Chapter Commentary of Utopia - Study Guide by Thomas More

Whilst it is Hythloday who presents the indictment of society and the account of Utopia, we can not help but want to align his narrative with More’s own views. He does in fact show ‘More’ agreeing with Hythloday on many accounts "You have given me great pleasure my dear Raphael, for everything you have said has been both wise and witty". However, they also disagree over the issue of the abolishment of private property. Perhaps in this open-ended, unresolved ending we can see a reflection of More’s own implacable reasoning. Models for Hythloday could be the stern expert counsellors of Plato’s political dialogues, whose detachment from practical affairs allows them to see, speak, contemplate; a model perhaps of what More himself might have become if he had continued to be on Henry VIII’s bench of counsellors. The persona of ‘More’ is practical, cautious a lawyer and family man. It lacks the passion of the author More who chose martyrdom in the face of religious reforms to which he objected and was beheaded by Henry VIII.

Utopia

does not conclude in certainties or authority. We are left unsure of what to believe as readers, and it is evidently More’s intention to leave us in this state of deliberation. In leaving the book open- ended he made a statement about the way in which political and philosophical matters are never concluded, they simply go on with or without success. The name of the characters and the place itself, serve as a source of humour and irony: Utopia means ‘no place’, Hythloday ‘expert in nonsense’, Polyrites ‘the people of much nonsense’, Nephelogetes ‘people born from the clouds’ and Alaopolitans ‘people without a country’. Such examples chart the constant undermining of any potential certainties to be derived from Utopia’s text. We are not allowed the luxury of feeling that we have seen a perfect world or a perfect solution: this is the reason, perhaps, for the cacophony of different voices in the debate of Utopia. It is an idea and a theory rather than an actual possibility. The ambiguous names More uses are not examples of mere nonsense naming, but a means of highlighting the stern and practical pessimism, the "wry acceptance of the difficulty of establishing egalitarianism in England" (Norbrook), and the irresolvable nature of the issues developed in Utopia. Man may have words for the perfect society but it is beyond him in actions: we do not know where it is situated or how to get there, "I freely confess" says More at the end, "that in the Utopian commonwealth there are many features that in our own societies I would like rather than expect to see", and by implication there are some that he might exclude.

The ironic and fantastic form betrays More’s scepticism since perfection (if Utopia is indeed ‘perfect’) can only appear "in a land such as never was and such as is nowhere nor will be". The chasm between the ideal and the possible is consistently highlighted for the learned. Rather than a tonic to social ills his book forms rather a condemnation of society, the dilemma is stated but left uncured – "the saddest of fairytales".

Humanist Realism or Idealism; Progressive or regressive?

In the depiction of private property and nobles, More critiques humanist assumptions of hierarchy and tradition, condemning the extravagances of the ruling classes. Furthermore he anticipates, in his depiction of the Utopians, a modern classless socialist civilisation. From Plato to Marx the elusive goal of a perfect state has occupied political thought and manifested itself in literature. More’s Utopia, then, is simultaneously backward and forward-looking. Janus-faced it draws on the ancients and influences the modern, Hythloday’s fantasy island draws heavily on the Greek republic and it influenced the revolutionary world of Marx.

It appears old fashioned when compared with Machiavelli’s The Prince (which typifies ‘progressive’ values that Cromwell lauded: of commercialism, ruthlessness and exploitation). Ethics and politics are divorced in The Prince between the realm of what ought to be and the realm of what is. It marked the beginning of brutally unsentimental and realistic perspectives upon human motives. Utopian life is, by comparison, naïvely simple, moral and idealistic. More pictures a society dependent on good will and the absence of pride: a blissful paradise based on Christian socialism and proscribing a lifestyle akin to the monastic brotherhood against the growth of industry, social degeneracy and greed.

Against this somewhat regressive and medieval paradigm of living however, we are faced with modernity. More imagines modern welfare state, equal education, the conception of a commonwealth as reciprocally