Discussion 7

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PS 361 – Classical Political Thought

Dr. Philipp Kneis

M I C R O - L E C T U R E 7 :

P O L I T I C A L R U L E & U T O P I A I N T H E E A R L Y M I D D L E A G E S

The Middle Ages are a very dynamic period, and a time of great inventions and political

experimentation. In Italy, the Republic of Venice and the Republic of Florence are rising forces. Dante

Alighieri is writing in Italian, not Latin, thus propagating and defining the vernacular language. This

in itself is a stark departure from the belief in the cosmopolitan Roman ecumene. Speaking a so-called

“lay” or people’s language other than Latin officially empowers local peoples and their ways of

expressing themselves. With the addition of the invention of printing with movable letters by

Johannes Gutenberg in 1450, local languages are becoming important, probably for the first time in

history their speakers are being given a chance to represent their thoughts, and feelings, in a more

authoritative voice towards the speakers of an elite language. While Gutenberg’s first complete print

is his bible, the presses are soon used to also print lay translations of the Bible, which will soon be

used to fuel the Reformation. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, this is for the follow-up class on

Modern Political Thought.

Back in the Renaissance, the other Florentine writer we will be discussing is Niccolò Machiavelli,

whose Il Principe was modeled on Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI. He is famous for his

political realism and presumed cynicism. Finally, we will end on a utopian note, and include an

English perspective investigating strange new worlds, and even stranger politics and social mores.

The very term “utopia” is coined by Sir Thomas More in 1516 in a political document meant to

criticize British political rule via a satirical text that describes a fictitious island, a non-place, and its

socio-political system that could be seen as good, although the satire paints a more complex picture.

In Greek, “topos” means “place”, “ou” means “not” and “eu” means good – the latter were both

pronounced as “u” at the time. Thus a “utopia” is a place that is both unreal and, possibly, good. To

clarify matters, a frightening vision of other places as not good is usually referred to as “dystopia”,

“dys-” meaning bad, thus a bad place. Given the complexities of most utopian societies, it could be

debated whether even a utopia has both positive and negative sides; and in reality, most of utopian

fictions and theories do indeed underline that.

Utopian fictions are foundational to any thinking about society and politics, and many great political

thinkers have pondered on the politics of the ideal state, and have theorized it, beginning probably

with Plato’s Atlantis story, and its highlighting of the alleged moral purity of the land-based Ancient

Athens vis-à-vis the perceived decadence of the cosmopolitan sea empire of Atlantis.

The utopian desire can be found in imagining how a city or state is supposed to be like, how a country

imagines itself, or imagines other countries to be — in order to find a place of understanding oneself

in relation to that dream.

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Almost always, utopian tales hold a political dimension. They also usually have to be removed from

reality through time or space. Be it imaginary islands, exotic countries, alien planets or galaxies, a

jump to the past or the future, or sometimes simply dreams: such devices help to allegorize a story

about contemporary society. These are merely metaphors about the relative here and now.

Allegorization herein may hold two functions: to remove a story from the local and specific to the

universal and general level, or to simply protect its author from ridicule and persecution.

Writing about Atlantis and Ancient Athens, Plato actually wrote about Persia and Athens in his own

time. In using metaphor instead of direct political commentary, his story gained relevance for future

generations and has inspired all kinds of searches for the island of Atlantis itself. — Writing about

Utopia, Thomas More actually wrote about sixteenth century England.

Any utopian non-place could be expected to be an utterly fantastic world, populated with ideas and

beings beyond all that was known or imagined before. New vistas of understanding and feeling could

be uncovered; new dimensions, new worlds could look like nothing in our contemporary and very

local surroundings. One could say that in theory, this is true.

Sir and later Saint Thomas More writes his Utopia at a time (1516) when a new continent has been

revealed in 1492. This is the same year the Reconquista of Spain, the regaining of the peninsula from

the Moors, had been completed. Both processes fueled new political imaginations. Only a year later,

in 1517, Martin Luther published his “95 Theses” in his call for religious reform. More was executed

in 1535 because he did not want to sanction Henry VIII’s claim to be the new head of the Church, after

failing to secure a divorce from the Pope. The conflict between the Pope and worldly authorities like

the King of England, together with calls for a reform of the church, inaugurate the end of the Middle

Ages, and the breakup of the Roman (Catholic) world. This third death, like the previous two

(Socrates and Caesar) yet again stands for a complex moment of change at the confluence of religion

and politics.

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