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St Thomas More: Utopia
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1 – Discourses of Raphael Hythloday, of the Best State of a Commonwealth
Thomas More is the narrator but also participant in the discussions put forth. At the behest of King Henry VIII he has travelled to Flanders to serve as ambassador and facilitate diplomacy between England and the Prince of Castille, Charles V.
During a break he travels to Antwerp where he meets a friend, Peter Giles, and he is introduced to Raphael Hythloday (= knowing in trifles), a Portuguese who had traveled with Americus Vesputius. He separated from the expedition in New Castile (South America), and encountered the lands and people of Utopia (= Nowhere).
A long discussion ensues on the structure of society and its social ills in England, of laws and punishment, the nature of government and oppression, unequal distribution of wealth, and more. This then gets contrasted with the structure of society in Utopia, which is presented to be a more egalitarian set-up. From the start More contradicts that one size cannot fit all.
At the end of this opening discourse we get a geographical description of the island of Utopia and its isolation.
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When I first read this classic I was less interested in the powerful criticism of his country and government that the author presents in Book 1 and more in the description of the idealized Utopia that we have in the following books because I was born and educated in a Communist country. Our teachers indoctrinated us from the earliest years in the glory of proletariat rule but as citizens, our parents struggled daily to make ends meet. These left painful early memories of that system. My family was fortunate to escape that environment for economic reasons. The forced pseudo-cooperative kolkhoz agricultural schemes of USSR were a failure and eventually disappeared after painful sixty years.This short but solid work has much to it. It is not for quick reading. More criticizes through Raphael Hythloday the royal corps where favoritism is more important than wisdom. They discuss punishments discuss socio-political issues. Raphael severely criticizes the English process of land enclosure that deprived the poor of access to common land for the benefit of fewer owners that was especially widespread in the 16th Century.
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I find the kindle 1901 translation by David Price a difficult text to deal with because the paragraphs frequently run into one or two or more pages. It is not easy to follow the arguments that long! Perhaps the original Latin was written the same way. I am curious what other translation is anyone in the group reading. I am waiting for a new Yale 2014 edition translated by Clarence H. Miller to hopefully arrive soon to compare what I read before we finish the discussions.
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The hardest part of reading works from that time period is spelling. Hopefully they modernized the spelling. The language and syntax, though awkward to our contemporary ears, is manageable. If the spelling is of the time period, which essentially means there was no fixed spelling, then it becomes a real chore to read. I once had to read Mallory's Le Morte de Arthur in its original spelling for a class. You would think what difference does a subtle spelling difference make? It makes a big difference when it's every word. It's almost like reading another language. I would never do that again.
The version I'm reading is put out by Kypros Press, whatever that is, published in 2016.
Manny wrote: "Galicius wrote: "I find the kindle 1901 translation by David Price a difficult text to deal with because the paragraphs frequently run into one or two or more pages. It is not easy to follow the ar..."Thank you Manny. I hope my translation was later than when St. Thomas wrote Utopia. Amazon kindle is terrible with documentation so who knows who was David Price, editor, translator, when?
(Canterbury Tales in the original was difficult enough. Beowulf was of course dealing with a foreign language.)
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I'm reading the same edition. What I find with "older" English is that I have to spend time with it. Though I have to agree with you, this one is a little harder. I started to listen from the beginning w the audio version on Librivox while reading along, and that helped a great deal.
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We had relatives behind the Iron Curtain, and we did visit on a semi-regular basis. Many folks did back then when there was still a divided Germany. Now I've never witnessed the worst of a Socialist system, but what I saw left a lasting impression.
Kerstin wrote: "Galicius wrote: "When I first read this classic I was less interested in the powerful criticism of his country and government that the author presents in Book 1 and more in the description of the i..."No doubt that was DDR. I made acquaintance with a German professor of ancient history at Freiburg who was visiting the States here in mid 1970’s. He was in his mid-thirties then. I asked him if he saw reunification of Germany in the future and he told me he did not see it in his lifetime.
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2 – Of their Towns
All towns are uniformly built. They are square in lay-out and all houses are the same. Every ten years each family moves to the house next door.
3 – Of Their Magistrates
Here we see a description of how they are governed. There is a Prince for life who is chosen from four possible candidates representing the four parts of town. There is a higher magistrate (Tanibore) who stands above 10 lower magistrates (Syphogrant). Each lower magistrate is chosen by 30 families once per year. “It is a fundamental rule of their government, that no conclusion can be made in anything that relates to the public till it has been first debated three several days in their council.” The government is set up to very directly report to the populace, but also in such a slow and deliberate way that from a practical point of view little ever gets done.
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“The island of Utopia is in the middle two hundred miles broad, and holds almost at the same breadth over a great part of it, but it grows narrower towards both ends. Its figure is not unlike a crescent. Between its horns the sea comes in eleven miles broad, and spreads itself into a great bay, which is environed with land to the compass of about five hundred miles, and is well secured from winds. In this bay there is no great current; the whole coast is, as it were, one continued harbour, which gives all that live in the island great convenience for mutual commerce. But the entry into the bay, occasioned by rocks on the one hand and shallows on the other, is very dangerous. In the middle of it there is one single rock which appears above water, and may, therefore, easily be avoided; and on the top of it there is a tower, in which a garrison is kept; the other rocks lie under water, and are very dangerous. The channel is known only to the natives; so that if any stranger should enter into the bay without one of their pilots he would run great danger of shipwreck. For even they themselves could not pass it safe if some marks that are on the coast did not direct their way; and if these should be but a little shifted, any fleet that might come against them, how great soever it were, would be certainly lost. On the other side of the island there are likewise many harbours; and the coast is so fortified, both by nature and art, that a small number of men can hinder the descent of a great army. But they report (and there remains good marks of it to make it credible) that this was no island at first, but a part of the continent. Utopus, that conquered it (whose name it still carries, for Abraxa was its first name), brought the rude and uncivilised inhabitants into such a good government, and to that measure of politeness, that they now far excel all the rest of mankind. Having soon subdued them, he designed to separate them from the continent, and to bring the sea quite round them. To accomplish this he ordered a deep channel to be dug, fifteen miles long; and that the natives might not think he treated them like slaves, he not only forced the inhabitants, but also his own soldiers, to labour in carrying it on. As he set a vast number of men to work, he, beyond all men’s expectations, brought it to a speedy conclusion. And his neighbours, who at first laughed at the folly of the undertaking, no sooner saw it brought to perfection than they were struck with admiration and terror.”
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I suppose in those days one could really let the fantasy roam and describe a place that was for all intents and purposes terra incognita.
To me the description of the island serves to point out how inaccessible and remote it is. Only in this isolation a utopian society can emerge.
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Good point. I've been trying to see if this genre has a name. I would call it Voyage Literature. Sort of a voyage to a strange and exotic land. As I think of it, this genre has never gone away. It's now voyaging to strange and exotic planets as part of science fiction.
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It is a bit of a peculiar title for this segment...
Here we are introduced to family life. The Utopians have a patriarchal multi-generational family structure. They are limited to 10 - 16 persons per household, if any more children are borne to this family they are given away to a family who has the space. Meals in cities are taken together in a communal mess hall, again the seating is highly structured by age and gender.
The cities are limited to six thousand families, and when this number is exceeded those families have to relocate.
Goods are exchanged in a market place without the exchange of money. Everyone trust everyone...
If this doesn't make the reader shudder, a more troubling aspect of Utopia emerges: all menial tasks are done by slaves. Where they live and how they get by hasn't been revealed yet. This supposedly egalitarian society isn't egalitarian at all. It is a hint that this ruling class lives by a self-imposed life-style - all supported on the backs of others.
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4 - Of Their Trades
Everyone learns a trade, and there is some allowance for individual preferences. Everyone works 6 hours a day, and the rest is left for meals and leisure. Women do the lighter work such as wool and flax, whereas men the more physically tasking. The wear uniform clothing distinguished by gender and whether married or unmarried. They are diligent in the upkeep of their homes.
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Kerstin said, "If your family gets too large, the "excess" children are given to another family - as if blood bonds don't matter. ". Utopia is not much different than Soviet Russia, Communist China, or the globalist vision of a one world socialist government. In all cases the nuclear family, the building block of a stable society, is a threat to the authority of the state, where the state takes the place of God, and government dictates replace parental authority, where the government owns and controls distribution of wealth and property, and makes decisions that in free societies are left up to the individual. The result is a homogenous, regimented, stifling existence, especially for the intellectually or the creatively gifted individual. We should be scared of such governments. Especially when they begin to demean or diminish the importance of family or religion in society. China, India, are two examples of government controlling family size, with forced abortions, for example, and religious freedom is either limited or eliminated, and dictated by the government. I am curious about how the citizens described so far fare better than slaves, as I haven't read that far yet. I also wonder if More's audience found this society appealing or appalling.
There are echoes of Utopian agrarian structure in the Chinese “Great Leap Forward” that started in 1957 and ended in great famines of following years. The difference between the Chinese way and Utopian is top down the way the Chinese authorities forced people to work in agriculture, sent them out of the cities, ordered night labor in the fields even. It is curious how the founding father Utopus instilled the bottom up culture. Some of the Utopian ways are outrageous such as enslavement as punishment for vagrancy, complete control of family, society, and movement.The free distribution of food at the markets was picked up by Marx in his slogan: “From each according to his ability and to each according to his need” and “It is the fear of want that makes any of the whole race of animals either greedy or ravenous.”
It is significant however that More distances himself from what Hyploday says when he criticizes English church hierarchy and government and disagrees in the end: “I cannot perfectly agree to everything he has related. However, there are many things in the commonwealth of Utopia that I rather wish, than hope, to see followed in our governments.”
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Manny said, " the question that critics have had is whether More was being satirical or whether he was endorsing the life in Utopia." I lean toward the first--Utopia means either "good place" or "no place," which I have always understand to be an ironic hint that such a society doesn't exist anywhere--maybe because he also hints that their way of life isn't sustainable, and, as Kerstin suggests, is so regimented and monotonous that eventually people will break from it or rebel. And there's the slavery issue.
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I'm not finished yet. I am struggling to find a satiric tone. I know "utopia" is supposed to mean "no place," but that doesn't necessarily mean that he doesn't wish this place existed. Perhaps he's acknowledging the impossibility of such a perfect place but he could still be creating his perfect country.
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This is a long chapter, and it took me a while to plough my way through it.
The Utopians freely travel withing their own precinct, otherwise they need a passport. Failure to obtain one can result in enslavement after repeated offenses. There are no taverns or inns, so they lodge with private citizens in exchange for labor.
They do engage in trade with other countries of whatever excess goods they have in exchange for gold and silver. This is taken to the treasury and used mostly for warfare. They pay mercenary armies to fight their wars for them. They have so much of these these precious metals they also make chamber pots out of them to demonstrate they find little value in these metals.
They believe in a good God who rewards virtue and punishes vice in the afterlife. To be virtuous is to live according to Nature in a temperate, almost puritan, fashion. They refrain from any kind of simple joys, such as games and hunting and don't find any delight in pretty clothes or jewelry.
The greatest virtues are those of the mind, and after they were introduced to the Greek philosophers developed a great admiration for them.
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7 – Of Their Slaves, and of their Marriages
It seems Utopia has a simple way of punishing people for crimes, slavery. And even stranger, poor people from other countries volunteer to be slaves for payment.
The frail and terminally sick are deemed a “burden” on society and are encouraged to commit suicide, which is considered “honorable”.
The age of marriage is 18 for women and 22 for men. Pre-marital intimacies are not permitted and can result in being punished by not being allowed to marry at all. Only the Prince can overturn such a sentence.
Choosing a spouse has little to do with compatibility of the personalities and is chosen purely on bodily fitness. Why do I have a picture of a horsemarket in my head?
Adultery is punished by slavery, repeated adultery by death.
The Utopians have few laws and no lawyers with the explanation that “it is much better that every man should plead his own cause, and trust it to judge, as in other places the client trusts it to the counselor.”
Some magistrates serve in other countries for a short time. As ambassadors? I found this passage a little difficult…
They do not enter treaties or form leagues with other countries because these are always broken by some loophole or other. For, “kindness and good nature unite men more effectually and with greater strength than any agreement whatsoever.”
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The Utopians detest war as a brutal thing but engage in it when some insurmountable injustice or fraud is committed. The victories they value most are the ones without bloodshed which are then celebrated with triumphs and trophies.
They employ various clandestine tactics to soften and disrupt the social order of their enemies. All their gold and silver is used in this effort as well as the hire of mercenary armies. They use various tactics of war including the building of engines of war. They avoid collateral damage as much as possible, such as the destruction of crops, as these could be of further benefit to them once hostilities have ceased.
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There were parts I didn’t fully understand, so I’m listing what I think I did get ;-)
The Utopians follow various pagan religions but agree on one overall deity. After hearing about Jesus Christ many converted and were baptized, but they had no surviving priests in their company, so no other sacraments could be administered.
One of their oldest laws is that no man should be punished for their religion.
They believe in an afterlife with rewards and punishments for the good and bad. “They think that the souls of beasts are immortal, though far inferior to the dignity of the human soul.”
Of their dead they do not mourn those who died in a state of hope. But those that died in a hopeless state are laid to rest with much sorrow.
The Utopians do have an equivalent to religious orders, these are men and women, married and unmarried, who will do servile work for others.
Priests are held in the greatest esteem. They teach the young in morals and ethics. They are chosen very carefully and must be men of superior character. They do marry, and on occasion even women serve as priests.
Their temples are large with dark interiors and no ornamentation. There is to be no visual distraction in worship to the Divine Essence or to offend the different sects using the same space. Men and women worship separately.
The priests wear white vestments adorned with colorful feathers. Their worship consists of prayers and hymns about the goodness of God.
In conclusion, the reason we don’t live like the Utopians is because we have so much pride. Moore states, “I cannot perfectly agree to everything he [Raphael] has related. However, there are many things in the commonwealth of Utopia that I rather wish, than hope, to see followed in our governments.”
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At this point I must say that much of what I read seems scattered about. What is the common thread that ties it all together? The lack of pride? I get the impression that this is one of those texts where it would be helpful to have a teacher guiding one through it and help pick it apart.
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At this point I must say that much of what I read seems scattered a..."
Kerstin, give a couple of days. I'll try to wrap this book up with some of my thoughts.
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In trying to understand Utopia I felt I needed to understand Thomas More’s life first, and so I put together a time line of his life in bullet form. I could not find such a timeline on the internet. Various sites, such as Wikipedia, summarize his life, but none of the websites seemed to include everything. I don’t think anyone site I came across was truly comprehensive. This is not comprehensive either. I left some more minor details out in an effort to not create clutter. These are what I see as the major details of his life, and below it I add More’s major literary works in a time line. Between these two timelines, I think we can put Utopia into his biographical perspective. More on that below.
Thomas More Timeline
1478 Born in London to Sir John and Agnes More
1490 Placed under tutelage of Cardinal John Morton
1492 Oxford to study law
1494 Admitted to Lincoln Inn Law Society
1496 Enters Law School
1501 Admitted to Bar as “Utter Barister”
1503 Falls into King Henry VII’s disfavor
1504 First entered Parliament
1504 Marries Joan Colt, who bears him four children
1509 King Henry VII dies
1509 Rises to prominence as a lawyer
1509 Represented London merchants in Antwerp
1510-8 Served as Under Sheriff of London
1511 Wife Joan dies in childbirth
1514 Becomes Master of Regants
1515 Appointed to delegation to revise Anglo-Flemish commercial treaty
1517 Resolves Evil Day Mob riot in London
1518 Resigns from City government to work for King Henry VIII
1521 Knighted
1521 Made Under-Treasurer of Exchequer
1523 Becomes Speaker of the House of Commons
1525 Becomes Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
1529 Becomes Lord Chancellor
1532 Resigns Lord Chancellor
1535 Executed
Major Literary Works:
1513-18 History of Richard III
1516 Utopia (Latin)
1523 Response to Luther
1528 Dialogue Concerning Heresies
1529 Supplication of Souls
1531 Confutation of Tyndale
The landmarks of his life which I think are pertinent to his writing of Utopia are these: (1) Childhood spent among the vowed religious. (2) At the age of twenty-six and three years after entering the bar he enters parliament, right around the time he falls in the disfavor of King Henry VII. (3) More marries Joan Colt that same year. (4) At the age of 31, he represents London merchants in Antwerp, ostensibly the setting for the Utopia discourse. (5) He publishes Utopia seven years later, More being 38 years old, and one can presume he was writing it at some point in the intervening years. (6) His wife dies giving childbirth two years after representing London at Antwerp, and five years before publishing Utopia, More being 33. So at the time of the publishing of Utopia, More is a mature man, experienced marriage, political success and disfavor, the birth of four children, and the tragedy of his wife’s death.
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Now when I say in the paragraph above that More “writes” of these aspects of Utopians’ life, he puts those words in a character’s mouth. There are several characters in Utopia and one of them is Thomas More himself as a fictional character. It should be noted that More the author does not put those words in Thomas More the character’s mouth. It is not More the character who is speaking of and praising the Utopians; it is a character named Raphael Hythloday. And this is where I think the difficulty lies in understanding the intent of Utopia. Do Raphael Hythloday’s opinions and values represent the author’s? Or is Raphael Hythloday just a foil for More the author to knock down and satirize? Clearly there are passages that could not rationally be supported by More, but then there are passages that might.
Even the name Raphael Hythloday is ambiguous. Raphael alludes to the archangel, and so on one hand his name may be suggesting the bringing forth of divine wisdom. But Hytholday means (I am told) “speaker of nonsense.” So which is it, wisdom or nonsense?
More the author makes Hythloday a strange character. He’s a bearded old man, a Portuguese sailor, and explorer who traveled with Amerigo Vespucci where he learned of many cultures and where he found the perfect in the Utopians. He is certainly an eccentric in that he prizes the strange aspects of Utopian life. Perhaps “eccentric” is putting it too mildly. Perhaps we, the reader, are to look at him as an oddball or a kook. He speaks at length in what must have been several hours of rambling. I found his support for the marriage customs hilarious:
Before marriage some grave matron presents the bride, naked, whether she is a virgin or a widow, to the bridegroom, and after that some grave man presents the bridegroom, naked, to the bride. We, indeed, both laughed at this, and condemned it as very indecent. But they, on the other hand, wondered at the folly of the men of all other nations, who, if they are but to buy a horse of a small value, are so cautious that they will see every part of him, and take off both his saddle and all his other tackle, that there may be no secret ulcer hid under any of them, and that yet in the choice of a wife, on which depends the happiness or unhappiness of the rest of his life, a man should venture upon trust, and only see about a handsbreadth of the face, all the rest of the body being covered, under which may lie hid what may be contagious as well as loathsome. (p. 94, Kypros Press. Kindle Edition.)
Now that is an example of Hythloday as a kook, and More the author lampooning the values of the Utopians. In other places it’s not so clear. For instance, here Hythloday explains the nature of the Utopians’ laws.
“They have but few laws, and such is their constitution that they need not many. They very much condemn other nations whose laws, together with the commentaries on them, swell up to so many volumes; for they think it an unreasonable thing to oblige men to obey a body of laws that are both of such a bulk, and so dark as not to be read and understood by every one of the subjects. (p. 98)
Well, that sounds rather practical, a body of laws that are short and to the point. Who could be against that? All in all, it’s not always clear whether More is satirizing or conceptualizing an ideal.
Perhaps the one notion that is a sticking point to modern day readers is what appears to be Hythloday’s endorsement of communism, and, because in this case it doesn’t appear to be satire, coming as an endorsement from More the author. More the character himself at the end leaves open the possibility of such an endorsement.
When Raphael had thus made an end of speaking, though many things occurred to me, both concerning the manners and laws of that people, that seemed very absurd, as well in their way of making war, as in their notions of religion and divine matters—together with several other particulars, but chiefly what seemed the foundation of all the rest, their living in common, without the use of money, by which all nobility, magnificence, splendour, and majesty, which, according to the common opinion, are the true ornaments of a nation… (p. 133)
So “many things” of the Utopians seemed rather absurd but not the living in common and the elimination of money. Is More really endorsing that? Is More the character in lock step with More the author? On the one hand, what is being conceptualized is the Benedictine rule of living in common. On the other hand, the Utopians apply it not to a monastery, where individual bachelors of a single gender choose such a life, but across a nation where families form the basic unit of society. More the author and married man would realize that a monastic lifestyle could not work in a lay society because the family would no longer be the basic unit. Indeed, I know of no example of one where it has. Unfortunately the tone of the writing is not indicative of the author’s intent.
As one thinks about it, however, the entire economic concept propounded in the book through the Utopians is absurd. Families living together? The majority of people idle, and yet agriculture being the primary means of sustenance, where the few that do work only labor six hours a day? In what farming community could that possibly be true? It’s impossible. It’s nowhere!
So what are we to make the book? The book fails for me because it is impossible to distinguish what are serious propositions to improve society and what are “nonsense” ramblings of an eccentric old man, and if all is to be taken as nonsense ramblings, to what end? “Utopia” means “nowhere.” So why should we read about this nonexistent and not even possible ideal? Ultimately then it would be a farce, but the tone of the work doesn’t feel like a farce. Why should we go through a 134 pages of silly notions? Is More satirizing the Utopians? Is he satirizing the exploration writings that was becoming a formal genre in his day? Or is he satirizing philosophic treatises with kooky old Hythloday as a silly savant? Ultimately I can’t tell.
But on a second read, I have to admit, I was entertained. Once I came to the conclusion that Hythloday is just an oddball not to be taken seriously I enjoyed the zaniness of the monologue. As a philosophic work, Utopia has its issues. As a tongue-in-cheek farce I found it a worthwhile read.
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All along while reading it I wanted a scholar next to me pointing out what's what. Some things made sense, some didn't, how does it all fit? In the end I concluded that it is all a jumble of well-meaning, do-gooder, high-minded stuff that when you put it all together will never work in real life, for it defies human nature.
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The book can be downloaded for free
Kindle https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...
Project Gutenberg https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2130
Reading Schedule:
Week 1: 6 – 12 September
1 – Discourse of Raphael Hythloday, of the Best State of a Commonwealth
2 – Of their Towns, Particularly of Amaurot
3 – Of their Magistrates
Week 2: 13 – 19 September
4 – Of their Trades, and Manner of Life
5 – Of their Traffic
6 – Of the Travelling of the Utopians
Week 3: 20 – 26 September
7 – Of their Slaves, and of their Marriages
8 – Of their Military Discipline
9 – Of the Religions of the Utopians