Utopian The first utopia is contained in the Book of Genesis, and the mechanism of anti-utopias is immediately described. For the plot, three are needed: a man, a woman and a bearer of power. Paradise life continues as long as people do not know the sex; gaining or realizing gender leads to expulsion from paradise. Exactly

Rasseniya, Xiongnu state, China and Parthian state

An analysis of Utopia shows that no matter how lofty were the thoughts and dreams of Thomas More about a just and happy society, these were the dreams of a man who lived in the 16th century and was not free from the prejudices of his time. But the controversy between scientists of various fields is still not quenched.

If we define "Utopia", most likely in our time, this word will be a metaphor that does not have an unambiguous and precise meaning, but does not go beyond the boundaries. To give a precise concept of this term, each reader needs to study a sufficiently large number of works and political views in order to really understand what exactly is meant by utopia.

Utopian socialism owes the birth of many of its ideas, including to Thomas More. In 1516, he wrote “A very useful, as well as entertaining, truly golden little book about the best structure of the state and about the new island of Utopia”, or abbreviated as “Utopia”

In his work, More proposed democratic principles of the organization of state power that were completely new for his era, posed and solved legal problems from humanistic positions. Formed during the formation of the capitalist formation, the emergence of early capitalist relations, the views of T. Mora have not lost their historical significance. His project of a utopian (ideal) state still causes sharp clashes of opinion among scientists from various countries.

"Nigdea" (from the Greek "ou" and "topos" - "a place that does not exist"), invented by T. Mor, is a symbiosis of an ideal political system and an ideal civil society. Conceived as a continuation of Plato's "State", "Utopia" is a humanistic image of a perfect community, where religious tolerance, equality, and a high level of development of moral principles reign.

This is an ideal country, a kind of federation of 54 cities. This is an attempt to design a state with a socio-economic structure that can provide a person with a decent lifestyle, and T. More is trying to portray a concrete picture of an ideal society. On the coat of arms of the island of Utopia, as well as on the coat of arms of the first socialist state, there are symbols of fruitful labor: a sickle, a hammer and ears of corn. There is no private property in Utopia, and therefore disputes between Utopians are rare, so the crime rate is low enough that citizens do not need an extensive and complex legal framework.

Considering in more detail the prerequisites for the emergence of a utopian state, we should draw an analogy with modern society. An example is the absence of private property as a prerequisite for the emergence of a utopian state.

T. More suggests that the existence of private property does not allow for the possibility of a utopia. He speaks through the mouth of his hero, voicing Plato's views on the ideal state: "There is only one way for public well-being - to declare equality in everything."

Equality is expected in all spheres, including social and political ones. “Here, where everything belongs to everyone, no one has any doubt that not a single individual will need anything, if only he takes care that the public granaries are full ... because there is no stingy distribution of goods, no not a single poor, not a single beggar ... although no one has anything there, everyone, however, is rich. “Wherever there is private property, where everything is measured by money, it is hardly ever possible for the state to be governed justly or happily.”

Thus, T. More proclaimed such principles of building a state as collective property, universal obligation of labor, an ascetic way of life, and a centralized distribution of manufactured products. The image of an ideal city-state of the future, close to the utopian projects of Thomas More, is created by the author of The City of the Sun, Tommaso Campanella.

But in real life, the state without private property does not exist. The emergence of private property, first of all, is inevitable because of the person himself, who is selfish by nature and always pursues his own interests.

In this regard, it would be appropriate to agree with the statement of one of the main representatives of the philosophy of the New Age, Benedict Spinoza: “Every person strives for his own benefit (benefit). But the majority is guided by their opinion, passion, and not by reason, driven by whims, does not consider the future. Therefore, no society can exist without power and strength, and, consequently, without laws that moderate and restrain the passions and unbridled impulses of people.

To a society of inequality and oppression, T. More opposed his dream of a just social system, where private property was destroyed, and with it the root of all social injustice and exploitation of man by man. Under the influence of this outstanding monument of socio-political thought, a whole trend of utopian socialism developed. This is the historical value of the humanistic "Utopia". However, history does not know a single successful example of the realization of the utopian fantasies of Plato, More, Campanella about an ideal state.

Plato's dialogues about the ideal state, which lie not in the realm of imagination, but "in the realm of reasoning", are quite far from what we are accustomed to consider today as utopia. Their task is not to describe, but to understand, to logically reconstruct a sample that “maybe exists in heaven”, to “disassemble” its laws. In this sense, Atlantis, only briefly mentioned in the Timaeus dialogue and not really described in the Critias dialogue (the description is interrupted as soon as it begins, as commentators note, “at the most interesting place”), is just an explanatory model, a schematic illustration necessary for a rigorous thought procedure.

Bibliography:

1. Volgin V.P. The historical significance of "Utopia". / Entry. article in the book: T. Mor. Utopia. M., 1953 - 5-28s.
2. Volgin V.P. The legacy of utopian socialism. // History of socialist doctrines. Digest of articles. M.: 1962.
3. Kazaryan S. O. Antique Modeling and Plato. M.: Publishing house of humanitarian literature, 2003. 272 ​​p., 2000 - 688 p.
4. Kagan Yu. M. //T. Mor. Utopia / Per. Kagan Yu.M/. Moscow: Nauka, 1978.
5. Leista O. E., History of political and legal doctrines: Textbook / Ed. Leista O. E., Mirror M. 2000-668s.
6. Losev A. F. in ed.: Platon, 1994-622s.
7. Malein A. I. Editions and translations of "Utopia" // Thomas More. Utopia. 1953. S. 257-263.
8. Marchenko M. N., Machin. I. F. / History of political and legal doctrines: Textbook. M.: Higher education, 2005-495 p.
9. Narsesyantsa V.S. History of political and legal doctrines: A textbook for universities / Ed. ed. V. S. Narsesyants. M.: Norma, 2004-944 p.
10. Polyansky F. Ya. Social utopias of the period of decomposition of feudalism // World History of Economic Thought: In 6 volumes / Ch. ed. V. N. Cherkovets. M.: Thought. T. I. From the birth of economic thought to the first theoretical systems of political life 1987-606 p.
11. Rakcheeva N. E. State. Plato. Moscow: MAKS Press, 2001-202 p.

From the very moment of the creation of the first state, people were obsessed with the idea of ​​​​creating an ideal society. A state in which there is no poverty, disease and inequality is such an old dream of enlightened mankind that it is difficult to say when it first appeared. For such fantasies and projects at the end of the Middle Ages, a special term appeared - "utopia". It was taken from the work of the same name by Thomas More - "A golden little book, as useful as it is funny about the best structure of the state and about the new island of Utopia", in which "Utopia" is only the name of the island. For the first time. in the meaning of "model of an ideal society" this word is found in the book of travels of the English priest Samuel Purches "Pilgrimage" (Pilgrimage, 1613). The adjective “utopian” is also used there for the first time. This became the specificity of the models of the ideal world - when creating a utopia, real conditions and historical prerequisites were not taken into account. It is all the more interesting today to look at the projects of the past, which demonstrate the hopes of the most enlightened people of the past.

The birth of utopia

In most cultures and religions, the myth of a distant past, in which humanity lives in a primitive and simple state, but at the same time in a state of perfect happiness and satisfaction, is strong. The earliest written references to utopias are recorded in the ancient heritage, for example, in the treatise "The Golden Age" by the ancient Greek poet Hesiod, written in the 8th century BC. In the poetic treatise, the poet suggests that before the present era there were other, more perfect ones, the very first of which was the Golden Age - a time of harmony and universal brotherhood.



Religions and utopias

Another of the most persistent and oldest utopias on earth is the dream of an afterlife and the ideal of paradise. Judaism, Christianity and Islam have a clear idea of ​​how things are "on the other side" and usually paradise is just an ideal society. The Garden of Eden has all the signs of a utopia, including the fact that time has stopped there and no changes have occurred over thousands of years.



spring peach flower

The Spring Peach Blossom is a fable written in 421 AD by the Chinese poet Tao Yuanming, which describes an ideal society in which people lead an ideal existence in harmony with nature without establishing any external contact.



New harmony and utopian experiments

With the advances of the Industrial Revolution, the prospect of achieving a utopia seemed real, especially in countries like the US. The number of utopian communities increased dramatically in the late 1800s. Usually they were created on the basis of certain religious or ideological ideas. One such community was called "New Harmony" and was founded by the Welsh industrialist Robert Owen. The community grew into a whole city, which in 1825 became a real center of achievements in the field of education and scientific research, but, in the end, the wrong economic approach destroyed a promising undertaking.



Utopian technologies

The scientific and technological utopias that flourished in the early 19th century gave rise to many fantasies about the amazing technology of the future. These utopian flying machines were featured on a French postcard issued in the 1890s.



Ville Radiuse

Ville Radieuse is an unrealized project designed by the French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier in 1924. Le Corbusier idealized the very idea of ​​the city, filling it with high-rise residential buildings and an abundance of green spaces.



Broadcree City

In 1932, American architect Frank Lloyd Wright saw the plans for Ville Radieuse and conceived his own utopia, with agrarians and open spaces. In his utopia, he exploited the idea of ​​mixing urban and agricultural spaces. Lloyd Wright's city was designed to accommodate 10,000 people and used only those resources that it produced itself. Broadacre was never built, but used the forward-looking principles of local food production and is an inspiration to architects to this day.



Speer's Nazi Utopia

The architect Albert Speer was one of Adolf Hitler's closest friends and, as "the first architect of the Third Reich", was engaged in the development of the reconstruction of Berlin in a very futuristic vein. The capital of Germany was to become a huge metropolis with a mass of skyscrapers, huge avenues and gigantic stadiums. The defeat of the Nazis in 1945 put an end to Speer's endeavors.



Buckminster Fuller's vision of a floating city

Buckminster Fuller, an inventor and architect, designed a number of futuristic city designs throughout his career. The most notable of these was the concept of a city that would be located on giant floating platforms in the ocean.



Seward's success

In 1968, oil was discovered in Pradhoe Bay, Alaska. This caused a real construction explosion in the northern state. "Seward's Success" was the working name of the domed city that was supposed to be built near the field. The city's design included office space, retail areas, residential areas, sports facilities, and a monorail system for the movement of residents.

Despite such a late strengthening of this term, the model of an ideal society in Plato's dialogue "State" is considered the first utopia in the history of European literature (he also first uses the word Utopia in the sense of "a place that does not exist" in the treatise "State" (427-347 BC). BC.)).

In addition, utopian motifs are present in the mythologies of almost all peoples.

Encyclopedic YouTube

1 / 1

✪ What is utopia

Subtitles

Story

The beginning of the genre was laid back by the works of ancient philosophers dedicated to the creation of an ideal state. The most famous of them is Plato's "State", in which he describes an ideal state built in the image and likeness of Sparta, with the absence of such shortcomings inherent in Sparta as endemic corruption (even kings and ephors took bribes in Sparta), the constant threat of an uprising of slaves , constant shortage of citizens, etc.

There is a widespread belief that utopias should not contain anti-humanistic elements, and represent a deliberately unrealizable beautiful dream of the future. Some utopias, on the contrary, are structured in the style of instructions for their practical implementation.

The main distinguishing feature of utopia, its specificity, is that its creation did not take into account the limitations of the real world. In particular, the historical background. Therefore, in ordinary consciousness, utopia is often perceived as something unrealizable, an unrealizable social ideal. This is also a design feature of utopia. From a general theoretical point of view, under certain conditions, a utopia can be realized.

According to the definition of D. V. Panchenko, "a literary utopia is, first of all, a picture of the best life." Panchenko considers the happiness of the inhabitants of the society described in it to be the fundamental genre features of utopia and the fact that it describes a fictional life, even if it does not localize it in a “place that does not exist”. At the same time, not all the details of life described in the utopia can contribute to happiness, and some even directly contradict it. From the point of view of the researcher, this paradox, at least in most cases, is explained by the fact that the author of the utopia constructs it from the standpoint of the creator, and often the ruler (a striking example is Campanella, who seriously counted on the implementation of his constructions). Hence the love for geometrically correct forms, maximum standardization, centralization of management, indications of the smallest details while hushing up some of the most important issues such as the mechanism for changing the ruler, etc. Panchenko also mentions such classifications of utopias as: Golden Age and social utopias; descriptive and creative; utopias of "flight" and "perestroika". Also, utopias include ideas about building communism and, as the ultimate goal, the lack of money and prisons for prisoners.

According to the opinion of Soviet ideologists about utopia, expressed by Konstantin Mzareulov in the book “Fiction. General Course" described as "utopia and dystopia: ideal communism and dying capitalism in the first case is replaced by communist hell and bourgeois prosperity in the second". Remarkably, according to this classification, almost all cyberpunk works turn out to be ... utopias.

Characteristic features of utopias

1. The society they represent is frozen in immobility; not a single utopian depicts the world he invented in time.
2. All utopias assume complete unanimity, they have a simplified view of a person, there is no individualization of characters, schematism in their depiction.
3. There are no internal conflicts in utopias. The plot of the utopia involves a description of the world, its laws, the relationship of people based on reasonable principles and therefore not conducive to conflict.
4. All processes occurring in societies proceed according to a predetermined pattern.
5. These perfect societies are completely fenced off from the outside world. Space in utopia is closed, isolated.
6. Utopias tend to depict their world, focusing on some ideal, divorced from reality.
7. There is no satire in utopias, since there is an affirmation of the ideal and the opposition of this ideal to the really existing reality.

Criticism of the genre

The creator of one of the most famous dystopias, George Orwell, believed that all written utopias without exception were unattractive and very lifeless. According to Orwell, all utopias are similar in that "they postulate perfection but fail to achieve happiness." In my essay "Why Socialists Don't Believe in Happiness" Orwell agrees with the thought of the philosopher N. Berdyaev, who stated that “since the creation of a utopia has become within the power of people, a serious problem has arisen before society: how to avoid utopia” . This quote from Berdyaev's work "Democracy, Socialism and Theocracy" in a more extended version became the epigraph to Huxley's novel "Oh, brave new world": “But utopias turned out to be much more feasible than previously thought. And now there is another painful question, how to avoid their final implementation […] Utopias are feasible. […] Life is moving towards utopias. And perhaps a new century of dreams of the intelligentsia and the cultural stratum is opening up about how to avoid utopias, how to return to a non-utopian society, to a less “perfect” and more free society.

see also

Notes

Literature

• Svyatlovsky V. V. Catalog of utopias. M.-Pg., 1923. S. 5.
• Freidenberg O. M. Utopia // Questions of Philosophy, 1990, No. 5, p. 141-167
• Mannheim K. Ideology and utopia // Mannheim K. Diagnosis of our time. - M., 1994. - S. 7-276.
• Utopia and utopian thinking: Anthology of foreign literature / Comp. V. Chalikova. - M.: Progress, 1991. - 405 p.
• Chernyshov Yu. G. Socio-utopian ideas and myths about the “golden age” in ancient Rome: In 2 hours. 2nd, rev. and additional - Novosibirsk, publishing house of the Novosibirsk University, 1994. 176 p.
• Russian utopias / Comp. V. E. Bagno. St. Petersburg: Terra Fantastica, 1995. - 351 p.
• Ainsa F. Reconstruction of Utopia: Essay / Prev. Federico Mayora; Per. from French E. Grechanoi, I. Staff; Institute of world literature. them. A. M. Gorky RAS. - M.: Heritage - Editions UNESCO, 1999. - 206 s -