Utopia | George M. Logan (essay date 1983)
George M. Logan (essay date 1983)
SOURCE: "Utopia" in The Meaning of More's "Utopia," Princeton University Press, 1983, pp. 131-253.
[In the following excerpt, Logan describes Utopia as a "best commonwealth exercise" in the classical tradition, pointing to the echoes of Plato and Aristotle in the work.]
To examine the theoretical questions advanced at the end of Book I of Utopia, More employed the original and central exercise of Greek political philosophy, the determination of the best form of the commonwealth. [In a footnote, the author adds: "To preclude misunderstanding, let me say at once that this statement does not imply that Utopia must be More's ideal commonwealth. The exercise can … be undertaken for reasons other than elaborating one's own ideal."] This exercise, which has its ancestry in the inveterate Greek practice of comparing polities, and its literary antecedents in such passages as the debate among...
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