More responds that social reform is a pleasant ideal, but that conservatism more appropriate to these precarious days: "what you can't put right you must try to make as little wrong as possible. Referring to Plato's Republic, Raphael notes that the likelihood of a king acting as a philosopher, or merely tolerating one, is coincidental at best: "I'd be promptly thrown out, or merely treated as a figure of fun" (p. When More asks if he might serve as counselor to some king, Raphael responds that no king or court would tolerate a counselor who might challenge their strongly (and wrongly) held assumptions. Of course, Raphael remains an outsider to civilization - despite his wisdom. Moreover, these ills produce a subjugated people: "you create thieves, and then punish them for stealing" (p. The seizure of land by oligarchs, the maintenance of a wasteful standing army, the practice of gambling and gratuitous ornamentation - all of these social ills lead to a sick society, according to Raphael. Raphael illustrates this rebuke by noting that thieves in English society are executed when, instead, they should be pitied and helped. Even Tudor England offers little in the form of civilization. Before long, it becomes clear that Raphael offers shrewd analysis of various communities around the globe - and that he finds most of them to be faulty in some way. After all "There is never any shortage of horrible creatures who prey on human beings, snatch away their food, or devour whole populations but examples of wise social planning are not so easy to find" (p. Even monsters are hardly worthy of concern. Raphael is a traveler who has seen much of the world yet is impressed by little of it. The books begin a conversation between Thomas More and Raphael (Hebrew for 'God has healed'). Unlike Plato's Republic, a largely abstract dialogue about justice, Utopia focuses on politics and social organization in stark detail. We're starting to wonder how Hythloday is remembering all these details.Summary of Thomas More's - Utopia Utopia (published in 1516) attempts to offer a practical response to the crises of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by carefully defining an ideal republic.In the country, people eat in their own home.And, of course, there is always music and dessert. Meals begin with a reading about some moral topic which then everyone discusses.Seating is arranged by prestige of position but young and old are mixed so that the young have good examples to follow and the eldest are served first.Nurses take care of children in a separate dining hall, and there are plenty nurses who love to take care of the children.Slaves have to do the hard cooking labor, while women do the skillful preparation.People can take extra food home after dinner if they want to, but no one does because it's considered kind of rude. After that, everyone has an equal amount food-except the syphogrants, prince, and any foreign visitors, who have more.They're built well to take the best care of the sick. Sick people have first dibs on food, and they rest in public hospitals located in every city.Everyone has dinner at various town halls run by a syphogrant (kind of like the eating hall in a college dorm).More doesn't mention them again, and they seem quite similar to the slaves he quickly mentions earlier, but he gives them a different name.) Food works the same way, though they have one distinct practice: someone called a bondsmen kills all the animals they eat, because they don't think it's ethical for their actual citizens to kill anything.After all, if no one owns anything, no one fears losing anything. It's this system that prevents greed from being a problem in Utopia. Families share everything they produce in a big, common storehouse of the city and take whatever they need.The oldest male gets to be in charge, and women and children help out. If the whole population of Utopia gets too small, they call back people from colonies.They think that this is totally justifiable because otherwise the land goes to waste. Utopians will declare war on another country if they aren't making good use of their land.In fact, they are so obsessed with this whole number-balance thing that they make people move to different cities that are too small and will even send them out of the country to make a new colony if the total population of Utopia gets too big.That means sometimes someone has to move from their family to another, smaller one. To keep everything balanced, they make sure family sizes stay at a certain number. When women grow up, they move in with their husband's family.Um, except for almost everything that follows. Every city in Utopia has families basically along the lines we're used to.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |