St. Thomas More’s Utopia and its Implicit Criticisms of Renaissance Values

[LightSpectra]

St. Thomas More’s Utopia and its Implicit Criticisms of Renaissance Values
by LightSpectra

“[W]e made no inquiries [to Raphael Hythloday] after monsters, than which nothing is more common; for everywhere one may hear of ravenous dogs and wolves, and cruel men-eaters, but it is not so easy to find states that are well and wisely governed.”1

Introduction & the Problem of Utopia

St. Thomas More (1477-1535) was an English knight that ascended to becoming Chancellor of England in service of the Crown in 1529. As a devout Catholic and servant of King Henry VIII, he saw it his duty to combat heresy in England through the Chancellorship. His career was regarded as highly successful until his fortunes were reversed by the passing of the Act of Supremacy in 1534, in which Henry’s divorce to Catherine of Aragon (which was unlawful in the Catholic Church) was formalized by declaring the King to be the head of the Church in England. More’s refusals to comply with the Act of Supremacy and affirm the divorce lead to his martyrdom by the crown in 1535.2 More’s most famous work is the book Utopia (1516), which consists of a dialogue between More, his friend Peter, and the sailor Raphael Hythloday. The subject of the discussion is the various problems with the governance of European kingdoms in comparison to the island nation of “Utopia”. Hythloday holds a myriad of unorthodox political and ethical beliefs, and demonstrates his beliefs by relating the tale of his visit to Utopia, which Hythloday thinks represents an ideal society and government. On its surface, Utopia appears to be a conversational treatise on political idealisms; however, it is clear that St. Thomas More intended the work to be a subtle satire on commonly held views during the Renaissance, especially the idealization of ancient Roman society and skepticism of Peripatetic philosophy. The primary evidence for this is the way religion is presented in Utopia, which at its surface, is a clear contradiction of More’s firmly held Catholic beliefs.

Utopia begins with More and Peter discussing politics with Raphael Hythloday, who describes his complaints against English law. In particular, Hythloday is dismayed by the fact that thieves in England are punished by death. He argues that this only induces criminals to murder the people they rob, so as to obscure the culprit; whereas if stealing were not a capital crime, murdering the victim would only increase the punishment.3 This is soundly reasonable, and it is also cleverly put in the mouth of a foreigner, so that whatever opinion the author actually holds is indeterminable from the text; thus sparing him from any retribution for criticizing the Crown.

The second book of Utopia then deals with Hythloday’s experiences on the island of the same name (from Greek ou, no or not, and topos, place; essentially “nowhere”), which is described by Hythloday as being almost perfect by his standards of justice, efficiency and the happiness of its citizens. He says that “if you had been in Utopia with me, and had seen their laws and rules, as I did, for the space of five years, in which I lived among them, and during which time I was so delighted with them that indeed I should never have left them if it had not been to make the discovery of that new world to the Europeans, you would then confess that you had never seen a people so well constituted.”4

But one of the peculiarities of the island Utopia is the societal attitude of religious tolerance. James Nendza writes that “[t]wo basic principles guide religious belief among the Utopians: broad toleration of various beliefs, and agreement on certain fundamental doctrines. […] As hedonists, the Utopians believe that 'sense' alone induces humans to pursue the maximum of pleasure, without, however, any innate regard to whether the means to that pleasure are fair or foul. Since peaceful civil society is impossible on the basis of such unrestrained pursuit of pleasure, the Utopians attempt to limit that pursuit by educating citizens to understand that happiness arises from the enjoyment of the more readily available natural pleasures.”5

This raises the question of why St. Thomas More would advocate such a philosophy and political belief as being ideal, through the mouth of Raphael Hythloday. More was a devout Catholic martyred for the faith, and worked strenuously to preserve orthodox Catholicism in England -- why would he be arguing in favor of hedonism and religious tolerance that did not conform to his own beliefs? This question is also raised by Edward Surtz, who writes: “More in his own person plainly calls many of the Utopian institutions extremely absurd and singles out in particular three of them: their religion and rites, their practices in war, and their communism. No one, consequently, is so foolish as to claim that the work is wholly jesting or wholly serious. Opinions of scholars and biographers, however, clash violently on the question as to the predominance of play or gravity in Utopia.”6

The problem of the incompatibility with St. Thomas More’s public beliefs and the apparent theses of Utopia have four logical solutions: (1) More’s public beliefs were not his “true” beliefs, which he secretly reveals in Utopia; (2) Utopia is a simple Denkschrift or storyt that brings to light several thoughts, that do not necessarily have any bearing on More’s actual philosophy7; (3) the intention of the Utopia is meant to subtly criticize the beliefs held by Hythloday, some of which were common beliefs of thinkers during the Renaissance; or (4) some combination of the above. These four views are summed up by Frederick L. Baumann: “[More] at times is represented as a practical, progressive reformer; on other occasions he is described as lagging behind timidly in the inauguration of a new social system, essentially conservative. Other commentators evade the idea of inconsistency in More by treating the Utopia as only an exercise of the imagination, a mere piece of wit.”8

Options (3) and (4) are the most likely ones; because it is difficult to conceive that More, who was consistently observed to be a devout Catholic, would either advocate option (1), or not immediately refute option (2), since Utopia presents a socio-philosophy that is wholly incompatible with the Catholic faith: “The writer of the Utopia preaching religious toleration seems quite different from the later bitter, religious controversialist. […] How reconcile the philosopher and scholar with the mercantilist statesman of Tudor England; 'the perfect advocate' of Erasmus' description, with the man having the soul of a medieval monk?”9

Further, Frank O’Hara writes in the Catholic Encyclopedia that “t is sometimes asked whether More meant to have the proposals in the Utopia taken seriously. Undoubtedly he did not.”10

Assuming options (3) and/or (4) to be the reality, it then has to be explained why St. Thomas More chose to present the island of Utopia the way he does, which at its surface, is positive and idealistic regarding ethical and spiritual issues incompatible with the Catholic faith. This question will be explored in the following pages of this essay.

Common Renaissance Beliefs as Reflected by Utopia, Pt. I: Slavery

One of the characteristics of the Renaissance was intense amor Romanis, in which men (such as Plutarch) wrote of the unpleasantness of their own era, and longed for a return to the glory of ancient Rome. St. Thomas More is severely critical of this, and Utopia is clearly in part a sarcastic rebuttal to those obsessed with ancient Rome. The first example of this is in the first half of Utopia, where Hythloday discusses why capital punishment for stealing is an undesirable law, because of both its unjust harshness and practical ineffectiveness. He follows this by praising the Romans in this regard: “I think it much easier to find out that than to invent anything that is worse; why should we doubt but the way that was so long in use among the old Romans, who understood so well the arts of government, was very proper for their punishment? They condemned such as they found guilty of great crimes to work their whole lives in quarries, or to dig in mines with chains about them.”11

This argument would be roundly appealing to Romanophiles, though analyzing the text seems to suggest that the author has a negative view of restitution-slavery. Michael Freund presents the opinion that the slavery on the island of Utopia is merely meant to be a clearly superior alternative to capital punishment, but not necessarily the ideal: “In diesem geschichtlichen Erlebnis wurzelt auch dem sach lichen Sinne nach die vielumstrittene 'Sklaveninstitution' der Utopia. Formal ist sie freilich wesentlich Straf system, wenn gleich von Anfang an ihre Reichweite durch Einbeziehung von Kriegs gefangenen und freiwilligen Knechten aus fremden Nationen weiter gespannt ist. Dies hat dazu gefährt, sie lediglich als Straf system anzusehen, das für die gesellschaftliche Verfassung des Landes kaum ins Gewicht fällt, als eine Schöpfung des Humanitätsgedankens im Kampf gegen eine verrohte Straf justiz.”12

Furthermore, P. Albert Duhamel, who writes that Utopia is “probably the most medieval of More's works,”13 says that “More's criticism of his England is not direct but is rather implied in the other two terms. If the completely rational state of Utopia surpasses Europe in its integrity and administration of justice, a fortiori, how much further would the ideal Christian state surpass this same early sixteenth-century Europe? […] More used the fiction of the imaginary state to show that Christians without charity are worse than good pagans guided by reason alone”14, which is to suggest that the ideal is not the Roman model, as Hythloday suggests, but rather a model that is followed by neither Europe nor Utopia. Hence, it is apparent that St. Thomas More presents slavery in Utopia in order to both subtly criticize Europe in his era, as well as the Renaissance humanists that wished to adopt ancient Roman law.

Common Renaissance Beliefs as Reflected by Utopia, Pt. II: Religion & Platonism

The religious policy on the island of Utopia is clearly reasonable to a modern reader. James Nendza writes: “The institution of religious toleration is intended to prevent disputes and promote civil peace. Moreover, the three religious doctrines which all Utopian citizens are required to acknowledge are precisely those doctrines which are seen elsewhere in the Utopia to be necessary for limiting the pursuit of pleasure to that compatible with civil peace.”15 However, as written in the introduction, these policies are likely not ones that St. Thomas More would have approved of in reality, since he himself persecuted Protestants in England during his Chancellorship.16

The reasons for what St. Thomas More wrote about religion in Utopia are still debated by scholars to this day. The most compelling argument appears to be that More was presenting a criticism of Neoplatonism through the Utopians. Raitiere writes: “… in opposition to the emphasis on authority, More hints that the Utopians are Platonists, or primitives with a prisca theologia, who escape of their own from reason into grace: 'They never have a discussion of happiness without uniting certain principles taken from religion as well as from philosophy, which uses rational arguments. Without these principles they think reason insufficient and weak by itself for the investigation of true happiness.'”17

The issue then is how St. Thomas More intended Renaissance Neoplatonists to read Utopia and then realize the problems with their philosophy. Raitere continues to say that: “More in Utopia is concerned to demonstrate that a monolithic government only parodies, it cannot realize, the libera civitas. The terribly successful social regimentation of which an efficient monolith, call it State-Church or Church-State, is capable…”18

Or, in other words, the Platonist vision of a utopian republic ruled by philosopher-kings is flawed insofar that it attempts to achieve human happiness without God’s grace, a position was in line with St. Augustine of Hippo. Hence, St. Thomas More’s actual opinion on religious tolerance becomes clear when Utopia is viewed in its full context of being a work of clandestine Augustinianism: “Augustine himself confronted this problem in connection with the Donatist controversy. As a propagandist for the Catholic Church he was necessarily concerned with bringing heretics into the fold. But it was inconsistent with his own skeptical view of politike to justice on religious grounds political compulsion to join the visible Church. His final position on this question was in fact to move in the direction of theocracy, that is, to justify coercion of Donatists and others to join the Church (as any religious would) on religious grounds.”19

This makes full sense when compared to the biography of St. Thomas More, who used the Chancellorship of England to persecute Protestants in order to perpetuate both the Church of England and the authority of the Kingdom of England.

Another writer who supposed Utopia to be a criticism of Neoplatonism is John A. Gueguen, who writes: “In the next place, we should consider what the Utopia tells us about natural religion grounded in reasonable experience, and the yearning for ‘a better revelation.’ […] The Utopian religion (and Plato's) certainly aims in the right direction […]. As religion arrived at through reason and experience, More stands in admiration of this achievement of Platonic theology. And yet, he would say, it is open to, and even presses toward something further-the very possession of a personal God who has walked with men and spoken with them about His creation and about Himself [...]”20

Hence, even if Hythloday’s presentation of the island Utopia seems rather perfect in regard to religion, its purely naturalistic religion can be seen to be deeply flawed by a sharp analysis of the text, insofar that the Utopian religion has not achieved the purity of truth that can only be derived from divine revelation. Gueguen later says that: “It seems clear that the Utopia can be read as an intentional correction, or reformation, of Plato's theology.”21

Hedonism on the Island of Utopia

It has been argued by some scholars, such as Robert P. Adams, that the island of Utopia is supposed to represent the best possible society that can be created according to pure reason, and that this was St. Thomas More’s actual opinion on the matter.22 The ethical philosophy held by the Utopians has been described as been “Epicurean”23 or just “hedonist”24 based on what Hythloday says about the island: “They seem, indeed, more inclinable to that opinion that places, if not the whole, yet the chief part, of a man’s happiness in pleasure; and, what may seem more strange, they make use of arguments even from religion, notwithstanding its severity and roughness, for the support of that opinion so indulgent to pleasure; for they never dispute concerning happiness without fetching some arguments from the principles of religion as well as from natural reason, since without the former they reckon that all our inquiries after happiness must be but conjectural and defective.”25

Therefore, if Adams were right to say that the island Utopia represents the best possible society according to pure reason, that therefore hedonism is the ethical philosophy that is the most reasonably acceptable without divine revelation. But, once more, this raises the question of why St. Thomas More would advocate this, since this belief is utterly contrary to the Catholic teaching, that pleasure is not a good end in and of itself.

Gerard Wegemer suggests that the reason for this is that Utopia is meant to be a drama about conflicting philosophies: “Prosopopoeia aims at the creation of plausible characters, at verisimilitude. More not only uses this rhetorical technique masterfully, he uses it to dramatize two opposing philosophies of life.”26 Further, Wegemer states that the reader is not meant to derive from the text that the island Utopia is “the best pure reason can offer” from Hythloday’s discourse, but rather is meant to see the character More’s subtle criticisms: “Perhaps to balance the force of these maxims, Morus does not end on a heavy, moralizing note. Having made his point unequivocally in parable and passive periphrastic, and having reinforced the point with parallel sententiae, Morus ends this rejoinder in sentence eleven as one would expect from a charitable master of Renaissance wit -- with irony, understatement, and word play.”27

Guegen shares the same thought, and says that: “It becomes easier, for instance, to understand the disagreement among Utopia scholars, between those who find it simply a playful work intending nothing serious and those who regard it as an earnest proposal for social reorganization. Like any good Platonic work it reveals both messages, for it is serious and playful at the same time.”28

Hence, the reader should read Utopia not with the belief that St. Thomas More intended the island Utopia to be a place “perfect according to reason”, but rather see its various faults as pointed out by the character More within the book.

Conclusion

Eric Nelson writes that “More's Italian enthusiasts understood only too well that his text constituted an outright assault on the values of civic humanism. Utopia was carried to Italy by the currents of anti-Ciceronianism…”29 It is evident from textual analysis as well as historical context that St. Thomas More’s Utopia was intended to satire and subtly criticize the common Renaissance attitudes of intellectual obsession with ancient Rome and Neoplatonism, and at the same time, vehicle More’s criticisms of Christian monarchies failing to govern properly according to their faith.



Bibliography

Adams, Robert P. “The Philosophic Unity of More’s Utopia.” Studies in Philology 38, no. 1 (1941): 45-65. Accessed March 3, 2011, <htt://www.jstor.org/stable/4172514>.

Baumann, Frederick L. “Sir Thomas More.” The Journal of Modern History 4, no. 4 (1932): 604-615. Accessed March 3, 2011, <http://www.jstor.org/stable/1899363>.

Duhamel, Albert P. “Medievalism of More’s Utopia.” Studies in Philology 52, no. 2 (1955): 99- 126. Accessed March 3, 2011, <http://www.jstor.org/stable/4173125>.

Freund, Michael. “Zur Deutung der Utopia des Thomas Morus: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Staatsräson in England.” Historische Zeitschrift 142, no. 2 (1930): 254-278. Accessed March 3, 2011, <http://www.jstor.org/stable/27606420>.

Gueguen, John A. “Reading More’s Utopia as a Criticism of Plato.” A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 10 (1978): 43-54. Accessed March 3, 2011, <http://www.jstor.org/stable/4048425>.

More, St. Thomas. Utopia. 1516. Project Gutenberg, 2005. <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2130/2130-h/2130-h.htm>.

Nelson, Eric. “Utopia through Italian Eyes: Thomas More and the Critics of Civic Humanism.” Renaissance Quarterly 59, no. 4 (2006): 1029-1057. Accessed March 3, 2011, <http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1353/ren.2008.0532>.

Nendza, James. “Religion and Republicanism in More’s Utopia.” The Western Political Quarterly 37, no. 2 (1984): 195-211. Accessed March 3, 2011, <http://www.jstor.org/stable/448565>.

O'Hara, Frank. "Utopia." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 15. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912. Accessed Mar 30, 2011, <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15243a.htm>.

Raitiere, Martin N. “More’s Utopia and The City of God.” Studies in the Renaissance 20 (1973): 144-168. Accessed March 3, 2011, <http://www.jstor.org/stable/2857016>.

Sanderlin, George. “The Meaning of Thomas More’s Utopia.” College English 12, no. 2 (1950): 74-77. Accessed March 3, 2011, <http://www.jstor.org/stable/372227>.

Surtz, Edward L. “Interpretations of Utopia.” The Catholic Historical Review 38, no. 2 (1952): 156-174. Accessed March 3, 2011, <http://www.jstor.org/stable/25015417>.

Wegemer, Gerard. “The Rhetoric of Opposition in Thomas More’s Utopia: Giving Form to Competing Philosophies.” Philosophy & Rhetoric 23, no. 4 (1990): 288-306. Accessed March 3, 2011, <http://www.jstor.org/stable/40237646>.

 

[vogtmurr]

Interesting discussion of More. So he was the first to use the term Utopia.

 

[civ_king]

Interesting discussion of More. So he was the first to use the term Utopia.

the fact he used the word utopia instead of eutopia is very interesting (no place vs. good place).

 

[BuckyRea]

Intriguing. More's satire is a hard "get" for contemporary minds for its lack of Swiftian simplicity. The fact that the guy whose view is being satirized makes such a spot-on critique of capital punishment for non-lethal crimes keeps the reader on his toes. These Utopians aren't all bad, contrary to what one expects in satire. I'm curious about this point fleshed out a bit since, as a modern reader, I'm expecting the Utopians to be shown in their folly. Was More implying that hanging for theft was a more just punishment?

Two minor things on style: Is referring to the author as "Saint Thomas More" instead of just "Thomas More" standard form in academia now? As I recall, my professor-mentor in college, who was a More nut and an Anglophile Catholic, never explained his point of saying "St. Thomas" when discussing theology but just "Thomas" when discussing English literature. He was also a Miltonist and thus capable of admiring a wide range of ideas.

My other question is petty, but do you have any insight as to why some academics (I'm guessing older sources) refer to Utopia as "the Utopia" in their papers. Neither the Latin nor English titles of the book justifies it--it's like they want to sound archaic.

 

[LightSpectra]

I'm curious about this point fleshed out a bit since, as a modern reader, I'm expecting the Utopians to be shown in their folly. Was More implying that hanging for theft was a more just punishment?

The basic structure of Utopia is that it's meant to portray the island as superior to Christian nations because the island is run perfectly through natural reason, which is inferior to proper Christianity, but superior to monarchs who contend to be Christian and yet don't rule as such. It seems pretty clear that More himself was opposed to executing thieves.

Two minor things on style: Is referring to the author as "Saint Thomas More" instead of just "Thomas More" standard form in academia now? As I recall, my professor-mentor in college, who was a More nut and an Anglophile Catholic, never explained his point of saying "St. Thomas" when discussing theology but just "Thomas" when discussing English literature. He was also a Miltonist and thus capable of admiring a wide range of ideas.

I have no idea, to be honest.

My other question is petty, but do you have any insight as to why some academics (I'm guessing older sources) refer to Utopia as "the Utopia" in their papers. Neither the Latin nor English titles of the book justifies it--it's like they want to sound archaic.

Since "Utopia" could refer both to the book and the place which the book describes, an article is useful to differentiate between the two. The book was originally in Latin, and the Latin language has no articles (which is why "Deus" is variously translated as "god", "a god", "the God", etc.).

 

[Phullax]

I am not so sure you can simply rule out option no. 1. Just because a man was famously known, or celebrated, for his piety does not necessarily mean that the man--in this case, Thomas More--was in fact pious. Socrates, after all, who was executed for impiety, was "was often CLEARLY VISIBLE sacrificing at home and often at the common altars of the city" (Xenophon, Memorabilia I.1.8-10).

 

[LightSpectra]

One, considering More could've escaped any penalties at all at any moment by acceding to the divorce, it's unlikely that he was secretly harboring anti-Catholic sentiments. Also, almost everybody that wrote about him before his execution mentioned his zeal for the faith, so to take the first interpretation, we'd have to reject something that's consistently in every secondary account we have of him. Secondly, Socrates was convicted for corrupting the youth, not impiety. Thirdly, analysis of the text reveals that #1 is a very weak interpretation.

 

[Plotinus]

Thanks for this, very interesting!

It seems pretty clear that More himself was opposed to executing thieves.

But he did burn Protestants. Now it's more than half my lifetime since I read Utopia but I remember being impressed by one of the arguments he presents against capital punishment, namely that God forbids killing, and if the state says that it's allowed to ignore this commandment under certain conditions then you create a precedent whereby the state could claim it can ignore any commandments under certain conditions. Which I still think is not a bad argument. But of course it applies to executions for religious crimes as well as for profane ones. So my question is: first, where's the consistency? If you say that More was serious in saying that thieves shouldn't be executed, then you must also say that he wasn't serious in saying that capital punishment is wrong altogether; but what's the textual basis for drawing a distinction? Wouldn't it be more reasonable to say that More wasn't being serious at all? And second, can this really be called Augustinian? Augustine didn't persecute anyone, including Donatists - he reasoned with them.

I don't think you've really grounded your claims. I notice this especially in the section on religion and Platonism. You quote various scholars to the effect that More's portrayal of the Utopians' attitudes to these subjects is meant to be critical. But the only support for this interpretation that I can find in this section is the fact that More himself, in his own career, did not follow the Utopians' attitudes to these subjects. Therefore he's being satirical in Utopia. Is that really the argument? Or is there any hint in the text itself that would reveal to a careful reader who knew nothing of the author that the Utopians' views are being satirised? Presumably there must be, since in the conclusion you quote someone as saying that More was praised in Italy for his attacks on humanism, so some people at least read Utopia as a criticism on humanism. But what about the work showed it to be a criticism?

(Two brief points on style: first, if you're going to have lots of quotations from secondary sources, it makes things infinitely easier on the reader if you set them as distinct paragraphs and indent/use smaller font/something, and certainly never finish a long quotation and then continue in your own voice in the same paragraph. And second, words such as "satire" and "vehicle" are absolutely not verbs and shouldn't be used as such in academic writing! It's bad enough that "critiquing" has become common.)

On naming conventions, it's scholarly practice to refer to people by their surnames. In the case of someone like Thomas Aquinas, the "surname" isn't really a surname, it's his place of origin. So you can reasonably talk about "Aquinas" or "Thomas" as you like. If you're going to call him "Thomas" you may as well call him "St Thomas", reflecting the fact not so much that he is canonised as that he is a traditional major authority. Moreover, he is a traditional authority for Protestants as well as Catholics. Referring to him as "St Thomas" is thus not restricted to Catholics or even Christians. After all, it is perfectly common practice to refer to "St Paul". But Thomas More is different, since although he's a popular saint his popularity is largely limited to Catholics - he did, after all, burn Protestants, which from a non-Catholic viewpoint is a bit off-putting. Also, he already has a (secular) title, so one might equally call him "Sir Thomas". More importantly, he has a surname, so a scholar would normally call him simply "More" in a way that one can't normally do for medieval saints or earlier. And finally, "St Thomas" is confusing since it's a common way of referring to Thomas Aquinas.

 

[LightSpectra]

But he did burn Protestants. Now it's more than half my lifetime since I read Utopia but I remember being impressed by one of the arguments he presents against capital punishment, namely that God forbids killing, and if the state says that it's allowed to ignore this commandment under certain conditions then you create a precedent whereby the state could claim it can ignore any commandments under certain conditions. Which I still think is not a bad argument. But of course it applies to executions for religious crimes as well as for profane ones. So my question is: first, where's the consistency? If you say that More was serious in saying that thieves shouldn't be executed, then you must also say that he wasn't serious in saying that capital punishment is wrong altogether; but what's the textual basis for drawing a distinction? Wouldn't it be more reasonable to say that More wasn't being serious at all? And second, can this really be called Augustinian? Augustine didn't persecute anyone, including Donatists - he reasoned with them.

More didn't write the anti-Protestant laws, he only enforced them as the Chancellor. Given that most of Utopia is a subtle criticism of Henry VIII and other like-minded monarchs, it's difficult to determine More's position on the treatment of religious dissidents. Maybe the matter is different enough that this section of the text is inapplicable; maybe More agreed with the persecution but not the penalty; or maybe More was just doing his job as Chancellor and his own beliefs are in Utopia. We can probably rule out the third of those, since if he was willing to be martyred over the king's divorce, it's likely he wouldn't have done something with his office that he considered immoral as such. So it's either he considered heresy to be a much different sort of crime than thievery, or he thought the laws were fine, just that the penalty too severe.

I don't think you've really grounded your claims. I notice this especially in the section on religion and Platonism. You quote various scholars to the effect that More's portrayal of the Utopians' attitudes to these subjects is meant to be critical. But the only support for this interpretation that I can find in this section is the fact that More himself, in his own career, did not follow the Utopians' attitudes to these subjects. Therefore he's being satirical in Utopia. Is that really the argument? Or is there any hint in the text itself that would reveal to a careful reader who knew nothing of the author that the Utopians' views are being satirised? Presumably there must be, since in the conclusion you quote someone as saying that More was praised in Italy for his attacks on humanism, so some people at least read Utopia as a criticism on humanism. But what about the work showed it to be a criticism?

It's not just that. A consistent theme of Utopia is that the island, by following natural reason perfectly, hits a middle-ground between monarchs that disregard both natural reason and revelation, and Christian monarchs that rule according to their faith. That was the point of the second paragraph from the end of that section: "the Utopia tells us about natural religion grounded in reasonable experience, and the yearning for ‘a better revelation.’"

(Two brief points on style: first, if you're going to have lots of quotations from secondary sources, it makes things infinitely easier on the reader if you set them as distinct paragraphs and indent/use smaller font/something, and certainly never finish a long quotation and then continue in your own voice in the same paragraph. And second, words such as "satire" and "vehicle" are absolutely not verbs and shouldn't be used as such in academic writing! It's bad enough that "critiquing" has become common.)

Sorry about the quotations, that's just how the copy/paste worked out. It looks better in the original file. I didn't really reformat it to fit CFF.

 

[Plotinus]

It's not just that. A consistent theme of Utopia is that the island, by following natural reason perfectly, hits a middle-ground between monarchs that disregard both natural reason and revelation, and Christian monarchs that rule according to their faith. That was the point of the second paragraph from the end of that section: "the Utopia tells us about natural religion grounded in reasonable experience, and the yearning for &#8216;a better revelation.&#8217;"

But does More suggest that that "middle ground" is inferior to kingdoms run purely according to faith? It's one thing to say that More presents his fictional society as such a middle ground - it's another to say that More thinks that such a middle ground is undesirable or at least not as good as one of the extremes. The point is - what is there in More's text to suggest this? Is he saying it's better to rule a kingdom on the basis of faith and reason rather than on the basis of faith alone? More may personally have believed such a thing, but in the text conveys this message? That's what I'm interested in here.