Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-rdgjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-09T13:39:32.479Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Utopia 9/11: A Plea for a New World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Nicole Schwartz-Morgan
Nicole Schwartz-Morgan*
Affiliation:
Collège militaire royal du Canada, Ecole militaire de St-Cyr, Coëtquidan, France
Get access

Abstract

Thomas More's Utopia is made up of two books. Book One, quickly skimmed over by those who dream of the future and are bored by history, tells us about Europe in 1515 at the dawn of a revolution in every field of knowledge dominated by a political power that uses religion, fear and ignorance to satisfy an insatiable appetite for hegemony, infinitely corrupt but in public promoting moral, family values. Book Two gives us a glimpse of a future on a human scale using new techniques, reason and good management of its resources to reconcile the common good with the pleasure of the individual. That book is the founding text for our modernity. It is the pagan bible adopted by the Enlightenment, which we have inscribed in the charter of our epoch's institutions. Five hundred years later the books are being rewritten in reverse: the great human dream set in train by Book Two in 1516 is bogged down in the reality of 2005. The new promises of free-choice economism in 2005 are just a nightmare journey back in time to the postulates of Book One.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , February 2006 , pp. 44 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Ames, R. (1949) Citizen Thomas More and His Utopia. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Bernstein, P. (1996) Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk. New York: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Bodéüs, R. (1988) ‘Entre l’esprit et la nature. Aristote et la Renaissance’ [Between mind and nature. Aristotle and the Renaissance], Le Beffroi, no. 62.Google Scholar
Boorstin, D. J. (1983) The Discoverers: A History of Man’s Search to Know His World and Himself. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Braudel, F. (1982a) Civilization and Capitalism, vol. 2: The Wheels of Commerce, trans. Siân Reynolds. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Braudel, F. (1982b) Civilization and Capitalism, vol. 3: Perspectives of the World, trans. Siân Reynolds. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Buchanan, J. (1986) ‘Why Governments Got Out of Hand’, New York Times, 16 October.Google Scholar
Bunge, M. (1982) Economía y Filosofía [Economics and Philosophy]. Madrid: Tecnos.Google Scholar
Cox, H. (1999) ‘The Market as God: Living the New Dispensation’, The Atlantic Monthly, March.Google Scholar
Delumeau, J. (1978) La Peur en Occident [Fear in the West]. Paris: Fayard.Google Scholar
Eco, U. (1994) The Name of the Rose. Trans. from the Italian by Weaver, W.. San Diego: Harcourt Brace.Google Scholar
Eliade, M. (1963) Aspects du Mythe. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Friedman, M. (1976) ‘The Line We Dare Not Cross’, Encounter, Vol. XLVII.Google Scholar
Geremek, B. (1987) La Potence ou la pitié. L’Europe et les pauvres du Moyen Âge à nos jours [Pity or the Gallows. Europe and the Poor from the Middle Ages to the Modern Day]. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Huizinga, J. (1954) The Waning of the Middle Ages. New York: Doubleday Anchor Books.Google Scholar
Jalbert, L. and Lepage, L., eds (1986) Néo-conservatisme et restructuration de l’État. Canada, États-Unis, Angleterre [Neo-conservatism and State restructuring. Canada, United States, Great Britain], Part I: Readings in Neo-conservatism. Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université du Québec.Google Scholar
Logan, G. M. (1983) The Meaning of More’s Utopia. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lohr, C. H. (1988) ‘Metaphysics’. The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Macaulay, T. B. (1913) The History of England, vol. I. London: Macmillan and Company.Google Scholar
Mairet, G. (1978) ‘L’éthique marchande’ in Châtelet, F. and Mairet, G. (eds) Histoire des idéologies. De l’Église à l’État du IXe au XVIIe siècle [History of Ideologies: From Church to State from the 9th to the 17th Centuries]. Paris: Hachette.Google Scholar
Marius, R. (1985) Thomas More: A Biography [1984]. New York, Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
McCutcheon, E. (1983) My Dear Peter: The Ars Poetica and Hermeneutics for More’s Utopia. Angers: Moreana.Google Scholar
McPherson, C. B. (1962) The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Morgan, N. (1996) ‘La plume, le plomb et la puce’, Futuribles no. 213 (October).Google Scholar
Prévost, A. (1978) L’Utopie de Thomas More [Thomas More’s Utopia]. Paris: Mame.Google Scholar
Schöpflin, G. (1990) ‘The Political Traditions of Western Europe’, Daedalus, 119.Google Scholar
Strosetzki, C. (1990) ‘L’Utopie de Thomas More: une réponse au débat sur le nouveau monde’, Moreana, 101–102.Google Scholar
Toffler, A. and Toffler, H. (1995) Creating a New Civilization: The Politics of the Third Wave. Atlanta: Turner.Google Scholar