Un texto capital del Renacimiento que nos recuerda que imaginar la libertad es más urgente que nunca.
Más de quinientos años después de su publicación, Utopía sigue siendo un hito del pensamiento político occidental, así como el más alto referente de la necesidad humana de construir mundos posibles.
Esta bella edición incluye una introducción del premiado escritor China Miéville, que analiza los límites de las utopías actuales a la vez que insiste en la necesidad de un pensamiento que imagine mundos posibles. Además, se añaden cuatro ensayos de Ursula K. Le Guin, una de las expertas más reputadas en pensamiento utópico, sobre su largo compromiso con la obra de Moro.
En un tiempo dominado por discípulos de Maquiavelo y donde el estoicismo mal entendido ha alcanzado la categoría de cultura pop es más necesario que nunca revisitar a Moro y soñar con mundos mejores. Esta edición cuenta con prólogo de China Miéville y finaliza con varios ensayos de Ursula K. Le Guin y no se me ocurren dos autores mejores para esa tarea. Ayudan mucho a contextualizar la obra en nuestros días y nos recuerdan que cada utopía contiene irremediablemente una distopía asociada. Y es que ahora mismo desgraciadamente estamos viviendo una utopía capitalista, al menos si eres billonario.
Books like this are great to make you realise "damn these ideas I thought were fresh are hella old" and "how the hell did they predict that back then?"
I didn't realise going in how communist this vision of Utopia would be, for good and for ill. Don't know if that's intentional but I hope Engels gives some props to old Thomas More somewhere in his writings.
Review of 'Utopia (Penguin Classics)' on Goodreads
3 stars
Good criticism of kings and needless war and hoarding of wealth while many starve and suffer, but the Utopians are all in on just war and debt imperialism, and patriarchal democratic hierarchy and slaves for the unpleasant work (but just criminals and poor immigrants) and to top off the comparison to today, their toilets are made of gold!
As a huge fan of dystopic fiction, St. Thomas More's Utopia has been on my to-read list for years. The book is a great satire of European history of the pre-reformation era.
Review of 'The Utopia Of Sir Thomas More' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
Written in his relative youth, long before the Chancellor business, or the messy question of who was the legitimate queen of England. In Latin, for a select audience of educated men.
More created a fantastical land, governed by a strange new communal system. Perhaps he was hearkening back to the early Christian church, where the believers held all their possessions in common while they waited for Christ to return. Maybe he started with a hard look at Tudor England and pulled everything that disgusted him out of it, just to see what sort of world would be revealed.
He came up with a world unlike anything that anyone had seen before. But there were some things that he could not imagine. He couldn't imagine a land without religion, so devised a vague sort of proto-Unitarianism. He couldn't envision a classless society, and gave the Utopians slaves to do the truly …
Written in his relative youth, long before the Chancellor business, or the messy question of who was the legitimate queen of England. In Latin, for a select audience of educated men.
More created a fantastical land, governed by a strange new communal system. Perhaps he was hearkening back to the early Christian church, where the believers held all their possessions in common while they waited for Christ to return. Maybe he started with a hard look at Tudor England and pulled everything that disgusted him out of it, just to see what sort of world would be revealed.
He came up with a world unlike anything that anyone had seen before. But there were some things that he could not imagine. He couldn't imagine a land without religion, so devised a vague sort of proto-Unitarianism. He couldn't envision a classless society, and gave the Utopians slaves to do the truly dirty work. He never dreamed that equality between the sexes might be possible. Also, he had a thing about adultery and premarital sex. In his Utopia they were strictly outlawed. It seems like a trivial thing for him to have gotten so worked up about that he lost his head over it. Which, come to think of it, is what he did.
1) [On advising counsellors] ''They'll behave as though their professional reputations were at stake, and they'd look fools for the rest of their lives if they couldn't raise some objection to your proposal. Failing all else, their last resort will be: 'This was good enough for our ancestors, and who are we to question their wisdom?' Then they'll settle back in their chairs, with an air of having said the last word on the subject -- as if it would be a major disaster for anyone to be caught being wiser than their ancestors!''
''Though, to tell you the truth, my dear More, I don't see how you can ever get any real justice or prosperity, so long as there's private property, and everything's judged in terms of money -- unless you consider it just for the worst sort of people to have the very best living conditions, or unless …
1) [On advising counsellors] ''They'll behave as though their professional reputations were at stake, and they'd look fools for the rest of their lives if they couldn't raise some objection to your proposal. Failing all else, their last resort will be: 'This was good enough for our ancestors, and who are we to question their wisdom?' Then they'll settle back in their chairs, with an air of having said the last word on the subject -- as if it would be a major disaster for anyone to be caught being wiser than their ancestors!''
''Though, to tell you the truth, my dear More, I don't see how you can ever get any real justice or prosperity, so long as there's private property, and everything's judged in terms of money -- unless you consider it just for the worst sort of people to have the very best living conditions, or unless you're prepared to call a country prosperous, in which all the wealth is owned by a tiny minority -- who aren't entirely happy even so, while everyone else is simply miserable.''
''The slaughtering of livestock and cleaning of corpses is done by slaves. They don't let ordinary people get used to cutting up animals, because they think it tends to destroy one's natural feelings of humanity.''
''You see how it is -- wherever you are, you always have to work. There's never any excuse for idleness. There are also no wine-taverns, no ale-houses, no brothels, no opportunities for seduction, no secret meeting-places. Everyone has his eye on you, so you're practically forced to get on with your job, and make some proper use of your spare time.''
