The New Republic: A Commentary on Book I of More’s Utopia Showing Its Relation to Plato’s Republic

Conclusion

CONCLUSION Our study has shown that More's intention in the first book was to prepare the reader for the radically new solution to Europe's political problems contained in the detailed account of Utopia. He has done this by showing that the two fundamental conditions of a happy common­ wealth in Plato's Republic have no practical application of any possible benefit. Indeed the contrary is the case for, where it is assumed that a separation of the classes is desirable and that it is the business of the philosopher to advise a king, there will follow all the evils of contempo­ rary Europe. This is the criticism of what, in the Platonic teaching, More knew to be inapplicable and destructive. But once Platonism is purgedof these elements what remains is the Arcadian paradise. More claimed that this, when properly expanded and developed (as in Book II), would prove to be the salvation of Europe as it struggled out ofthe collapse of a medieval system that could no longer maintain the balanced relation of sacred and secular powers which had defined European society and politics for a thousand years. In this essay I do not propose to comment on the second book of the Utopia. My intention has only been to help readers do this for them­ selves through an understanding of More's own introduction. What remains to be clarified is how, in the wider context of the political problem of the sixteenth century, More's criticism of Plato led himto the solution offered in the description of Utopia. If we can answer this question it will be no difficult matter to understand what is going on in Book II. The problem can be stated in this way. Why did More think that it was possible not only to see but to construct and live in that first­best state, when Plato held this to be an impossibility which lay beyond the power Reference notes to the Conclusion appear on pp. 106­108. 91 92 THE NEW REPUBLIC: A COMMENTARY of actual men and women? Human nature had not changed in the interval. More is under no illusionthat all men have become good. Why then would the same desire for luxury and owning which made the actual realization of the Arcadian paradise impossible for Plato not make it equally impossible for More? The answer to this question lies in Christianity—in those positions and assumptions that had constituted the warp of the fabric of European life for over a millennium. Indeed, it could hardly be otherwise since More was proposing a solution for Christian Europe. That Utopia did in fact conform to the essential demands of a Christian state is clearly testified in the positions of those humanists who contributed the prefatory materials—amongst whomwe may take Rhenanus' letter as an example of the opinion of all. He says: The Utopia contains principles of such a sort as it is not possible to find in Plato, in Aristotle, or even in the Pandects of your Justinian. Its lessons are less philosophical,perhaps, than theirs but moreChris­ tian. (253/17­20) But far from answeringour question about how More and his contem­ poraries thought they could realize what Plato himself only dreamed of, the implicit Christianity of the Utopian institutions only complicates the question. For now we have to answer not only how Christian assump­ tions made it possible to realize what, for Plato, was impossible, but we have to do this withoutin any way invokinga knowledgeof Christ or the Christian religion which the Utopians did not possess! This apparently intractable contradiction is what lies behind the opposing interpretations of Utopia. Because it seems that one cannot maintain both positions, modern scholars, insofaras they have proposed a complete account of the work, have come down on one side or the other. For some, Utopia is a sacred community, the City of God, fully Christian with its roots in the soil ofthe medieval church and particularly in the monastic movementfrom Benedict to St. Francis. For others, itis the purely secular City of Man, havingits roots in ancient pagan philoso­ phy and standing as the shining example of what man can, and will in the end, achieve by following the dictates of human nature alone. There is evidently much truth on both sides but so long as they are taken as mutually exclusive it appears that we cannot have the whole truth of More's position—or any fully satisfactory interpretation...