Thomas Mores Utopia as a Social Model Essays -- Thomas More Utopia

Thomas more thans Utopia as a Social Model In his famous s alikel Utopia, Sir Thomas More describes the society and culture of an fanciful island on which both companionable ills reach been cured. As in Platos Republic, a work from which More drew while writing Utopia, Mores work presents his ideas through a dialogue between two characters, Raphael Hythloday and More himself. Hythloday is a false character who describes his recent voyage to the paradisal island of Utopia. throughout the work, Hythloday describes the laws, customs, system of presidential term, and air of life that exist in Utopia to an incredulous and somewhat condescending More. Throughout the work, Hythloday presents a society organized to overcome the flaws of human nature. This society has been cautiously thought out by More -- as the author of the work -- to help avoid the problems associated with human nature. Individual human appetites ar controlled and equilibrize against the needs of the communi ty as a whole. In other words, More attempts to describe a society in which the seven acerb sins are counterbalanced by other motivations set up by the government and society as a whole. More seems to think that the seven deadly sins will be fairly easy to overcome. Pride, for instance, is counterbalanced in several(prenominal) ways in his social system. For instance, he makes sure that all battalion wear the same clothing, except that the different genders wear different styles, as do married and unmarried people. More also makes individuals fairly similar within the social system -- one carpenter, for instance, seems to be more or less like another to him, and can find work anyplace that carpenters are needed. He also says that the Utopians encourage their ci... ...en consumed by lust for violence due to the way in which he was raised, others in his society would have been. No society can control the motivations of all individuals involved to such a degree as to completely eliminate power-lust in all of its members. Mores Utopia, then, presents a nice theory, but one too abstract, too Platonic, too rationalistic, and with too little understanding of real human motivations to be workable. However, it is barely a useless or worthless work -- it contains many dusky psychological insights, quite a bit of humor, and many very profound points. I doubt that it is workable as a complete social system, however. Works Cited More, Sir Thomas. Utopia. late York Washington Square Press, 1965. Marlowe, Christopher. The Tragedy of Doctor Faustus. Ed. Louis B. Wright. New York Washington Square Press, 1959.