UTOPIA

In the Greek language, "utopia" means: "no place," suggesting that utopia is never to be found on earth; that it is instead an eternally-empty ideal, or dream. In 1516, the famous English philosopher, Sir Thomas More, wrote extensively about utopia, where he depicted an 'ideal state' that has since given its name (Utopia) to all such later romantic visions of an ideal country, or a "heaven on earth" society. Typically, people who are known as Utopian writers criticize the present conditions of the world and outline vast revolutionary schemes without describing the concrete, specific steps necessary to achieve them. Some famous philosophers who were regarded as Utopian include Plato, who constructed an ideal society in his Republic, as well as Campanella, Bacon, and Rousseau. During the nineteenth century, Utopian thinking began to be taken more seriously, as technological advances associated with industrialization caused many people to believe that a Utopian world could be achieved with the help of technology and with a scientific system of economics. In particular, Engels, Saint-Simon, Fourier, Proudhon, and other nineteenth-century socialist philosophers began to write extensively about creating Utopian socialist communities. Utopian experiments were actually tried, both in the United States and in Europe, but they were all short-lived, and all failed. In the twentieth century, most people became more cynical about the prospects for Utopian societies, and at least two major satiric anti-Utopian books were written: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, and George Orwell's 1984.

See also: Brook Farm