This year marks the five-hundredth anniversary of Thomas More's widely influential book Utopia, and this volume brings together a number of scholars to consider the book, its long afterlife, and specifically its effects on political activists over the centuries. In addition to thorough studies of Utopia itself, and appraisals of More's relationship with Erasmus, the book presents detailed studies of the effect of Utopia on early modern England and the Low Countries, as well as philosophical reflections on ideology and the utopian mind, and much more.
- Contents
- Introduction
- Part 1. The book
- A praise of pain
- Bodies, morals, and religion
- Part 2. Original reception
- Realism vs utopianism
- From Thomas More to Thomas Smith
- Part 3. Philosophical criticism
- Reflections on the utopian mind
- Utopianism in today’s health care
- Part 4. Philosophical acclaim
- Utopianism and its discontents
- The integrity of exacerbated ambiguity
- Index