CONCEPT OF IDEAL STATE IN UTOPIA

Many scholars read Utopia with the primary goal of finding More’s intentions
in writing it. Thus the question which precedes many interpretations is
whether More meant it to be taken seriously or not, whether he truly meant to
represent Utopia as an ideal state or even a reform agenda to be applied to the
states of the real world. Yet a work of literature should generally not be
reduced to the question of what its writer meant to convey by it. A reader
should be free to build his own opinion of the text’s meaning and relevance, in
addition to the author’s intention, especially since this intention is sometimes
rather elusive, as is the case with More’s Utopia.
One has to differentiate between the questions of More’s intentions and
modern readers’ point of view on the Utopian commonwealth. Even if More
meant his island to be ideal and a blueprint for a new and better society, which
is itself already very disputable, it does not necessarily mean that it can still be
seen as such. Most modern reader cannot be expected to see Utopia as society
which is anywhere near perfect or desirable. Values, of societies as well as
individuals, have shifted in their meaning and focus between the era of Tudor
England and today. It is also rather questionable in how far the utopian society
would have appeared as ideal to More’s contemporaries, especially in regard
to its communism and its religious practices.

Karl Kautsky in Thomas More and his Utopia (1888) has argued: “The island of
Utopia is, in fact, England. More designed to show how England would look,
and what shape her relations with abroad would assume, if she were
communistically organised.” He claims that More meant his fictional state to
be ideal and that he wished its political, economical programme could be
applied to England, but realised that it would have been impossible under the
government of his time since the only way to realise such a concept in reality
would be, as in the book itself, to get an absolute ruler to enforce it. Such a
ruler would have not been found in More’s time, and, in my opinion, almost
none of the European rulers of that time would have had sufficient power to
do so. Thus, according to Kautsky, Utopia has had to stay merely fiction, one in
the “plethora of directions to princes”. It is of course very possible to read
Utopia as a mirror for princes, but one can apply this concept in two ways - “to
show princes how they should govern”, as Kautsky claims it was meant, or to
show them exactly how they should not govern.
Kautsky’s interpretation is strongly biased by his socialist stance and he tends
to equate More completely with the Utopians. Such an approach is generally
very problematic. The best evidence of this is to be found in chapter on religion
in Utopia, in which Kautsky praises More for the religious regulations in Utopia:
“What an advance this Utopian Church marks upon Lutheranism and even
Calvinism! It agrees with both in the abolition of aural confession, of priestly
celibacy, of the worship of images, and with Calvinism in providing for the
election of the priests by the people. But More goes further. He abolishes, for
instance, the coercive powers of the priesthood, and admits women to the
priesthood. He does not shrink from recommending suicide to incurable
invalids. In the common divine service of all creeds and the relegation of
special services to the home, More is in advance of every Church of his age.
This is in the language of the sixteenth century the same principle that
modern Socialism has adopted, in declaring religion to be a private matter.”
Kautsky does seem to think that the regulations More invented for the
Utopians are in complete accordance with the author’s wishes and attitudes on
the given subject. Kautsky is also one of many critics who do not only interpret
parts of Utopia from the background of More’s biography, but simultaneously
try to ‘interpret’ Sir Thomas himself and his actual attitude out of the fictional
world he created. In one of the biographical chapters on More, Kautsky claims
that “how freely More thought about religious matters may be inferred from
the ideal religion which he ascribed to his Utopians.” Still, he admits that
More’s principles on that matter have changed towards the end of his life.
Judging the attitude of a historical personality by taking his writings at face
value only is rather risky. One is left wondering how such a paragon of religious
tolerance, as Kautsky makes More out to be, could have changed so extremely
within a few years.

Gerald Munier on the other hand claims that More’s limits of tolerance of
other forms of worship than the one prescribed by the Catholic Church, were
always very narrow. He argues that this is already evident in Utopia, since the
citizens of that fictional state are, according to Munier, only allowed to join
one of the existing religions and not allowed to establish a new one. Munier’s
claim is in so far questionable since Christianity has been accepted in Utopia,
and even although it is not a newly established religion in Europe, it is a new
religion to the Utopians.
H.W. Donner in Introduction to Utopia (1945) shares Kautsky’s opinion
that Utopia was meant as a mirror for princes but he disagrees in that it was
ever meant as a blueprint for a reform. He argues that the fictional state of
Utopia has negative as well as positive aspects, and that the negative aspects
were meant as warnings while the positive ones were meant as an example to
be followed. In summary he states that the second book of Utopia “does not
describe the ultimate ideal, but one that is practicable enough, which we are
asked not slavishly to copy, but to surpass and excel. The Utopia does not
attempt a final solution of the problems of human society—for More was too
wise to attempt the impossible—but it contains an appeal addressed to all of
us, which allows us no refusal, that we should try and do each one his share
to mend our own selves and ease the burden of our fellow-men, to improve
mankind and prepare for the life to come.” And to surpass and excel “religion
must reinforce the arguments of reason and Christian society surpass the
pagan. It is not our institutions that we must destroy, but those evil passions
which are at the root of the abuses.” Thus, it is human behaviour that has to
change before an attempt for an ideal state can be made and it is to be
expected that reason combined with Christian ethics shall succeed in making a
better state than pagan Utopia, which relies on reason only.