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Utopia

Inspiring, provocative, prophetic, and enigmatic, Utopia is the literary masterpiece of a visionary statesman and one of the most influential books of the modern world. Based on Thomas More’s penetrating analysis of the folly and tragedy of the politics of his time and all times, Utopia (1516) is a seedbed of alternative political institutions and a perennially challenging exploration of the possibilities and limitations of political action. This Norton Critical Edition is built on the translation that Robert M. Adams created for it in 1975. For the Third Edition, George M. Logan has carefully revised the translation, improving its accuracy while preserving the grace and verve that have made it the most highly regarded modern rendering of More’s Renaissance Latin work. “Backgrounds” includes a wide-ranging selection of the major secular and religious texts—from Plato to Amerigo Vespucci—that informed More’s thinking, as well as a selection of the responses to his book by members of his own humanist circle and an account by G. R. Elton of the condition of England at the time More wrote. “Criticism” now offers a more comprehensive survey of modern scholarship, adding excerpts from seminal books by Frederic Seebohm, Karl Kautsky, and Russell Ames, as well as selections from stimulating and influential recent readings by Dominic Baker-Smith and Eric Nelson. In the final section, on “Utopia’s Modern Progeny,” the opening chapter of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is now complemented by excerpts from another great work in the complex tradition of utopian and dystopian fiction, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. Throughout the Third Edition, the editorial apparatus has been thoroughly revised and updated. An updated Selected Bibliography is also included.

Utopia

Five-hundred-year anniversary edition of More's Utopia, with writing from major science fiction writersFive hundred years since its first publication, Thomas More's Utopia remains astonishingly radical and provocative. More imagines an island nation where thousands live in peace and harmony, men and women are both educated, and property is communal. In a text hovering between fantasy, satire, blueprint and game, More explores the theories and realities behind war, political conflicts, social tensions and redistribution, and imagines the day-to-day lives of a citizenry living free from fear, oppression, violence and suffering. But there has always been a shadow at the heart of Utopia. If this is a depiction of the perfect state, why, as well as wonder, does it provoke a growing unease? In this quincentenary edition, published in conjunction with Somerset House, More's text is introduced by multi-award-winning author China Miéville and accompanied by four essays from Ursula K. Le Guin, today's most distinguished utopian writer and thinker..From the Trade Paperback edition.

Utopia: The Influential Classic (Capstone Classics)

What we can learn from a Renaissance nowhere In 1516, a book was published in Latin with the enigmatic Greek-derived word as its title. Utopia—which could mean either “good-place” or “no-place”—gives a traveler’s account of a newly discovered island somewhere in the New World where the inhabitants enjoy a social order based purely on natural reason and justice. As the traveler describes the harmony, prosperity, and equality found there, a dramatic contrast is drawn between the ideal community he portrays and the poverty, crime, and often frightening political conditions of 16th century Europe. Written by Sir Thomas More (1477–1535)—then a rising intellectual star of the Renaissance and ultimately the advisor and friend of Henry VIII who was executed for his devoutly Catholic opposition to the king—Utopia is as complex as its author. In the form of a Platonic dialogue, Utopia explores topics such as money, property, crime, education, religious tolerance, euthanasia, and feminism. Claimed as a paean to communism (Lenin had More’s name inscribed on a statue in Moscow) as often as it has been seen as a defense of traditional medieval values, Utopia began the lineage of utopian thinkers who use storytelling to explore new possibilities for human society—and remains as relevant today as when it was written in Antwerp 500 years ago. Explore the issues like feminism, euthanasia, and equality through Renaissance eyes Early communist tract or a defense of medieval values? You decide. Peer inside the enigmatic mind of the man who dared stand up to Henry VIII Appreciate the postmodern possibilities of Platonic dialogue Part of the bestselling Capstone Classics series edited by Tom Butler-Bowdon, this edition features an introduction from writer, economist, and historian Niall Kishtainy.

Utopia: And History Of King Richard Iii (Dover Thrift Editions Ser.)

First published in Latin in 1516, Utopia was the work of Sir Thomas More (1477-1535), the brilliant humanist, scholar, and churchman executed by Henry VIII for his refusal to accept the king as the supreme head of the Church of England. In this work, which gave its name to the whole genre of books and movements hypothesizing an ideal society, More envisioned a patriarchal island kingdom that practiced religious tolerance, in which everybody worked, no one has more than his fellows, all goods were community-owned, and violence, bloodshed, and vice nonexistent. Based to some extent on the writings of Plato and other earlier authors, Utopia nevertheless contained much that was original with More.In the nearly 500 years since the book's publication, there have been many attempts at establishing "Utopias" both in theory and in practice. All of them, however, seem to embody ideas already present in More's classic treatise: optimistic faith in human nature, emphasis on the environment and proper education, nostalgia for a lost innocence, and other positive elements.In this new, inexpensive edition, readers can study for themselves the essentials of More's utopian vision and how, although the ideal society he envisioned is still unrealized, at least some of his proposals have come to pass in today's world.

Utopia

Designedly fantastic in suggestion of details, “Utopia” is the work of a scholar who had read Plato’s “Republic,” and had his fancy quickened after reading Plutarch’s account of Spartan life under Lycurgus. Beneath the veil of an ideal communism, into which there has been worked some witty extravagance, there lies a noble English argument.

Utopia: with Erasmus's "The Sileni of Alcibiades" (Hackett Classics)

Wootton's translation brings out the liveliness of More's work and offers an accurate and reliable version of a masterpiece of social theory. His edition is further distinguished by the inclusion of a translation of Erasmus's 'The Sileni of Alcibiades,' a work very close in sentiment to Utopia, and one immensely influential in the sixteenth century. This attractive combination suits the edition especially well for use in Renaissance and Reformation courses as well as as for Western Civilization survey courses. Wootton&’s Introduction simultaneously provides a remarkably useful guide to anyone&’s first reading of More&’s mysterious work and advances an original argument on the origins and purposes of Utopia which no one interested in sixteenth-century social theory will want to miss.

Utopia: A Revised Translation, Backgrounds, Criticism (Norton Critical Editions)

Inspiring, provocative, prophetic, and enigmatic, Utopia is the literary masterpiece of a visionary statesman and one of the most influential books of the modern world. Based on Thomas More's penetrating analysis of the folly and tragedy of the politics of his time and all times, Utopia (1516) is a seedbed of alternative political institutions and a perennially challenging exploration of the possibilities and limitations of political action. This Norton Critical Edition is built on the translation that Robert M. Adams created for it in 1975. For the Third Edition, George M. Logan has carefully revised the translation, improving its accuracy while preserving the grace and verve that have made it the most highly regarded modern rendering of More's Renaissance Latin work.

Utopia

'It remains astonishingly radical ... one of Utopia's most striking aspects is its contemporaniety' Terry EagletonIn Utopia, Thomas More gives us a traveller's account of a newly-discovered island where the inhabitants enjoy a social order based on natural reason and justice, and human fulfilment is open to all. As the traveller describes the island, a bitter contrast is drawn between this rational society and the practices of Europe. How can the philosopher reform his society? In his discussion, More takes up a question first raised by Plato and which is still a challenge in the contemporary world. In the history of political thought few works have been more influential than Utopia, and few more misunderstood.Translated and introduced by Dominic Baker-Smith

uTOpia: Towards a New Toronto (uTOpia)

Visions of a truly workable, liveable and world-class city are once again dancing in Torontonians' heads. In the past two years, this spirit has, directly or indirectly, manifested itself in multifarious forms: in writer Sheila Heti's sui generis lecture series, Trampoline Hall; in the transformation of derelict hotels such as the Drake and the Gladstone into cultural hotspots; in renewed interest in waterfront revitalization and public transportation; in exciting, controversial architectural developments such as the OCAD building, the expansion of the ROM and the AGO; in the [murmur] project, which catalogues stories about Toronto neighbourhoods and broadcasts them to people's cell phones; in the explosion of the local independent music scene.uTOpia aims to capture and chronicle that spirit, collecting writing by many of the people inspired by and involved in these projects. Featuring passionate, visionary essays by thirty-four different journalists, artists, thinkers, architects and activists, uTOpia is a compendium of ideas, opinions and strategies. The anthology explores plans to redevelop the Island airport into a Ward's Island-style community; how the Zeidler family is energizing artist-run centres; what a car-free Kensington Market might mean; the necessity and beauty of laneway housing; the way past efforts to combat devastating developments like the Spadina Expressway have shaped current activism; what a utopian Toronto might look like mapped out; and much, much more. Playful, erudite and accessible, uTOpia writes Toronto as it is shared and created by the people who live here. Though it is by no means a complete picture of what is happening in the city right now, it will hopefully show that what was once just a T-shirt slogan - I Heart T.O. - is now genuine, heartfelt sentiment.Contributors include Howard Akler, Andrew Alfred-Duggan, Jacob Allderdice, Bert Archer, James Bow, Nicole Cohen, Jonny Dovercourt, Dale Duncan, Philip Evans, Mark Fram, Misha Glouberman, Chris Hardwicke, Sheila Heti, Alfred Holden, Luis Jacob, Lorraine Johnson, Edward Keenan, Mark Kingwell, John Lorinc, Sally McKay, Heather McLean, Dave Meslin, Shawn Micallef, Derek Murr, Ninjalicious, Darren O'Donnell, Planning Action, Barbara Rahder, Dylan Reid, Erik Rutherford, Jeffrey Stinson, Deanne Taylor, Conan Tobias, Stéphanie Verge, Adam Vaughan and Marlena Zuber.

Utopia and Revolution: On the Origins of a Metaphor

The most comprehensive study of ideology and utopia since Karl Mannheim's work of the 1930s, Utopia and Revolution can be understood as turning classical political theory on its head or, perhaps, inside out. Instead of the usual summary of how English radical theologies contributed to the revolutionary process, Lasky shows how such political theology of the mid-seventeenth century became the backbone of the natural history of revolutionary disasters. In a remarkable feat of scholarship in intellectual history, Lasky charts the course of this historic entanglement over some five turbulent centuries of Western history. In so doing, he traces the ideological extension of the human personality through the writings of political theorists, philosophers, poets, and historians.

Utopia and Terror in Contemporary American Fiction (Routledge Transnational Perspectives on American Literature #21)

This book examines the quest for/failure of Utopia across a range of contemporary American/transnational fictions in relation to terror and globalization through authors such as Susan Choi, André Dubus, Dalia Sofer, and John Updike. While recent critical thinkers have reengaged with Utopia, the possibility of terror — whether state or non-state, external or homegrown — shadows Utopian imaginings. Terror and Utopia are linked in fiction through the exploration of the commodification of affect, a phenomenon of a globalized world in which feelings are managed, homogenized across cultures, exaggerated, or expunged according to a dominant model. Narrative approaches to the terrorist offer a means to investigate the ways in which fiction can resist commodification of affect, and maintain a reasoned but imaginative vision of possibilities for human community. Newman explores topics such as the first American bestseller with a Muslim protagonist, the links between writer and terrorist, the work of Iranian-Jewish Americans, and the relation of race and religion to Utopian thought.

Utopia as Method

Utopia should be understood as a method rather than a goal. This book rehabilitates utopia as a repressed dimension of the sociological and in the process produces the Imaginary Reconstitution of Society, a provisional, reflexive and dialogic method for exploring alternative possible futures.

Utopia Drive: A Road Trip Through America's Most Radical Idea

For Erik Reece, life, at last, was good: he was newly married, gainfully employed, living in a creekside cabin in his beloved Kentucky woods. It sounded, as he describes it, "like a country song with a happy ending." And yet he was still haunted by a sense that the world--or, more specifically, his country--could be better. He couldn't ignore his conviction that, in fact, the good ol' USA was in the midst of great social, environmental, and political crises--that for the first time in our history, we were being swept into a future that had no future. Where did we--here, in the land of Jeffersonian optimism and better tomorrows--go wrong? Rather than despair, Reece turned to those who had dared to imagine radically different futures for America. What followed was a giant road trip and research adventure through the sites of America's utopian communities, both historical and contemporary, known and unknown, successful and catastrophic. What he uncovered was not just a series of lost histories and broken visionaries but also a continuing and vital but hidden idealistic tradition in American intellectual history. Utopia Drive is an important and definitive reconstruction of that tradition. It is also, perhaps, a new framework to help us find a genuinely sustainable way forward." … an engaging exploration -- and example -- of the fruitful tunnel-visions of dreamers turned doers." - Publishers Weekly

Utopia from Thomas More to Walter Benjamin (Univocal)

“Utopia poses a question. Not simply in the sense of a problem to be resolved and at the same time eliminated . . . but in the sense that, within the economy of the human condition, utopia, the aim of social alterity—of all social otherness—is ceaselessly being reborn, coming back to life despite all the blows rained down upon it, as if human resistance had taken up residence within it.” For the French philosopher Miguel Abensour, the fictional genre of utopia has provided thinkers and artists a fertile ground to explore for the past 500 years, both as a way to imagine new emancipatory practices of shared existence and as a tyrannical imposition of power. Here, Abensour’s project is to examine the idea of utopia in two different but powerful moments in its trajectory: first, utopia’s beginning, when Thomas More sought a path for justice through a world in transformation, and second, when utopia faced its greatest danger, the moment that Walter Benjamin called “catastrophe.”

Utopia in Practice: Bishan Project and Rural Reconstruction (Contemporary East Asian Visual Cultures, Societies and Politics)

This book is a collection of texts on one of China's boldest social experiments in recent years: the rural reconstruction project in Bishan. The Bishan Project (2011-2016) was a rural reconstruction project in a small village Bishan, Anhui Province, China. The writings describe and criticize the social problems caused by China’s over-loading urbanization process and starts a a contemporary agrarianism and agritopianism discourse to resist the modernism and developmentalism doctrine which dominated China for more than a century, answering a global desire for the theory and action of the alternative social solution for today’s environmental and political crises.This practical utopian commune project ran for 6 years and caused a national debate on rural issues in China, when it was invited to be exhibited and presented abroad. This collection of writing will be of interest to artists, China scholars, architects, and the cultural community at large.

Utopia in the Age of Globalization: Space, Representation, and the World System

The idea of Utopia has made a comeback in the age of globalization, and the bewildering technological shifts and economic uncertainties of the present era call for novel forms of utopia. Tally argues that a new form of utopian discourse is needed for understanding, and moving beyond, the current world system.

Utopia in the Age of Survival: Between Myth and Politics

A pathbreaking exploration of the fate of utopia in our troubled times, this book shows how the historically intertwined endeavors of utopia and critique might be leveraged in response to humanity's looming existential challenges. Utopia in the Age of Survival makes the case that critical social theory needs to reinstate utopia as a speculative myth. At the same time the left must reassume utopia as an action-guiding hypothesis—that is, as something still possible. S. D. Chrostowska looks to the vibrant, visionary mid-century resurgence of embodied utopian longings and projections in Surrealism, the Situationist International, and critical theorists writing in their wake, reconstructing utopia's link to survival through to the earliest, most radical phase of the French environmental movement. Survival emerges as the organizing concept for a variety of democratic political forms that center the corporeality of desire in social movements contesting the expanding management of life by state institutions across the globe. Vigilant and timely, balancing fine-tuned analysis with broad historical overview to map the utopian impulse across contemporary cultural and political life, Chrostowska issues an urgent report on the vitality of utopia.

Utopia Limited: The Sixties and the Emergence of the Postmodern

Utopia Limited is an original, engaging account of how postmodernism emerged from the political and cultural upheaval of the 1960s. Marianne DeKoven argues that aspects of sixties radical politics and culture simultaneously embodied the full, final flowering of the modern and the beginning of the postmodern. Analyzing classic sixties texts, DeKoven shows where the utopian master narratives underlying the radical and countercultural movements gave way to the "utopia limited" of the postmodern as a range of competing political values and desires came to the fore. She identifies the pivots where the modern was superseded by the nascent postmodern: where modern mass culture was replaced by postmodern popular culture, modern egalitarianism morphed into postmodern populism, and modern individualism fragmented into postmodern politics and cultures of subjectivity. DeKoven rigorously analyzes a broad array of cultural and political texts important in the sixties--from popular favorites such as William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch to political manifestoes including The Port Huron Statement, the founding document of SDS (Students for a Democratic Society). She examines texts that overtly discuss the conflict in Vietnam, Black Power, and second-wave feminism--including Frances FitzGerald's Fire in the Lake, James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time, and Shulamith Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex; experimental pieces such as The Living Theatre's Paradise Now; influential philosophical works including Roland Barthes's Mythologies and Herbert Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man; and explorations of Las Vegas, the prime location of postmodernity. Providing extensive annotated bibliographies on both the sixties and postmodernism, Utopia Limited is an invaluable resource for understanding the impact of that tumultuous decade on the present.

Utopia, Limited: Romanticism and Adjustment

What is utopia if not a perfect world, impossible to achieve? Anahid Nersessian reveals a basic misunderstanding lurking behind that ideal. In Utopia, Limited she enlists William Blake, William Wordsworth, John Keats, and others to redefine utopianism as a positive investment in limitations. Linking the ecological imperative to live within our means to the aesthetic philosophy of the Romantic period, Nersessian’s theory of utopia promises not an unconditionally perfect world but a better world where we get less than we hoped, but more than we had. For the Romantic writers, the project of utopia and the project of art were identical. Blake believed that without limits, a work of art would be no more than a set of squiggles on a page, or a string of nonsensical letters and sounds. And without boundaries, utopia is merely an extension of the world as we know it, but blighted by a hunger for having it all. Nersessian proposes that we think about utopia as the Romantics thought about aesthetics―as a way to bind and thereby emancipate human political potential within a finite space. Grounded in an intellectual tradition that begins with Immanuel Kant and includes Theodor Adorno and Northrop Frye, Utopia, Limited lays out a program of “adjustment” that applies the lessons of art to the rigors of life on an imperiled planet. It is a sincere response to environmental devastation, offering us a road map through a restricted future.

Utopia, Limited

What is utopia if not a perfect impossible world? Anahid Nersessian reveals the basic misunderstanding of that ideal. Applying the lessons of art to the rigors of life on an imperiled planet, she enlists the Romantics to redefine utopia as an investment in limitation--not a perfect world but one where we get less than we hoped but more than we had.

Utopia of Usurers and other Essays

Utopia or Bust: A Guide to the Present Crisis

After the financial crash and the great recession, the media rediscovered Karl Marx, socialist theory, and the very idea that capitalism can be questioned. But in spite of the publicity, the main paths of contemporary critical thought have gone unexplored outside of the academy. Benjamin Kunkel's Utopia or Bust leads readers - whether politically committed or simply curious - through the most important critical theory today. Written with the wit and verve of Kunkel's best-selling novel, Indecision, this introduction to contemporary Leftist thinkers engages with the revolutionary philosophy of Slavoj i ek, the economic analyses of David Graeber and David Harvey, and the cultural diagnoses of Fredric Jameson. Discussing the ongoing crisis of capitalism in light of ideas of full employment, debt forgiveness, and "fictitious capital," Utopia or Bust is a tour through the world of Marxist thought and an examination of the basis of Western society today.From the Trade Paperback edition.

The Utopia Reader

The book compiles primary texts from a variety of authors and movements in the history of theorizing utopias. <p><p>Utopianism is defined as the various ways of imagining, creating, or analyzing the ways and means of creating an ideal or alternative society. Prominent writers and scholars across history have long explored how or why to envision different ways of life. <p><p>The volume includes texts from classical Greek literature, the Old Testament, and Plato's Republic, to Sir Thomas More's Utopia, to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and beyond. By balancing well-known and obscure examples, the text provides a comprehensive and definitive collection of the various ways Utopias have been conceived throughout history and how Utopian ideals have served as criticisms of existing sociocultural conditions. <p><p>This new edition includes many historically well-known works, little known but influential texts, and contemporary writings, providing an even more expansive coverage of the varieties of approaches and responses to the concept of utopia in the past, present, and even the future. <p><p>In particular, the volume now includes feminist writings and work by authors of color, and contends with current concerns, such as the exploration of the ecological ideals of Utopia. Furthermore, Claeys and Sargent highlight twenty-first century trends and popular narrative explorations of Utopias through the genres of young adult dystopias, survivalist dystopias, and non-print utopias. Covering a range of original theories of utopianism and revealing the nuances and concerns of writers across history as they attempt to envision different, ideal societies, The Utopia Reader is an essential resource for anyone who envisions a better future.

The Utopia Reader

Utopian literature has given voice to the hopes and fears of the human race from its earliest days to the present. The only single-volume anthology of its kind,The Utopia Reader encompasses the entire spectrum and history of utopian writing-from the Old Testament and Plato's Republic, to Sir Thomas More's Utopia and George Orwell's twentieth century dystopia,Nineteen Eighty-Four, through to the present day. The editors of this definitive collection demonstrate the various ways in which utopias have been used throughout history as veiled criticism of existing conditions and how peoples excluded from the dominant discourse-such as women and minorities-have used the form to imagine empowering alternatives to present circumstances. An engaging tour through the dissident, polemic, and satirical tradition of utopian writing,The Utopia Reader ultimately provides a telling portrait of civilization's persistent need to imagine and construct ideal societies.

Utopía (Serie Great Ideas #Volumen 18)

Ideas que han cambiado el mundo. A lo largo de la historia, algunos libros han cambiado el mundo. Han transformado la manera en que nos vemos a nosotros mismos y a los demás. Han inspirado el debate, la discordia, la guerra y la revolución. Han iluminado, indignado, provocado y consolado. Han enriquecido vidas, y también las han destruido. Taurus publica las obras de los grandes pensadores, pioneros, radicales y visionarios cuyas ideas sacudieron la civilización y nos impulsaron a ser quienes somos. En Utopía, Tomás Moro describió el fantástico escenario de una isla lejana donde la sociedad se ha perfeccionado hasta alcanzar la armonía. Sin embargo, su título literalmente significa «el no lugar», y esta influyente obra no constituía sino un ataque a su propia época, corrupta y peligrosa, y a los defectos de la humanidad. Comentarios sobre la colección Great Ideas:«De veras que la edición es primorosa y pocas veces contenido y continente pueden encontrarse mejor ensamblados y unidos. ¡Qué portadas! Para enmarcar. [...] Ante las "Great Ideas", solo cabe quitarse el sombrero. ¡Chapeau!»ABC «Taurus propone un doble envite con este lanzamiento. Por un lado aumenta su compromiso con el ensayo; por otro, recupera el gusto por la estética. A los volúmenes se les ha proporcionado una portada delicada y cuidada (copian el original británico) que invita a la lectura.»La Razón «Un fenómeno editorial.»The Guardian «Aparte de los contenidos, en general muy bien elegidos, son tan bonitos que si los ven seguro que cae alguno.»El País «Ideas revolucionarias, crónicas de exploraciones, pensamientos radicales... vuelven a la vida en estas cuidadísimas ediciones, muy atractivas para nuevos lectores.»Mujer Hoy «Grandes ideas bien envueltas. De Cicerón a Darwin, esta colección entra por los ojos.»Rolling Stone «Original y bella iniciativa la emprendida por Taurus con su colección Great Ideas.»Cambio 16 «Hay libros inmortales, libros únicos que contienen pensamientos y reflexiones capaces de cambiar el mundo, tesoros en miniatura reagrupados en la colección Great ideas.»Diario de León