Education, Science,
Philosophy- at Utopians
Though, as has been mentioned earlier, only
certain accomplished people are allowed to give up manual labor for
intellectual studies, every Utopian child receives a thorough education. The
Utopians believe that it is through education that the values and dispositions
of citizens are molded. The success of the Utopian educational system is
evident in the fact that while most Utopians are engaged in manual labor as a
career, in their free time Utopians choose to follow intellectual pursuits.
Utopians conduct all of their studies in their native language.
In science the Utopians are rational and
accomplished. They have the same general level of understanding as Europeans in
the fields of music, logic, arithmetic, and geometry. They are adept at
astronomy and no one believes in astrology. They are able to predict changes in
weather, though, like the Europeans, the underlying causes of these changes
remain at the moment beyond their grasp.
In philosophy, the Utopians are uninterested
in the abstract suppositions that are the rage in Europe and which Hythloday
finds empty. The foremost topic of Utopian philosophy is the nature of
happiness, and the relation of happiness to pleasure. In such matters they
ground their reason in religion, believing reason alone is ill equipped to
handle such an investigation.
Utopians believe the soul is immortal and that
there exists an afterlife in which the deeds of life are rewarded or punished.
They further believe that if people were skeptical of an afterlife, all
intelligent people would pursue physical pleasure and ignore all higher moral
laws. Belief in an afterlife means that pleasure exists only in acts of virtue,
because it is these acts that will ultimately be rewarded.
Utopians make a distinction between true and
counterfeit pleasure. True pleasure involves any movement of body or mind in
which a person takes a natural delight, such as reflecting on true knowledge,
eating well, or exercising. Counterfeit pleasures are those sensations that are
not naturally delightful, but that distorted desires have tricked people into
believing they pleasurable. Examples of such counterfeit pleasures are pride in
appearance, wealth, or honorific titles. Pursuit of these counterfeit pleasures
often interfere with pursuit of true pleasures, and so Utopians do everything
in their power to root counterfeit pleasures out of their society.
Utopians believe that their understanding of
the relationship between pain and pleasure is the height of reason. The only
possible way to gain a deeper understanding, they hold, would be if God were to
send some religion down from heaven to "inspire more sacred
convictions."
The Utopian belief in education as a right and
a necessity is surprisingly familiar to modern readers but a far cry from the
policies of Europe in which only the rich and powerful could hope to be
educated. Utopian education, moreover, is systematized and uniform, unlike the
European system that often involved independent private tutors and certainly
differed from school to school. Through this rational educational system,
Utopians felt they could shape the morality and values of their children, to
instill in their children the ability to be good Utopians. Education, then, in
Utopia is not just a means of intellectual enlightenment; it is a program of
moral and cultural development designed to make sure that Utopia will always
replenish itself through its children.
The reference to science is once again an
effort to show the irrationality of Europe. Thomas More's Europe was a society
rapidly expanding its scientific knowledge. Yet despite its scientific
achievements Europe was filled with believers in astrology, which had no
rational or scientific basis whatsoever. This contrast displays that while Europe
has the means to think and act rationally, it often does not seem to have the
commitment. Utopia, on the other hand, exists at almost exactly the same level
of scientific understanding as Europe, but is committed to rational thought,
and so astrology and other similar superstitions do not exist. Similarly, the
discussion of Utopian philosophy, which pays no heed to the suppositions of the
new European philosophers, is meant to be a biting criticism of the state of
European thought. Thomas More's displeasure with the state of European
philosophy was not unique to Utopia. During the period in which he wrote
Book 2 of Utopia, Thomas More wrote a long letter
disparaging the new European philosophers and logicians.
In the matter of the Utopian investigation into
the nature of happiness, Utopian reason comes to the conclusion that it is
ill-equipped to handle such an inquiry on its own. This seems a strange outcome
for reason to come to, and this strangeness underlines a tension between reason
and religion that became more evident as the Renaissance led eventually into
the Enlightenment and beyond. However, for Thomas More and the Humanists,
reason and religion went hand in hand. There simply was no question of the
eternal truth of Christ and Christianity. The Utopian investigation of
happiness, which begins by categorizing types of happiness and ends with the
conclusion that happiness lies in acting virtuously because virtue will be
rewarded in the afterlife, comes to much the same conclusion as Christianity. Also,
Utopians believe that the only thing better than their philosophical
investigation into the nature of things would be a divine revelation, which is
exactly what Christianity conceives itself to be. By setting up this situation
in which his ideal society, Utopia, venerates the religion of the European
society he is trying to criticize, Thomas More manages to endorse the tenets of
Christianity itself as the only outcome of rational thought while at the same
time forcefully using the model of Utopia to criticize Europe. If the Utopians,
with their inferior understanding of the nature of things, can act rationally
and justly, then why can't the Europeans, who have the divine revelations of
Christ, act similarly? The question is a damning one for Europe as a whole.
Bibliography
Sir
Thomas. Utopia. David Wootton, ed. Hackett Publishing Company,
Cambridge, England, 1999.
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