Utopia and Dystopia

Definition

The term Utopia is a made-up word from the Greek words ou (no) and topos (place) that means “no place” or “nowhere.” Its first verifiable mention is in the Latin title of the novel Utopia (1516) by Sir Thomas More, which was originally published as De Optimo Reipublicae Statu, deque Nova Insula Utopia (“Concerning the best state of the republic and the new island Utopia”). The very antithesis of More's humanistic ideas is the thinking of his contemporary Niccoló Machiavelli, who developed in his dystopia The Prince (1513) a society ruled by pure power.

with the increasing use of the term Utopia in 17th-century European literature, it soon became part of the everyday language. In its metaphoric meaning, Utopia described a nonexisting albeit cogitable place of a commonwealth superior to the existing one. The contradiction of this place was related to its impossibility and for this reason Utopia turned into a pejorative term referring to an unrealistic or nalve idea. During the 19th century the significance of Utopia changed to more temporal aspects, and perfection was created in the future. The ambiguity of Utopian ideas expressed in the criticism and hope of progress persisted into the 20th century. In recent times, Utopia is often used as a term for economic, political, historical, religious, scientific, and technological improvements.

Temporalization of Utopia

Until the end of the 18th century, Utopia referred to an imaginary country, often supposed to be situated in an isolated or undiscovered territory on Earth. Utopias of place assume a succeeding model of socialization in the present within an [Page 1403]unreachable or unknown spatial distance. Due to the discovery of the world it became more and more difficult to create an earthly place of perfection. Even though More and his contemporaries wrote in the century of great voyages of discovery, they refused the idea of a fully mapped world.

with Louis Sébastien Mercier's novel The Year 2440: A Dream If Ever There Was One (1771) the concept changed from Utopias of place to Utopias of time. Utopia became an ideal place in the future, and the anywhere was substituted by an anytime. The essential new element was the optimistic way in which time was used. within the classical understanding of time, the ideal society on earth existed only in the past; all events in the present and in the future will be inferior to former times. Already in the Republic, Plato referred to a special conception of time by creating a society that can reach the perfection of the world of ideas only in retrospection. Similar conceptions of time can be traced in the Utopian writings of the European Renaissance. Various philosophers and authors believed in the myth of a past or current golden age that could be followed only by a worsening situation. Despite the introduction of a prospective view, the 18th century remained a period of transition from space to time.

...