Utopia

Utopia, concept of an ideal society. The word utopia was coined by English writer Sir Thomas More in his fictional satire Utopia (1516), from Greek terms meaning “no” and “place.” More describes an imaginary society without the inequalities of wealth and status that characterized his own Tudor England.

However, many consider the concept of utopia to have been in existence long before More. One example is the biblical Garden of Eden, which represents a natural utopia now lost. Another, The Republic of Plato, seems to invite philosophers to establish an ideal state. These three examples illustrate different functions of utopia as it is expressed in literature and philosophy: a form of social criticism, a nostalgic vision, or a feasible social experiment. Other examples of literary utopias include Francis Bacon's The New Atlantis (1627); Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (1888); Tommaso Campanella's Civitas Solis (1602); Étienne Cabet's Voyage en Icarie (1842); and H. G. Wells's The Shape of Things to Come (1933).

The inspiration of a utopia has not been confined to the realm of ideas. Actual communities have been founded as utopias throughout history. Examples include the Essenes, the model industrial towns of Robert Owen, the Israeli kibbutzim, Brook Farm, New Harmony, the Separatist Society of Zoar, and the Shakers. Few of these communities, however, have withstood the tension between their own ideal principles and the pressures from the unreformed outer world that governed the desires and habits of their inhabitants. The problem of how to found a radically new society with people who have grown up in existing societies has plagued all attempts to establish utopias.

While drastic methods of purging society have at times seemed necessary for founding utopias, fear of these methods has also inspired recurrent works of anti-utopianism. George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four (1949) is a classic example of anti-utopianism, condemning a purportedly ideal society in which language itself is twisted for political ends. Other anti-utopian works include Samuel Butler's Erewhon (1872); Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932); and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726).