Utopia

Even the most cursory glance through the history of philosophical literature will show that the primary obsession of humanity’s thinkers has been the imagining of new worlds. We are, fundamentally, creatures of inventions and creativity and a vast amount of our literary tradition is devoted to this practice. Chief among these works are those that we call “utopian” fictions, works of prose that flesh out new ways of living and of organizing society. These works have been the preoccupation of philosophers for millennia, from Plato’s Atlantis to The Communist Manifesto. Though certainly not the first of its kind, Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (known also by its more presumptuous title: A truly golden little book, no less beneficial than entertaining, of a republic's best state and of the new island Utopia) would seem on its surface to be another such effort from the ranks of philosophy. More’s Utopia reminds us that it is the right and responsibility of those who can imagine a different future to bring it to the consciousness of the species, that it may be learned from and the best of it adopted.