Utopia by Thomas More

I was a little bit disappointed with this book. I'm not sure exactly what I expected from it, but Danielle's veneration of the book in the movie Ever After may have influenced my subconscious. Utopia is very much a book of it's time, as exemplified by my favorite quote, referring to how the founder of Utopia "gave to every ma  free liberty and choice to believe what he would; saving that he earnestly and straightly charged them that no man should conceive so vile and base an opinion of the dignity of men's nature as to think that the souls do die and perish with the body, or that the world runneth at all aventures governed by no divine providence." In essence, More's perfect society was allowed freedom of religion so long as they weren't atheists. Granted, any kind of freedom of religion in his time was quite the radical idea, especially once you consider More was eventually killed for his religious beliefs. 


Another point that shows Utopia is a book of its time, is that many of More's complaints and remedies have to deal with the flaws in the feudal system of running cities. He often mentions the lazy lords who benefit off of the manual labor of the poor who get little for their work. In Utopia, this is countered by having every person rotate into the husbandry jobs every few years, so that all work for all to benefit. There are a few exceptions though, and there are those such as their priests, who are exempt from this. He offers up a form of democracy where these types of people are chosen by everyone else for their abilities and goodness. He claims that no bribes will work and that their is no corruption, because of the lack of money and personal wealth in Utopia. However, I believe that he underestimates the ability for people to find something of value worth trading a vote for, and also the desire that some will have for those positions of perceived power and veneration. What I think he most underestimates however is the ability for one person to fool another. There are no hypocrites in More's Utopia, though they abound in the real world.

The major flaw in More's Utopia is that he postulates that a good government will naturally lead to good people, when in truth it is the other way around. A truly perfect society comes from each individual within that society choosing to live unselfishly. There is no government that can produce that.

I can't say that I highly recommend this book to anyone, but it is not a bad part of our culture to have under your belt and it is a short read. I will next be reading Cicero's The Republic for my classics book club. It should be interesting to see another point of view on what makes a good government, especially considering I currently live in a republic.