In this volume, John Farrell shows that political utopias—societies with laws and customs designed to short-circuit the foibles of human nature for the benefit of our collective existence—have a perennial opponent, the honor-based culture of aristocracy that dominated most of the world from ancient times into early modernity and whose status-based competitive psychology persists to the present day. While utopias aim at equality, the heroic imperative defends the need for personal and collective dignity. It asks the utopian, Do we really want to live in a world without struggle, without heroes, and without the stories they create? Because the utopian dilemma pits essential values against each other—equity versus freedom, dignity versus justice—few who confront it can simply take sides. Rather, the dilemma itself has been a generative stimulus for classic authors from Plato and Thomas More to George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. Farrell follows their struggles with the utopian dilemma and with each other, providing a deepened understanding of the moral and emotional dynamics of the western political imagination.
Author(s): John Farrell
Edition: 1
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 226
City: New York
Tags: utopia, politics, heroic, aristocratic, Orwell, Zamyatin, Huxley, Plato, Marx, Smith, Rousseau, Bacon, Voltaire, capitalism, feminism, conditioning, status, hierarchy
0 Title and Contents.pdf
0 Utopian Dilemma Combined Chapters
0 Intro Imagining a World Without Heroes
Ch 1 The Hero and the City
Ch 2 Thomas More's Imaginary Kingdom
Ch 3 Francis Bacon and the Heroism of the Age
Ch 4 Jonathan Swift and Utopian Madness
Ch 5 Voltaire's Garden Retreat
Ch 6 Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Land of Chimeras
Ch 7 Adam Smith and the Utopia of Commerical Society
Ch 8 Karl Marx and the Heroic Revolution
Title Page
Chapter 8 Karl Marx and the Heroic Revolution
Ch 9 Fyodor Dostoevsky and the Ungrateful Biped
Title Page
Chapter 9 Fyodor Dostoevsky and the Ungrateful Biped
Ch 10 Edward Bellamy's Invisible Army
Ch 11 William Morris and the Taming of Art
Ch 12 H. G. Wells and the Samurai
Ch 13 Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Mothers' Utopia
Ch 14 Yevgeny Zamyatin and the Scythian Horde
Ch 15 Aldous Huxley and the Rebels against Happiness
Title Page
Chapter 15 Aldous Huxley and the Rebels against Happiness
Ch 16 George Orwell's Dystopian Socialism
Title Page
Chapter 16 George Orwell’s Dystopian Socialism
Ch 17 B. F. Skinner's World Without Heroes
Ch 18 Anthony Burgess and the Revenge of the Dandy
Conclusion
9.92 Index
