Thomas More describes his ideal society which is an island because isolation on the outside is essential to the proper functioning of the ideal society. Utopia is a crescent-shaped island that contains fifty-four large cities and the distance between every city and another is 24 miles away. Language, laws, customs and institutions are uniform.
In the nearly-500 years since its publication, Thomas More’s Utopia has influenced everything from the thinking of Gandhi to the tech giants of Silicon Valley, writes Tom Hodgkinson.
An establishment figure, he was also an enemy of the Protestant Reformation and is known today as a Catholic martyr, having been beheaded by King Henry VIII. Today, though, we may know More best for his invention of a word – and for his development of an idea that would be exported around the world.
Because of his Humanist studies of classical philosophy, More had an ideal vision of morality that contrasted with the realities of his world, and one of the major goals of the Humanist movement was to integrate those ideals into real life. However, More knew that principles alone don’t get anyone very far in politics.