Prompted by Becky at Becky’s Books, I read Thomas More’s Utopia because it seemed relevant to a novel I am currently reading. (More about that soon).
‘Utopian’ is part of our everyday vocabulary now but when Thomas More wrote his book describing an alternative political system of an imaginary island state, it was a risky venture. In 1515 Henry VIII was on the throne, and in that year Wolsey, Archbishop of York was appointed cardinal by Leo X. Henry VIII then appointed him Lord Chancellor, and, as it says in the Introduction of the Project Gutenberg edition I read:
…from that year until 1523 the King and the Cardinal Wolsey ruled England with absolute authority, and called no parliament.
Henry, as we all know, had succession troubles and he didn’t need any frisky political opponents making things more complicated. Until his execution in 1535 — Thomas More managed, with deft political nous, to survive and thrive during his time as a lawyer, judge, and statesman. His prudence included suppressing Utopia during his life time.
(It was More’s opposition to the Protestant Reformation that brought him undone. He refused to swear an oath to please the King, and as you know if you read or saw Robert Bolt’s 1954 A Man for All Seasons, Henry’s reaction was swift and merciless.)
Utopia was published in Europe, but not in England until 1551 under the reign of Edward VI, in a translation from the Latin by Ralph Robinson. It was generally acknowledged to be less ‘literary’ than the subsequent translation in 1684 by Gilbert Burnet, who had his own troubles with disagreeable monarchs.
Burnet was drawn to the translation of “Utopia” by the same sense of unreason in high places that caused More to write the book.
Well, even if you simply peruse the summary at Wikipedia, you can see how Utopia still applies in our time. Utopia begins with More doing real-life diplomatic things in Antwerp, but moves to his encounter with the traveller Raphael Hythlodaeus, exploring in some depth the knotty problem of how best to counsel a prince when he is not amenable to wise advice, new ideas or anything that contradicts his world view. Think Henry VIII, think of That Man in America, or any shabby procession of recent political leaders who think they know it all. No wonder Hythlodaeus has such cogent reasons for staying out of public life.
More thinks that it is the duty of philosophers to work within flawed systems to improve them.
But Hythlodaeus tells More than he doesn’t think that there are diplomatic ways of influencing leaders who won’t listen, and that getting involved inevitably lends to being compromised. As you read this, think of the political advisers interviewed in the January 6th Hearings — the ones who tried to intervene, and the ones who did not.
I do not comprehend what you mean by your ‘casting about,’ or by ‘the bending and handling things so dexterously that, if they go not well, they may go as little ill as may be;’ for in courts they will not bear with a man’s holding his peace or conniving at what others do: a man must barefacedly approve of the worst counsels and consent to the blackest designs: so that he would pass for a spy, or, possibly, for a traitor, that did but coldly approve of such wicked practices; and therefore when a man is engaged in such a society, he will be so far from being able to mend matters by his ‘casting about,’ as you call it, that he will find no occasions of doing any good—the ill company will sooner corrupt him than be the better for him; or if, notwithstanding all their ill company, he still remains steady and innocent, yet their follies and knavery will be imputed to him; and, by mixing counsels with them, he must bear his share of all the blame that belongs wholly to others.
“It was no ill simile by which Plato set forth the unreasonableness of a philosopher’s meddling with government. ‘If a man,’ says he, ‘were to see a great company run out every day into the rain and take delight in being wet—if he knew that it would be to no purpose for him to go and persuade them to return to their houses in order to avoid the storm, and that all that could be expected by his going to speak to them would be that he himself should be as wet as they, it would be best for him to keep within doors, and, since he had not influence enough to correct other people’s folly, to take care to preserve himself.’
More, like any intelligent human person, was troubled by the inequities of his society. There is a long discourse about capital punishment for trivial theft, and how it is counter productive, because a thief who knows the punishment is the gallows may as well kill the victim who might identify him, because the punishment is the same. In Utopia they think is it better to have the thief work, and pay compensation, but …
The downside is that the outcome to theft is a form of slavery, and it’s enforced by mutilating a thief’s ear.
Utopia is a Republic with an elected monarchy and decision-making is shared. Nobody is allowed to be idle, but they are not to wear themselves out as if they were beasts of burden. There are rules about how the day must be spent:
…dividing the day and night into twenty-four hours, appoint six of these for work, three of which are before dinner and three after; they then sup, and at eight o’clock, counting from noon, go to bed and sleep eight hours: the rest of their time, besides that taken up in work, eating, and sleeping, is left to every man’s discretion…
However…
… they are not to abuse that interval to luxury and idleness, but must employ it in some proper exercise, according to their various inclinations, which is, for the most part, reading. It is ordinary to have public lectures every morning before daybreak, at which none are obliged to appear but those who are marked out for literature; yet a great many, both men and women, of all ranks, go to hear lectures of one sort or other, according to their inclinations: but if others that are not made for contemplation, choose rather to employ themselves at that time in their trades, as many of them do, they are not hindered, but are rather commended, as men that take care to serve their country.
After supper they spend an hour in some diversion, in summer in their gardens, and in winter in the halls where they eat, where they entertain each other either with music or discourse. They do not so much as know dice, or any such foolish and mischievous games.
Feminists will take umbrage at some of what is said. Utopians only need to work six hours a day because the women work too, and this makes for great productivity, which contrasts with other societies…
First, women generally do little, who are the half of mankind; and if some few women are diligent, their husbands are idle.
Did Thomas More never see the seven-days-a-week domestic labour of the women who served his needs???
Oh, and fashion is out. The Mao suit in Communist China was probably modelled on Utopian clothing:
As to their clothes, observe how little work is spent in them; while they are at labour they are clothed with leather and skins, cut carelessly about them, which will last seven years, and when they appear in public they put on an upper garment which hides the other; and these are all of one colour, and that is the natural colour of the wool.
Family life is regulated, including the removal of children to fit the rules:
As their cities are composed of families, so their families are made up of those that are nearly related to one another. Their women, when they grow up, are married out, but all the males, both children and grand-children, live still in the same house, in great obedience to their common parent, unless age has weakened his understanding, and in that case he that is next to him in age comes in his room; but lest any city should become either too great, or by any accident be dispeopled, provision is made that none of their cities may contain above six thousand families, besides those of the country around it. No family may have less than ten and more than sixteen persons in it, but there can be no determined number for the children under age; this rule is easily observed by removing some of the children of a more fruitful couple to any other family that does not abound so much in them.
More contentiously in our modern world, Hythlodaeus attributes entrenched inequity and poverty to an economic system based on the ownership of property. He is particularly critical of the enclosure of the commons for sheep farming (which we learned about at school) because the common people no longer had the village common on which to graze their flocks. Poverty and starvation was widespread and of course it led to theft.
“Though, to speak plainly my real sentiments, I must freely own that as long as there is any property, and while money is the standard of all other things, I cannot think that a nation can be governed either justly or happily: not justly, because the best things will fall to the share of the worst men.”
![](https://anzlitlovers.files.wordpress.com/2021/01/prelude-to-christopher.jpg?w=106&h=150)
1934
This is where my current reading indirectly meshes with More’s Utopia. Experiments with shared ownership of property have been discredited since the fall of Communism and the rise of globalisation. My current novel touches on a failed Utopia based on an equally discredited form of social organisation. It’s Eleanor Dark’s Prelude to Christopher, written in 1934 before the Nazis put Eugenics into practice.
Image credit:
Title woodcut for Utopia written by Thomas More: By Original uploader was Marcok at it.wikipedia – Utopia by Thomas More. Transferred from it.wikipedia; Transfer was stated to be made by User:Marcok., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3893696
Mao suit: Wikipedia: By User:chrislb – Erstellt nach Image:Chiangs and Stilwell.jpg, Image:Mao1949.jpg, Image:Mao.jpg und Eduard Kögel: Der Maoanzug. In: archplus 168. Februar, 2004, Ausgabe 168, archplus Verlag GmbH, S. 24–25, ISSN 0587-3452, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=947505
Author: Thomas More
Title: Utopia (Libellus vere aureus, nec minus salutaris quam festivus, de optimo rei publicae statu deque nova insula Utopia)
Translated from the Latin by Gilbert Burnet
Publisher: Project Gutenberg Release Date: April, 2000 [eBook #2130] edited by Henry Morley, first published in Europe in 1515, first English edition 1551.
Oh my, Lisa!! What an informative and nicely written post! I’m reading the book again for my reading group https://groups.io/g/AllNonfiction . We know the book is fiction but it’s used in more ways than that – it’s used for the philosophy which is what I believe More intended but as one of the first to explore these kinds of ideas it’s not been classified as such (as far as I know).
Yes, I’m interested in socialist-type communes and the ideas behind them before the luddites got into the act. We had a few in the States, too. influenced by what was being written in Europe. More’s name almost always topped the list in the tiny section of the history books – lol.
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By: beckylindroos on January 3, 2024
at 11:56 pm
P.S. I’ll be recommending your blog post to the others there.
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By: beckylindroos on January 4, 2024
at 12:46 am
Hey, Becky, I’m glad you liked it!
There is so much to think and talk about in this slim work, I’d love to be a fly on the wall when you have your discussions.
I find it interesting that More could not conceive of a family life that wasn’t patriarchal.
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By: Lisa Hill on January 4, 2024
at 10:47 am
Such a fascinating post, Lisa, and you remind me I have a whole pile of Utopian type reading sitting about, including at least two copies of More. It’s interesting that it still chimes in with our issues today, and I imagine that the conflict between the haves and the have nots will never go away, and the possibility of some kind of socialist equality will fail because of human greed. Maybe 2024 should be the year I read more Utopian lit!
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By: kaggsysbookishramblings on January 4, 2024
at 2:48 am
Ooh, that arouses my curiosity!
What are the other titles in your Utopian pile of books?
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By: Lisa Hill on January 4, 2024
at 10:48 am
Well there are quite a few which I covered in a post here: https://kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com/2018/11/05/utopian-ideas-and-ideals-utopia-professorrichardclay-bbc4/ Though I do see that quite a few are actually dystopian…
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By: kaggsysbookishramblings on January 5, 2024
at 3:01 am
Ah I see.
A bit depressing how much more prevalent the dystopias are…
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By: Lisa Hill on January 5, 2024
at 3:44 am
I read this about 10 years ago and you’ve made me realise I’ve forgotten almost all of it! You have encouraged me to a re-read, I know I still have my copy somewhere…
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By: madamebibilophile on January 4, 2024
at 2:48 am
I’m sure that I had a Penguin copy somewhere, probably a more modern translation, but I can’t find it.
(This is a message from the Reading Gods that January is the time to do a ‘spring cleaning’ of all the books in the library: all of them off the shelves; all dusted; and all put back in proper library order according to their nature. Utopia may turn up lurking in which classics, but if not I had shall have to tackle the philosophy shelves in the other room as well….)
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By: Lisa Hill on January 4, 2024
at 10:52 am
In my last year of French high school, we studied various themes. One of them was utopia, so we read this one, also Erewhon, and another one which I forgot.
I don’t remember much (that’s a few decades back…), but just that I really enjoyed it
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By: WordsAndPeace on January 4, 2024
at 8:25 am
I think it would be a great text to discuss at school, giving the idealists something to mull over, eh?
I’ve been meaning to read Erewhon for ages too.
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By: Lisa Hill on January 4, 2024
at 10:54 am
It has been years since I last read ‘Utopia’. I really enjoyed reading your post, Lisa. I am a bit of a fan of Sir Thomas More.
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By: Jennifer on January 4, 2024
at 10:26 am
LOL I was Bolshie about More at school. When we did A Man for All Seasons I was at a Catholic school in Australia and of course they venerate him as a martyr and a saint. We had to write an essay about the play, and everyone wrote the approved version which was that he had a moral choice to make and he gave his life because he chose his religion instead of his king.
I wrote that there was another choice that he could have made. He could have taken his family and fled to Europe instead. The nuns Did Not Approve but I know they enjoyed reading an essay that was different to all the others.
Thinking about it now, I find myself wondering about More’s family afterwards, like the families of defectors from the USSR who left people behind…
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By: Lisa Hill on January 4, 2024
at 11:01 am
I admired his principles and consistency without necessarily agreeing with his choice. We didn’t have any saints in my government school ;-).
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By: Jennifer on January 4, 2024
at 11:04 am
No, *chuckle* there weren’t any at University High either!
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By: Lisa Hill on January 4, 2024
at 11:06 am
I think we, the world, barely survived the T#$@% years by the skin of our teeth, and much as I oppose anything Republican I am grateful that 45’s military went behind his back – placating the Chinese and refusing to call out the troops to put down demonstrations.
I also think that the commons worked pretty well and it was a sad day when the Enclosures Act went through.
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By: wadholloway on January 4, 2024
at 4:07 pm
You don’t think the troops should have been called out for January 6th??
Or are you thinking of a different demo?
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By: Lisa Hill on January 4, 2024
at 4:32 pm
I was thinking that there were elements in the government that wanted to use troops to put down BLM demos.
That said, National Guard generals held back their troops when they should have properly been defending the Capitol
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By: wadholloway on January 4, 2024
at 4:37 pm
Ah, the BLM demos. I’m probably with you on that though as a general rule I think that demonstrating during a pandemic is a dumb idea, especially for vulnerable groups of people most likely to have poor health outcomes if they get infected.
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By: Lisa Hill on January 4, 2024
at 4:43 pm
My son who’s studying philosophy has been citing More’s Utopia to me – but I’ve not read it in its entirety and some of the things about women make me think I’d struggle with it. Of its time and place, I suppose.
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By: MarinaSofia on January 4, 2024
at 9:38 pm
Well, I was nodding long as I read about the stupidity of capital punishment with restitution and compensation as an alternative until I got to the bit about how they chopped off a bit of an ear and had to wear a distinctive uniform all the time while they were ‘free’ in society so that thieves couldn’t escape from the years of slavery while they made restitution.
There’s good and bad in what he says, and discussing it helps us to clarify what we think an ideal society might be in our own time.
For example, though what he says about most women being idle is just ignorant, the principle that an economy benefits from women’s participation was one of the arguments used by the women’s movement in the 1970s. I’ve read that one of the reasons the Allies had a functioning economy and full production of armaments was because women were in the workforce during WW1 and WW2 whereas the Germans kept the women at home because of their beliefs about the domestic role of women.
So, I think it’s worth reading, sifting and winnowing to keep the ideas that are wise and chuck the ones that are offensive in our day and age.
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By: Lisa Hill on January 4, 2024
at 10:08 pm
Another great review Lisa. I read Utopia a great many decades ago and can remember it only in very general terms. There is one question to ask though: if it’s such a great society and way of life, why has Hythlodaeus not stayed there?
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By: Eleanor Dilley on January 7, 2024
at 9:50 pm
Thanks Eleanor. I think there are other questions too, notably about the slavery which is what bothers me most.
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By: Lisa Hill on January 7, 2024
at 9:56 pm
Indeed. Some are always more equal than others!
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By: Eleanor Dilley on January 7, 2024
at 10:17 pm
Thanks for this post, Lisa 🙂 what a great read! I never read this before, and yet you’ve piqued my interest. After I read the comment section, I’m curious to explore more of More’s ideal society.
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By: ☆○。cookie。○☆ on January 14, 2024
at 12:59 pm
It’s great when we discover very old texts that still have something to say in our modern world.
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By: Lisa Hill on January 14, 2024
at 1:12 pm
I agree. It gets me questioning what if… So many what ifs…
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By: ☆○。cookie。○☆ on January 14, 2024
at 6:51 pm