Eutopia – Utopia – A Greek Neverland?

 

 

The word Utopia; used to describe an imaginary island, a perfect world, was first used by Sir Thomas More, an English lawyer, writer and statesman, in his book “Utopia”, written in 1516.

More created the word utopia from the Greek ou-topos (from Ancient Greek οὐ -ou; -not or no and τόπος -topos; a place or region), which translates literally as no place or nowhere.

He was making a play on words as eutopia ( eu-topos –  eu, the Greek prefix meaning good and τόπος -topos; a place or region), the almost identical Greek word, means a good place or a heaven on Earth, so to speak.

With the word utopia, Thomas More raises the debate; can a perfect world ever exist, can everything and everyone ever work in perfect harmony, what is the ideal society?

 

A brief summary of Thomas More’s Utopia

 

 A community set on an island where people share a common culture and way of life, everything is public property, food and hospitals are free and all religions are tolerated.

 

 

The narrator, Thomas More, (a fictional character with the same name as Utopia’s author, Sir Thomas More), arrives in Belgium and meets up with his old friend Peter Giles (an actual historical figure).

Giles introduces More to Raphael Hythloday (a fictional character), a philosopher and world traveler whose surname, in Greek, means “talker of nonsense”.

 

 

Hythloday had lived on the island of Utopia, in the south Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South America (founded by General Utopus, who conquered the savages and then set up the Utopian society), for five years, before returning home to Europe to sing the praises of the island’s perfect political and social system.

During a conversation between the three men, where Hythloday is describing his travels, Giles wonders why he hasn’t offered his services to governments, who could make use of his awareness of different customs and practices to improve society.

Both More and Giles try to persuade Hythloday, that a person of his knowledge and learning, must use his abilities to better humanity.

 

Truth wins the day

 

 Hythloday, who believes in the ideal of truth, disagrees and attempts to explain, to More (who has no such beliefs but in fact believes wisdom must be put to public use, even if the original ideal is compromised along the way), why offering one’s knowledge to governments is not a good idea.

Hythloday tries to make him see sense, by explaining how reality would cause a conscientious person to make compromises where power and corruption were concerned.

More battles with the question of whether one can remain true to one’s principles and to truth while in government employment but goes on to argue, along with Giles, that the educated must not leave leadership to the corrupt and must always try to improve society whenever possible.

 

More’s Predicament

 

 

 

At the time of writing his book, Utopia, Thomas More was undecided about whether or not to join the King’s service which, in a way, would mean compromising his life of freedom (and integrity) as a philosopher in order to improve society.

 

The choice is made

 

In the end More chose to enter the King’s service, ultimately ascending to the position of Lord Chancellor, the most powerful office in England next to the king himself.

It has been suggested that the arguments between the narrator More and Hythloday, in Utopia, were actually the internal arguments between More and himself over his predicament of which path he must follow in life.

 

Eutopia :

 An Arcadian Shangri La

 

 

Whilst the word utopia brings about thoughts of some sort of fool’s Paradise or cloud cuckoo land, the Greek word eutopia, brings to mind the ideal place; a Heaven on earth or paradise, completee with nubile frolicking nymps

By no means was Thomas More the first to write about a fool’s paradise, the ancient Greek philosopher, Plato, was thousands of years ahead of him with his book, “Republic”, which I’ll get to in a minute, have patience!

 In many cultures, there are stories and myths about the distant past when people led the simple life; were at one with nature, self-reliant and filled with happiness and fulfillment.

 

Elysium

 

 

One such place is the mythical Greek Arcadia, an idyllic, pastoral place, not created by man but evolved naturally, an unspoiled wilderness, said in Greek mythology to be the original site of “The Golden Age”, an elysium, an age of peace, harmony, stability and prosperity.

Arcadians were humble people, without hate or greed, living peacefully, as shepherds, uncorrupted by civilization.

 

Plato’s utopia:

 

 

Greek philosopher, Plato, wrote one of his most well-known works” Republic”, in 345 BC.

  Plato, pupil of Socrates, another great Greek philosopher, was not a big fan of democracy and holds it responsible for the downfall of Athens and also for the death of Socrates, who was accused of corrupting the youth of Athens and sentenced to death.

Platos’s main goal in life was to help people reach eudaimonia; a state of well-being; contentment with the simple things in life.

 

What’s on a man’s mind?

 

Plato had four predominant ideas:

1. Think more; don’t be a sheep, don’t automatically agree with the crowd, think for yourself

2. Let your lover change you; true love is admiration; educate each other

3. De-code the message of beauty; we find things beautiful when we sense qualities in them that are missing in our lives, such as, harmony, balance, peace and strength, beautiful things therefore have a role in our lives, they help educate our souls.

4. Reform society; Plato was inspired by Athens’s rival, Sparta, everything they did was organized.

 

Ethics and politics in Plato’s Republic

 

 

“Republic”, one of twenty six books Plato wrote, all dialogues, is part analogy, part genuine policy proposal and part criticism of the existing systems and policies of the day.

 The book opens with a meeting between Socrates (the main character of the book) and his pals, who are discussing the question of what is justice, what makes one just and what makes one unjust and would everybody be unjust if they thought they could get away with it?

 

Kallipolis:

The perfect city state

 

 

Socrates, to back up his arguments creates an imaginary city; Kallipolis (the good city), ruled by philosopher-kings, who have been educated for fifty years before being allowed to govern the city.

All men and women are considered equal, there is no gender discrimination and all children receive the best education, appropriate to their natural talents.

Families no longer exist; children are the result of state-approved marriages and brought up by the state and any imperfect children, or children produced by below average parents, are put to death.

No social climbing is allowed for adults, children, however, may move up or down the social scale, according to how well they fared in school.

The custodians and military classes; the ones who rule and protect the city, are prohibited from owning personal and private property but live in communal housing, paid for by taxes collected from the lower classes.

To make sure truth is maintained, all poets are sent into exile and all books, plays and other works of culture, must be approved by the governors.

Order is preserved by a progressively totalitarian series of laws and regulations, which keep the city running as smoothly as possible with little or no concern for the wishes of the people.

The stability of the system is made possible by using a “noble lie”; γενναῖον ψεῦδος, gennaion pseudo, a concept thought up by plato and described in the Republic.

 

The Noble Lie

 

 

In politics, a noble lie is a myth or untruth, usually of religious nature, developed by the elite to maintain social harmony or advance an agenda.

The myth put forward in Plato’s Republic, is that men are born of the earth and that into each soul is mixed gold for the philosopher kings, silver for their deputies and military and farmers, laborers and tradesmen are, supernaturally, made from brass and iron.

The lie goes with the warning that everything will turn to chaos if people of the wrong metal are put in charge.

Could this possibly be where the idiom “Prove one’s mettle” originates?

(Mettle was originally the same word as metal, mettle was a variant spelling associated with figurative uses of the word, meaning ‘quality of temperament’ and from that ‘natural spirit’ or ‘courage’)

The reasoning behind the noble lie, was that if the people could be convinced to believe this, they will more readily conform to their roles in a well-ordered and stable city.

 

Dystopia

 

 

The opposite of eutopia is dystopia, from Ancient Greek δυσ- dys -bad or hard and τόπος – topos – place or region.

If eutopia or utopia, illustrates the perfect world, dystopia indicates an Armageddon or make-believe wretched world, usually a world of the future, such as referred to in literature, for instance, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

 

One man’s meat is another man’s poison

 

Do the words utopia (eutopia) and dystopia basically have the same meaning?

Thomas More’s “Utopia”, certainly seems to me, to be more of a wretched than a perfect world; a world run by tyrants but for others that may not be the case.

There is some debate as to whether More wrote his book as a satire, I don’t think the same can be said about Plato’s Kallipolis, the perfect city state.

I’m no philosopher and things become rather complicated when you dive deep into ancient Greek philosophy, however, I get the distinct feeling Plato actually believed his imaginary utopia to be seventh Heaven; there’s no accounting for taste!

At least, he did himself, admit that he didn’t think the Kallipolis idea would work!

Let’s take a ‘Greeker’ look at things, how about eutopia, an Arcadian nirvana?

It is more convincingly a sort of Garden of Eden, even though there, things did not always run smoothly.

 

 

I wouldn’t mind frolicking around in green pastures with satyrs and nymphs, the pleasure addicts of ancient Greece.

Then again, another’s idea of eutopia could be wandering about on Mount Olympus, home to the Greek gods, which to me, who hates Mountains, would be dystopia, give me the sea any day!

You see, in the end, it all comes down to personal preference; one man’s meat is another man’s poison and one man’s dystopia is another man’s eutopia and vice versa.