Human Nature and Politics in Utopian and Anti-Utopian Fiction PDF Download
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Author: Nivedita Bagchi
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 149855167X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 101
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Book Description
While the interest in anti-utopias has exploded over the years, issues of human nature rarely make it into the discussion of these works of literature. Yet conceptions of human nature play a key role in both the utopian belief that the perfect political system can be achieved and in the anti-utopian conviction that an ideal state is neither possible nor desirable, and would simply lead to a repressive state. This book examines two well-known utopias and two anti-utopias to draw out their conceptions of human nature and show that these conceptions are directly related to their views on politics. It shows that utopians emphasize that human nature is knowable, predictable, and therefore, open to manipulation and/or suppression. Anti-utopians, on the other hand, make the claim that human nature is not entirely knowable or predictable. While they worry about the power of the state to manipulate human nature, they also make the case that the natural recalcitrance and unpredictability of human beings would lead inevitably to a search for freedom and individuality and, therefore, to a clash between the state and the individual in the supposedly ideal state. Ultimately, therefore, these anti-utopians suggest a new conception of human beings as people who value the power to choose their own ends and are unable to entirely suppress their desire for freedom. These two conceptions of human nature lead to two dramatically different conceptions of politics. Utopians see the possibility of manipulating human nature to create an ideal political system which synthesizes all political values and issues while anti-utopians reject both the possibility and desirability of an ideal political system and make the case for providing freedom of choice for all people.
Author: Nivedita Bagchi
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 149855167X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 101
Get Book Here
Book Description
While the interest in anti-utopias has exploded over the years, issues of human nature rarely make it into the discussion of these works of literature. Yet conceptions of human nature play a key role in both the utopian belief that the perfect political system can be achieved and in the anti-utopian conviction that an ideal state is neither possible nor desirable, and would simply lead to a repressive state. This book examines two well-known utopias and two anti-utopias to draw out their conceptions of human nature and show that these conceptions are directly related to their views on politics. It shows that utopians emphasize that human nature is knowable, predictable, and therefore, open to manipulation and/or suppression. Anti-utopians, on the other hand, make the claim that human nature is not entirely knowable or predictable. While they worry about the power of the state to manipulate human nature, they also make the case that the natural recalcitrance and unpredictability of human beings would lead inevitably to a search for freedom and individuality and, therefore, to a clash between the state and the individual in the supposedly ideal state. Ultimately, therefore, these anti-utopians suggest a new conception of human beings as people who value the power to choose their own ends and are unable to entirely suppress their desire for freedom. These two conceptions of human nature lead to two dramatically different conceptions of politics. Utopians see the possibility of manipulating human nature to create an ideal political system which synthesizes all political values and issues while anti-utopians reject both the possibility and desirability of an ideal political system and make the case for providing freedom of choice for all people.
Author: Zsolt Cziganyik
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9633862434
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265
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Book Description
The 500th anniversary of Thomas More’s Utopia has directed attention toward the importance of utopianism. This book investigates the possibilities of cooperation between the humanities and the social sciences in the analysis of 20th century and contemporary utopian phenomena. The papers deal with major problems of interpreting utopias, the relationship of utopia and ideology, and the highly problematic issue as to whether utopia necessarily leads to dystopia. Besides reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of contemporary utopian investigations, the eleven essays effectively represent the constructive attitudes of utopian thought, a feature that not only defines late 20th- and 21st-century utopianism, but is one of the primary reasons behind the rising importance of the topic. The volume’s originality and value lies not only in the innovative theoretical approaches proposed, but also in the practical application of the concept of utopia to a variety of phenomena which have been neglected in the utopian studies paradigm, especially to the rarely discussed Central European texts and ideologies.
Author: Thomas More
Publisher: e-artnow
ISBN: 8027303583
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 105
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Book Description
Utopia is a work of fiction and socio-political satire by Thomas More published in 1516 in Latin. The book is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs. Many aspects of More's description of Utopia are reminiscent of life in monasteries.
Author: Lisa Garforth
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745684777
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208
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Book Description
Environmentalism has relentlessly warned about the dire consequences of abusing and exploiting the planet's natural resources, imagining future wastelands of ecological depletion and social chaos. But it has also generated rich new ideas about how humans might live better with nature. Green Utopias explores these ideas of environmental hope in the post-war period, from the environmental crisis to the end of nature. Using a broad definition of Utopia as it exists in Western policy, theory and literature, Lisa Garforth explains how its developing entanglement with popular culture and mainstream politics has shaped successive green future visions and initiatives. In the face of apocalyptic, despairing or indifferent responses to contemporary ecological dilemmas, utopias and the utopian method seem more necessary than ever. This distinctive reading of green political thought and culture will appeal across the social sciences and humanities to all interested in why green utopias continue to matter in the cultivation of ecological values and the emergence of new forms of human and non-human well-being.
Author: Marianna Papastephanou
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9087909764
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
This book examines the transformative potential of collaborative teacher research. Specifically, Kalin shares the perspectives of educators as they investigate the teaching and learning of drawing within their own elementary classrooms and within the context of an action research group.
Author: Michael J. Griffin
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9783039109135
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 440
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Book Description
A series of essays by an international and trans-disciplinary group of contributors which explores the nature and extent of the utopian impulse. Working across a range of historical periods and cultures, the book investigates key aspects of utopian theory, texts, and socio-political practices.
Author: John Farrell
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319489771
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 281
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Book Description
This book explores the logic and historical origins of a strange taboo that has haunted literary critics since the 1940s, keeping them from referring to the intentions of authors without apology. The taboo was enforced by a seminal article, “The Intentional Fallacy,” and it deepened during the era of poststructuralist theory. Even now, when the vocabulary of “critique” that has dominated the literary field is under sweeping revision, the matter of authorial intention has yet to be reconsidered. This work explains how “The Intentional Fallacy” confused different kinds of authorial intentions and how literary critics can benefit from a more up-to-date understanding of intentionality in language. The result is a challenging inventory of the resources of literary theory, including implied readers, poetic speakers, omniscient narrators, interpretive communities, linguistic indeterminacy, unconscious meaning, literary value, and the nature of literature itself.
Author: Mark R. Levin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439173281
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288
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Book Description
In his acclaimed #1 New York Times bestseller, Mark R. Levin explores the psychology, motivations, and history of the utopian movement, its architects—the Founding Fathers, and its modern-day disciples—and how the individual and American society are being devoured by it. Levin asks, what is this utopian force that both allures a free people and destroys them? Levin digs deep into the past and draws astoundingly relevant parallels to contemporary America from Plato’s Republic, Thomas More’s Utopia, Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, and Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto, as well as from the critical works of John Locke, Charles Montesquieu, Alexis de Tocqueville, and other philosophical pioneers who brilliantly diagnosed the nature of man and government. As Levin meticulously pursues his subject, the reader joins him in an enlightening and compelling journey. And in the end, Levin’s message is clear: the American republic is in great peril. The people must now choose between utopianism or liberty. President Ronald Reagan warned, “freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” Levin agrees, and with Ameritopia, delivers another modern political classic, an indispensable guide for America in our time and in the future.
Author: Laurence Davis
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739158201
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 353
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Book Description
The Dispossessed has been described by political thinker Andre Gorz as 'The most striking description I know of the seductions—and snares—of self-managed communist or, in other words, anarchist society.' To date, however, the radical social, cultural, and political ramifications of Le Guin's multiple award-winning novel remain woefully under explored. Editors Laurence Davis and Peter Stillman right this state of affairs in the first ever collection of original essays devoted to Le Guin's novel. Among the topics covered in this wide-ranging, international and interdisciplinary collection are the anarchist, ecological, post-consumerist, temporal, revolutionary, and open-ended utopian politics of The Dispossessed. The book concludes with an essay by Le Guin written specially for this volume, in which she reassesses the novel in light of the development of her own thinking over the past 30 years.
Author: Donald Morris
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438479492
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338
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Book Description
Taxation in Utopia explores utopian political philosophy from the neglected perspective of taxation. At its core, taxation is an ethical question. It requires people to sacrifice for the benefit of others, whether or not they also benefit themselves. Donald Morris refers to this broader, nonmonetary context as constructive taxation, which includes restrictions on privacy and access to information, constraints on marriage and child-rearing, and conventions restricting the proprietorship of land. Morris examines this in the context of various utopian writings, such as More's Utopia, as well as literary treatments of these issues, such as Bellamy's Looking Backward. This interdisciplinary exploration of utopian taxation provides a novel approach to examining relations between a state's view of the general welfare and the sacrifices this view requires of its citizens.
