answers to contemporary social, economic and moral questions also emerged in the struggling Italy of the XVIth century, gaining enormous popularity in the literature of the ancien régime. The goal of the present study is to describe the general characteristics of renaissance utopias and the most influential authors and works of the period – bearing in mind that the genre did not exist as a well-founded paradigm at the time. Discussing their characteristics, the study aims to pay special attention to presenting the antique authors and works inspiring this evolving genre beside the Morean tradition, as well as elements borrowed from the antiquity, which later became literary tropes.

Re-orienting Ethiopia’s educational policy in the classical humanist perspectives of renaissance utopias

Ethiopia has launched a grand scheme of renaissance to realise fast-paced economic growth. The two Growth and Transformation Plans spanning five years each (2010/11– 2015/16 and 2016/17 – 2020/21) outlined major targets towards which the country intends to mobilise all its resources. In the education sector, this vision is understood as producing a workforce that can realise massive industrialisation. However, what is conceived as ‘renaissance’ in Ethiopia and what kind of education is viewed as capable of bringing it is very mechanical, reductive and utilitarian compared to the Renaissance movements of the late-medieval Europe, which were holistic endeavours to culturally uplift and humanise individuals and societies. The purpose of this paper is to compare the educational views of Christian humanists – the European renaissance thinkers who wrote the early-modern renaissance utopias – with what is conceived today as ‘renaissance’ education in Ethiopia as embedded in major educational policy documents.

Making it Real

In His Preface ToThe Anatomy Of Melancholy, Robert Burton dwells in characteristically fine detail on the international reputation of his home country. He emphasises its positives – the ‘fair’ cities, the ports, the laws – and admits that it lacks good rivers and prosperous towns. The primary English failing, according to Burton, is idleness – a fault it would be difficult to find in the writer himself. Burton follows this evaluation with a long, satirical reflection on a literary form that was well known, as Chloë Houston points out at the opening of The Renaissance Utopia, for ‘imagining practical social reform’ (p. 4). He writes: I will yet to satisfie & please my selfe, make an Utopia of mine owne, a new Atlantis, a poeticall commonwealth of mine owne, in which I will freely domineere, build Citties, make Lawes, Statutes, as I list my selfe. And why may I not? (Pictoribus atque Poëtis, &c.)1

Chloë houston. The Renaissance Utopia: Dialogue, Travel and the Ideal Society.

chloë houston. The Renaissance Utopia: Dialogue, Travel and the Ideal Society.

The Renaissance Utopia: Dialogue, Travel and the Ideal Society by Chloë Houston (review)

The Renaissance Utopia: Dialogue, Travel and the Ideal Society by Chloë Houston (review)

In Search of the Reason and the Right—Rousseau’s Social Contract as a Thought Experiment

For Rousseau, social contract is a hypothetical one; the paper claims that it is, in contemporary terms, a political thought-experiment (TE). The abductive way of thinking, looking for the best normative pattern in the data, finds its counterpart in the historical abduction in the Second Discourse; the analogy between the two secures the methodological unity of Rousseau’s political philosophy. The proposed reading of the work as a TE shows that it fulfills the necessary requirements put by (hopefully) intuitively acceptable definition of a TE, and fits in the contractarian tradition that has been experimenting with hypothetical arrangements since its start. The reading of The Social Contract as a TE has helped to systematize some of its shortcomings from the wider perspective of methodology of political philosophy. Finally, the political thought experiment (PTE) reading of Rousseau places his central work where it belongs: in the tradition started by Plato’s Republic, continuing with Renaissance and early modern philosophical utopias, culminating in the contractarian social contract TE, and going all the way to the work of Rawls and his present day continuators. We hope that this can contribute to a more positive picture of Rousseau’s work, despite criticism concerning his brusque manner of thought-experimenting.

Major Themes in Renaissance Utopias

Utopian themes reflect the spirit of the age which produces them, and echo its problems, ailments and concerns. Ages of helplessness and despair produce myths of wishful thinking and escape, such as, the myths of the Golden Age and the Earthly Paradise. An age of social instability and widespread discontent and frustration begets literary social utopias of social stability and universal contentment, such as, More's Utopia and other Renaissance utopias. An age of steady progress and prosperity inspires utopias of ambitious hopes of perfection as H.G. Well's Men like Gods and William Morris' News from Nowhere. The twentieth century in which change has madly pace and the necessary adjustments have a frustrating slow pace has created either utopias of men like gods or dystopia of men like beasts, such as, Zamyatin's We, and Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four.This paper intends to deal with the major themes of the Renaissance utopias which are often called social utopias, such as Thomas More's Utopia (1516), Francois Rabelais' Abbev of Theleme (1534), Thomas Campanella's The City of the Sum (1613-14), Valentine Andrea's Christianopolis (1619), and Francis Bacon's New Atlantis (1623).

Laughter in Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel: Utopia as Extra-Textual Place

Gargantua and Pantagruel exists at the nexus point of four subtypes of utopia: the medieval utopia of abundance, such as The Land of Cockayne and Chaucer’s Former Age; the Renaissance utopia of the pastoral found in New World chronicles by conquistadors; the Renaissance utopia of escape such as Campanella’s City of the Sun; and the by Columbus of the utopia he found during his voyages to the New World. Because Gargantua and Pantagruel simultaneously occupies multiple utopian spaces without ever being comfortably classified as a single type of utopia, we can look outside the text for utopian satisfaction. In the persona of Master Alcofribas, Rabelais tells the reader that the boundary of his utopia was laughter brought forward by the act of reading his book. In taking Alcofribas’s advice to look outside the text for utopia, we discover that the utopia of Gargantua and Pantagruel is extra-textual, found in the act of reading and in the Bakhtinian grotesque realism of laughter.

Platão e os Guaranis: uma análise da obra de Joseph Perramás à luz das utopias européias renascentistas e das teorias ilustradas sobre o Novo Mundo

This article analyzes the work Platon y los Guaranies , written by the Jesuit, Joseph Perramas in 1793, after many years living among the Guaranis. It intends to establish a comparison between Perramas, some Renaissance utopias (More, Campanella) and especially some theories on the New World by European Enlightenment philosophers, published in the second half of the eighteenth century, whose presupposition and conclusion were the inferiority of the American continent in comparison with Europe. It argues that, although Perramas considered an opponent of the Enlightenment, he incorporated much of its reasoning and, in his defense of the Jesuit missions among the Guaranis, he is sophisticated enough to use the arguments of European authors against each other in order to better prove his own theory. Keywords: Joseph Perramas, Guarani missions, dispute around the New World, Jesuits, Enlightenment.

‘Knowledge Shall be Increased’: Natural Philosophy and Religion in the Early Modern Utopia

AbstractRecent studies of the Renaissance utopia have focused on the importance of historicising utopia and in particular of considering the influence of contemporary developments in science or natural philosophy on the development of utopianism during the period. This article, having assessed the problem of defining the utopia, surveys some of the most prominent examples of the utopian mode of discourse from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (including those of More, Bacon, Campanella, Andreae and Cavendish). Considering scholarship which illuminates the relationship between utopian writings and the theories and practices of natural knowledge, it reflects on the utopia's abiding interest in spiritual improvement alongside social and scientific reform.

Utopia, Carnival, and Commonwealth in Renaissance England (review)

Reviewed by: Utopia, Carnival, and Commonwealth in Renaissance England Aaron Kitch Christopher Kendrick. Utopia, Carnival, and Commonwealth in Renaissance England. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. 382 pp. $85.00/£55.00. One of the main achievements of Christopher Kendrick's new book is that it moves us beyond the impasse of late twentieth-century criticism that was content to reinforce a false binary between utopia and dystopia. At the same time, Kendrick shares with many intellectuals on the Left an impatience with Marxism's outward rejection of utopia. He shares with his mentor and advisor Fredric Jameson an insistence on the multiple traditions of utopian thinking within Marxism itself, including Ernst Bloch's ideal of hope, Mikhail Bakhtin's dialogical thinking that ruptures a conventional bourgeois narrative of history, and the Frankfurt School's concept of "strong memory" that gives aesthetic texts revolutionary power. Jameson himself goes so far to suggest that "all class consciousness"—not just the ideology of the ruling classes—is "in its very nature Utopian."1 Kendrick attends more to the political ambiguities of utopia. He emphasizes that the utopian genre is necessarily bounded by history. Utopian texts may function on some level as thought experiments, but these experiments are founded in historically determined contradictions. Such contradictions ultimately remind us of the "impossibility of sketching a consequent vision of social happiness whole"—or, as Kendrick puts it in more colloquial (and, again, Jamesonian) terms, remind us that "thought in fact is not free" (10). Kendrick insists that Marxism has depended on utopian thinking all along. He locates in works like Marx's essay on the Paris Commune a particular type of utopia, one that acknowledges the "necessary and salient utopian dimension" of class struggle (24). Kendrick actually regards Marx's stated anti-utopianism as a characteristically utopian response, one that helped him and others to define abstractions like "mode of production" and "working class" which were so essential to his vision of the future. It is in the tradition of utopian fiction itself, beginning with Thomas More's Utopia, that Kendrick locates a notion of history as both progressive and epochal. Kendrick's hefty task in Utopia, Carnival, and Commonwealth is to trace in detail the origins and implications of such contradictions, not just in obvious places such as More but in a constellation of historically connected texts in the Renaissance, including Rabelais's Pantagruel and [End Page 215] Gargantua, the "commonwealth" tracts of Thomas Starkey and Thomas Smith, Thomas Nashe's Piers Penniless and Nashes Lenten Stuffe, and Francis Bacon's New Atlantis. Kendrick's resulting work of scholarship offers complex arguments and detailed readings of interrelated texts, something of a luxury for the reader at a time when academic presses (at least in the U.S.) seem to be taking their cues from Disney and Viacom in subordinating all aspects of intellectual production to the principle of profit maximization. Following Ernest Mandel's Trotskyist theory of late capitalism, Kendrick locates a key source of contradiction within Renaissance utopias in the historical process of "uneven development," which Marx defined as the overlap between modes of production manifested in the disparity between economic and social power of the ascending yeoman class. Kendrick's definition of uneven development (which he labels "archaic") includes a specific historical process by which a centralized Tudor monarchy was both motivated and hampered by nascent capitalism (83), as well as a more general sense of the relativity of social forms. Far from reducing the works at hand to so many proto-Marxist manifestos, Kendrick uses the historical genre of utopia as a way to interrogate Marxism itself. He provocatively suggests that utopia itself "sketches the limits of a Marxist politics by foregrounding the difficult question of (especially working-class) culture and consciousness" (17). In the process, he embraces Ernest Bloch's assimilation of Marxism and utopia and rejects Louis Marin's arguments for a break between them (18). In his original readings of More, Starkey, Smith, Nashe, and others, Kendrick tries to retain the power of utopian fiction to remain situated in the "real" over and against Marin's restriction of utopia to a merely signifying practice. Kendrick defines utopian literature...

Renaissance Utopias and the Problem of History. Marina Leslie

<i>Renaissance Utopias and the Problem of History</i>. Marina Leslie

Renaissance utopias and the problem of history

Renaissance utopias and the problem of history

Grand Designs The Peace Plans of the Late Renaissance

The frustration of intellectuals who attempt to cure mankind of its follies is perennial and proverbial. Reactions to this frustration, at all times, range from resignation to revolution. In the sixteenth century resignation received philosophical expression in Neostoicism which taught the wise man how to survive in adversity and preserve his peace of mind and moral rectitude, and as an extreme example of revolutionary reaction one could cite the Munsterite attempt to establish a New Jerusalem by force. In between these two poles lies the field of utopias: literary descriptions of things as they should be, visions to be aspired to but often without a prescription as to how they are to be attained. For this weakness the absence of a precise bridge leading from reality to ideal utopias are frequently dismissed as ' 'melancholic sighs which are not calls for action. Yet not all utopists were armchair intellectuals indulging in day dreams, and one of the tantalizing aspects of the study of their visions is the attempt to deduce the means by which they hoped to realize the dream, or, in other words, what they considered to be possible agents of change. Most Renaissance utopias were blueprints for a single perfect community existing within an unreformed world. Thus their authors had to contend with the question of the relations of their ideal society with the rest of the still-imperfect world. In certain cases the problem was solved by locating the Utopian country in such a remote place that it would be cut off from the rest of civilization, hidden and protected from its evils; other utopists imagined their perfect community as strong enough to repel any invader and even, when necessary, to conquer neighbours and impose upon them the ideal way of life; and some visionaries claimed that the security of their land would be assured since its Utopian simplicity, austerity and absence of gold would deflect the envy and greed of potential enemies. Yet in none of the

Leisure and Learning in Renaissance Utopias

If a utopia is a near perfect, or even a demonstrably superior, society, is there anything that endangers that society as soon as it is achieved? Yes. Prosperity! I have shown in “More's Utopia and the New World Utopias: Is the Good Life an Easy Life?”, that the actually existing, “real” New World Utopian communities were severely challenged by success. For example, the vigor of the Jansonite community in Bishop Hill, Illinois (1846-1860) sharply declined when that community met their survival needs and had to deal with surpluses and comfort. As soon as communal efforts and group sacrifices produced prosperity, the attractiveness of communism faded.