Aquinas and Some Subsequent Thinkers on the Renewal of Utopian Speculation

AQUINAS AND SOME SUBSEQUENT THINKERS ON THE RENEWAL OF UTOPIAN SPECULATION I.N STUDIES THAT DEAL with utopia and the utopian mode of thought it is not uncommon to find scholars class together under the heading of utopian such distinctly different kinds of literary expressions as prophetic writings in the Judaeo-Christian tradition on the one hand, and works which present a picture of an ideal political structure on the other.* However, as I have attempted to demonstrate elsewhere, the thinking that underlies prophetic literature and that which characterizes projections of ideal societies are significantly different in what they have to say about the nature of man, about his place in history, and thus also about his relation to political thought.1 The primary difference between these kinds of ex- * A section of this paper was read at the Patristic, Mediaeval, and Renaissance Conference held at Villanova University in October 1980. 1 As traditionally used the term utopia refers to works which present a descriptive picture of an ideal State or commonwealth. Today however it is applied to any work containing elements of what is called utopian thought; that is, any social, intellectual, political, religious, or philosophical theory that speculates about the possibilities of man's achieving the good life in the future. This search for synthesis has resulted in classifying as utopian such distinctly different kinds of expression as religious writings (Old and New Testaments, Augustine's The City of God), political and social tracts outlining plans for restructuring social arrangements (Marx's Communist Manifesto and Condorcet's Sketch for the Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind), writings that set forth a plan for the redesigning of cities (Antonio Averlino's Treatise on Architecture and Bruni's Laudatio Florentinae Ui·bis), and fictional works presenting a picture of an ideal commonwealth (More's Utopia and Bacon's New Atlantis). Thus in the tendency to focus on similarities-in this instance on the fact of the conceptualization of the 'good life '--critics have ignored basic and, it can be argued, irreconcilable differences . For regardless of what form utopias take, or however much they differ in underlying assumptions and working principles, they have in common several basic propositions: they deal with ideas about achieving an ideal telos in this world; they are not founded on supernatural truths; and they are not brought about by revelation or by divine intervention. Further discussion of this point may be found in Dorothy F. Donnelly, "The City of God and Utopia: A Revaluation," Augustinian 589 540 DOROTHY F. DONNELLY pression can be summed up this way-in prophetic writings the belief is that man and human destiny are controlled by omnipotent forces outside of time; in utopian writings the assumption is that man himself, through his use of reason, is capable of controlling and arranging human affairs and, therefore , the history and destiny of mankind. And it is this basic contrast in point of view which explains why in the centuries from the Greek period until the Renaissance there appeared no utopian writing.2 Medieval thought not only did not lend itself toward engaging in speculation about aehieving the ideal life in this world, it was in many respects a mandate against utopianizing . Because it encompasses so much, the term 'Medieval thought ' is of course as ambiguous as the terms ' Greek thought ' and ' Renaissance thought.' Rather than referring to a single perspective to which every thinker, from Augustine to the Renaissance, subscribed, it covers a wide range of systems and attitudes. Thus it would be no more accurate to select one thinker, like Augustine or Thomas Aquinas, as typifying Medieval thought than it would be to say that Bacon or Hobbes is representative of seventeenth-century thought. Yet it is generally recognized that there existed a common framework within which nearly all Medieval thinking was carried on. And it is here, as Gordon Leff puts it, " that the thought of the Middle Ages must be sharply distinguished both frorn the classical thought of Greece and Rome and from modern, post-Renaissance thought. This framework was provided by Studies, 8 (1977), 111-128; Raymond Ruyer, L'utopie et les utopies (Paris: Presses Universitaires...