From 1900 onwards, scientists and novelists have explored the contours of a future society based on the use of “anthropotechnologies” (techniques applicable to human beings for the purpose of performance enhancement ranging from training and education to genome-based biotechnologies). Gradually but steadily, the technologies involved migrated from (science) fiction into scholarly publications, and from “utopia” (or “dystopia”) into science. Building on seminal ideas borrowed from Nietzsche, Peter Sloterdijk has outlined the challenges inherent in this development. Since time immemorial, and (...) at least since the days of Plato’s Academy, human beings have been interested in possibilities for (physical or mental) performance enhancement. We are constantly trying to improve ourselves, both collectively and individually, for better or for worse. At present, however, new genomics-based technologies are opening up new avenues for self-amelioration. Developments in research facilities using animal models may to a certain extent be seen as expeditions into our own future. Are we able to address the bioethical and biopolitical issues awaiting us? After analyzing and assessing Sloterdijk’s views, attention will shift to a concrete domain of application, namely sport genomics. For various reasons, top athletes are likely to play the role of genomics pioneers by using personalized genomics information to adjust diet, life-style, training schedules and doping intake to the strengths and weaknesses of their personalized genome information. Thus, sport genomics may be regarded as a test bed where the contours of genomics-based self-management are tried out. (shrink)

In this major new work by one of the leading writers on Utopian Studies, Ruth Levitas argues that a prospective future of ecological and economic crises poses a challenge to the utopian imaginary, to conceive a better world and alternative future. Utopia as Method does not construe utopia as goal or blueprint, but as a holistic, reflexive method for developing what those possible futures might be. It begins by treating utopia as the quest for grace, through a (...) hermeneutics that recovers the utopian meaning in our culture, explored through colour and music. Moving from the existential to the social, it draws on H.G. Wells's claim that the creation of utopias is the distinctive and proper method of sociology, and on the tentative reappearance of utopia in contemporary social theory. It proposes a constructive method, the Imaginary Reconstitution of Society. This fusion of explicitly normative social theory and analytic critique rehabilitates utopia as an integral part of sociology, and offers a means of collective engagement in shaping a better tomorrow."--Publisher's description. (shrink)

Neste capítulo, vamos tratar do discurso-corpo demarcado pelas utopias em justaposição com as heterotopias em duas produções cinematográficas do horror francês contemporâneo. Dessa forma, o corpo que operamos é feito de discurso, ou seja, todo seu tecido, seus órgãos, seus sistemas, seus ossos são discursos sobrepostos pelo visível e pelo dizível, da mesma forma, como demonstrou Foucault na obra O Nascimento da Clínica em 1963.

Many utopian visions operate by scapegoating an Otherness. They blame an ‘enemy’ for an unbearable, dystopian current reality, holding the ‘enemy’ responsible for it or for obstructing the passage to a desired, new reality. Then they exclude (or even promise the elimination of) this ‘enemy’. Despite the renewed interest in utopias, such utopian frames remain theoretically neglected or, worse, they are considered typical of the logical structure of utopianism. This paper aims to show that this issue merits a different political-philosophical (...) attention. We begin with operations of utopian predicates in the relevant scholarship and distinguish them from the operations of the term ‘incriminatory’ that we are introducing. We term incriminatory the kind of utopian frame whose future-oriented, idealized and desired image is constructed in and through an incriminated ‘Other’. We indicate the re-conceptualizing merits of this new term and then we discuss the affirmative utopianism that does not incriminate a specific Other. Our main argument, which we deploy contra Yannis Stavrakakis’s position, is that utopias are not unavoidably or inherently incriminatory. (shrink)

Thomas More’s Utopia, a book that will be 500 years old next year, is astonishingly radical stuff. Not many lord chancellors of England have denounced private property, advocated a form of communism and described the current social order as a “conspiracy of the rich.” Such men, the book announces, are “greedy, unscrupulous and useless.” There are a great number of noblemen, More complains, who live like drones on the labour of others. Tenants are evicted so that “one insatiable glutton (...) and accursed plague of his native land” may consolidate his fields. Monarchs, he argues, would do well to swear at their inauguration never to have more than 1,000lbs of gold in their coffers. Perhaps this is one reason why Utopia is... (shrink)

This paper reexamines Adorno’s conception of utopia within the context of his critique of the concept of progress. It contests the standard interpretation which conveys Adorno’s conception of utopia to be imbued with an essentially extra-historical idea of redemption. I argue, contrary to this view, that the motif of redemption surfacing in Adorno’s conception of utopia negates a specific type of historical life – life under which historical consciousness sinks into oblivion – rather than history per se. (...) In order to reveal the historicality of Adorno’s conception of utopia, I examine his fragmentary yet consistent critique of the concept of progress, which, far from calling for total abandonment, aims to access and unearth its truth-content. Last but not least, I visit Adorno’s suggestion regarding the consonance of utopia with genuine progress, assessing its implications vis-à-vis a characteristic feature of mythological life, the ratio of self-preservation. (shrink)

The recovery of politics as the art of what is possible, implies an adequate relationship with utopia, which is a condition of political realism. This supposes the affirmation of reality as the condition of possibility in human life, in contrast with its displacement by the hegemonic fetishist per..

Within the history of African American struggle against racist oppression that often verges on dystopia, a hidden tradition has depicted a transfigured world. Daring to speculate on a future beyond white supremacy, black utopian artists and thinkers offer powerful visions of ways of being that are built on radical concepts of justice and freedom. They imagine a new black citizen who would inhabit a world that soars above all existing notions of the possible. In Black Utopia, Alex Zamalin offers (...) a groundbreaking examination of African American visions of social transformation and their counterutopian counterparts. Considering figures associated with racial separatism, postracialism, anticolonialism, Pan-Africanism, and Afrofuturism, he argues that the black utopian tradition continues to challenge American political thought and culture. Black Utopia spans black nationalist visions of an ideal Africa, the fiction of W. E. B. Du Bois, and Sun Ra’s cosmic mythology of alien abduction. Zamalin casts Samuel R. Delany and Octavia E. Butler as political theorists and reflects on the antiutopian challenges of George S. Schuyler and Richard Wright. Their thought proves that utopianism, rather than being politically immature or dangerous, can invigorate political imagination. Both an inspiring intellectual history and a critique of present power relations, this book suggests that, with democracy under siege across the globe, the black utopian tradition may be our best hope for combating injustice. (shrink)

Winner of the 1975 National Book Award, this brilliant and widely acclaimed book is a powerful philosophical challenge to the most widely held political and social positions of our age--liberal, socialist, and conservative.

When we make public policy choices, is it helpful to know how utopia would look? Amartya Sen argues that it is neither necessary, nor sufficient, nor even contributory. He claims that before making a policy choice one should compare several feasible institutional designs to see which promotes justice most, and that it is misleading to use the perfect design as a standard in those comparisons. Principles of justice are the proper standard. The present article contends that the perfect design (...) has nevertheless an important role to play in the prior task of identifying and refining our principles of justice. It also shows that the perfect design—in at least one sense of this term—may be a legitimate long-term goal for present policy choices. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this article, I consider Bernard Suits’ Utopia where the denizens supposedly fill their days playing Utopian sports, with regard to the relevance of the thought experiment for understand...

Environmentalism has relentlessly warned about the dire consequences of abusing and exploiting the planet's natural resources, imagining future wastelands of ecological depletion and social chaos. But it has also generated rich new ideas about how humans might live better with nature. Green Utopias explores these ideas of environmental hope in the post-war period, from the environmental crisis to the end of nature. Using a broad definition of Utopia as it exists in Western policy, theory and literature, Lisa Garforth explains (...) how its developing entanglement with popular culture and mainstream politics has shaped successive green future visions and initiatives. In the face of apocalyptic, despairing or indifferent responses to contemporary ecological dilemmas, utopias and the utopian method seem more necessary than ever. This distinctive reading of green political thought and culture will appeal across the social sciences and humanities to all interested in why green utopias continue to matter in the cultivation of ecological values and the emergence of new forms of human and non-human well-being. (shrink)

Este artículo propone recorrer las diferentes perspectivas desde las que históricamente se ha pensado la utopía. En este recorrido Miguel Abensour subraya dos giros fundamentales. El primero sería la asignación de la utopía al tiempo por medio de su transferencia a una ontología dialéctica, operación llevada a cabo por Marx e identificada por Marc Bloch. El segundo, aún más importante en cuanto se trata de una tarea presente, sería la superación de los límites que la previsión dialéctica impone a la (...) utopía a partir de un pensamiento de la alteridad, aspecto en el que la filosofía de Emmanuel Levinas juega un papel exploratorio pionero.  . (shrink)

El presente artículo realiza un contrapunto entre estos dos conceptos, cuestionando que exista entre ellos una antinomia irreducible, y propone explorar una conjunción entre la exuberancia de la utopía y la sobriedad de la democracia. En su desarrollo, el autor revisa la idea instalada de que la utopía no puede ser sino totalitaria, y busca restituir a la utopía su capacidad de movimiento. Profundizando en los conceptos de democracia y utopía propone una nueva conexión entre ambos, situando a la democracia (...) y la utopía bajo el signo de lo humano. (shrink)

The author challenges the canonical opposition of utopia vs. realism in political thought. Although this opposition traces back to the very origins of Western political theory, in the works of such authors as Thucydides and Plato, the author maintains that both ‘utopian’ and ‘realist’ thinkers of every age keep the reality of their society in the background of their political constructions. The real difference is in their view of human nature: ‘utopian’ thinkers have a more optimistic view of human (...) nature, they see it flexible and prone to be changed by education and institutions; whereas ‘realist’ thinkers have a more pessimistic vision of man and have less faith in the power of laws and education. Based on their anthropological view, political authors have different expectations to mould human nature and different hopes to create a perfect society. This view is supported by an examination of Thucydides, Plato and Machiavelli and by reference to some other classic political thinkers in the Western tradition. (shrink)

El ejercicio utópico de la voluntad política que caracteriza el XIX latinoamericano se desgrana en las categorías de unidad continental, unidad cultural, unidad en el concepto de Patria, etc.; clausurando un apretado siglo de extrema densidad social y política, un siglo de utopía en el discurso. Una Ilustración insuficiente, el coste del hibridismo, las comunidades imaginadas, las dependencias encadenadas, las resistencias, los logros y los fracasos, traducen el sacrificio, la traición y la inconclusión de la tarea emancipatoria. Si podemos contemplar (...) hoy día el descubrimiento de América como el comienzo de una empresa civilizatoria, y admirar sus obras más allá del trabajo infatigable de una destrucción que no ha cesado, es sólo en virtud de esta tradición de crítica y resistencia , a lo largo de un proceso social, artístico y literario ininterrumpido hasta el día de hoy. (shrink)

It has often been argued that Thomas More’s Utopia is fundamentally concerned with outlining and theoretically justifying an ideal model of society and not with determining what would be the practical steps required for its establishment in the real world. Even if we were to accept this widespread interpretation, I consider that it is possible to recognize in the text indications that suggest two different and even opposing paths along which the political construction of Utopia could take place. (...) The first, and strictly speaking, the only one that the work is trying to put forward, is individual, elitist, coercive, and top-down. The second that, for its part, seems to be presented rather with the intention of preventing it from coming to fruition is hence, on the contrary, collective, popular, insurrectionary and from below. The present article tries, first, to show how and through what arguments these two models of action are presented in More’s work, taking note, in addition, of the important difficulties involved in the one which it intends to propose. After this, two historical realizations immediately after Utopia was published that illustrate them are developed. Finally, the present article tries to establish what relationship these two paths have with each other according to the work’s approach and, also, suggest what alternative relationship they could maintain if a different point of view was attempted. (shrink)

The clash between these two dimensions of human condition – but also their complementary nature – make utopia and melancholy specially compelling as they address us today from Don Quixote’s text, providing an accurate standing from which both the author and his protagonist become our contemporaries. Taking an ethic point of departure, we shall consider the aim of the fantasies of Don Quixote is to modify the reality in a certain moral sense, despite of his ridiculously and impractical goals. (...) At the same time The Quixote’s utopia is interrelated with the melancholic Quixote’s character. The melancholy arises from the ethic conscience which is leaded by the moral duty of the justice. This article shows clearly the double melancholic and utopian nature of Don Quixote’s character, which is chaired by a modern ethic conscience. (shrink)

Historians of modern design and sociology have shown little interest in the leaders of the ever resourceful and influential British Positivist Society. One of the aims of this essay is to show that the Positivist polymath Frederic Harrison (1831–1923) cultivated ideas and practices that are compatible with modernists’ aspirations to improve the lives of the masses. It is accordingly shown that Harrison was an ardent supporter of working-class causes and that on this basis he developed sociological survey methods and produced (...) social programmes to initiate the comprehensive reorganisation of cities. Harrison intended to realise a modern utopia called the “Occidental Republic”, created by Auguste Comte, the Positivist Philosopher who – during the 1830 and 1840s – introduced both sociology and the Religion of Humanity. While many studies pore over the Positivists’ “church” rituals, this essay is the first to argue that the Religion of Humanity and sociology were of equal consequence – and that together they formed the basis of their controversial spatial theory and practice, which was considered the means to realise Comte’s utopia. This vision, it is argued, is central to appreciating how Positivism percolated into the “modern movements” of architecture and planning. (shrink)

Celem artykułu jest ukazanie w perspektywie historiozoficznej, dla której naczelną wartością staje się stosunek do świadomości historycznej. Jednym z jej wyznaczników jest relacja wobec czasu historycznego. Na tym tle można mówić o utopiach antyhistorycznych, ahistorycznych i historycznych.

At first glance, "practical utopias" might appear to be a contradiction in terms. If, to be sure, most utopian proponents would love to see their schemes realized, painfully few offer the practical skills and detailed blueprints to come close to that goal or to obtain a sufficient following to achieve long-term successes, whether sustainable utopian communities or substantial political and economic transformations or even lasting takeaways from temporary world's fairs. Yet "practical utopias" can legitimately be applied to the "techno-fixes" discussed (...) here without contradiction."Techno-fixes" are avowedly practical. They are quick shortcuts to try to solve long-standing and deeply rooted economic, social... (shrink)

The people in utopias have many characteristics Abraham Maslow said self‐actualized people have: they're accepting, spontaneous, creative, appreciative of life, honest, responsible, and hardworking; they even maintain deep relationships and have childlike wonder. In Star Trek: Mission Log, Ken Ray defends life under the care of Norman's androids on Mudd's planet as preferable because of its possibilities for self‐actualization. Self‐actualization is impossible unless the basic biological, safety, and social needs are met, all of which the spores and Vaal guarantee. The (...) spores even saved the colonists’ lives. Once one achieves self‐actualization, it's easy to pity those who can't attain it; but for those who struggle just to survive, giving up safety and security for an unlikely chance at self‐actualization would seem crazy. The criticisms of Vaal seem to echo the criticisms of communism, and the control a communist government must exercise in providing for its people. (shrink)

(2000). For Utopia: The (limits of the) Utopian function in late capitalist society. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 3, The Philosophy of Utopia, pp. 25-43.

If utopias in the western cultural tradition owe their model of ideal, final, unitary order to the objective basis of metaphysics, have they not, like metaphysics, undergone a dissolution in Heidegger’s sense of Verwindung? Insofar as the very notion of unity, like that of an ultimate metaphysical foundation, now reveals its violence and will to domination and as we are interested instead in thinking utopia as a ‘project for emancipation’, the author suggests replacing the unity that was hitherto characteristic (...) of utopia with a multiplicity that is defended as a value and not as a phase of ‘confusion’ to be overcome. (shrink)

Black Utopias posits a concept of utopia made possible by black people's exclusion from the human and expressed through the ecstatic practices, community creation, speculative fiction and music. Jayna Brown explores the practices and works of 19th century black women mystics as well as 20th century musicians and speculative fiction writers including mystics Sojourner Truth and Rebecca Cox Jackson, musicians Alice Coltrane and Sun Ra, and writers Samuel Delany and Octavia Butler.

Via the existential questioning outlook supplied by the Grasshopper’s three visions as relevant to the fate of humankind – oblivion, delusion, and really magnificent games – this article seeks to alleviate some of the ambiguity surrounding Bernard Suits’ provocative claim that Utopian existence is fundamentally concerned with game-playing. Specifically, after proposing an interpretation of Suits’ parable designed to enrich the logical intelligibility of his Utopian thesis, I advance the suggestion that the Grasshopper’s picture of people playing really magnificent games is (...) reasonably interpreted as a clue that the philosopher’s quest to discern games worthy of a Utopian might very well be that which saves humanity from the desolate oblivion-delusion paradox erected as a consequence of the initial two visions. (shrink)

El presente artículo reivindica para el Chile de hoy las ideas de libertad, igualdad y fraternidad como utopías, capaces de transformar lo inaceptable del momento presente reivindicando sueños despiertos y horizontes de esperanza. Advierte que no todo utopía es liberadora, reclama una revolución copernicana de la política, rescata los sueños igualitarios en el Chile decimonónico y declara que las experiencias humanistas propias del utopismo han tendido a ser subvaloradas. Concluye con una crítica a la idolatría del mercado y consignando que (...) este periodo de la historia de Chile sería analogable a la República Parlamentaria. (shrink)

In this essay, I explore Cassirer’s brief discussion of utopia in An Essay on Man, as likely built upon Kant’s theory of genius as from the Critique of Judgment. This exploration of Cassirer’s theory of utopia lays the groundwork to argue that a utopia is the dynamic product of the “ethical genius,” a work that advances culture by luring it, via ideal imaginaries, to new realms of possibility for ethical advancement. Utopias have their dangers and limits, but (...) nevertheless have a critical role to play in improving our ethical life. (shrink)

One of the most historically recent and damaging blows to the reputation of utopianism came from its association with the totalitarian regimes of Hitler’s Third Reich and Mussolini’s Fascist party in World War II and the prewar era. Being an apologist for utopianism, it seemed to some, was tantamount to being an apologist for Nazism and all of its concomitant horrors. The fantasy principle of utopia was viewed as irretrievably bound up with the irrationalism of modern dictatorship. While these (...) conclusions are somewhat understandable given the broad strokes that definitions of utopia are typically painted with, I will show in this paper that the link between the mythos of fascism and the constructs of utopianism results from an unfortunate conflation at the theoretical level. The irrationalism of any mass ethos and the rationalism of the thoughtful utopian planner are, indeed, completely at odds with each other. I arrive at this conclusion via an analysis of the concepts of myth and narrative, and the relationships these have with the concept of utopia. (shrink)

This is a critical-hermeneutical and historical-comparative study on Political Economy, Economic History and Social Thought, applied to the American utopias in the 19th century and its role in the colonisation of the United States (US) west. This review is based on a heterodox economic approach, used in the disciplines of Religion and Economics. It gives a general view of religious and ideological utopias, as cooperative enterprises of intentional life in farms and workshop, making a comparative analysis of efficiency and sustainability. (...) This study attempts to explain the colonial paradox of American utopias because the last established, with more inversion, they were the first to fall. This study shapes the development of the western territories, from the Quaker’s Holy Experiment framework and its support for the utopias experiments in the expansion to Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. Contribution: This review offers a descriptive and explanatory study on the colonisation of the US west, under the hermeneutical turn from heterodox economic approaches, to deal with some current contradictions and anachronism in the mainstream view. Also, there is a systematisation of the American utopias, divided into religious and ideological experiments, with a comparison. (shrink)

_“This translation offers a fresh and vital encounter with Thomas More’s _Utopia_ for a twenty-first century audience.”—Elizabeth McCutcheon, _Utopian Studies__ Saint Thomas More’s _Utopia_ is one of the most important works of European humanism and serves as a key text in survey courses on Western intellectual history, the Renaissance, political theory, and many other subjects. In _Utopia_, More introduces the mysterious traveler Raphael Hythloday, who tells of an island nation that he considers the most perfectly organized and harmonious in the (...) world. Preeminent More scholar Clarence H. Miller does justice to the full range of More’s rhetoric in this masterful translation. In an Afterword to this edition, Jerry Harp contextualizes More’s life and _Utopia_ within the wider frames of European humanism and the Renaissance. (shrink)

Starting from Miguel Abensour’s contribution, the article addresses an interpretation of the concept of utopia aiming to stress its political nature and to place it within the movement of emancipation emerged throughout the nineteenth century. The first part of the article points out four fundamental dimensions of the Abensourian concept of utopia, whilst the second part aims to locate it within the broader context of the French Marxism debates and, in this way, to link it with Jacques Rancière’s (...) thought of utopia. The conclusion provides a critical interpretation of the considered idea of utopia and maps out the political-intellectual environment emerged around that idea in France at the end of the 1990s. (shrink)

En este artículo revisamos la huelga general en _Para una crítica de la violencia_ de Walter Benjamin, enfatizando en las temporalidades que se desprenden del análisis de los _medios puros_, concentrándonos, especialmente, en la noción de _huelga general proletaria_. Así, proponemos revisar esta _huelga general soreliana _y su relación con la _violencia_ _mítica_ y la_ divina_. Por lo tanto, mostramos la distinción entre _utopía _y _mito_ en las _Reflexiones sobre la violencia_, porque a partir de estas conceptualizaciones se separarían la (...) _huelga general política_ de la _huelga general proletaria_. Entonces, proponemos leer el vínculo entre Benjamin y Sorel desde la _temporalidad _del _medio puro benjaminiano_ en el que se convierte el _mito soreliano de la huelga general proletaria_. (shrink)

This article examines the relationship between utopian production and reception via a reading of the work of the great utopian author and theorist William Morris. This relationship has invariably been defined by an inequality: utopian producers have claimed unlimited freedom in their attempts to imagine new worlds, while utopian recipients have been asked to adopt such visions as their own without question. Morris’s work suggests two possible responses to this inequality. One response, associated with theorist Miguel Abensour, is to liberate (...) reception, with Morris’s utopianism containing an invitation to readers to reformulate the vision proffered. However, this response, despite its dominance in contemporary utopian theory, not only misreads Morris but also undermines the political efficacy of utopianism. Consequently, I suggest that Morris responds to the problem of utopian inequality by constraining production, proposing a historical control on utopianising; new utopias are directed by an archive of visions articulated in past struggles. (shrink)

As utopias nascem do profundo desejo humano de que o mundo seja diferente, seja melhor. As distopias, por sua vez, nascem do reconhecimento-pavor de que esse mundo possa ser pior. De todo modo, utopia e distopia, partem do que se tem, do mundo como aí está, das “coisas como elas são”, em direção a uma possibilidade. A Literatura e a Filosofia – especialmente a Filosofia Política –, andam sempre juntas no caminho que perpassa as utopias e distopias, descrevendo e (...) redescrevendo a condição humana, construindo e desconstruindo a ideia de homem e de boa vida. Grandes nomes da história do pensamento, desde Platão a Thomas Morus, Campanella, Francis Bacon, Aldous Huxley e George Orwell dedicaram-se à tarefa imaginativa de pensar o mundo que temos em face daquele que poderíamos ter – para o bem ou para o mal. Mas ainda haveria espaço para utopias e distopias no pensamento político contemporâneo? Ainda faz sentido autilização de tais vocabulários no âmbito da reflexão política? O filósofo estadunidense Richard Rorty (1931-2007) desenvolveu, no século XX e início do XXI, uma concepção de utopia cosmopolita social democrática e liberal. Reconhecidamente etnocêntrico, Rorty vislumbrava a construção de uma ampla sociedade democrática a partir da reforma das instituições consolidadas nas sociedades democráticas reais, rumo ao objetivo da extinção da crueldade e da humilhação dos homens por outros homens e da contínua substituição da força pelo diálogo. Por outro lado, em defesa do pessimismo, e denunciando os perigos da falsa esperança, o filósofo e literato inglês Roger Scruton (1944-2020) apresenta-se como uma voz crítica face às utopias, incluindo aquilo que denomina “falácia utópica” em seu rol de sofismas correntes na contemporaneidade que contribuem para uma leitura inapropriada do nosso tempo. Apresentamos neste artigo um passeio pelos sentimentos de utopia e distopia, assinalando os escritos fundamentais de Huxley, Rorty e Scruton e traçando um paralelo entre suas retóricas, destacando algumas controvérsias que entre elas se pode verificar. (shrink)

The field of medicine is generally greeted with great enthusiasm. This can be witnessed in the immense support for medical progress, which is widely hoped to lead to a realization of idealized goals. Indeed, with the help of medicine the human body would be controllable and constructible, human nature perfectible. However, enthusiasm in favor of medical progress is first and foremost a sentiment and, like all sentiments, not necessarily a product of rational contemplation. People are capable of enthusing about the (...) realization of utopian notions, such as life without disease or with the perfect body, without requiring any concrete arguments to back them up. Enthusiasm alone is not a guarantee of ethical desirability, however. Hence, this book takes a closer look at four research fields often referred to in medical utopian literature: 'tissue engineering', 'bioelectronics', 'germ line genome modification' and 'interventions in the biological aging process'. They serve as a basis for analyzing whether ethical arguments can be found to support the euphoric advocacy of the further development of these fields. (shrink)

A political philosophy classic from one of the foremost political thinkers of the twentieth century After Utopia was Judith Shklar’s first book, a harbinger of her renowned career in political philosophy. Throughout the many changes in political thought during the last half century, this important work has withstood the test of time. In After Utopia, Shklar explores the decline of political philosophy, from Enlightenment optimism to modern cultural despair, and she offers a critical, creative analysis of this downward (...) trend. She looks at Romantic and Christian social thought, and she shows that while the present political fatalism may be unavoidable, the prophets of despair have failed to explain the world they so dislike, leaving the possibility of a new and vigorous political philosophy. With a foreword by Samuel Moyn, examining After Utopia’s continued relevance, this current edition introduces a remarkable synthesis of ideas to a new generation of readers. (shrink)

In Utopias, Dolphins and Computers Mary Midgley brings philosophy into the real world by using it to consider environmental, educational and gender issues. From "Freedom, Feminism and War" to "Artificial Intelligence and Creativity," this book searches for what is distorting our judgement and helps us to see more clearly the dramas which are unfolding in the world around us. Utopias, Dolphins and Computers aims to counter today's anti-intellectualism, not to mention philosophy's twentieth-century view of itself as futile. Mary Midgley explains (...) the point of philosophy: how to do it, why it is needed, what difficulties confront it and what topics need its attention. (shrink)

This paper challenges Alasdair MacIntyre’s assertion that the modern firm — such as Google, Unilever, or Microsoft — is inimical to human flourishing within an Aristotelian framework. The paper begins by questioning MacIntyre’s rendering of utopian communities. It then addresses four specific criticisms of the modern firm to be found throughout MacIntyre’s oeuvre, namely compartmentalisation, myopia, inequality, and loss of community. Arguments are made to the effect that these criticisms do not vitiate the institutional role of the modern firm in (...) an Aristotelian context. The paper concludes with an invocation of the modern firm as institutional ideal within an evolving utopian vision of human flourishing. This is a utopian vision in which the modern firm plays a constructive, not corruptive, institutional role. (shrink)

This paper challenges Alasdair MacIntyre’s assertion that the modern firm — such as Google, Unilever, or Microsoft — is inimical to human flourishing within an Aristotelian framework. The paper begins by questioning MacIntyre’s rendering of utopian communities. It then addresses four specific criticisms of the modern firm to be found throughout MacIntyre’s oeuvre, namely compartmentalisation, myopia, inequality, and loss of community. Arguments are made to the effect that these criticisms do not vitiate the institutional role of the modern firm in (...) an Aristotelian context. The paper concludes with an invocation of the modern firm as institutional ideal within an evolving utopian vision of human flourishing. This is a utopian vision in which the modern firm plays a constructive, not corruptive, institutional role. (shrink)

Utopia repeatedly sets forth the rhetorical strategy of using pleasant and healing words to “enter” or “flow” or “steal into” fortresses of hardened opinion and custom without arousing warlike passions to keep them out. An important part of this strategy is the creation of a character who denounces major instances and causes of injustice but who nonetheless supports war and other means of force at the expense of law in rectifying that injustice; another part of the strategy is the (...) creation of a character and a plot that embody the “indirect” rhetorical approach aimed primarily at long-term persuasion needed to improve laws and institutions. (shrink)

The ob jec ti ve of this ar ti cle is two-fold. On the one hand it is a ten ta ti ve re cons truc tion of the theo re ti cal struc tu re of neo li be ra lism, poin ting out that this theory has litt le ex pla na tory ca pa city, and it is ba si cally a po li ti cal Pro ject of a uto pian ca rác..

Myth, Utopia, and Political Action Starting from the premise that some form of "reality transcendence", i.e. the ability to imagine a different reality and reach out for the (un)thinkable, is necessary for political action, the aim of this paper is to analyse the concepts of myth and utopia elaborated by Georges Sorel and Karl Mannheim and to examine their possible contributions to a theory of political action and social change. By comparing the role the authors assign to rationality (...) and irrationality in human affairs, methodological and conceptual differences between Sorel's and Mannheim's approaches to the political are illustrated. It turns out that due to its immunity to critique Sorel's concept of the social myth is highly problematic. Mannheim's concept of utopia, on the other hand, culminates in a technocratic understanding of the political. Though both approaches emphasise the collective dimension of political action, they ultimately exhibit elitist understandings of the political. (shrink)

To measure the life `as it is' by a life `as it might or should be' is a defining, constitutive feature of humanity. The urge to transcend is nearest to a universal, and arguably the least destructible, attribute of human existence. This cannot be said, however, of its articulations into `projects' - that is, of cohesive and comprehensive programmes of change and of visions of life that the change is hoped to bring about - visions that stand out of reality, (...) adumbrating a fully and truly different, alternative world. For the constantly present transgressive urge to be articulated into such projects, some less common conditions must arise. Utopia is one of the forms such uncommon articulations may take. This article explores the conditions that defined that form - those of modernity in its initial `solid' stage, a form that was marked and set apart from other articulations of the transgression urge by two remarkable attributes: territoriality and finality. It is concluded that in the transgressive imagination of `liquid modernity' the `place' (whether physical or social) has been replaced by the unending sequence of new beginnings, inconsequentiality of deeds has been substituted for fixity of order, and the desire for a different today has elbowed out concern with a better tomorrow. (shrink)

Contemporary political philosophers disagree about whether theories of justice should be utopian or realistic. Contributors to this volume largely deny that the choice between realism and idealism is binary. Their contributions represent a continuum between realism and idealism that best represents the contemporary state of the debate.

Despite his producing voluminous writings beyond Utopia, scholarly consensus seems to be that if we want to understand the political thought of Thomas More, we must turn to this ‘little book’. This approach, however, has yielded little consensus about how to categorise More as a political thinker, as Utopia is notoriously and intentionally enigmatic. This article attempts to generate a portrait of More as a political thinker by going beyond an investigation of Utopia alone and taking into (...) consideration those texts often overlooked or rejected by scholars, primarily his polemical and religious writings. Doing so provides an outline of More as a thinker concerned with themes of natural and artificial inequality, popular authority and representation and, at the least, justifies the exercise of reading More’s work beyond Utopia. (shrink)

In this article, I argue for an historical understanding of the relationship between ideology and utopia/utopianism that positions the latter as a specifically modern compensation for the loss of the cosmologically grounded, unitary ideology supplied by the late medieval Christian Church. This claim relies upon but revises Fredric Jameson’s early theorization of the collaboration between ideology and utopia/utopianism, which emphasizes that utopian elements allow ideology to offer subjects a ‘compensatory exchange’ for their complicity. Developing my central argument requires (...) considering the current viability of the ‘secularization thesis’, which classically associated modernization with secularization but which has undergone heavy criticism and revision by social scientists over the past half-century. These theoretical discussions, finally, are couched within a critical appraisal of the status of utopianism in contemporary politics. (shrink)