Utopia, eutopia and dystopia Science fiction and political philosophy

Terminology

✤ St Thomas More (1478-1535) invented the word Utopia for the title and island setting of his philosophical novel (1516).

✤ Utopia puns on the Greek eu-topos, meaning “good place,” (euphemism, eudaimonia) and ou-topos, meaning “no place,” which sound alike in English.

✤ Today we also use dystopia, from the Greek for “bad place,” for an undesirable society of terror and oppression

Science Fiction and Politics

✤ Discussing the political issues was often a dangerous task for the author, because it often involved the critique of political authorities.

✤ So it is easier to do it using fiction which always can be understood ambiguously.

✤ Writing utopia and describing ideal political system was a good way to avoid the accusation of being anarchic or putting the authorities in question.

The problem of labour

✤ One of the primal problem which is to deal in utopian literature is the problem of labour which must be done to produce the wealth.

✤ In the ancient world, the economy could rest on slavery (Plato’s Republic)

✤ In the Christian Renaissance (slavery was destroyed by Christianity), the favoured mechanism was the regularisation of work (the idea was inspired by the monastic life).

✤ In the Industrial Revolution, the economy was based either on machines or, if need be, on their rejection.

✤ In the post-industrial world, the economy is often based on humans who works like machines or robots (machines are the model of efficient work).

Plato’s Republic

✤ Plato’ Republic is a dialogue which influenced all utopian literature.

✤ Society were divided in three classes, philosophers who ruled, soldiers (who guarded peace internally and externally), workers (who produced all kind of goods)

✤ Plato seemed to allow in his ideal state some actions which seems to be immoral but are good for the wellbeing of the state:

✤ he postulated to banish all poets

✤ necessary lie (when the child of the king is stupid)

The age of utopias

✤ Renaissance meant the fall of Medieval model of state and society. Especially religious wars showed that the idea of one Christendom no longer works.

✤ Such situation raised the discussion on how the new political structure of state and Europe should look like.

✤ Many writers tried to answer it writing utopias - the novels both promoting and denouncing certain political social solutions.

Utopia of St Thomas More

✤ Utopia is an ideal society placed on the island. More starts with the letters, which are communications between actual people, to further the plausibility of his fictional land (in the letters we find the praise of Plato’s Republic).

✤ The island is placed at the New World. The island contains 54 cities. Each city is divided into four equal parts. The capital city, Amaurot, is located directly in the middle, people are distributed to keep numbers even in every part of the island.

✤ In ideal society there is no private propriety, and people always get from warehouses what they need. There is a freedom, equality and tolerance everywhere, but privacy is not regarded as a freedom…

✤ We don’t know the reason of More writing this novel and whether it is a satire on European society or the promotion of the new model

✤ Those who find it satiric cite such details as its uses of gold for shackles and chamber pots and its ironic foreign policy.

The City of the Sun

✤ Friar Tommaso Campanella’s The City of the Sun (1602) is an ideal state where slavery is abolished and work esteemed.

✤ One of the most significant aspects of this community is the distribution of work. Campanella engages in an explicit polemic with Aristotle, who had excluded artisans, peasants and those involved in manual labor from the category of full citizenship and from the highest levels of virtue.

✤ Thanks to the equal division of labor, it is sufficient for each person to spend only four hours a day working,

✤ Everything is held in common, food, houses, the acquisition of knowledge, the exercise of activities, honours, amusements, women, children etc.

✤ Campanella proposes a natural religion that establishes a sort of osmosis between the city and the stars. “I shall make the heavens a temple and the stars an altar”

New Atlantis

✤ Francis Bacon left the unfinished utopia called New Atlantis (1627).

✤ Bacon portrayed a vision of the future of human discovery and knowledge, expressing his aspirations and ideals for humankind.

✤ This science based society is ruled by long line of Scientist-Kings.

Leviathan

✤ Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1652) sees the need for absolute monarchy to provide the constant struggle between opposite forces human freedom and the freedom of the other.

✤ The main issue of the book is how the ruler can gain absolute control over the society

✤ The solution is to organise and treat the state as mechanism…

✤ The ruler’s power is absolute and Hobbes believes that this is the only thing that can save man from state of nature, which is much worse than oppressive ruler.

Utopia in Industrial Revolution

✤ Edward Bellamy Looking Backward (1888). The book tells the story of Julian West, a young American who, towards the end of the 19th century, falls into a deep, hypnosis-induced sleep and wakes up one hundred and thirteen years later.

✤ USA is transferred into socialist utopia (whole concept reflects Marxism)

✤ All industry is owned by state, there is no private property and work is distributed equally.

✤ All citizens receive an equal amount of "credit." Those with more difficult, specialised, dangerous or unpleasant jobs work fewer hours.

Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We

✤ In 20th century the intellectuals have observed some attempts to make utopian ideas true in totalitarian systems (Nassim and Socialism). That is why political SF of 20th century is often dystopian aiming at showing the dangers of totalitarian political projects

✤ Perhaps the greatest dystopian work is We ( 1920) by Yevgeny Zamyatin ( 1884-1937). The first book officially banned by the Soviet Union, and undoubtedly was an inspiration to Orwell and Huxley.

The plot of We

✤ We is set in the future, after the great war, which ended with one state ruling all the Earth (named: One State)

✤ People have numbers instead of names (the main character’s name is D-503), wear identical clothing, there is no private property etc.

✤ Like all other citizens of One State, D-503 lives in a glass apartment building and is carefully watched by the secret police, or Bureau of Guardians. (people are allowed to use curtains only during sex).

✤ Lives are fully regulated, as by a Table of Hours

✤ D-503 meets a woman named I-330, who smokes cigarettes, drinks alcohol, and shamelessly flirts with D-503. He is both repelled and fascinated with her. As it occurs I-330 is a part of the secret organization MEPHI, which aims to overthrow the government.

Romantic and mechanical

✤ The novel brilliantly combines the romantic with the mechanical.

✤ The covert political plot focuses on a male engineer and a female rebel who induces him to turn his hand against a controlling state.

✤ The covert psychological plot focuses on the engineer, our narrator, struggling to be a good citizen of this mechanized One State even as his unique impulses grow.

Providence and state

✤ History of utopia shows that the main problem is the balance between human freedom and government control.

✤ Whether taking away human freedom is justified by the promise of good life?

✤ Whether man can be happy when he is not free?

✤ The same problem can be seen in theology where the way of how God rules the Universe is considered - it is called providence.

✤ Whether God should allow man to choose evil to make the world better place?

✤ Christian conception of providence shows that the fundamental principle of providence is God’s love to mankind and love is impossible without freedom…

Conclusion

History of utopia shows that Science Fiction provides good tools for making the thought experiments in

searching for the best social system.

The history of utopia is the history of the struggle between idealistic (Platonic) and realistic (Aristotelic)

view of politics and society.