Utopia
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- ISBN13: 9780140449105
- Condition: New
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Product Description
Revised introduction; new chronology and further reading
Translated with an Introduction by Paul Turner.
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I came into this book with two things in mind (mostly because of additional reviews): this is going to be an interpretable piece of work about the benefits/downfalls of socialism/capitalism AND this is going to be an enjoyable read. Well guess what? Neither are right. Book 1 is pretty excellent…the dialogue is well thought out, and it slowly gets you into the tale. Book 2 is, on the whole, horrible. There is maybe a stretch of 5 pages where it really raises a few eyebrows and gets you thinking…otherwise, More desperately tries to fill the pages with useless information about how this Utopia is arranged, from government to the most trivial of things (i.e. naked marriage). And, i mean, i was expecting to be able to see two sides of the tale here — the ups and downs of Utopia for instance. As a replacement for, More seems to be attacking this Utopian vision with the most absurd examples. He paints a picture of Utopia as being completely from left meadow…nearly seeming to discredit any conception of a socialist state, but with the worst possible opinion. If he was trying to make a convincing case, he utterly fails, because his description of Utopia is full of exaggerated details. Essentially, it comes down to More supporting his beliefs with a book full of fallacies.
Beyond that, I wouldnt even read this book for fun. It just isnt well written (at points More seems to repeat himself over and over again, stretching out certain points beyond their breadth). Plus, he just doesnt give any awe inspiring description of a) a reasonable Utopia, or b) the reasons why a Utopia seems ridiculously impossible. As a replacement for, he just babbles on and ridicules this superfluous Utopia that is intentionally exaggerated for simple pickings.
Thumbs down!
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
Not the book everyone thinks it is. Fantastic insight into thoughts on crime in the 12th century (in England).
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
One must realize that the introduction at the beginning of the Penguin Classics edition of Utopia states that this book was originally written in Latin. Thus the writting and how sentences are some what annoying, confusing, or gramatically incorrect..do not point your finger at Sir Thomas More but as a replacement for at Paul Turner, the translator. Yet even with previous statement which I just stated, this book’s depth and issues that very well exhibited were enough that I was entertained through out the incredibly fleeting read. Though to disbelief, I loved Book 2 better than Book 1. These books are really are radical in difference (one is mostly made up of dialogue, and the additional is one man explaining a ’setting to a plot’). The Utopian Republic gives an incite into different political structures that are now within the group of Socialism, Communism, and Marxism. I judge that if such a book is revered by many of the world’s largest political facts as one of the best politically idealistic books ever written, what can be stopping you from adage it yourself. If you have an even and a couple hours off, sit down, read, and delight in.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
I got this book because of all the hype surrounding it, especially when something carries the title “Utopian society”. Yet, after reading it I find that Utopia itself was never meant to be the “perfect” society, but rather a “different” society. In fact, Utopia is far from perfect, and people need to quit thinking that it is. As a STORY, Utopia is not all that exciting. Animal Farm is a much better book in my opinion.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
This was required reading for a graduate course in the Humanities. A fantastic tale and vital past work in literature. History of Utopia starts with Thomas Moore’s book in 1516 he coins the axiom Utopia. Ideal societies have been around before like Garden of Eden, city on a hill. For Moore the thought of utopia was proposed to be an ironic one. One of the problems you are faced with when reading his utopia is that you cannot really tell when he is serious and when he is being satirical. He writes on the border of the lyrical and satirical, you cannot really tell when he is trying to be amusing or serious. The additional problem is the Thomas Moore who speaks to us in the tale is not the Thomas Moore who really lived. He wrote himself into a character. He is intending it to be ironic. Utopia is Greek for “Excellent Place, and “no place.” He is punning an ironic two-sided term he clearly proposed irony when he wrote this text, which provided the foundation for a new genre for social representation. Now, according to Lewis Mumford, who wrote the book “The Tale of Utopia” 1922, one of the first comprehensive studies of Utopian representation in Western Civilization, the word Utopia signifies human folly or human hope, the vain hope of perfection. The vain hope of remaking our own imperfect natures, so that we can set up the blissful harmonious communal life. On one hand, he is entirely playful and contradictory. Thomas Moore could be bigoted (against Protestants), tiny minded, not a saint as described. Among all the things, he was a fantastic wit, fantastic sense of humor. On the additional hand, it seems that Utopia could be a reflection of his devout Catholicism. He has been represented as a Roman Catholic martyr. In which case you want to take him seriously, altering the model of menses a set of new aims for moral and social objectives. Of course, Moore’s death is vital to consider in this life he is glorified in the film, “A Man for All Seasons.” He was a Renaissance man, he was a lawyer, statesman, Christian humanist a classical scholar an advocate for women’s rights he was also Henry 8’s Lord Chancellor.
In 1514, he was sent to Flanders to negotiate a wool treaty and while there, he meets and befriends Peter Giles who is the town clerk of Antwerp, and allegedly tells him “It is my intention to write a book about the way a country should be governed according to my principals. But, it is treacherous to write about persons things in England while king Henry the 8 wrath is so easily encouraged, I could perhaps write that I met an ancient sailor in your house and introduce that man as a globetrotter, who had traveled all over the world and had seen places that we don’t even know the being of. What he had seen there was so unbelievable as compared to the life in Europe that the islands the countries he had visited would seem to belong to another world. Therefore, the title of my book will be “Utopia” a word that means “no where.” That sailor will have traveled all over Europe and lived sometime in France Germany, and England. That is why he could compare the ideal community he got acquainted with in Utopia, to the ones he got to know in our countries, and that way I would keep myself out of the matter.” After he returned to London, he wrote the fist chapter. Now, what would that tell us about the Utopian imagination, the creation the public presentation of a Utopia? Moore was beheaded in 1535; he would not admit marriage to Ann Boleyn as lawful to the church. In 1534, Henry becomes head of the church, but Moore remains loyal to pope. In 1935, Moore is canonized. We have to take Moore’s religion very seriously. Moore thought Protestants should be burned, he was greedy and proud, not a perfect man. Yet he had this wish for a Utopia.
All utopian fictional thoughts of mythic proportion occupy kind of distant realm of the afterlife, myth, faith that unite all of these fundamentals in a matter that is so rich and potentially illuminating and invaluable for scholars students that are interested in effective across boundaries and in understanding and exploring the value of effective across boundaries. Societies natural fiber and inhabited by populations some of them very select, the exceptionally virtuous or blessed in some cases getting there requires a metaphysical transformation, in additional cases it requires a upsetting journey that has to be understood as some ways metaphorical and some ways literal. There is permanently a sense that to reach Utopia requires a transformation of the human self how do we get away from our flaws, how do we get away from our seemingly inevitable and invariable scenery of our being.
These places offer anecdotes to painful and tragic realities to human being. They are past in scenery you cannot know any utopia, whether it is represented in a sci-fi movie, or novel or feminist utopia; they must be placed in some kind of a past context. A fascinating proposition to explore, all utopias all acts of the utopian imagination strike us as constituting in one manner or another statements, critiques or observations about the world we occupy at that agreed moment. Therefore, any utopia is a reflection and study of the world that we are occupying at that agreed moment and what we wish it were rather than what it is at that moment. Therefore, utopia is a deeply and inescapably a past manner organizing the human imagination. I don’t reflect any utopia works in a fixed and eternal way because for every generation and every age they have to imagine their own utopia. Of course utopian experiments were not just talking about fiction or wishing it were so, were talking about actual Soviet Revolution of 1917, were looking at movements looking to bring about radical profound social and political changes that are so deeply utopian in scenery. So utopians are aesthetic, philosophical, sociological, they are imagined and fictional, but you can look a history and find attempts most of which failed to bring about these kind of communities that Emerson, Thoreau, these 19th century American egalitarian attempts to make the ideal agrarian society. 1960 hippies reawakening movement of going back to the natural and living off the land. Even today’s green and ecological revolution you find in them utopian aspects that resonate so richly with the history of envisioning the ideal society, an ideal place.
Oscar Wilde once said “A map of the world that does not include Utopia, is not even worth glancing at for it leaves out the one country at which humanity has permanently landed, and when humanity lands there it looks out sees a better country set sail. Progress is the realization of utopias.” So when we talk about utopias we are not only talking about a desire or a wish or a longing for perfection, we are talking about an order of progress, a way in which we intend to advance, a way in which we envision or imagine improvement and progress. A progress narrative, psychoanalysis is utopian. Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis is a scientific expression of the utopian imagination. The thought that where id was, the ego shall be. The thought of a talking tale, the thought that we can master our neurosis that we can harness them that we can go from unconscious behavior to conscious behavior. Marxism and all the grand philosophies of the 19th and 20th centuries are grand utopian narratives. Feminism is a grand utopian narrative in and of itself.
Recommended reading for anyone interested in history, psychology, philosophy, and literature.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5