CHAPTER TWO
NARRATIVES
A map of the world that does not include Utopia is
not ever worth glancing at, for it leaves out the one
country where humanity is always landing.
- - - Oscar Wilde1
Individual and social identities are created, transmitted, revised and undermined through
narratives and practices. Narratives tell people who they are, what they should aspire to become
and how they should relate to others. They are invariably linear, as they are structured around a
plot line that imposes a progressive order on events, selecting and emphasizing those that can be
made supportive or consistent with it. Frank Kermode suggests that to make sense of the world
we "need to experience that concordance of beginning, middle and end which is the essence of
our explanatory fictions."2 Practice is repetitive behavior that is widely shared and culturally
regulated. It can be sub-divided, as Montesquieu famously did, into manners [manières], norms
[moeurs] and laws [lois].3
Narratives and practices are often designed to uphold existing social, religious, political
and economic orders. Practices serve these ends when they become habitual.4 Charles Taylor
maintains that practice not only fulfills rules, but gives them concrete shape in context. Practice
is “a continual ‘interpretation’ and reinterpretation of what the rule really means.”5 Change in
actual or fictionalized practice can threaten existing orders so institutions have a strong interest
in regulating them, just as their opponents do in changing them to reflect reformist or
revolutionary ends.6 The same is true of narratives. In early modern Europe, the Catholic
Church, which had propagated Latin Vulgate translation of the Old and New Testaments, voiced
strident opposition to vernacular translations. The first printed English language translation,
John Tyndale's 1525 , was banned in England and English clerics visiting the continent bought
and burned all the copies they could find.7
Narratives and practices interact in complex and still poorly understood ways. Narratives
often describe or critique existing practices. They introduce and encourage new practices,
generate support for them or attempt to destabilize existing ones. Practices sometimes reinforce
existing narratives, as does the reading of scripture in churches and synagogues. New practices
encourage new narratives, even new narrative forms. The boundaries between text and practice
are blurred as there is considerable overlap. Postmodern literary theory has further muddied the
waters by categorizing as texts what formerly would have been described as practices.8
Narrative has long been a vehicle for social analysis. In the late eighteenth century,
David Hume insisted that history is functionally indistinguishable from novels and epic poetry
because it is made meaningful by fictional emplotment; a mere recital of past events being
nothing more than a chronicle.9 In the nineteenth century, William Dilthey, hoping to bridge the
growing gap between what would become known as the humanities and social sciences, made
the case for a sociology of biography.10 Social science nevertheless developed more in
opposition to the humanities than in collaboration with it. Margaret Sommers aptly describes
narrative as social science's “epistemological other.”11 It is an ideographic mode of
representation that is discursive and generally atheoretical, in contradistinction to social science’s
quest for theory based on quantitatively testable propositions. Beginning in the 1980s,
researchers in psychology, legal theory, organizational theory, anthropology, medical sociology
were nevertheless drawn to narrative because of what it revealed about the understandings
people had of themselves and their social worlds.12 In recent years, comparative politics and
2
international relations have turned to narratives for much the same reason. This interest and the
rise of constructivism as a paradigm, parallels and reflects widespread recognition of the
importance of identity politics. As constructivism emphasizes the central importance of
intersubjective understandings, it directs our attention to narratives and practices as locales
where such understandings arise, spread and are challenged.
Over the course of the millennia we have witnessed dramatic shifts in narratives and
practices. At the macro level, these shifts raise problems about the continuity of cultures, just as
the reworking of ife stroies does about the continuity of individuals. At the analytical level, this
evolution poses conceptual challenges. We must exercise great care about using one culture’s
categories and understandings to study identity construction and maintenance in other eras and
cultures. Variations in how people understand, construct and theorize identity -- or do not
theorize it all -- are nevertheless a valuable analytical resource. They allow us to study the
present in comparative perspective and thereby develop a more comprehensive understanding of
identity narratives and practices and the conditions that shape them.
Humanists describe different kinds of narratives, study how they work and the projects
for which they are utilized.13 My interests overlap with theirs in part. I want to know why
certain kinds of narratives are used to propagate or probe identities, but also what they have to
tell us about the process by which people and institutions form, reconfigure and re-order their
identifications. Narratives are absolutely critical to the sense of selfhood felt by individuals and
attributed to social collectivities. Paul Ricoeur maintains that people come to know themselves
only indirectly by means of cultural signs, most notably narratives of everyday life. “Narrative
mediation underlines this remarkable characteristic of self-knowledge.”14 We may be hard-wired
3
to think this way as experiments show that people will construct narratives to impose order on
unconnected events and images.15
We not only tell stories about ourselves but about others.16 This phenomenon is
reciprocal and generates narratives and counter-narratives. Not infrequently, our narratives are
influenced by others. We cannot understand the various ways Jews, the Irish, AfricanAmericans or women have come to define themselves without taking into account how others
have stereotyped them.17 Identity is thus a kind of bricolage that builds on life experiences, cues
from others and reflections on both.18 This is true for groups, institutions and countries, not only
individuals. Constructivist scholarship indicates that “great powers” and “civilized states” are
social categories, whose markers and boundaries have steadily evolved since their creation. The
narratives that construct these identities help to shape how people think of their countries and
how they should behave.19
Life narratives only rarely take the form of written autobiographies. The most prominent
early example was St. Augustine’s, penned in the fourth century of the Common Era.20
Autobiography became a popular genre in the eighteenth century. More often, life narratives are
piecemeal and inchoate. They take the form of internal dialogues and real or fictional
conversations with others.21 In modern times, novels, plays and films have also served as
vehicles to present life experiences and to construct identities. People often identify with their
characters and sometimes even seek to emulate them. Romanticism and its core project of
discovering and expressing oneself was effectively propagated by the best-selling novels of
Rousseau and Goethe.22
Shared experiences and common understandings of them sustain communities as well as
individuals.23 Seminal works on nationalism -- by Hans Kohn, Carleton J. H. Hayes and Karl W.
4
Deutsch -- maintain that a shared past, based on territory, language, religion, history, or some
combination of them, is the foundation of nationality.24 Deutsch defines a people as “a
community of complementary habits of communication.” Stylized representations of the past
have the potential to create a “we feeling,” and hence a sense of community among those who
internalize these narratives.25 At least as far back as Herodotus, students of community have
recognized the largely mythical nature of such narratives. Fictional origins and historical events
are retrospectively woven into master narratives to “invent” a people and provide them with a
distinctive and uplifting past.26 In this chapter and the next, I examine two of the earliest and
most successful master narratives: the Old Testament and Iliad. The former helped to create and
sustain a strong sense of community among Jews and the latter among Greeks.
Narratives that construct or propagate identities often do so self-consciously. This is true
of many autobiographies and for the Iliad and the Old Testament. Augustine wrote his
autobiography and Rousseau and Goethe their novels to advance religious, philosophical and
cultural projects. Goethe was amazed at his success and horrified at the suicides that his novel
prompted; “copy cat” suicides are generally described as the “Werther Effect.”27 The Old
Testament and the Iliad were collaborative projects, transmitted initially by word of mouth and
not written down until centuries later. Changes in their language, contents and style tell us
something about the evolving nature of the projects they were used to advance. Personal life
narratives are equally creative products, although we may be unaware of the extent to which we
edit, reinterpret and even invent memories to support them.
Collectively, narratives track the evolution and relative appeal of different kinds of selfidentification. This is rarely the goal of any single narrative, some academic studies aside, but an
unintended system level effect of many individual narratives. Political theorists have studied
5
philosophical tracts and literature to fathom the emergence of individual identity.28 Historians
have done the same with national movements and identities. International relations scholars
have relied on a variety of texts to identify and analyze competing national narratives. Ted Hopf
uses newspapers, official discourse, popular novels, film reviews, and memoirs to track the
identity discourse in the late Soviet Union and first years of post-Cold War Russia. He
discovered four distinctive narratives, each of which frames Russian relations with the West and
“Near Abroad” differently and vies for supporters among the public and government officials.29
Stefano Guzzini analyzes the revival of geopolitical discourse as a response to post-Cold War
identity crises in Russia, Eastern Europe and Turkey. In these countries, previously established
national identities have been challenged from within and without. Geopolitics has been
mobilized to circumscribe boundaries and provide justifications seemingly more acceptable to
public opinion and third parties than narrow definitions of national interest.30
As these examples illustrate, narratives can be partisan or analytical about identity. The
most common analytical narratives track the rise, fall, uses and consequences of particular
identities. This approach was pioneered by Greek tragedy, whose characters are constructed as
archetypes. They can be considered thought experiments as they create uni-dimensional, and
hence unrealistic, characters to probe the individual and social consequences of their identities.
Modern novels have characters with inner lives and distinctive personalities but many also
explore, problematize or advocate specific identities. Cervantes’ Don Quixote, published
between 1605 and 1615, and generally regarded as the pioneering modern novel, parodies
chivalry and honor-based quests. By showing their absurdity, even madness, it seeks to
undermine traditional aristocratic identities, anchored in honor codes. Early English novels,
notably those of Richardson, Fielding and Steele, describe newly emerging roles and identities
6
that would come to be associated with the bourgeoisie. In chapter five, I make the case that the
three operas on which Mozart and librettist Carlo Da Ponte collaborated critically examine
ancien régime and the Enlightenment identities.
Relatively few narratives probe the concept of identity itself. In the Introduction, I noted
two such works: Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan and Robert Musil’s, A Man Without Qualities.
Bracketing the modern era, Hobbes and Musil make the case that identity is a purely social
construct by peeling away the roles and practices into which people have been socialized.
Underneath, both authors contend, there is nothing but raw appetites. Several of the texts I
examine implicitly probe the concept of identity and a few do so explicitly. Most of the latter are
science fiction novels. They raise the question of what it is to be human by problematizing
existing makers and boundaries between humans and other species.
My focus on identity directs my attention to three related kinds of narratives: golden
ages, utopias and dystopias. They have been used to construct, propagate and analyze identity.
They make their respective appearances in eras of change when new justifications for order were
required and new hopes kindled about the possibility of transforming or even transcending
traditional identities. In the West, the respective popularity of golden age, utopian and dystopic
narratives is an excellent barometer of belief in progress and the relative appeal of religious
versus secular foundations of order. I will nevertheless argue that many, if not most, utopias are
anti-modern in orientation.
Utopias are elite narratives and generally optimistic about the prospect of a better life in
this world. Dystopias, another elite narrative, are quintessentially pessimistic. Golden ages are
popular, pessimistic narratives as they trace the irreversible decline of the human race. The
7
Christian reading of the Garden of Eden nevertheless embeds a deeper optimism because it holds
out the prospect of rebirth and life in heaven.
Since the ancient Greeks, a major tradition of Western thought has regarded active
participation in society as a precondition of human fulfillment. One of the common goals of
utopias, from Plato to the present day, has been to design societies that successfully integrate
people into society. Utopias foster harmony and happiness. Their critics maintain that their
harmony is superficial and socially costly as utopias are achieved and maintained by repression
from above and suppression from within. Critics read many utopias as dystopias, as I do in
chapter four with The Magic Flute. Golden ages can also be read as dystopias, and for many of
the same reasons. Chapter five, which examines the post-Enlightenment German reconstruction
of ancient Greece as a golden age, offers such an interpretation. In the conclusion, I will argue
that these opposed readings can be attributed to the strategies utopias employ to address the
tensions between reflexive and social selves. These strategies in turn reflect different
understandings of what it is to be human.
Golden Ages, utopias and dystopias are only some of the narratives used to interrogate
practices. Others include stories of creation, states of nature, social contracts, ideal type
deductive systems and genealogies. They rely on a range of strategies to evoke a set of favorable
responses from diverse readers. I have chosen golden ages, utopias and dystopias over other
narrative forms for several reasons. Many of the texts that I examine (e.g., the Iliad, Aeneid,
Magic Flute, Looking Backward, Left Behind) have had far wider audiences than political or
philosophical tracts. Next to the Old Testament, the Iliad is arguably the most influential text of
Western culture.31 These works have influenced popular as well as elite conceptions of self.
8
A common feature of golden age, utopian and dystopic narratives is their ability to
distance us from the world we know by creating fictional ones in which, with a little imagination,
we can situate ourselves. Sheldon Wolin notes the “impossibility of direct observation” of social
alternatives and therefore the essential role of imagination as a “means for understanding a world
[one’] can never know in an intimate way.”32 Golden ages, utopias and dystopias create and
draw us into such worlds, emotionally and intellectually, and by doing so offer otherwise
inaccessible vantage points on our worlds.33 Immersion in alternate worlds encourages us to
reflect upon and question practices and identities in our society that we may have taken for
granted. Reflection can arouse or focus desires for change. It can also strengthen our
commitment to existing practices and identities when alternative worlds convince us that change
is likely to impoverish us physically, emotionally or psychologically.
Golden ages and utopias are instantiations of ideal worlds, and dystopias of their
opposite. For most of human history, these worlds were important vehicles for advancing
normative claims. Counterfactuals also serve this end, but in a narrower instrumental sense.34
One can always make the case for a better or worse outcome if another course of action had been
followed. Better and worse ultimately depend on some notion of best and worst. Normative
claims accordingly require ideal worlds. In Western culture, golden ages and utopias were
created in part for this purpose. In the early modern era, they were joined by state of nature
narratives and later, by the additional modes of argumentation.
State of nature narratives are counterfactual extrapolations to get at phusis [nature] by
stripping away nomos [convention]. They purport to describe human nature uncorrupted, or at
least unshaped, by society, and use it as the template to construct social orders. The legitimacy
of these orders and the principles on which they rest depend on their supposed fit with human
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nature. From Hobbes on, state of nature narratives played a powerful role in the development of
the liberal paradigm.35 Contemporary examples include Nozick’s explicit appeal to a state of
nature and Rawls’ use of the original position as a conceptual analog.36 Following Rousseau, the
state of nature is sometimes portrayed as capturing the original historical condition of
humankind. More often, states of nature are thought experiments intended to highlight what
their authors believe to be the most fundamental attributes of human nature. Hobbes arguably
fits this model as does Rawls, who makes no claim that his original position could exist in
practice. To get to the state of nature it is essential to do away with some features of the world in
which one resides. As Hegel observed, philosophers cut away various human traits and related
behaviors and what they leave behind and emphasize are subjective choices that reflect their
cultural setting and ideology.37 States of nature are Rorschach Tests that tell us more about their
authors than they do about the character of humankind.
Three other modes of moral argumentation emerged in the modern era: Kantian
deontology (and its Rawlsian variant), utilitarianism, and deliberative democracy or discourse
ethics. Discourse ethics claims to be more concerned with process than with ends, at least in a
direct way. Unlike the Kantian criterion of universalism, these normative conditions are, or are
at least purported to be, far less determinative, and accordingly do not require an ideal world.
Discourse ethics is reflexive, making rules themselves a subject to argument, and thereby hoping
to encourage fairer and more open-ended dialogues. Discourse ethics nevertheless assumes
egalitarian reciprocity and universal human respect, neither of which Seyla Benhabib contends,
have enough substantive content to specify a singular ideal framework.38 The presuppositions of
universal human respect and egalitarian reciprocity are themselves based on a prior, underlying
10
conception of the good, which, of necessity, rests on some idea of an ideal world. The “should,"
as always, requires some image of a better and attainable society.
Although states of nature, and subsequently utilitarian frames, have dominated
philosophical and political narratives, utopias endure. It is interesting to ask why some authors
choose to use them in lieu of other formats to advance normative arguments. One reason may be
their rhetorical potential and ability to reach wider audiences. In the 1960s, Aldous Huxley’s
Island, an attempt to critique contemporary society by means of a utopia, attracted considerable
attention among the well-educated general public.39 The same was true of B. F. Skinner’s
Walden Two, which became something of a bible for many young people.40 Utopias also have a
subterranean existence. Many scholarly narratives, discourse ethics, for example, smuggle them
in without acknowledgment. This is also true of golden ages. Sociobiology’s unrealistic
description of hunter-gatherer societies and, until quite recently, anthropology’s portrayal of
Neolithic societies as largely peaceful "uncorrupted" worlds, are cases in point.41 The American
anthropological community is overwhelmingly anti-war and evidence of a peaceful past offered
some justification for the claim that humanity could and should return to its “natural” state of
existence.
GOLDEN AGES
Arthur Lovejoy and George Boas, coauthors of the classic account of golden ages,
consider them expressions of either “chronological” or “cultural primitivism.” The former
describes an idyllic world that never was, while the latter rhapsodizes about earlier, simpler
societies in which life is imagined to have been more tranquil and satisfying. Both discourses
reflect discontent with contemporary life and tend to become prominent in eras when change
11
makes life more difficult for people.42 Some students of golden ages insist that “cultural
primitivism” is the product of urbanization. Northrop Frye reads the story of Cain and Abel in a
similar light; the murder of Abel, a shepherd, by Cain, a farmer, symbolizes the “blotting out of
an idealized pastoral society by a more complex civilization.”43 Moses Finley suggests that the
description of the Garden of Eden in Book Two of Genesis is an implicit critique of what are
often considered the two principal evils of society: competition for women and for wealth.44
Conflict over women must hark back to the emergence of the species, but that over wealth,
Finley insists, requires a prior division of labor and is accordingly associated with development
and "progress."
It seems fair to say that golden ages reflect a desire to escape from hierarchy, injustice
and all that is understood to be confining and corrupting. Golden ages of all kinds typically do
away with technology and often dispense with private property, laws, meat eating, money,
armies and warfare. Order is maintained by individual self-control in response to “natural”
human impulses. Such worlds are moral, but in a different sense from real worlds. Virtue, in the
eyes of Romans and Christians alike, is the avoidance of temptation.45 "Primitive" peoples
appear virtuous only because they have not been exposed to the many temptations of civilization.
The emphasis on natural virtue may explain why golden ages are placed so far back in the
past or so far away geographically if set in the present day. Greeks and Romans imagined distant
lands populated by peoples who lived simple, stress-free lives. In the Iliad, Zeus turns away
from the unremitting violence of the Trojan Plain to the far north and the land of the noble maremilking Albii, “the most decent men alive.”46 Pliny characterizes the land of the Hyperborians
as a pastoral utopia; there are no seasons, seeds are sown and harvested on the same day and
Hyperborians die only when they tire of life.47 Sir John Mandeville’s Blessed Isles, like the
12
mythical Atlantis, lie somewhere beyond the Pillars of Hercules and are inhabited by a godly and
innocent people whose virtue offers a sharp contrast with the corruption of Europeans and their
religions. In the age of discovery, Europeans continued to imagine paradises in uncharted seas,
no doubt influencing Thomas More to place his Utopia in this setting Alternatively, like
Rousseau and Gauguin, they glorified the lives and virtues of the peoples that European voyagers
actually encountered.
Golden ages are common to Judeo-Christian and Greek culture and in both cases appear
to have roots in earlier Mesopotamian myths and texts. The Greek word for paradise
[paradeisos] most likely derives from Median paidaeza, meaning “enclosure.” It can be broken
down into pari, signifying “around” and daeza, meaning “wall.” In Persia, it was frequently
used to describe enclosed gardens. Paidaeza is a loan word in Akkadian, Hebrew and Aramaic,
and best known to us from the English word “paradise,” a synonym for the Hebrew gan Eden
[Garden of Eden] in Genesis 2-3.48 Earlier Mesopotamian texts reveal no conception of a golden
age but do reflect the “cultural primitivism” of Lovejoy and Boas. The Sumerian epic,
Gilgamesh, describes the life of the adventures of Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Our most complete
text (in Akkadian) is from the 7th century BCE, and Gilgamesh may have been an historical king
in the 27th century BCE. The people of Uruk are unhappy with Gilgamesh, who is a harsh ruler
and deflowers engaged women. Aruru, the goddess of creation, conjures up the wild-man
Enkidu. He roams the wilderness with animals who treat him as one of their own. Shepherds are
terrified by him, and in response to their fears, Gilgamesh sends the temple prostitute Shamhat to
seduce Enkidu. She comes onto him disrobed and provocative and they make love for seven
days, after which the wild animals flee from him. Enkidu has no recourse but to enter human
society, learn to speak and use his knowledge of the wild to support himself as a hunter.49 He
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quickly becomes the sidekick of Gilgamesh and loses his life on one of their adventures. There
is an obvious, if superficial, parallel to Adam’s corruption by Eve in the Garden of Eden. For the
Sumerians, however, Enkidu's pre-civilized existence, while it may have invoked nostalgia for
the simpler life, was certainly not a life they envied or wished to emulate. Urban Sumerians, the
epic’s audience, looked down their noses on their impoverished, unlettered, and unsophisticated
country cousins.
The Torah's description of Eden is first presented in Genesis, 2-3 and a variant appears in
Ezekiel 28:12-19. Adam and Eve live well in Eden without having to work. They have a simple
lifestyle without clothes or crafts and do not appear to eat meat. They are ignorant of shame and
moral distinctions. Eden is an ideal state of existence in contrast to the hardships, sufferings and
uncertainties of real life. It is recognizably fictional as people in pre-literature pastoral societies
suffered all the same tribulations of post-exile humanity. Paradise assumed a wide range of
meanings over the ages. For Christians, the Garden of Eden became closely connected to the
Kingdom of God, or Heaven. Early Christian writers interpreted Eden literally and
metaphorically, producing wildly contradictory accounts.50 Modern readings generally
understand it as a golden age narrative. Some Christians have come to view the expulsion
favorably as it set humanity on the path to independence and self-knowledge.51 For ancients and
modern believers alike, Eden offers the sharpest contrast to the world in which real people live.
Everything is possible that is not in real quotidian life. Augustine even imagined that Adam,
when still in paradise, could raise and lower his penis at will and procreate with Eve without
penetrating her.52
The Eden story appears to suggest that Earth was created as a paradise for humans who
failed to recognize how well off they were and were expelled for violating the Lord's injunction
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not to eat fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. It is significant that curiosity appears to have driven
Adam and Eve to break the one taboo established by their deity. Curiosity and the pursuit of
knowledge are the basis for technology, improvements in the quality of life and ultimately, of
reflection about the nature of the world and the human condition. There can be little doubt that
then, as now, cultures, and many individual people, were highly ambivalent about curiosity and
where they thought it led. It is a primary catalyst for change, which is most often regarded as
threatening, politically and psychologically. Change, when it occurs, inevitably gives rise to
nostalgia among those who do not share in its benefits and provides an important motive and
audience for golden age discourses. The film "Goodbye Lenin" offers a powerful and comic
illustration of this phenomenon in the former East Germany.
The most conservative reading of Genesis 2-3 supports the contention that human beings
should not only bend to divine will, but to higher human authority as well because they neither
know what is best for them nor can effectively overcome temptation. This is the traditional
Roman Catholic interpretation, which posits original sin as the consequence of inadequate
resolve in the face of temptation. Not surprisingly, Augustine attributed such lack of resolve to
curiosity.53 His explanation gives rise to a conundrum: why would an all-knowing and
omnipotent deity create human beings with such a flaw, and one moreover, that would lead them
to rebel against him at the very outset of their existence? Traditional Jewish readings of the
serpent, apple and expulsion emphasize free will and choice and are more tolerant of human
failings. Eden is the first of many examples in the Torah and Jewish liturgy in which humans
succumb to intellectual, sexual or material temptations but are encouraged to try yet again to live
up to higher standards of behavior. For Christians and Jews alike, the struggle for selfimprovement is understood to be a defining characteristic of human beings.
15
Nietzsche recognized that the wealth of texts far exceeds the intentions of their authors or
even the cultures that produce them.54 As Oscar Wilde put it: "When the work is finished it has.
. . an independent life of its own, and may deliver a message far other than that which was put
into its lips to say."55 More recently, Stanley Fish observes that good texts point away from
themselves to ideas and feelings they cannot capture. They invite readers to enter into a dialogue
and to create a “community” between author and reader that transcends generations. 56 Golden
ages have functioned this way over the ages. They may have been created to justify the status
quo; the Eden myth was certainly used this way for two millennia by the Roman Catholic
Church.57 Leibniz’s invention of monads and his description of his world as the best of all
possible ones is a secular version of this argument, although one advanced by a deeply religious
man.58 The Garden of Eden and Hesiod’s ages of man serve as a bridge between nature and
culture, pre-history and history and fantasy and reality. Their ability to inspire fantasy was
undoubtedly an inspiration for utopias that seek to transform the world to recreate something as
satisfying as the Garden of Eden. Golden ages, like so many other human creations, thus carry
with them the possibility of inspiring projects diametrically opposed to their authors’ intentions.
Tradtional Jewish and Christian readings of Eden attribute the decision to eat the apple
and gain knowledge to curiosity. The Enlightenment yoked curiosity and reason together as the
driving forces of human betterment. This shift finds its quintessential expression in Arthur C.
Clarke’s clever riff on the Garden of Eden myth. His City and the Stars depicts a utopia many
millennia in the future: a city where the conditions for human happiness, including de facto
immortality, have been provided by its founders. Human beings have been genetically
programmed to accept the city’s life style, but even futuristic science cannot rid them of curiosity
and a streak of rebelliousness. The consequences of one man’s violation of the city’s strictest
16
taboo -- avoidance of the outside world -- leads to his cleverly engineered departure from “Eden”
and subsequent adoption of a more “natural” life that includes mortality.59 Clarke provides
subtle hints throughout the novel that the city’s founders intended such rebellion and actually
programmed the periodic creation of individuals with characters that would make them
dissatisfied with paradise.
City and the Stars highlights a fundamental truth, one known to the ancient Greeks:
paradise in any form is inherently unstable because it is static. Such societies must exist in
splendid isolation, untouched and uncorrupted by contact with the outside world. For this
reason, Plato situated his Kallipolis and Magnesia at the peripheries of Greece and the original
European utopias were located on distant and largely inaccessible islands. Even in isolation, an
ideal world would not remain stable for very long, as Plato acknowledges in his Republic.
Human curiosity and desire for material goods and higher status lead some people to act in
innovative and destabilizing ways. Adam Smith, a typical Enlightenment thinker in this regard,
maintains that this drive “comes with us from the womb.”60 If so, no degree of socialization and
stipulated order can effectively suppress these instincts; there will always be people who are
dissatisfied and willing to explore new experiences and arrangements. Expulsion from the
Garden of Eden, as some modern Christians contend, was perhaps inevitable and beneficial.61
Greek myths, like their Hebrew counterparts, reveal deep ambivalence about progress.
Prometheus, whose name means “forethought” in ancient Greek, was a Titan. He was famous
for his intelligence and theft of fire from Zeus to give as a gift to humankind. Zeus punished
Prometheus by chaining him to a rock in the Caucasus where his liver was eaten every day by an
eagle or vulture but regenerated every night. Heracles ultimately killed his avian tormentor and
freed Prometheus from bondage. Early Greek texts alternatively praise or blame Prometheus for
17
setting humanity on the road to civilization, innovation and technology.62 Zeus punished men
more generally by having Hephaestus mould the first woman whose descendants would
henceforth torment the male of the species. In his Theogony, Hesiod does not give this woman a
name, but she may be Pandora, whom he identifies in Works and Days. When Pandora first
appears before gods and mortals, “wonder seized them” as they looked upon her. But she was
“sheer guile, not to be withstood by men.”63 Zeus sends Pandora to Prometheus’ brother
Epimetheus with a jar from which she releases “evils, harsh pain and troublesome diseases which
give men death.”64
Pandora is an analog to Eve in that she brings suffering to mankind, although she does so
through no failing of her own but on the instructions of the leading deity. The Pandora myth
functioned as another prop for misogyny, although its more fundamental purpose, as with the
Garden of Eden, was to serve as a theodicy. If the world and human beings were created by a
benign god or gods worthy of respect and worship, the existence of evil and suffering are
anomalous and require an explanation. Golden Ages – at least the original Western ones –
admirably serve this end. The Greeks and Jews nevertheless resolve the anomaly somewhat
differently. The Prometheus and Pandora myths suggest that humans are the playthings of gods,
not all of whom are benign. The Garden of Eden exonerates the deity by making Adam and
Eve’s expulsion and subsequent life of hardship the result of their decision – an exercise of free
will -- to disregard the one restriction imposed on them. Both sets of myths attempt to reconcile
human beings to life as they find it. The Greek myths further suggest that efforts to control one’s
environment or escape from its sufferings are only likely to produce more suffering. They
became the foundation for the tragic vision of life elaborated by later Athenian playwrights.65
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Unlike their Jewish counterparts, Greek myths distinguish contemporary men from their
predecessors. In the Iliad, Nestor refers to an earlier generation of superior and stronger men.66
Pindar laments the old days of “superheroes.”67 The fullest account is given by Hesiod in his
Works and Days, which describes a paradise in which a “golden race” once lived like gods, free
from toil and grief. They never aged or wearied of feasting. They lived in peace with one
another and did not work because the earth yielded its bounty spontaneously. When they died in
ripe old age it was as if they went to sleep.68 This golden age was set in the time of Cronos,
before he was overthrown by his son Zeus.
The golden age degenerated into one of silver as its people gave way to a new race that
was less perfect, physically and mentally. They had shorter lives and were more belligerent.
Zeus ultimately destroyed them because of their impiety. A third race, of bronze, was created. It
was more violent and cruel, although superior to their predecessors in brawn and brains. The
bronze race destroyed itself by its intemperance and violence. It was followed by the age of
heroes, who were superior to their predecessors, and were reborn after death on the Island of the
Blessed. A fifth race, human beings, constitutes an iron age. They continue the decline
temporarily interrupted by the age of heroes. Humans are the weakest and least intelligent but
most quarrelsome of races. They suffer because they are governed by force instead of justice.
They succumb to old age and all of its infirmities, if they live that long. Their lives end with
unpleasant deaths. By using a sequence of metals, each less valuable than the other, Hesiod
indicates a steady decline in the quality of races.69 Separation of golden ages from the present by
multiple races suggests that there is no going back.
Golden ages are ambivalent about technology and reflect the attitudes of the societies that
produced them. Progress is sometimes considered a boon for mankind, and fire was readily
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accepted by humans when it was offered to them by Prometheus. But progress is also a catalyst
for nostalgic narratives. This was true in ancient Mesopotamia, Israel, Greece and Rome and
also post-industrial revolution Europe and Japan.70 In Hesiod’s account, only the iron race has
agriculture. Romans considered agriculture a blessing and a curse. It sustains the human race
but was closely connected with war. Roman citizens were farmers and soldiers, and exchanged
plows for swords as circumstances required. Many Roman authors, Virgil among them, linked
agriculture and manufacture, and described both as forms of warfare against the natural world.71
In the Middle ages and Renaissance, Eden was taken as evidence of decline; people were thought
to be short-lived and short in stature in comparison to their Edenic and biblical predecessors.
The closing lines of King Lear affirm that the young "Shall never see as much nor live so
long."72 In the Merchant of Venice, Lorenzo contrasts the permanence of the moon with the
body, "this muddy vesture of decay."73 The Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment reveal a
similar ambivalence about progress, although the positive and negative features of progress are
now advanced by different individuals or schools of thought.
Modern interpreters of Hesiod and Vergil have tried to reconcile their seeming
contradictions about progress by every obvious strategy: they sequence positive and negative
takes, suggest these authors modified or revised their views over time, find hidden keys that
reconcile apparent inconsistencies and describe one of the opposing positions as concessions to
political pressure or attempts to appeal to different audiences. This ambivalence, we shall see, is
equally characteristic of our world and of the future worlds that science fiction creates.
UTOPIAS
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Utopias are forward looking and motivated by reformist, even revolutionary projects.
The distinction between utopias and golden ages is nevertheless not hard and fast as the Garden
of Eden and Hesiod’s golden age have occasionally been mobilized for reformist ends.74 These
two kinds of narratives are connected in another sense: it is difficult to imagine utopias in the
absence of the inspiration provided by golden ages.75 Utopias do not arise spontaneously in
cultures with no tradition of golden ages.
Ernst Bloch considers utopias a means of expressing the belief that something is wrong or
missing in present-day life.76 Other discourses also serve this function. In my view, what most
effectively distinguishes utopias from golden ages is their starting assumption that people can
make the future better than the present. Utopias are offered as model societies in which
individual happiness and collective harmony are achieved by means of institutions and practices
that rest on and reinforce what their authors depict as universal human traits and aspirations.
They invariably incorporate the principle of equality and de-emphasize material goods and their
use as status symbols.77 In some utopias, property and women are held communally.78 Utopian
authors often assert or imply that their imaginary worlds are realizable in practice; this is a
common feature of nineteenth century socialist utopias. Others are offered as ideal type worlds
that can provide inspiration and direction for improving, although never perfecting, the societies
in which authors and readers reside. George Logan astutely observes that utopias, like their
golden age predecessors, assume that a world without evil is impossible so long as competition
over property and sexual partners exists.79
The first utopias are Greek. Homer’s account of Phaeacia in the Odyssey has utopian
characteristics. It is isolated, rich, peaceful, offers boundless hospitality to visitors and plies the
sea in ships that do not need rudders because they are steered by men’s thoughts.80 Plato’s
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Republic offers the first detailed depiction of a utopia. His Socrates acknowledges early on that
the Republic is nowhere on earth but in heaven.81 Like most utopias, it is explicitly based on a
set of underlying assumptions about human nature, needs and motives and the corresponding
belief that they can be harmonized with the right institutions, practices and indoctrination.
Plato’s Kallipolis is more sophisticated than many subsequent utopias in three important
ways. He addresses the problem of origins: how one gets to a near-perfect society from the
deeply flawed one in which creator and readers reside. Plato acknowledges the difficulty of this
transformation by introducing the noble lie. To hide their society’s human design and encourage
loyalty to the city by all its citizens, the founders agree to tell subsequent generations that they
are all brothers “born of the earth.”82 This lie also serves as the basis for collective as opposed to
individual identities. Plato recognizes that Kallipolis cannot be isolated permanently from
contact with the outside world and that some of these contacts will be hostile, especially if the
republic is successful, increases in population and needs to conquer additional territory.83 Most
importantly, he understands that societies are never static and will evolve regardless of rules and
precautions introduced by their creators and enforced by their guardians. The last two
characteristics would hasten the dissolution of Kallipolis. Innate curiosity and contact with
foreigners would introduce new ideas and provide incentives for change and corruption.
Plato’s Kallipolis is unusual in another respect. It is less a model for society than for the
individual. Plato describes a city but offers it as a collective representation of a well-ordered
human psyche, with its philosophers embodying the drive of reason. The constitution Plato lays
down for Kallipolis is similar in all important respects to what he believes is best for the
individual. That constitution is derived from first principles by philosophers whose wisdom
comes from their holistic understanding of the good. They know how to order the life of the
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polis to the benefit of all citizens regardless of their particular skills and intellectual potential.
They rely on guardians to impose correct opinion on the polis and enforce its rules, including its
provision of denying citizens, as far as possible, contact with outsiders.84 Plato and Aristotle -and Rawls, if we want a contemporary example -- offer their fictional worlds as ideal ones
toward which we must aspire, individually and collectively, but which we are unlikely ever to
achieve. Their worlds serve as templates that we can use to measure how our lives and societies
live up to our principles. As Plato might put it, even imperfect knowledge of a form can
motivate citizens and cities to work towards its actualization. Partial progress can generate
enough virtue to sustain reasonable order in both.
In antiquity, all utopias are agricultural. They have small populations, hierarchical
political structures and do little more than meet the minimum material needs of their
inhabitants.85 In other ways they are quite radical. Kallipolis extends equality to women and
does away with the traditional family. Iambulus’ Heliopolis is an island populated by almost
hairless, ambidextrous giants who live in kinship groups and are furnished with all of their needs
by a bounteous nature. In each kin-group, the oldest man serves as a king and is obeyed
absolutely by his juniors.86 From our perspective, such societies are neither ideal nor just. Lewis
Mumford observes that these imaginary worlds incorporate unpalatable features of their authors’
societies. “It was easier for these Greek utopians to conceive of abolishing marriage or private
property than of ridding utopia of slavery, class domination and war.”87 Even Plato’s guardians
live off of the involuntary labor of others, Moses Finley, a life-long socialist, hastens to point
out.88 Utopias nevertheless provide political theory with access to abstract realms that offer
vantage points on one’s own world. Not everyone was attracted to this strategy. The Stoics,
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who looked forward to the brotherhood of all men, at least in an abstract kind of way, turned
their backs on society and utopias too for the most part.89
Modern utopias begin with Thomas More, who coined the word “utopia.” Born in
London in 1478, he became a page in the household of Henry VII’s Lord Chancellor, John
Morton. He was a lawyer, author, humanist scholar, and in the latter connection, a friend of
Erasmus. He served as Lord Chancellor from 1529 to 1532, and in this position was responsible
for burning numerous Protestants at the stake. He was beheaded in 1535 after refusing to sign
the Act of Supremacy recognizing Henry VIII as Supreme Head of the Church in England.
Utopia was conceived in Flanders in the summer of 1515, where More was serving as part of a
trade mission. In Antwerp, Erasmus introduced him to Peter Giles, and the discussions in Utopia
can reasonably be assumed to be a fictional elaboration of those between More and Giles.
In 1516, More published Utopia in Latin. An English edition appeared posthumously in
1551, and translations followed in other European languages before the end of the century.
Utopia is a recently discovered island in the New World. The imaginary explorer who describes
it is Raphael Hythloday; his surname is an invented compound that in Greek means “nonsense
peddler.” Utopia is a compound word where the “u” stands for the Greek “ou,” signifying no or
not, and the “topia” to “topos,” or place. Utopia means “no place” or “nowhere.” If we
substitute the Greek prefix “eu” meaning “good” or “well,” for the “u,” it translates as “good” or
“ideal” place.90 So More’s society should be understood as ideal but imaginary.
More models his commonwealth on Plato and Aristotle, both of whom regarded autarky
as essential. He isolates his commonwealth and gives it sufficient, size, population and resources
to make it entirely independent and powerful enough to protect its independence and even to
establish a regional hegemony. Plato and Aristotle insist that the happiest life is one of virtue.
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This requires leisure for contemplation and, for Aristotle, civic participation as well. In the
ancient world, such a life was only possible for a small elite, supported by the labor of many
others. More breaks with his Greek mentors in banning private property and any kind of special
privileges; in Utopia everyone works and shares a similar level of prosperity. Striking too, given
its author's intensely partisan involvement in the religious controversies of his day, is the
religious freedom of Utopia. All denominations, even the small Jewish community, are allowed
free exercise of their faith, but atheists are not tolerated. In practice, religious freedom turns out
to be meaningless because everyone is under enormous social pressure to participate in
community rituals and is deprived of the interiority that make beliefs meaningful. Like Plato’s
Republic, Utopia emphasizes the value of order and discipline, which is achieved and maintained
at the expense of individual freedom. Utopia appears to resolve some of the key problems that
plagued More’s Europe; nobody is hungry, homeless, ill-clothed or socially isolated, unless they
are a criminal. More considers private property the source of all social ills. However, Utopia's
communism is not intended as a coherent, workable program but as a vehicle for exposing the
greed and selfishness of English society.
The commonwealth is egalitarian but authoritarian. The government periodically
redistributes the population within families, cities and between Utopia and its colonies. There
are no locks on doors, but little privacy and little to no down time. People are expected to spend
their odd free hour listening to epistolary lectures or doing volunteer labor. There are no bars,
coffee houses or private places for singles to meet. There is no sexual freedom beyond the
choice of mates and stiff punishments are imposed for adultery. Sex is considered a lowly bodily
activity akin to defecation and the scratching of itches. To travel, citizens need permission from
the authorities. Everyone wears the same simple clothing and shame is brought to bear against
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people who sport finery or jewelry. This is part of the general strategy of reducing differences
among individuals to deprive them of individuality. Sameness is stressed in clothing, food,
architecture and the layout of deliberately interchangeable cities. There are, however,
hierarchical distinctions between generations and genders. Utopus aside, we never learn the
name of a single citizen. To their credit, Utopians detest war, get on well with neighbors, but are
not above colonial conquests to accommodate their growing population. They employ foreign
mercenaries to do their fighting, indicating a double standard with regard to citizens and
outsiders and undoubtedly leading to social conflicts that never surface in the book. More’s
ethics represent something of a fusion of Stoic and Epicurean beliefs. He relies on the epicurean
rule of choosing the greater over the lesser pleasure, for individuals and the state.
Toward the end of the book, More acknowledges that many of Utopia's customs are
absurd and others he would “wish rather than expect to see.”91 He does not believe that good
institutions or leaders with good advisors can solve pressing social problems because they are
manifestations of the underlying tensions and inequalities of society. Hythloday offers the
example of capital punishment for theft, arguing that people will continue to steal as long as they
are hungry, and they will be hungry as long as aristocrats and their retainers exploit their labor to
provide income for foppish luxuries.92
Quentin Skinner was among the first to recognize that More’s Utopia is at odds with
humanist orthodoxy and “embodies by far the most radical critique of humanism written by a
humanist.93 Utopia, and the dialogue that precedes it, are vehicles for addressing contemporary
ethical and political controversies. One of these concerns is the relationship between morality
and expediency, which the Stoics believed could be reconciled. Machiavelli takes them to task
in the Prince, written in 1513 but not published until 1532, in which he demonstrates that
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honestà is often at odds with utilitas. Only if the two could be made fully compatible, would it
be possible to construct a commonwealth that would always act morally. Utopia might be
regarded as a thought experiment and its loose ends taken as evidence -- admittedly, planted by
the author --that morality and expediency can only be reconciled in part.
Stephen Greenblatt offers a more germane reading given my focus on identity.94 Following
Burckhardt and Michelet, he argues that discourses in early modern Europe reveal a growing selfawareness of identity, something that can be shaped, manipulated and performed. More's History
of Richard III indicates that role playing of this kind was widespread and that even ordinary people
were not taken in by it, even if they had to pretend that they were. More used his notable political
skills to achieve and hold onto the highest office in the land until the religious ground shifted
underneath him.95 He would have agreed with Machiavelli that the social world was upheld by
conventions in which nobody really believed. Humanist-inspired reforms were doomed to fail
because political life was irrational, if not insane.
Utopia reveals More's deep unhappiness with his public and family lives and the roles that
they compelled him to perform. He built a house in then rural Chelsea as a retreat where he could
partially escape from his roles and develop his thoughts. Utopia explores the possibility of a more
radical alternative. It takes social conditioning to a new level, leaving no possibility of inner
retreat or the private spaces that make it possible. Privacy is prevented by the denial of free time,
near-constant surveillance and social conditioning that encourages people to feel shame for
seeking solitude or individuation in any form.96 More understands interiority and autonomy as
distinguishing features of modernity. He is most sensitive to their negative consequences and
designs a world that nips modernity in the bud. Inner life, with its potential for alienation and
social disruption, is all but excluded. Utopia is a fantasy of self-annihilation that represents a
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figurative attempt to overcome the tension between its author's active inner life and his confining
public roles. It is a self-serving fantasy in a second sense as More confided to Erasmus in a 1516
letter that he imagined that the Utopians elected him king in perpetuity. The egos of Utopians are
destroyed to inflate that of their creator.97
The seventeenth century witnessed a very different kind of utopia with the publication of
Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis. Written in 1626, it builds on Plato’s tale of the imaginary island
of Atlantis.98 Bacon’s Atlantis, called Bensalem, is set in the “Southern Ocean” and possibly
inspired by tales of Portuguese explorers about the New World. It represents a radical
philosophical break with earlier utopias as its inhabitants use science and engineering to conquer
nature and provide a longer, healthier and happier life. Following Bacon’s regimen of
experimentation and inference, Bensalem’s citizens have developed techniques to isolate and
protect themselves from outsiders and to control the weather and surrounding waters. As with
the ancients, reason plays a central role, but of a very different kind. Its purpose is no longer to
discover what constitutes the happy life, but to master nature and improve the human condition.
More’s New Atlantis and Novum Organum are rebellions against Aristotelianism and its attempt
to explain everything by means of deduction from first assumptions.
From our vantage point, New Atlantis, like Utopia, embodies a paradoxical ethical code.
The sailors blown off course are allowed to come ashore and visit Bensalem only after they
swear that they have not killed anyone within the last thirty days, even in self-defense. When
freed from the quarantine, they encounter a generally benign and non-expansionist society that
has learned to live with its neighbors and to incorporate occasional outsiders. The authorities are
nevertheless prepared to kill anyone who does not assimilate effectively, and would execute
sailors who violate their rules. Intended or not, New Atlantis encourages readers to conclude that
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science can be used “rationally” for benign and malign human ends. Bacon’s Great Instauration
published in 1620, was intended as an introduction to the Novum Organum, his unfinished
treatise on the scientific method. It was to be a comprehensive study of how science could
produce knowledge about the physical and social world. Jerry Weinberger rejects Bacon’s claim
that it was beyond his strength to finish this work. He maintains that Bacon left clues about his
method for intelligent reader.99 This subterfuge was motivated by Bacon’s recognition, common
to authors of later dystopias, that political science was the most dangerous science and had to be
“secret and retired.”100
In Bacon’s New Atlantis, technology is treated as an unalloyed blessing. By the early
nineteenth century, utopias offer sharply contrasting views on science and economic
development. Some condemn them as the twin curses of modernity. Their authors create
utopias by going back to what they imagine was a simpler, more satisfying, better regulated, premodern life-style. Louis Sébastien Mercier’s L’an deux mille Quatre Cent Quarante, published
in 1771, outlaws foreign trade on the grounds that it stimulates desire for luxuries, the thirst for
gold, sustains the slave trade and saps the health of the French people and their society. Snuff,
coffee and tea, described as “natural poisons," are likewise banned. The transfer of scientific
knowledge from country to country is nevertheless welcomed as an end in itself and not seen as a
spur to economic development . In contrast, Henri Saint-Simon, in his “Sketch of a New
Political System,” published in 1819, understands that technology and economic development go
hand-in-hand. His House of Commons establishes a “Chamber of Invention,” whose 300
members are composed of scientists, engineers, poets and other writers, painters, sculptors,
artists and musicians. Members with scientific and technical skill are expected to introduce and
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oversee new public works and other projects to increase France’s wealth and make the life of its
citizens healthier and more enjoyable.101
Later in the century, the industrial revolution was the catalyst for a series of utopias that
reveal even sharper disagreements about the benefits of technology and economic development.
Almost all of their authors recognize the impracticality of small, isolated communities and most
are deeply influenced by socialism.102 A little known but interesting example is Ignatius
Donnelly’s Caesar’s Column. Published in 1890, it attributes all social and economic evils to
borrowing with interest. Donnelly insists that usury benefits only the lender and a small number
of borrowers, reducing all others to debt and bankruptcy. His future America outlaws borrowing
and introduces other laws to prevent the concentration of wealth. There are still rich men, and
the desire for honor is mobilized to encourage them to dispose of excess wealth in a socially
productive way. Under the guidance of the government, they donate their money, to schools,
hospitals, libraries, parks and amusement centers for the benefit the people. A statue of each
donor is placed in a great national gallery to honor them in perpetuity. Donnelly’s understanding
of economics is flawed, to say the least, but his insight that honor can induce charitable giving in
a capitalist society is right on the money.
The backlash against industrialism found expression in art, architecture and other forms
of literature. William Morris’ News from Nowhere, published in 1890, self-consciously explores
these connections. Morris was a publisher, specializing in handcrafted editions, drawn to PreRaphaelite Brotherhood and later influenced by socialism. He used his wealth to support the
newspaper of the Social Democratic Federation. He was fascinated by the pre-modern era, in
which he convinced himself life was more purposeful and less corrupt. Two of his historical
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romances are about fifth century German tribes and full of praise for the fellowship and
community of tribal democracy.103
News from Nowhere transforms London into a quasi-rural, pre-modern economy run
along socialist lines where everyone has access to food, education, culture and the material
possessions essential for a fulfilling life. There is no money or credit, but a collective joy in
producing goods of high artistic quality and providing them to people who need and appreciate
them. Young people receive a fundamental education, but little emphasis is put on “book
learning.” Instead, people are taught agriculture and crafts. As people are happy, and there is
only limited foreign exchange and intercourse, and there is no war and thus nor need for armies
or fleets. Following the lead of the Pre-Raphaelites, Morris regards the Middle Ages as a kind of
golden age. He idealizes it as a time when craftsmanship, the simple pleasures of life and tightknit social relations flourished. His future Londoners dress in variants of medieval garb and live
in houses with thatched roofs. Morris' utopia is modern in the sense that there is no class system,
no differences among people in their standard of living, and remarkably for a Victorian, equal
opportunity and treatment of women. He is ahead of his time in recognizing the horrendous
effects of industrialization on the environment. His hero, who awakens in London in the distant
future, is amazed to discover a clean Thames, teeming with wildlife, in which he can safely
swim. There is a more general commitment by the society to minimize pollution and maintain
green swards throughout the metropolis.
Some British and American authors wrote utopias that envisage positive benefits to
technology and economic development, suitably regulated by radically reformed institutions.
Looking Backward, 2000-1887 is arguably the most famous example of this genre. It became an
instant best-seller and inspiration for numerous societies dedicated to political and economic
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reform. Its principal character, Julian West, is a young American who awakens after a century of
hypnosis-induced sleep. His native Boston has been transformed into a quasi-suburban socialist
utopia. Doctor Leete, his guide, explains how the quality of life has been significantly improved
by drastically reducing the length of the working week. Nobody works before the age of twentyone and everyone retires at forty-five with a reasonable pension and other impressive benefits.
America’s industry is commonly owned and its products are distributed more or less equally to
its citizens. Technology has not only facilitated production but has enhanced social and cultural
life. People are able to listen to live concert performances in their homes through tubes that
carry the sounds of music across town. Much free time is devoted to socializing in a manner that
has not changed since the Victorian era. The “vacuum left in the minds of men and women by
the absence of care for one's livelihood has been taken up by love.”104
Like Morris, Bellamy is sensitive to environmental issues. His Boston is unrecognizable
to the recently awakened American because it is green, clean, well-laid out and populous but
uncrowded. Bellamy perpetuates female subjugation. His women are brought up to be virginal,
pious, domestic and deferential. They work in their own industrial army where they perform
tasks “suitable” to their gender. They must be married and mothers to attain positions of
authority, presumably because this makes them more acceptable to men. Looking Backward
nevertheless appealed to women, even suffragists, and there were many female members of
Bellamy clubs.105 Bellamy’s world is a dystopia for African-Americans, who are segregated and
forced to perform menial labor.
Looking Backward looks forward in other ways. It invents readily available lines of
personal credit, gigantic retail stores like Wal-Mart and the ability of distribution centers to
deliver goods promptly to people’s homes. Following the program advocated by consumer
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cooperatives of Bellamy’s day, the cost of goods is reduced by cutting out “the middleman.”
Bellamy was a committed socialist and wanted his book to show how the future he described was
prefigured in contemporary developments.106 His socialist society has been brought about
without acute class conflict, let alone revolution, making it utopian in the negative sense
understood by Marx and Engels. Bellamy tells us nothing about how socialism was achieved or
how it functions at the macro level. It is implicitly a command economy, with decisions about
production, employment and distribution of goods made by bureaucracies. This economy
functions smoothly in the novel, which seems unrealistic given our knowledge of the Soviet
Union. The “industrial army” makes it evident that production is the core of the economy, which
is anachronistic from the vantage point of a post-industrial world. Most troubling of all,
Bellamy’s America is authoritarian. Labor is organized and disciplined like an army,
propaganda is delivered directly into the home by the telephone and no organized opposition
appears to be sanctioned.107
The most influential nineteenth century utopia was the set of scholarly discourses in
which Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels elaborated their version of socialism: historical
materialism. They sought to distance themselves from so-called utopians whose works, in their
view, were mental exercises in which “Reason became the measure of everything” and inspired
societies in which social leveling occurs “in its crudest form.”`108 In contrast to many utopian
authors, Marx and Engels claim scientific justification for historical materialism, insisting that it
was based on universal laws of historical development. Like so many utopians, they fail grapple
with the question of how you get there from here. They insist on the need for revolution, but
their extensive corpus of writings contains few thoughts about how socialism would be
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constructed and organized, how the state would wither away and, most importantly, how human
consciousness would be transformed to make a communist world possible.109
Karl Mannheim suggests that ideologies and utopias fulfill different functions, although
both have ideal origins. They are “incongruous with” prevailing life situations.110 Marx’s vision
of socialism is much closer to anti-industrial utopias than either Marx or Engels were willing to
recognize. It is well-ordered, and prosperous, without factories or war, yet humans have the kind
of leisure and choices that allow them to develop their potential. Engel's language is positively
utopian. “With the seizing of the means of production by society," he writes, "production of
commodities is done away with, and simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the
producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organization. The
struggle for individual existence disappears. Then for the first time, man, in a certain sense, is
finally marked off from the rest of the animal kingdom, and emerges from mere animal
conditions of existence into really human ones.”111
Utopias spawned numerous critiques. Some emphasize the literary limitations of the
genre. From More’s Utopia to Huxley’s Island, utopias tend to be didactic works with long
instructional speeches or dialogues and turgid descriptions of institutions. Pedagogy is given
primacy over plot. Utopias are invariably static; their social, economic and political institutions,
practices and values are frozen on the grounds of perfection.112 There is no conflict or
dissension, only near-universal satisfaction, and uncertainty of all kinds is replaced by personal
and collective security. This thoroughly unrealistic tranquility is based on the belief, common to
utopias, that human needs and aspirations are fully compatible and can be satisfied or
harmoniously channeled by appropriate institutions. Utopias also rest on the all-important
corollary that human beings have the insight and political skill to design, bring into being,
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manage and fine tune the array of institutions and practices that produce social harmony and
human fulfillment.
Ortega y Gasset and Karl Popper accuse utopian thinking of laying the intellectual
foundations for totalitarianism.113 Utopias can hardly be held responsible for the socialeconomic conditions that enabled psychopathic leaders like Lenin, Mussolini and Hitler to gain
and consolidate power. They have nevertheless been consistently authoritarian. They put
extraordinary trust in intellectuals – whether guardians, scientists or philosophers -- and severely
restrict personal freedom as it is considered a threat to order and stability. Even post-World War
II utopias, whose authors should have known better, reveal this kind of naïveté. In B. F.
Skinner’s, Walden Two, published in 1948, the chief utopian planner Frazier rather smugly
explains: “When a science of behavior has once been achieved, there's no alternative to a planned
society. . . . We can't leave the control of behavior to the unskilled.”114 Judith Skhlar aptly
observes that in utopias “Truth is single and only error is multiple.”115
DYSTOPIAS
If golden ages enabled utopias, utopias inspired dystopias. Dystopias depict
dysfunctional societies that exaggerate features of the present, like bureaucracy, capitalism,
socialism, advertising and technology, to show their truly dreadful consequences when used for
perverse ends. Evgeny Zamyatin’s, We, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, George Orwell’s
1984 and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies are classic representatives of this genre. A few
dystopias are counterfactuals set in the present, as are the spate of novels premised on a German
victory in World War II.116 In the second half of the twentieth century, dystopias far outsold
utopias, and several of them (e.g., 1984, A Clockwork Orange) became box office hits when
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turned into films. Utopias and dystopias are a good barometer of the mood and expectations of
intellectuals and sometimes of the population more generally.
Dystopias were unknown in the ancient world, although utopias were a source of parody
in classical Athens. Aristophanes’ Ecclesiazusae, Thesmophoriazusae and Birds ridicule them as
politically and socially naive. In modern times, this tradition finds expression in Gulliver's
Travels, which can be read as a parody of Bacon’s New Atlantis. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
can also be interpreted as a critique of utopian thinking. Her monster is a prescient warning of
how scientific knowledge, ostensibly intended to benefit humankind, can give rise to unintended
horrors. Dystopia came into its own at the end of the nineteenth century in response to
industrialization, bureaucratization, materialism and mass politics. H. G. Wells, an early master
of the genre, published six utopias and two dystopias. When the Sleeper Wakes, which first
appeared in 1899, describes the world encountered by its hero Graham, who regains
consciousness after being in a coma for two hundred years.117 In the interim, he has inherited
sizeable wealth, which has been managed astutely by a trust -- the “White Council” -- established
in his name. They have used the income to establish a globe-spanning economic and political
order. Graham’s revival comes as a shock to the Council, which puts him under house arrest and
tries as far as possible to keep him ignorant of their society and the turmoil that his awakening
has provoked. He manages to discover that he is the legal owner and master of the world and
that a revolutionary movement, led by a man named Ostrog, is trying to overthrow the
established order.
Graham is liberated by Ostrog's agent and survives a harrowing flight across the roofs of
London’s skyscrapers while pursued by armed monoplanes. He arrives at a massive hall where
the workers and underprivileged classes have gathered to launch an uprising and, led by Ostrog’s
36
brother, chant the Song of the Revolution. In an ensuing mêlée with the police, Graham escapes
and wanders around a London engulfed by fighting. He eventually encounters Ostrog, leader of
the now triumphant revolution, who provides him with comfortable quarters and, at his request,
flying lessons. Through his friendship with a young woman, he learns that the people are
suffering as grievously under Ostrog as they did under the previous regime. In a subsequent
confrontation with the new leader, Graham realizes that he has no real commitment to economic
and social reforms but is interested only in power. To suppress a growing insurrection in Paris,
Ostrog uses African shock troops to get the workers back in line. Graham demands that he keep
the Africans out of London. Ostrog agrees, but promptly breaks his promise. With the help of
the workers, Graham escapes captivity a third time and makes a beeline for his aircraft. Ostrog’s
forces hold a few landing areas to which the air armada bringing troops in from Africa heads. To
delay the air fleet and give the workers time to capture the landing sites, Graham uses his
airplane as a battering ram and knocks several transport airplanes out of the air. He also brings
down Ostrog's machine, seemingly at the cost of his own life.
Wells’ novel is remarkably prescient. Coming of age in a world where the popular press
and mass electoral politics made their debuts, he recognized how easily they could be exploited
by ambitious politicians to advance parochial ends. He envisaged politics as becoming a
struggle for power divorced from any principles or rules of the democratic game. To make
successful appeals, politicians would nevertheless have to associate themselves with symbols
venerated by the masses, even create them. “The Sleeper” was the most potent symbol in the
society, and the White Council and Ostrog struggle to control the now very much awake Sleeper
while Graham attempts to assert his identity and use it for benign ends. In contrast to Marxism,
Wells understood that politics could dominate economics because the drive for power would
37
eclipse that for wealth, as it does for the villains in the Sleeper novels. Wells projects the racism
of his day into the future, making it another political weapon that the elite can exploit. The
masses are enraged but cowed by widespread rumors of atrocities – which the author is careful
never to confirm – allegedly committed by African troops in the course of their occupation of
Paris. The novel can nevertheless be read as a critique of colonialism and socialism. The
“White Council,” an unambiguous reference to a consortium of colonial powers, manages the
world in its own interest, using capital extracted from the labor of the masses. Ostrog is a
socialist revolutionary whose real goals turn out to be no different from the exploiters he so
vocally opposes.
In the twentieth century, influential dystopias explore the malign consequences of
bureaucracy, materialism and socialism. Evgenii Zamyatim’s We, published in 1924, was the
first fictional exposé of the Soviet experiment. He lived through the 1906 and 1917 Russian
Revolutions but spent much of the First World War in Newcastle, where he worked in the Tyne
shipyards. We combines the authoritarian socialism of the Soviet Union with the rationalization
of Tyneside’s labor, and carries both to deliberately absurd lengths. His “One State,” led by the
Benefactor and his Guardians, has existed for 1,000 years and came into being after a Hundred
Years War that all but annihilated European civilization. Citizens have numbers instead of
names: odd numbers preceded by consonants for males, and even numbers preceded by vowels
for females. They are confined within the green walls of their cities and march four abreast to
work every morning in matching uniforms. Privacy is verboten, but sex is sanctioned as a form
of release and recreation. It is entirely heterosexual and must be preceded by the filing of a
requisition form. Liaisons with appropriate partners are scheduled by the “Sexual Department”
after an extensive study of candidates’ hormonal levels. Space engineer D-503 rebels, stimulated
38
by his love for E-330, a member of a dissident group. Their plot to takeover the space station
fails. D-503 is captured and “fantasiectomized,” a surgical procedure that removes his
imagination. Now reconciled to “One State,” he betrays the other conspirators, who are tortured
and executed.
Huxley’s Brave New World, published in 1932, is an industrial dystopia superficially
portrayed as a utopia. People appear to live secure, healthy and hedonistic lives in a
technologically advanced society where poverty and war have been eliminated. So, too, have art,
literature, science, religion and family – everything that makes people who they are. The
government maintains social stability through a rigid social order and the free distribution of
hallucinatory drugs. Brave New World shares much with Zamyatin’s We, which Huxley claimed
never to have read. He acknowledges the influence of H. G. Wells’ Men Like Gods and The
Sleeper Awakes.118 Huxley was impressed by the soft-sell, totalitarian bent of American mass
advertising and assembly line production introduced by Henry Ford. In Brave New World, Ford
is made the Lord and the symbol “T,” derived from the Model T, replaces the cross and becomes
the dominant icon of the society. Ford's famous dismissal of history as “bunk” is the official line
of the World State. Isaiah Berlin describes Brave New World as “the most influential modern
expression of disillusionment with purely technological progress.”119
George Orwell’s 1984 is an unambiguous dystopia. The novel is set in in 1984 London, a
city that has become a provincial capital of the totalitarian state of Oceania, one of three world
superpowers. Ubiquitous billboards feature photographs of “Big Brother,” the party leader, and
the slogan “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.” Citizens are barraged by propaganda
beamed at them from televisions and loudspeakers in public places. They endlessly hear that
“War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery and Ignorance is Strength.” Like contemporary CCTV,
39
television cameras monitor the population to detect social and political deviants. The principal
protagonist, Winston Smith, works for the powerful Ministry of Truth, where he rewrites history,
destroying and adding evidence to the records of people, making some of them “unpersons” as
the need arises. The past is made totally subservient to contemporary domestic and foreign
policy goals. War is continuous, as allegedly are the victories won by Oceana’s forces. Both
justify economic hardship and the authoritarian political regime.
In Brave New World, for which the United States was the model, people are pacified
through access to pleasure. In 1984, modeled on the Soviet Union, they are kept in line through
fear and punishment. Neil Postman observes that Orwell and Huxley were responding to
different concerns:
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was
that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who
wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information.
Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to
passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us.
Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared
we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial
culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the Feelies, the Orgy Porgy, and the
Centrifugal Bumble-puppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited,
the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny
‘failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.’120
Orwell’s 1984 is closer to Zamyatin’s We in its plot and politics. The society is
hierarchical, with Big Brother at the apex, the Party in the middle and the all but nameless
40
“proles” at the bottom. Winston Smith lives in a drab one-room apartment and survives on a
near subsistence diet of black bread and synthetic food supplemented by rotgut gin. He is
discontented, and keeps a secret journal which he fills with negative thoughts about the Party.
He has an illicit romance, which serves as a catalyst for his alienation from Big Brother and
attempt to join the Brotherhood underground. The Brotherhood appears to be set up and run by
the Party as a clever means of identifying dissidents. Winston is betrayed, imprisoned,
interrogated, tortured and brainwashed. He emerges, disgusted by his former affair and with
renewed love for Big Brother.
These novels indicate that dystopias are not the work of traditional conservatives. Their
authors do not defend capitalism, religion or Victorian values. They are not opposed to
modernity, but to the dangerous political and economic directions in which they believe it is
heading. Wells was a socialist, but broke with the Fabian Society because he considered it
insufficiently radical. He ran unsuccessfully for Parliament in 1922 and 1923 as a Labour Party
candidate. Huxley was not directly involved in politics but was attracted to social
experimentation, drugs and the counter-culture that emerged in California and the American
southwest, where he lived after 1937. George Orwell, born Eric Arthur Blair, chose to
experience colonialism in Burma and live in poverty in Paris and London. He fought in the
Spanish Civil War and throughout his adult life maintained a deep commitment to social
injustice and intense opposition to authoritarianism.
Bacon, More, Hegel and Marx were optimistic about the future and wrote utopian tracts
or novels. Rousseau and Nietzsche broke with this tradition and envisaged a bleak, culturally
desolate future. For many intellectuals, two World Wars and the Holocaust appeared to confirm
Nietzsche’s pessimistic view of history. Post-structuralists like Foucault and Derrida not only
41
reject the Enlightenment “project” but condemn progressive narratives of history as dangerous
falsehoods.121 Dystopia more or less triumphed over utopia in the course of the twentieth
century as intellectuals became increasingly disillusioned with the allegedly liberating power of
reason. The failure to achieve a classless society, by peaceful or revolutionary means also
hastened the demise of utopia.122 Many of us respond negatively to utopias because of their
authoritarian political structure and oppressive regulation of private life.123 In the Second World
War’s immediate aftermath, Scottish poet and socialist Alexander Gray exclaimed that “no
Utopia has ever been described in which any sane man would on any conditions consent to live,
if he could possibly escape.”124
Utopias flourished in the immediate post-war years and garnered wide audiences. B. F.
Skinner's Walden Two (1948), Robert Graves, Seven Days in New Crete (1949) and Aldous
Huxley’s Island (1962) follow the time-worn formula of distant island or future worlds that
reject industrialism in favor of a simple, agricultural life. From the perspective of the twentyfirst century, such idylls seem impractical and unattainable, if not undesirable. As history’s
course is never linear, it is not impossible that optimism will return at some future date. If so, we
can expect it to give new life to utopias. To be compelling, they will have to take a new form,
and as we will see, contemporary science fiction is already experimenting with possible outlines.
REFERENCES
1
Wilde, Soul of Man Under Socialism, p. 24.
2
Kermode, Sense of an Ending, pp. 35-36.
3
Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, Book 19.12 and 14,
4
Weber, Economy and Society, I, 24-43, 212-16 and 319-325; Durkheim, Rules of Sociological
Method, pp. 51-55, argues that habits, custom and tradition account for most behavior most of
42
the time. They prevail because of our cognitive need for simplification. Dewey, Human Nature
and Conduct; James, Principles of Psychology; Simon, Administrative Behavior; Turner, Brains,
Practices, Relativism; Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice; Steinmetz, State/Culture; Hopf, "Logic
of Habit in International Relations."
5
Taylor, “To Follow a Rule.”
6
Goffman, Behavior in Public Places, Interaction Ritual, Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
and Stigma.
7
Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, p. 95.
8
Derrida, Of Grammatology.
9
Hume, Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, section iii, and “On the Study of History.”
10
Dilthey, “Understanding of Other Person and Their Life Expressions.”
11
Somers, “Narrative Constitution of Identity.”
12
Bruner, "Life as Narrative," Acts of Meaning and "Narrative Construction of Reality"; Schank
and Abelson, Scripts, Plans, Goals, and Understanding; White, "Value of Narrativity";
Brooks, Reading for the Plot. Ricoeur, "Narrative Time” and Time and Narrative.
12
Geertz, Local Knowledge; White, When Words Lose Their Meaning; Dworkin, Politics of
Interpretation; Hales, “Inadvertent Rediscovery of Self in Social Psychology”;Bruner, "Life as
Narrative”; Sarbin, Narrative Psychology; Gergen, and Gergen, "Narrative Form and the
Construction of Psychological Science”; Williams, "Genesis of Chronic Illness”; Kleinman,
Illness Narratives; Spence, Narrative Truth and Historical Truth; Schafer, Analytic Attitude;
Valentine, Fluid Signs; Turner and Bruner, Anthropology of Experience.
43
13
White, "Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality," On Narrative; and Content of
the Form; Mink, "Autonomy of Historical Understanding" and "Narrative Form as a Cognitive
Instrument"; Danto, Narration and Knowledge.
14
Ricoeur, “Narrative Identity,” p. 198.
15
Heider and Simmel, "Experimental Study of Apparent Behavior"; Michotte, Perception of
Causality.
16
Bertaux, Biography and Society; Bertaux and Kohli, "Life Story Approach"; Freeman,
"History, Narrative, and Life-Span Developmental Knowledge"; Linde, "Privates Stories in
Public Discourse."
17
Becker, Outsiders; Memmi, Colonizer and the Colonized; Goffman, Presentation of Self in
Everyday Life and Stigma; Lebow, White Britain and Black Ireland; Brodkin, How Jews Became
White Folks; Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color; Nicholson, Identity Before Politics.
18
Beck, “The Reinvention of Politics”; Lash, “Reflexivity and its Doubles.”
19
Price and Tanenwald, “Norms and Deterrence”; Reus-Smit, Moral Purpose of the State;
Klotz, Norms in International Regimes; Lebow, Cultural Theory of International Relations.
20
Augustine, Confessions.
21
Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics.
22
Rousseau, Émile; Goethe, Werther.
23
Malinowski, “The Role of Myth in Life”; Basso, “Stalking with Stories"; Herdt, Guardians of
the Flutes; Gross and Barnes, eds., Talk That Talk.
24
Hayes, Essays on Nationalism; Kohn, Prophets and Peoples; Deutsch, Nationalism and Social
Communication.
25
Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication, p. 81.
44
26
Herodotus, Histories; Freud, Moses and Monotheism; Anderson, Imagined Communities.
27
Williams, Life of Goethe, pp. 215-16.
28
See especially, Seigel, Idea of Self. For a more widely cited but more partisan reading,
Taylor, Sources of the Self.
29
Hopf, Social Construction of International Politics; Also, Clunan, Social Construction of
Russia's Resurgence, who identifies five distinct post-communist identities.
30
Guzzini, Geopolitics Redux, esp. ch. 1.
31
Lebow, Cultural Theory of International Relations.
32
Wolin, Politics and Visions, p. 19.
33
Khanna, “Text as Tactic”; Williams, “Utopia and Science Fiction.”
34
Lebow, Forbidden Fruit.
35
Hobbes, Leviathan; Riley, General Will Before Rousseau.
36
Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia; Rawls, Theory of Justice, esp. ch. 3. For critiques,
Dworkin, “Original Position”; Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, ch. 3; Kilcullen,
Rawls.
37
Hegel, Philosophy of History, Part III, 3(b). Benhabib, Critique, Norm and Utopia, pp. 42-
43, maintains that Hegel’s model of “transparent ethical life” is a “retrospective utopia.” See
also Wenning, "Hegel, Utopia, and the Philosophy of History."
38
Benhabib, “Toward and Deliberative Model of Democratic Legitimacy.”
39
Huxley, Island.
40
Skinner, Walden Two.
41
For documentation of prehistoric warfare, Keeley, War Before Civilization.
42
Lovejoy and Boas, Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity, pp. 1-7.
45
43
Frye, “Varieties of Literary Utopias.”
44
Finley, “Utopias Ancient and Modern.”
45
Seneca, Epis, 90.46.
46
Homer, Iliad, 13.3-9.
47
Pliny, Natural History, 4.88-89; Plutarch, Life of Serorius,.8.2-3.
48
Bremmer, “Paradise”; Noort, “Gan-Eden in the Context of the Mythology of the Hebrew .”
49
Tablet 1, 103-221.
50
Benjamin, “Paradisiacal Life."
51
For modern readings, Barr, Garden of Eden and the Hope of Immortality; Wallace, Eden
Narrative.
52
Augustine, City of God. Book XIV, 24, pp. 472-73.
53
Ibid., XXII, 1-9, XIII, 12-15 and XIV, 12-14, who defined curiosity as man’s desire to
transform his perfect human knowledge into perfect divine knowledge and thus become like a
god.
54
Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy, pp. 73-75; Vidal-Nacquet, Black Hunter, p. 252, offers the same
judgment about the last century of Hellenic studies.
55
Wilde, quoted in Kermode, Romantic Image, p. 56.
56
Fish, Self-Consuming Artifacts, ch. 1, and Is There a Text in the Class, pp. 323-24, 347-48;
White, When Words Lose Their Meaning, pp. 18-20, 286-91; Iser, Implied Reader.
57
Heinberg, Memories and Visions of Paradise; Goodwin and Taylor, Politics of Utopia, on the
conservatism of golden ages.
58
Leibniz, Theodicy.
46
59
Clarke, City and the Stars.
60
Smith, Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of Wealth of Nations, II.ii, p. 362.
61
Kateb, Utopia and Its Enemies, pp. 68-112.
62
Hesiod, Theogony, lines 42-47, 560-612, Works and Days, lines 42-105; Aeschylus,
Prometheus Bound.
63
Hesiod, Theogony, lines 560-612.
64
Hesiod, Works and Days, lines 91-92.
65
Lebow, Tragic Vision of Politics, chs. 4, 9.
66
Homer, Iliad, 1.260-28 and 5.302-4, refer to a golden age
67
Pindar, Odae Pythiae, III, 1-6.
68
Hesiod, Works and Days, lines 109-21.
69
The nineteenth century British classicist George Grote observed that Hesiod’s story of the five
ages represents a fusion of two distinct and incompatible myths. The first, which predates
Hesiod, is the myth of the Four Ages, all bearing names of metals, and succeeding each other in
declining order of value. The second is the age of heroes, which Hesiod or a precursor, inserted
between the third and fourth age. Berlin, Crooked Timber of Humanity, p. 25.
70
Plutarch, Tiberius, 2.3.63-64; Ovid, Metamorphoses, 1.95, 101-02, 123-24.
71
Virgil, Georgics, 1.125-26; Plutarch, Tiberius. 2.3.35-50; Ovid, Metamorphoses, 1.113-62;
Seneca, Octavia, 120-30; Evans, Utopia Antiqua, pp. 83-87.
72
Shakespeare, King Lear, 5.3.325-26.
73
Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, 5.1.64.
74
Finley, “Utopianism Ancient and Modern.”
75
Evans, Utopia Antiqua, p. 3.
47
76
Bloch, Principle of Hope.
77
Manuel, “Toward a Psychological History of Utopias.”
78
Dawson, Cities of the Gods, for communist utopias in ancient Greece.
79
Logan, Meaning of More’s “Utopia,” pp. 7-8.
80
Homer, Odyssey, Books IX-XII.
81
Plato, Republic, 9.592b.
82
Ibid., 414b-e.
83
Ibid., 373d-e.
84
Ibid, 506c and Statesman, 309c6-10.
85
Hexter, More’s Utopia, pp. 70-71.
86
Iambulus, Heliopolis.
87
Mumford, “Utopia.”
88
Finley, “Utopianism Ancient and Modern.”
89
Vergil, Ecologues, IV, 37-45, for a possible exception.
90
Logan, The Meaning of More’s “Utopia,” p. 3, contends that More is aware of this double
meaning. “Meter IV Verses in the Utopian Tongues,” which appears as an appendix to Utopia,
reads in the sixteenth century English translation: “Wherefore not Utopie, but rather rightely/ My
name is Eutopie: a place of felicitie.”
91
More, Utopia, p. 107.
92
Ibid., pp. 15-16.
93
Skinner, “Review Article,” and Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vo. 1., p. 256;
Bouwsma, “Two Faces of Humanism.”
94
Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, ch. 1.
48
95
Machiavelli, Prince, ch. 19.
96
Ibid., pp. 45-46.
97
Ibid., pp. 54-55.
98
Plato, Critias, 120d6-121c4 and Timaeus, 19b-d, 22a, 25a-b6. See also his Phaedrus, 278d7,
Laws, 676
99
Weinberger, “Introduction.”
100
Bacon, Advancement of Learning, II.47, p. 286.
101
Saint-Simon, “Sketch of a New Political System”.
102
Frye, “Varieties of Literary Utopias.”
103
Morris, House of the Wolfings and Roots of the Mountains.
104
Bellamy, Looking Backward, p. 261.
105
Strauss, “Gender, Class, and Race in Utopia.”
106
Bowman, Year 2000, p. 74.
107
Frye, “Varieties of Literary Utopias.”
108
Engels, “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific”; Marx and Engels, “Manifesto of the Communist
Party.”
109
Marx, “After the Revolution” and Engels, “On Morality” are the principal sources and both
are very short essays.
110
Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia.
111
Engels, “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.”
112
Manuel, “Toward a Psychological History of Utopias”; Evans, Utopia Antiqua
113
Ortega y Gassett, xx; Popper, Open Society and Its Enemies; Ulam, “Socialism and Utopia.”
Mumford, Story of Utopias, offers a more benign judgment.
49
114
Skinner, Walden Two, p. 226.
115
Skhlar, “Political Theory of Utopia.” On Skinner, see Kateb, Utopia and Its Enemies, pp.
141-47.
116
117
Rosenfeld, World Hitler Never Made, for a review of this literature.
Wells, When the Sleeper Wakes. This is a substantially revised version of The Sleeper
Awakes, published in 1910.
118
Find cite XX
119
Huxley and Huxley, Aldous Huxley, p. 150.
120
Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, foreword.
121
Foucault, Language, pp. 153-54.
122
Shklar, After Utopia.
123
Bowman, Year 2000, p. 121.
124
Gray, Socialist Tradition, p. 62.
50