Utopia Definition

1. Utopia is the unattainable idealization of a perfect society, where there is social justice, equal opportunities and, consequently, everyone achieves a state of happiness.

2. Literature. Work of Thomas More from 1516, who popularized the term.

3. Literature. Literary works that describe an imaginary vision of a place, government, or situation.

4. Derivation of meaning. Something that is only possible in the mind of an individual, that is, a dream.

Etymology: By postclassical Latin Utopiabased on the work of Thomas More from 1916, based on the Greek οὐ (or), which refers to ‘no’, the term τόπος (moles), as for ‘place’, and the suffix -iaas a quality property.

Grammatical category: noun fem.
in syllables: u-to-pi-a.

Utopia

Utopia is an imaginary narrative about the ideal society and its qualities for the good of human beings. Derived from the Greek words οὐ (or) and τόπος (moles), whose conjunction can be translated as “no place”. In general, the utopian character of a doctrine or a plan —whether it is related to a political system or not— refers, on the one hand, to its ideality, and, in turn, on the other hand, to the great difficulty that would mean putting it into practice.

The origin of the notion of utopia

The concept of utopia as a space that is nowhere to be found can be traced back to ancient Greece, in Platonic texts such as the Republic (4th century BC) However, the version of this term with which we are most familiar was developed in Modernity, in the context of the political-religious confrontation that was going through Europe around the 16th century. The idea of ​​the utopian, in this framework, is inscribed —more specifically than in Antiquity— within the tradition of political thought.

At first, utopia was associated with the early days of the human being —for example, in authors such as Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778)—, then, after the Bourgeois Revolutions, the concept was transformed to describe the utopia as a model of society that would overcome the inequalities of the current social order. Entering Modernity, in the 19th century, utopia will appear linked to the discussion about the foundations of political power, once it loses its justification in divinity, after a general process of secularization of society and its institutions.

Thomas More’s Utopia

The first development around utopia itself was that of Thomas More (1478 – 1535), who invented the term in his work called, precisely, Utopia (1516). More’s work, which can be characterized as part of the current of thought renaissance humanist, critically deals with the functioning of European institutions and proposes, through a literary story, the description of a social system in which the life of men is ideal and is exempt from the economic, political and social evils that we know. To achieve this situation, we must address the causes of these evils and reverse them. In the author’s analysis, the first cause of evils —such as robbery and hunger— is given by the individual use of private property.

For Moro, private property can exist, but its use must be public, that is, the goods must be available to the entire community. However, the work stands, at the same time, as a justification of the colonial relations that Europe maintained with the rest of the planet, to the extent that it maintains that the conquest of other territories is a moral duty as long as there are lands in them. not worked, since this is contrary to the designs of God, by virtue of which the earth must be exploited.

From utopian socialism to scientific socialism

A later version of utopia was developed around the 19th century by authors belonging to the current called utopian socialism, who were confronted with the bourgeois social class, mainly responsible for the precariousness of the living conditions of the proletariat. Utopian socialists —such as Robert Owen (1771-1858), Charles Fourier (1772-1837), Saint Simon (1760-1825)— sought to achieve better material conditions for the workers based on a cooperative production model.

The proposal of the utopian socialists was later criticized by Karl Marx (1818 – 1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820 – 1895), since, from their perspective, those authors denied the capacity for action of the proletariat, considering it only as an oppressed class and not as a revolutionary class, capable of carrying out political action for social change (which, in Marx’s terms, will be the organization of workers for the abolition of social classes).

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