This essay is a ôreviewö of Thomas MoreÆs Utopia, and includes a comparison and contrast with RousseauÆs The Social Contract, in terms of their both presenting theories about the nature of human society.
Thomas More was, of course, Henry VIIIÆs Chancellor whom Henry had beheaded because he refused to sign the oath of loyalty to the English monarch as being head of the Church of England rather than the Pope. Aside from his political problems, however, he was a diverse and prolific writer, interested in the many philosophical issues being debated by the English intellectuals of his day. He wrote Utopia as both a satirical commentary on the England of his day and as a philosophical discourse on how a better society might be constructed, at least in theory.
The translator says that More wrote this fictionalized social treatise as a way to ôshadow forth remedies for evils against which plain and direct speaking would probably have been dangerous.ö It is clear from the description of Utopia, as an island about two hundred miles long, with a capital city situated on a great river spanned by many stone bridges, that it is England being described, even though Utopia is supposedly located in the New World.
More describes a society with advanced agricultural techniques, city planning, and conservation policies in place, as many in England were thinking about in his time. Socio-economically, he describes what might now be called a confederation of communal societies. He longed to see more thought taken for the laboring classes and their toil lessened. He wished that selfishness, greed, and desires for wealth might be lessened. He wanted there to be universal public education, and attention to be paid to the living conditions that affect public health. He wanted wars to end, the essential similarities in religion (at least among Christian sects) to be emphasized for the sake of unity, and non-essential differences to be to...