[lit-ideas] Re: Another Christian Commonwealth
- From: John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2011 10:53:43 +0900
On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 4:20 AM, Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> I was taught that More's book might well be a satirical demonstration that
> no such society could be instituted because of the internal contradictions
> (intentionally) displayed in his description of it. (Years ago, I had to
> discuss *Utopia*, with a group of 18 and 19-year-old students as part of
> Reed's first-year Humanities course; that was not easy: they did not know,
> nor do I know today, its politico-religious background and historical
> setting in any useful depth.) It does strike me though that Greenblatt's
> analysis is too simple.
>
I was taught that, too. Now I wonder if the interpretation we learned isn't
Whig history, like accounts of Newton that celebrate the physics and
ignore the astrology.
Also, in fairness to Greenblatt, whose book is about the rediscovery of
Lucretius' *De Rerum Naturum *during the Renaissance, the bits about More
are a few paragraphs, less than a page, in a work whose primary focus is
elsewhere.
Finally, the views attributed to More are not all that different from those
that later inform sociologists like Durkheim and Talcott Parsons, Stalinism
and Maoism, and, only a bit of a stretch (a tease for Walter), other
exponents of the view that without a consensus on transcendental values
social order is at risk. From this perspective, it seems plausible to read
More as a statesman of his time as well as a philosopher, observing that
enforcing uniformity of belief in basic principles requires the prison, the
rack and the stake to deal with sinful unbelievers.
I am not saying that I do or want to believe this. But it is a bracing
challenge to the kumbaya approach of all sorts of folks who seem to believe
that if only we could reach a mutual understanding, peace on earth would
reign.
John
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
jlm@xxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.wordworks.jp/
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