More on Utopia

Author(s): Brendan Bradshaw

Source: The Historical Journal, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Mar., 1981), pp. 1-27
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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The Historical Journal, 2,1., 1 (I98I), pp. I 27.
Printed in Great Britain

MORE ON UTOPIA*

BRENDAN BRADSHAW

Queens' and Girton Colleges, Cambridge

J. H. Hexter's brilliant analysis of More's Utopia in the Introduction to the Yale

edition of the text in I965 was favoured by a resounding endorsement from
Quentin Skinner in a no-less-brilliant analysis of the Yale edition in Past and
Present in I 967.1 Given the status of both scholars as interpreters of the political
thought of the early modern period, Skinner's prediction that Hexter's analysis
would 'cause a reorientation of [the] entire historiography' of the subject was
bound to be something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.2 Skinner, in any case,
clearly considers the claim to have been justified in the event. In his recent
masterly study of the history of political thought in the early modern period
his treatment of Utopia is especially - and avowedly - indebted to Hexter's
work.3 Meanwhile, the most stimulating challenge presented to Hexter's
thesis - by Dermot Fenlon in the Transactions of the Royal Historical Society in
1975 - serves in its way to vindicate Skinner's prediction. Fenlon is concerned
not to contradict Hexter's basic hypothesis but to stand it on its head.4 Fenlon's
thesis in turn was assimilated into the survey literature when it was adapted
by G. R. Elton to hammer Christian humanism in his Reform and Reformation
in 1977 .
It looks, therefore, as if the Yale edition succeeded not only in producing
a definitive version of More's text but also in establishing a new framework
for its interpretation by means of Hexter's introduction. In the circumstances
it may now seen an embarrassment that the edition came furnished not with
one but with two interpretations of the text. Hexter shared editorial

* I am grateful to Professors G. R. Elton and Quentin Skinner of Cambridge, and to Dr Dermot

Fenlon, now of the Beda College, Rome, for generous and helpful criticism of earlier versions of
this study.
1 The complete wvorks of St Thomas More, iv, ed. Edward Surtz, Sj. and J. H. Hexter (New
Haven and London, I965: hereafter cited as Yale Utopia), xv-cxxiv. Quentin Skinner, 'More's
Utopia', Past and Present, xxxviii (1967), 153 68.
2 Skinner, 'More's Utopia', p. I57.
3 Quentin Skinner, The foundations of modern political thought (2 vols., Cambridge, I978), I, 223,
n.i; 255, n.i.
4 Dermot Fenlon, 'England and Europe: Utopia and its aftermath', T'ransactions of the Royal
Historical Society xxv (I 975), I I5- 35. For a discussion of Fenlon's interpretation see below pp. 5,
i8, 20.
6 G. R. Elton, Reform and Reformation (London, I977), pp. 42 7. Cf. Elton, Reform and renewal
(Cambridge, I973), pp. 4-5, I58.

ooi8-246X/8o/2828-3730 $o2.50 I980 Cambridge University Press

1 1-2

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 2 BRENDAN BRADSHAW

responsibility with the Jesuit, Edward Surtz, and the latter provided an
introduction of his own as well as an extensive textual commentary.' The work
of the two editors was intended to be complementary, and from an organizational
point of view that was indeed the case. But, as Skinner's critique brought
brilliantly to light in I967, the editors differed in interpretative method and
provided diverging approaches to the interpretation of the text.7 He left no
doubt about which route he considered led into the heart of Utopia. The present
writer is less convinced. I shall argue, in fact, that despite all the light which
Hexter's analysis throws on the text it is founded on an unsustainable
hypothesis. Conversely, despite the many irrelevancies with which Surtz's
analysis is lumbered, his hypothesis is basically sound. It should be said,
however, that the primary purpose of the present study is neither to refute
Hexter nor to vindicate Surtz. It is rather to attempt the hazardous voyage
to Utopia yet again, profiting from the exerience of those earlier expeditions,
from their positive achievements no less than from their mistakes.
The debate about the meaning of Utopia comes down essentially to the
question of what is to be made of book II where the fictitious narrator, Raphael
Hythloday, gives an account of the island of Utopia, which he claims to have
discovered on his travels, and of the way of life of its inhabitants. The problem
of interpretation is twofold: what does More here intend to describe and what
is his purpose in describing it?8 In relation to the first question the established
framework of interpretation before Hexter wrote took Utopia more or less at
face value. It was assumed to depict how reasonable human beings might
organize their society relying on the powers of natural reason unenlightened
by the divine revelation available to Christians in scripture. The debate about
Utopia, then, related to the second question - More's purpose in depicting
Utopian society. No dispute existed, of course, about its ironic and satirical
function: the follies of Christian society castigated by More in book I stood out
all the more when juxtaposed with the good sense of the Utopian life-style
depicted in book II. But did More's purpose go beyond satire and irony? Here
consensus broke down on the precise relationship which the author envisaged
between Utopia and real life.
Borrowing from the vocabulary of literary analysis - after all, Utopia was
written as a literary work - the traditional debate about Utopia could be said
to hinge on whether the Utopian commonwealth was proposed by More as
an idyll or as an ideal. The mainstream tradition took Utopia in the former
sense. On this reading the concept of Utopia was nothing more than a literary
conceit designed to heighten the reader's perception of the real world in the
way already described, and in doing so to prick the conscience of Europe by

6 Yale Utopia, pp. cxxv-clxxxi, 267 570.

7 Skinner, 'More's Utopia'.
8 The distinction I have in mind here would be described in scholastic terms as that between
the finis operis and the finis operantis. For a recent demonstration of the relevance of the autho
intentions and purposes to the interpretation of literary texts, see Quentin Skinner, 'Motives,
intentions, and the interpretation of texts', New Literary History, iii (1972), 393 408.

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 MORE ON UTOPIA 3

pointing out that the values by which it lived - self-interest, power, wealth -
stood condemned even by the standards of virtuous pagans. This interpretation
has the special advantage of preserving Utopia for Christian orthodoxy despite
its apparent commendation of a way of life that involves the abolition of private
property, radical social egalitarianism, divorce and euthanasia. On this
account such radical features can be explained as elements of a fantasy created
by More in an attempt to portray the social order that might obtain should
society exit, per imposibile, in a state of perfect nature, i.e. lacking grace and
divine revelation but in the firm control of reason. The alternative interpretation
rejected the consignment of Utopia to the realm of fantasy in order to claim
More's work for what might be called the Old Testament canon of the
literature of social revolution. The imaginative tour deforce of book II was taken
to refer not to what might have been in a hypothetical world of perfect nature
but what ought to be in the real one. Its purpose was to show how existing
society must be organized in order to accord with the norms of social justice.
As such it provided both a radical challenge to the existing order and a
blueprint for revolutionary change. In a word, book II of Utopia presents not
an idyll but an ideal.9
Against this historiographical background the interpretative framework
established by Hexter appears both daring and plausible. This is based on a
hypothesis about book II which enables Utopia to be read as the work of a man
who was at the same time a deeply committed Christian and a social
revolutionary. The key to the understanding of the text, he argues, is to set
it in its ideological context. And he demonstrates in a manner altogether
convincing that this is provided neither by medieval Catholic orthodoxy nor
by the 'pre-history' of social revolution. The context in which Utopia must be
set is that of Erasmian humanism. The two major preoccupations of Utopia,
as Hexter shows, also constitute the two major preoccupations of Erasmian
humanists in 15 15-I6: the sterility and formalism of contemporary religion
with the consequent need for religious renewal; the injustices of the contem-
porary socio-political culture and the need for social and political reform.1?
The Utopian commonwealth of book II, therefore, must be interpreted as a
Christian humanist statement about religion and society. This perception leads
Hexter to postulate the startling hypothesis that - the textual references
notwithstanding - book II was intended to portray a Christian commonwealth,
9 For a bibliographical note on these two traditions of interpretation see Skinner, Foundations,
I, 257, n. i. To the works cited by Skinner add D. Baker-Smith, Thomas More and Plato's voyage
(Cardiff, I978). Approaching Utopia from a base in literary studies Professor Baker-Smith makes
no reference to the current historiographical discussion. His treatment is also rather limited in
scope: it constitutes an inaugural lecture delivered at Cardiff in I978. Nevertheless, his central
theme, indicated in his title, draws attention to an inadequately explored dimension of Utopia's
intellectual provenance, about which more anon. Meanwhile, Professor Baker-Smith's work may
be associated with the conservative tradition of interpretation which argues for an 'idyllic' rather
than an 'ideal' understanding of book II, see Baker-Smith, Plato's voyage, pp. I4 - 17. I am grateful
to Dr David Starkey of the London School of Economics for drawing this study to my attention
and for providing me with a copy of it.
10 Hexter, Introduction, Yale Utopia, pp. xlv-cv. Cf. Skinner, 'More's Utopia', pp. 153 -4.

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 4 BRENDAN BRADSHAW

not a pagan one. More contrived the paradox of a Christian community existing
beyond the ambit of the institutional Church in order to direct attention to
what Christian humanists regarded as the real substance of christianity.
Christianity for the individual consists in virtuous living, not in ritual
observances. Hence the Utopians, despite their lack of Christian rituals, are true
Christians, while the inhabitants of Europe, despite their observance of Christian
rituals, are not. Similarly, the criteria for a Christian society are moral rather
than institutional. Utopia, founded upon and living by social justice - the
commonwealth - is a Christian society despite its lack of Christian institutions.
The nations of Europe founded upon and living by egoism, power and wealth
are not. In all of this, in its preoccupation with religion and society, in its
criticism of contemporary christendom, in its notion of the essential content of
christianity, Utopia is a typically Christian humanist text. However, Hexter
proceeds to argue, Utopia is something more, and therein lies its uniqueness
and the originality of its contribution to political thought. Seen in relation to
the literature of Christian humanist reform it turns out to be - to use Skinner's
neat summary of Hexter's argument - not merely a humanist critique of late
medieval christianity but a critique of Christian humanism as well.
The portrait of the virtuous Christian commonwealth presented in book II
of Utopia, Hexter suggests, exposes the inadequacy of the christian humanist
concept of reform and the soft-centred quality of its ideology. The humanists
analysed the ills of contemporary society in terms of the moral bankruptcy of
its religious, social and political culture. However, their strategy for reform
showed that they jibbed at the radical implications of their own analysis. They
pinned their hopes on an inner transformation of mind and heart effected by
the inculcation of correct moral values through exhortation and education.
More's uniqueness lay in grasping the inadequacy of this formulation. The false
values from which the injustices of late medieval society sprang were enshrined
not only in men's hearts but in the very structures of their society that upheld
the pre-eminence of power, wealth, lineage and degree. What sets Utopia apart
is its concept of the commonwealth - the just society - not simply as a virtuous
community but as a virtuous community founded upon ajust social order. The
perception that, beyond the need for a radical moral transformation within
society - a change of mind and heart - there existed the need for a radical
structural transformation also - a change of social and political institutions -
makes Utopia unique in the genre of humanist reform literature. Conversely the
priority accorded to structural reform as an instrument, a strategy, of social
reform earns Utopia a place 'on the margins of modernity' as a work of political
theory. The Utopian commonwealth is a triumph for rational planning and
social engineering.
The historiographical significance of Hexter's interpretation was twofold,
therefore. It raised the question of what More intended to describe in book
II by postulating the island of Utopia as a Christian community. In this way
Hexter provided a new interpretative framework for the discussion of the work.
Secondly, his own exposition of the meaning of Utopia within that framework

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 MORE ON UTOPIA 5

gave a new twist to the old debate about More's polemical purpose. As he
explains it, Utopia is not simply an imaginative reconstruction of society as it
might have been in a state of perfect nature. It is rather More's conception of
how a just society could be created, human nature being what it is. Com-
munist and egalitarian Utopia is not a pagan idyll. It is a Christian ideal.11
As mentioned earlier, the most stimulating challenge to this thesis, that
provided by Fenlon's paper in 1975, and by the treatment of Utopia in the
recent work of G. R. Elton, served incidentally to entrench the interpretative
framework established by Hexter. Although it relates more to the spiritual
rather than to the narrowly moral concerns of Christian humanism, Fenlon's
argument is constructed within the broad framework of Hexter's interpretative
scheme. More's preoccupations in Utopia emerge in the context of a humanist
reforming ethos. Book II provides a humanist critique of late medieval chris-
tianity from the perspective of a model Christian commonwealth. But the
ultimate significance of book II - as of the work as a whole - lies in its critique
of humanism itself. The substantive difference between Hexter and Fenlon
concerns this final crucial aspect. Both agree that More's criticism of humanism
is by way of a clear-headed response to humanism's naive strategy of reform.
However, Fenlon does not see More's response as an attempt to improve the
humanist scheme by reformulating it along more rigorous and more radical
lines. More's message is rather that the humanist programme is misdirected,
literally bound for nowhere. When More wrote Utopia, according to Fenlon,
he had come to believe that the humanist strategy was based upon an illusion:
the assumption that the political powers of Europe and the institutions of
secular government could be made the instrument of Christian renewal, of the
creation of a truly Christian commonwealth. More pin-pointed this fallacy by
directing attention in book I to the single-minded egoism of secular politics,
and in book II to the single-minded altruism which secular politics would be
required to display for the humanist scheme to work. The reader was thus
enabled to perceive the chasm between. To emphasize the point More called
the model commonwealth of book II 'Utopia', i.e. 'Nowhere', and he located
it on a remote island: ... the humanists and their books were stranded in
Utopia upon an island'.12 By means of this ingenious reformulation, Hexter's
thesis is made to turn somersault. Utopia is indeed the model of a Christian
commonwealth, but a model which More wishes to expose as an illusion.
Thus Fenlon succeeds in reviving within the new interpretative framework
the old historiographical debate about whether More proposes the Utopian
commonwealth as an idyll or as an ideal.
With that debate this study will ultimately engage. However, it will do so

" Hexter, 'Introduction', pp. c-cxxiv. Skinner, Foundations, I, 255-62.

12 Fenlon, 'England and Europe', especially p. I27. Elton, loc. cit. (n.s). It should be said that
for Dr Fenlon and Professor Elton Utopia seems to be endowed with a studied ambiguity. On
the one hand it represents 'an urbanized extension of More's household, which together with the
London Charterhouse, was the best model of a Christian society known to him', Fenlon, 'England
and Europe', p. I 22. On the other hand it is 'the best form of society imaginable without Christian
revelation', ibid. p. I 24.

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 6 BRENDAN BRADSHAW

by challenging in the first instance the interpretative framework proposed by

Hexter in I 965. Necessarily, therefore, it brings under review the 'reorientation
of [the] entire historiography' which Hexter's Introduction to the Yale edition
brought about. In this connexion it should be pointed out that despite the
scepticism that will frequently be voiced in what follows, this study stands
indebted to Hexter's work in one fundamental respect. That is, his identifi-
cation of the humanist ideology of reform as the ethos from which the Utopian
polemic emerged. The interpretation of Utopia presented here suggests, in fact,
that despite the correctness of his starting-point Hexter set off in the wrong
direction. His mistake, it will appear, was twofold. He misconceived the nature
of the humanist ideology of reform in its religious aspect, and that of its
polemical stance in I5I5-i6 when Utopia was written. Considerable attention
is here devoted to this topic since Hexter's mistake illustrates a more general
confusion which the present study may go some way to correct. Secondly, he
failed to take sufficient account of what must be regarded as basic data for the
purpose of an exercise which attempts to recover the author's intentions, the
meaning which he wished to convey to the reader. I refer to the guidance which
More provided for the reader within the text itself. In fact the present study
is largely an attempt to focus attention on that guidance and to elucidate its
meaning by reference to the humanist ethos from which the Utopian polemic
emerged.

II

Such an interpretative method raises an immediate problem for Hexter's

central hypothesis about what book II of Utopia describes. For the text purports
to describe the Utopian community prior to its conversion to christianity. It
is true that Hexter faces this difficulty head on by arguing that More here
intended to present an ironic paradox: their way of life stamps the nominal
pagans of Utopia as true Christians while the way of life of the nominal
Christians of Europe brand them as the worst kind of pagans.13 More's
insistence on the paganism of the Utopians heightens the ironic effect since
irony works by paradox. This explanation is open to criticism in the first
instance on purely formal grounds. It is true that irony works by inference.
To explain the point of the paradox is to blunt its ironic edge. On the other
hand, irony does not work by confusion, least of all when its point is a polemical
one. Thus, More, by portraying the Utopians as virtuous pagans without
enabling the reader to perceive his ironic intent, was not heightening the effect
of his paradox but, it would seem, rendering it inscrutable.
This brings us to the second leg of Hexter's argument and to the crucial
question of the message which Utopia conveyed as a humanist polemic. If
Hexter's exposition of the humanist ideology of reform is correct, contemporary
readers would have needed no special assistance from the author to recognize
who the Utopians really were and to grasp the point of More's paradox. One

13 Hexter, 'Introduction', pp. lxxiv-lxxviii. Cf. Skinner, Foundations, I, 232 3.

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 MORE ON UTOPIA 7

of Christian humanism's central tenets - one with major implications for its
programme of ecclesiastical, educational and social reform - was that true
christianity consisted in virtuous living not in the ritualism which characterized
the religion of the late-fifteenth-century Church. Viewed in the context of
Christian humanist polemics, therefore, Hexter argues, the function of the
Utopian commonwealth is clear. It enables More to state in a highly
challenging form the Christian humanist position regarding the essential and
the peripheral aspects of the Christian religion. Lying beyond the ambit of the
institutional Church Utopia is, nevertheless, a truly Christian society because
it is devoted to the one thing necessary, the cultivation of virtuous living.
So-called christendom, on the other hand, is a thoroughly unchristian society
because it neglects what is essential in the Christian religion, the life of virtue,
and concentrates instead on inessential religious paraphernalia.
Superficially this view seems plausible. It seems less so, however, when its
implications are considered. For if, on the one hand, the Utopian community
was happily devoted to virtue and free from the ritualism of late-medieval
christianity, on the other hand, it lacked scripture and the sacraments on which
depended the Church's claim to be the unique source of revelation and of grace.
If, therefore, Utopia represents More's model of true christianity it must be
accepted that he did not consider scripture, the sacraments, the cult of Jesus
himself, to be essential features of a truly Christian existence. Hexter and
Skinner seem to accept this implication since they argue that the point of
More's paradox - the authorial motive - was the assertion that virtue consti-
tuted the essence of the Christian life.14 It looks as if some anomaly has crept
in here, however, since Hexter's own exposition of the humanist ideology of
reform shows that it was not only virtue-orientated but also emphatically
christocentric and evangelical. Is it possible that the Erasmus who laboured
to produce in the same year as Utopia his Greek New Testament - a work of
scarcely less epochal significance - could have contemplated a model of truly
Christian living which had no place in it for the New Testament or for the
historical figure ofJesus Christ?
This consideration draws attention to the inadequacy of Hexter's exposition
of the humanist formula for the reform of religion in 1515-I6. The answer
which Erasmus gave to the 'paramount question of what constitutes a true
christian' was, according to Professor Hexter, 'not first and foremost to assent
to a creed, or to participate in a particular routine of pious observances; it was
to do as a Christian'.15 Consequently to live virtuously was to be a true Christian
even if one knew nothing of scripture or the historical Jesus for it was 'to have
God in Christ at the bottom of [one's] heart'.16 Despite its strong textual echoes
this statement of the Erasmian position in i5I5-i6 is misleading for one
reason: it fails to reflect the Platonist mould in which the humanist discussion
of Christian renewal was cast. This means that while Erasmus and More and
Christian humanists generally emphasized 'doing' as the ultimate test of true
14 Ibid. 15 Hexter, 'Introduction', p. lxviii.
16 Ibid. p. lxxvi.

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 8 BRENDAN BRADSHAW

christianity they saw that possibility to be dependent upon a true knowledge

of christianity. And the unique source of such knowledge was the life and
teaching ofJesus revealed in scripture. In the humanist view, therefore, it was
not the case that virtue somehow subsumes the christian revelation as if to say
'virtue is Christ'. Such a proposition postulates a relationship between deeds
and knowledge to which the humanists, because of their Platonic epistemology,
would have been quite averse. In fact, their proposition was rather that ' Christ
is virtue', in the sense that his life and teaching reveal definitively what it is
to be truly virtuous. It was in terms of this conception of the relationship
between Christian revelation and virtue that the humanist discussion of
Christian renewal took place It was on this formula that the scheme of
Erasmus's classic spiritual manual, the Enchiridion militis christiani, was built.
And it was in this conviction that he undertook the Herculean labours that
led to the publication of his Greek New Testament in 15i6.17 It follows that
the virtuous pagan, even the most noble, as Erasmus explicitly states - and the
most noble were surely the Utopians - could never be a true christian, lacking,
as he did, the knowledge of divine revelation that alone would enable him to
be one.18 In the light of all of this it will be clear that when More depicted
the Utopians as a community that lacked knowledge of the Christian gospel
he could never have intended them to provide a model of a truly Christian
commonwealth, nor could it have occurred to his humanist readers to suppose
that he had.
Utopia, therefore, must be taken for what the text tells us that it is, a
non-Christian community, organized in accordance with human values as
perceived by the light of reason. If that is what More intended to describe what
was his purpose in describing it? How, on this reading, can Utopia be related - as
Hexter rightly insists that it must - to the concerns of Christian humanists in
the opening decades of the sixteenth century?
A useful start can be made by reinstating the so-called Catholic interpretation
which Hexter summarily dismissed in 1965 on the grounds that it 'smacks a
little too strongly of the medieval schools'.'9 This was the view that the
heathenism of the Utopians gave a double edge to More's satire on the vices
of Christian Europe. As R. W. Chambers put it in 1935, 'The underlying
thought of Utopia always is, "With nothing save reason to guide them, the Utopians

17 For a discussion of the Enchiridion see below, pp. Ioff. For a statement of Erasmus's
conviction of the fundamental and unique importance of a knowledge of the revealed teachings
of Christ for christian living see his preface to his edition of the New Testament in I5I6, the
Paraclesis, ed. J. C. Olin, Christian humanism and the Reformation (London, I965), pp. 92---I06. An
English version of the Enchiridion is provided in The Enchiridion of Erasmus, ed. Raymond Himelick
(Bloomington, Indiana, I963).

"I For Erasmus's distinction between the noble pagan and the christian see The education of a
christian prince, ed. L. K. Born (New York, I936), p. I52. Having made that distinction Erasmus
went on to insist that true christianity was not a matter merely of creed or of ritual but of virtue.
Erasmus, therefore, excludes both the possibility that mere (pagan) virtue constitutes the essence
of christianity or that creed and ritual does so, ibid. p. I53.
19 Hexter, 'Introduction', p, lxxv.

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 MORE ON UTOPIA 9

do this; andyet we Christi

though this approach may seem to Professor Hexter to be, the fact remains
that precisely the same rhetorical ploy - appealing to the moral excellence of
pagans to shame Christians into a livelier sense of their responsibilities - is
exploited incessantly by Eramus in his Education of a Christian prince.21 Thus when
the Morean paradox is taken to hinge upon the heathenism of the Utopians
it functions as a rhetorical device in precisely the same way as the appeals to
classical antiquity in the polemics of Erasmus, More's esteemed friend and
collaborator at this period. It need hardly be said that a readership schooled
on the works of Erasmus was already conditioned to read the Morean paradox
in this way.
It seems clear, however, that the paradox was intended by More to operate
at a level deeper than rhetoric. As Professor Hexter rightly pointed out, it posed
some fundamental questions about the nature of christianity. What were the
questions and, more important, what were the answers, to which More wished
to lead his readers? As we have seen, Hexter's hypothesis, that Utopia
represents a truly Christian commonwealth, asserts much more - or much
less - about the nature of christianity than humanists would have wished. On
the other hand, when Utopia is taken at face value, as a community of virtuous
pagans, it raises precisely the issues about the Christian life which were at the
heart of the humanist scheme.
The issue which Erasmus tried to get late medieval christendom to face by
confronting it with the lore of classical antiquity hung upon a paradox which
bears obvious affinities to the Utopian one. Although lacking the resources of
divine revelation and externally mediated grace - the sacramental system,
etc. - classical antiquity provided outstanding examples of thought and con-
duct in harmony with the spirit of christianity. Conversely, despite its
possession of these resources, the thought and conduct of late medieval
christendom was far from the spirit of christianity. To grasp the point of the
Erasmian paradox it is necessary to bear in mind its compound character. It
was by this means that Erasmus succeeded in reformulating a question which
scholasticism had already posed and apparently answered. The scholastic
answer was contained in the Thomist adage which stressed in opposition to
Augustinian teaching the mutuality of the natural and supernatural dispen-
sations: gratia non tollit naturam sedperfecit. The supernatural order did not sup-
plant the natural one but enabled it to achieve a perfection that surpassed its
inherent possibilities. One implication of the formula was that non-Christians,
without the guidance of revelation or the assistance of externally mediated
grace, were capable of discerning by the light of reason their natural human
perfection and of striving towards it. In this way the achievements of classical
antiquity in the sphere of morality could be explained. However, the com-
pounded paradox which Erasmus posed, by contrasting the vices of contem-

2" R. W. Chambers, Thomas More (London, I935), pp. I26-8.

21 E.g., Born (ed.), The education of a christian prince, pp. I48, I52, i6o, i65, I7I--2.

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 10 BRENDAN_BRADSHAW

porary christendom with the virtues of classical antiquity, inverted the problem
which the Thomist formula had answered. At the same time it removed the
discussion from the speculative sphere of ontology, with its categories of nature
and grace, and posed it in terms of the existential relationship between religion
and morality. In this way, the Erasmian paradox formed part of a satire upon
contemporary religion which remorselessly exposed the inadequacy of the
scholastic formula.22
That grace had failed to bring late medieval christendom to any kind of
perfection whatever was the point from which Erasmus's critique of late
medieval religion began. The Church's treasury of grace had never been so
freely dispensed or so eagerly availed of by means of those 'supernatural works'
on which he turned so jaundiced an eye. At the same time divine revelation
had never been so minutely scrutinized by means of the scholastic dialectic
upon which he looked no less coldly. The result of all of this supernatural
industry was to produce, in Professor Hexter's phrase, 'louts at living'. In this
way, the invidious comparison invited by Erasmus's flaunting of the moral
rectitude of classical antiquity highlighted the ineffectualness of grace as
dispensed by the late medieval Church. Nevertheless, to say it again, the
conclusion to which Erasmus wished to lead his readers was not that the
resources of grace and revelation were incidental to a truly Christian existence
or that Christian perfection consisted in the cultivation of virtue alone. Sola
virtute was not the response of Erasmian humanism to the moral bankruptcy
of late-medieval religion - whatever the appeal of that formula to certain
rationalist and progressive strands in post Enlightenment christianity. What
then was the nature of its polemic against late medieval ritualism? No better
way of elucidating this could be found than by examining the teaching of the
Enchiridion militis christiani, which is generally accepted as Erasmus's classic
statement on christian living, whose vogue began with the publication of its
second edition two years after the appearance of Utopia.
The Enchiridion, as the preface explains, is Erasmus's treatise on Christian
formation, on 'how to achieve a character acceptable to Christ '.23 The key
to the interpretation of the work as a whole is provided by chapter 3, where
the thesis is set forth in summary form. Having warned the aspirant to Christian
perfection in chapter 2 that the task involves an incessant struggle against evil,
he proceeds in chapter 3 to discuss the special means - the weapons - with
which the struggle must be conducted. These, he explains, can be reduced to
two, prayer and knowledge.24 The book is mainly concerned with the way in
which prayer and knowledge relate in the formation of a Christian. In this
regard Erasmus expresses two convictions which constitute the essence of his

22 St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 2 ae, Q. IO9, art. I-4. For a somewhat different
account of the relationship between scholastic theology and the Erasmian polemic see the
Introduction by A. H. T. Levi to the Penguin translation of Erasmus's Praise qf folly (Harmonds-
worth, I97I), pp. I6 -32.
23 Himelick (ed.), Enchiridion, p. 37.
24 Ibid. pp. 38-44, 47-

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 MORE ON UTOPIA II

thesis. Firstly, he believes that prayer and knowledge must be wielded in

conjunction; the one is indispensible to the other. Secondly, he believes that
while prayer is the more powerful of the two, it depends for fruition on
knowledge.25 All of this assumes special significance in the light of the meaning
which Erasmus attaches to his terms. It transpires that he employs them in
a generic sense to categorize what seem to him to be the two fundamental
aspects of the Christian life. Prayer describes the properly religious dimension
of christian living, the dimension that pertains to 'communication with the
Deity'. Emphasizing its cultic character, Erasmus sees it symbolized by Aaron,
the archetype of the Judaic priesthoood.26 Knowledge, on the other hand, is
represented by Moses, the giver of the law. That is because Erasmus, in the
Platonic tradition, regards knowledge in moral rather than in purely intellectual
terms: the object of knowledge is virtue. Knowledge, therefore, categorizes the
moral dimension of the christian life.27
In this light it is possible to see how the thesis presented in the Enchiridion
relates to the polemics of the Erasmian paradox. In a world in which religion
and morality seemed to have become divorced, Erasmus asserts an integral
relationship between the two. Further, in a world frantically attempting to
achieve sanctification by religious works he asserts the need to ground religion
in morality for sanctifying effect. To be truly sanctifying, he argues, religion
must proceed from within, from the mind and heart. To secure this interior-
ization is precisely the function of knowledge, of moral purposefulness.
Conversely, it was precisely the failure to ground religion in morality that
explained the formal and mechanistic quality of the devotional life of the
late-medieval Church as well as the legalism and sterile intellectualism of
scholastic theology. Conducted with 'unwashed hands', without a purification
of mind and heart, religious practice and religious reflexion remain external,
superficial, unholy. Expressed in terms of the scholastic formula, the point of
the Erasmian paradox is that grace will perfect nature only if nature has
disposed itself, by moral endeavour, to receive grace.
It is the polemical thrust of Erasmus's teaching which has led to the modern
cliche' about the 'unsacramental' nature of his religious position, which, in
Professor Hexter's exposition of it, amounts to an assertion of sola virtute.28
Erasmus was concerned to restore moral endeavour to the centre of the

25 Ibid. pp. 46-58; see especially p. 47.

26 Ibid. p. 47.

27 Ibid. pp. 48--50, 55-7, I32. On the Platonic concept of knowledge see W. K. C. Guthrie, A
history of Greek philosophy (Cambridge, I975), IV, 24I-65.
28 For a recent exposition of Erasmianism and, in particular, of the Enchiridion, which finds
Erasmus's perspective 'emphatically un-sacramental', see J. K. McConica, English humanists and
Reformation politics (Oxford, I965), pp. I3-43, especially pp. I9--23: A more nuanced view is
provided by Roland H. Bainton. Nevertheless, his exposition of the Enchiridion concludes that 'the
thrust [of Erasmus's discussion], despite all disclaimers, made for rendering the outward apparatus
of religion superfluous'; Bainton, Erasmus of Christendom (New York, I 969), p. 67. Whilst not arguing
explicitly against this position John B. Payne was able to extract from Erasmus's writings a
generally orthodox theology of the sacraments; Payne, Erasmus: his theology qf the sacraments
(W. E. Bratcher, I 970).

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 12 BRENDAN BRADSHAW

christian life in a situation in which, as he perceived it, the role of religious

endeavour had been overstressed and misunderstood. That is not to say that
he reduced christianity to a matter of morality. On the contrary, his teaching
in the Enchiridion was that the christian mustjourney from bondage to freedom
under the leadership not only of Moses, the symbol of morality, but also of
Aaron, the symbol of religious cult, who, Erasmus explains significantly, has
charge of the holy sacraments. Indeed he held that even the naive popular
devotions to saints, images and relics had a positive contribution to make in
the formation of a Christian.29 If, therefore, Erasmus stressed the moral
dimension of the Christian life his purpose was not to eliminate its religious or
cultic aspect but to enable cult to be exercised with truly sanctifying effect.30
In this light it is possible to see how Utopia functioned as a humanist polemic
concerned with the reform of religion. The constraints of the form which he
employed provided More with a different perspective on the problem from that
of Erasmus. Whereas the latter was straightforwardly concerned with the
perfection of the individual as a christian, More's treatment of the subject was
set in the context of a discussion of the perfection of the community as a political
entity. However, once the different framework of the discussion is allowed for,
the correspondence between the argument of Utopia and that of the Enchiridion
on the subject of christian perfection needs little elucidation. The categories
of prayer and knowledge by means of which Erasmus conducts his analysis are
replaced by those of reason and revelation. But the burden of the polemic
remains the same: the integral relationship between morality and religion.
The crucial episode in this respect is the account of what happened when
the Utopians who live in accordance with reason come in contact with the
teaching of Christ. In Professor Hexter's account the response of the Utopians
at this point is simply one of happy recognition that they are already Christian,
possessing as they do the one necessary qualification - virtue.3' But that cannot

29 Himelick (ed.), Enchiridion, pp. 47, 99--I00, III I2.

30 On this see especially ibid. pp. IO9--Io. The alleged dualism of the Enchiridion, with which
the foregoing exposition takes issue, is often related to the alleged dualism of Platonic philosophy
from which the philosophical framework of the Enchiridion derives. Thus, the supposedly dualistic
structure of the Platonic universe, in which sensible reality - the visible material world - is set over
against intelligible reality - the unseen, conceptualized world of the mind - is paralleled with the
supposedly dualistic structure of Erasmian religion: the external religion of cult and the
internalized religion of virtue. Such a formulation not only misconceives the conceptual structure
of the Enchiridion: it misconceives the structure of Platonism also. The source of the confusion seems
to be a failure to distinguish between Plato's epistemology and his ontology. His disparagement
of external reality and of sense experience occurs at the former level. He is not concerned to reject
material reality but rather to ensure a proper knowledge of it. He is not concerned to reject sense
experience but rather to delimit its boundaries as a source of knowledge. On the other hand, the
fundamental postulate of Plato's ontology, far from being dualistic, affirms the harmonious and
unitive structure of the universe. In Plato's view external and internal reality, the material and
the spiritual, are functionally related in the fulfilment of this unitive design. This is precisely the
perspective of Erasmus in the Enchiridion. He is not concerned to repudiate cultic religion but to
repudiate misunderstandings about it and to show how it relates to the inner life of virtue in the
fulfilment of God's design for human sanctification, W. K. Guthrie, A history of Greek philosophy
(Cambridge, I978), V, 44I-5. 31 Hexter, 'Introduction', p. lxxvii.

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 MORE ON UTOPIA 13

be the message which More wished to convey. What he describes is a process

of conversion: evangelization, producing intellectual assent and followed by
sacramental initiation.32 If christianity had no more to offer the Utopians than
they already possessed, why not rest content with Utopianism - and claim
Christ as a true Utopian? Like Erasmus in the Enchiridion, the thrust of More's
polemic led him to concentrate on the affinity between Utopian reason and
Christian revelation. But that he did not regard the unevangelized Utopians
as perfect Christians is obvious from the account of their conversion. In this
respect one incidental feature of the conversion account is revealing,
particularly so in the light of the common misconception of the humanist
position. That is the concern which Hythloday displays to make the full
sacramental system of the Church available to the Utopians after their
conversion and the eagerness which the Utopians display to avail themselves
of it.33 The purpose of Utopia as a religious polemic is not, therefore, to reduce
christianity to a matter of morality. Nor is it concerned to demonstrate the
congruence of reason with revelation considered in objective terms as systems
of intellectual knowledge. That was the point of St Thomas. What Utopia
considers is the relationship between the two from the subjective point of
view, i.e. in terms of their mutual action in enabling the individual to perceive
the truth. Herein lies the significance of the conversion episode and the key to
the Utopian paradox. Just as morality is a precondition of spirituality in the
practice of religion, so it is a precondition of revelation in the understanding
of it. More makes the point in a positive and in a negative way. On the one
hand the Utopians show themselves remarkably open to the teaching of Christ.
Duly allowing for the 'mysterious inspiration of God' - thus guarding himself
against a charge of Pelagianism - More explains this openness in terms of the
affinity between a way of life lived in fidelity to reason and the christian way
revealed in the New Testament.34 On the other hand, the affinity which the
Utopians perceive between the gospel message and their own rational idealism
emphasizes by contrast the incongruity between the religious idealism of the
gospel and the sterile cerebralism of late medieval theology.
This, then, was the polemic of Christian humanism against the mechanistic
and legalistic religious practice of late-medieval christendom and against the
moral and spiritual bankruptcy of its theology. Its purpose was not to promote
a doctrine of sola virtute or to push creed and cult to the periphery of the
Christian life. Its purpose was not to destroy but to renew: to renew Christian
cult and Christian theology by reformulating the relationship between
morality and religion. No doubt the religious polemic of christian humanism
as presented here will seem less radical than recent writers have conceived it
to be. On the other hand, it places Erasmus and More at a considerable
distance from the scholastics on the theology of nature and grace. Gratia non
tollit naturam sedperfecit. To that proposition Utopia and the Enchiridion respond
that DroLress towards Derfection in the order of nature is a condition, not a

32 Yale Utopia, pp. 2I8- i9. 33 Ibid. p. 2I9. 34 Loc. cit.

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14 BRENDAN BRADSHAW

consequence, of progress towards it in the order of grace. Further, to neglect

the means of perfection in the order of nature - rational moral endeavour - is
to render ineffectual the means of perfection in the order of grace. The
distinctiveness of the humanist position is emphasized when it is set in relation
to the teaching of that contemporary Augustinian theologian who was also to
denounce the futile religious works of the late medieval church and the
bankruptcy of its theology, but who offered a very different critique of
scholasticism. The opposition of Erasmus and More to the solafide doctrine of
Martin Luither is not to be reduced to a matter of personality traits - supineness
in the one, aggressive traditionalism in the other. The source of their opposition
is to be found in the humanist conception of the relationship between morality
and religion propounded in the Enchiridion and in Utopia.

III

The theme of Utopia is not, of course, ecclesiastical reform as such but the reform
of civil society. It is in that context that the polemic for the renewal of religion
is conducted. The problems that agitate the dialogists in book I, the problems
that book II is designed to solve, are considered in relation to the civil rather
than to the ecclesiastical organization of society. Accordingly, the moral norm
to which appeal is made is that of socialjustice. More specifically, the discussion
is dominated by the notion which for the humanists, following scholastic and
classical commentators, constituted the norm of justice in the sphere of civil
government, the commonwealth. To the interpretation of Utopia specifically
as a treatise on the commonwealth it is now proposed belatedly to turn.
Our concern here is not with Professor Hexter's brilliant exposition of the
originality of Utopia in its approach to social reform by means of social
engineering. However, two comments suggest themselves in that regard.
Firstly, Professor Hexter seems to underplay the fact that here Utopia did not
so much invent the concept of 'social environmentalism' as revive it after a
lapse of some eighteen hundred years: Aristotle's attack upon the original
version, Plato's Republic, having apparently killed the notion stone dead.35 As
we shall see, that earlier battle of the gods has an important place in the
intellectual pre-history of Utopia.36 Secondly, to point out the obvious, that
aspect of Hexter's exposition is in no way related to the hypothesis that book
II of Utopia describes a Christian commonwealth. It is significant, indeed, that
the features which Professor Hexter finds most remarkable about the Utopian
commonwealth, the features which set it apart from the general run of
humanist political treatises and which place it on the 'margins of modernity'
derive not from its supposed christianity but from its rationality. What enabled
More to achieve this unremittingly rational approach if not his adherence to
the concept of a society organized by the light of reason alone?

35 Hexter, 'Introduction', pp. cv-cxxiv. For Aristotle's attack on the Republic see Politics, bk ii,
260b- I 266b, and below, n. 43.
36 See below, pp. i6 -I7.

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 MORE ON UTOPIA 15

On the other hand, where Hexter's hypothesis about Utopia as a model

Christian commonwealth does intrude it continues to be a source of confusion.
In the first place, it seems to have produced an element of double-think on
his own part. On the one hand he presents Utopia to us as the embodiment
of the highest aspirations of the Christian revival of the renaissance period. It
is a polity designed to establish the kingdom of Christ on earth, to create a
truly Christian social order aimed at extirpating the roots of sin and built upon
the gospel's golden rule of charity, love of God and love of all men for his
sake.37 When, however, he comes to assess the significance of the Utopian ethos
in the light of later intellectual history the analogy he draws relates the
Utopians to the philosophes of the eighteenth century: 'the equation reason equals
nature equals virtue, the deism precariously perched on rational foundations of
doubtful solidity, the feeble and slightly apologetic hedonism wavering
between the logical need for a this-worldly base and the psychological need
for other-worldly sanctions '.38 If this represents the Utopian philosophy - and
it seems to come close enough to the mark - it is not easy to see how it can
be reconciled with an aspiration towards the establishment of the regnum Christi
as described earlier.
However, the most serious objection to Hexter's hypothesis is that it not only
misrepresents the nature of More's case with regard to religion, as we have seen,
but that it misrepresents it with regard to social justice also. Here the matter
at issue is the central feature of the Utopian commonwealth, its communism.
In this regard Professor Hexter's anxiety to demonstrate the christianity of
Utopia has resulted in a failure to relate the debate about common ownership
to its precise context in the history of Christian moral philosophy. This is
important because a proper understanding of the argument mounted in Utopia
depends on an understanding of the position which it sought to overthrow.
Professor Hexter sees the context of moral thought in which Utopian
communism is set as the 'theory which reached Christianity by way of Stoicism
through the Church Fathers of late antiquity '.39 This theory vested the radical
ownership of the world's goods universally in all mankind. However, it
precluded the logical corollary, a communist social system, by invoking the
doctrine of the Fall. Communism was possible to man only in the state of
primeval innocence. With the corruption of human nature through sin, and
man's consequent vulnerability to greed and pride, private ownership became
a necessary feature of the human condition. Like the curtailment of human
freedom by means of political authority, the private possession of property was
both a punishment for sin and a remedy for it. Relating Utopia to that moral
tradition Professor Hexter suggests that, as Marx did to Hegel, More turned
the theory upside down. Utopia argues that private property is not a remedy
for sin but a cause of it. Conversely, common ownership attacks at source the
sins of greed and pride to which private possessions give rise.40

37 Hexter, 'Introduction', pp. cii, civ. 38 Ibid. p. cxvi.

39 Ibid. pp. cxi, cxiii. 40 Loc. cit.

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 BRENDAN BRADSHAW

Despite the apparent neatness of the fit the patristic argument does not seem
to be the one with which the exposition of communism in Utopia is primarily
concerned. The text itself suggests another context which also seems more
plausibleprimafacie. The fact is that the argument about communism in Utopia
is not conducted within the theological frame of reference employed by the
Fathers. Hythloday's antagonist - More himself- does not defend private
property by appealing to a divine dispensation ordained as a safeguard against,
and a remedy for, sin. Instead, the defence is mounted at the rational level
in terms which situate it in an intellectual tradition more immediate to the
early sixteenth-century humanists. The tradition in question is the scholastic
one which derived from St Thomas's adaptation of the philosophy of Aristotle.
With the assistance of Aristotle St Thomas was able to formulate an explanation
of private property in more positive terms than the Fathers. He removed its
origins from the realm of sin and as a divinely ordained prophylactic to that
of reason, human experience and positive law. He accepted a radical right of
common ownership founded upon natural law. But he taught that this did not
preclude the practical organization of the material resources of society on the
basis of private ownership; further, that reason, vindicated by experience,
indicated the necessity of such a course on three grounds - economic incentive,
efficient production and social harmony. Thus, scholasticism derived from St
Thomas a theoretical justification for private property as an ordinance of
positive law, devised by the wit of man for the common good, and grounded
in reason and experience.4'
That this was the tradition of thought with which Hythloday engaged in
Utopia is clear. As mentioned earlier, More himself set up the discussion in those
terms. In countering Hythloday's introductory speech on behalf of communal
ownership More rehearsed two of the Thomistic arguments: the necessity for
an economic incentive, and for a means of defining 'mine and thine' in the
interests of social harmony. In place of the third, the organizational advantages
of private ownership, he exploited a structural argument that was to loom large
in the course of the century, and which ultimately derived from Aristotle's
advocacy of a political elite of property-owners, namely that political order
requires social degree - which in turn assumes degrees of wealth.42 At the same
time Hythloday made the intellectual tradition within which he stood explicit
by aligning himself with Plato from the outset.43 In this way he set his debate

41 Aquinas: selectedpolitical writings, ed. A. P. D'Entreves (Oxford, I959), pp. xxxi-xxxii, I66 .75.
42 Yale Utopia, p. I07. Aristotle, Politics, bk. vii, I329a.
43 Yale Utopia, pp. 10 1, 105. Hexter detaches Utopia from the Platonic tradition by arguing that
a proper communist system is not found in the Republic at all. Common ownership is there confined
to the Guardian class as a means of segregating them from 'the lumpish mass', 'Introduction',
p. cx. The situation is more complex. As Aristotle pointed out, it was not the case that Plato
specifically confined common ownership to the Guardians. Rather he neglected to specify whether
it was to apply to the other classes as well. In fact, Aristotle's criticism of the Republic proceeded
on the assumption that Plato envisaged a fully fledged communist system, Politics, bk. II, 1261 a,
I 264a. Furthermore, Plato's own cursory summary of the Republic in the Laws speaks of a system
in which common ownership 'is put into practice as widely as possible throughout the entire state',
Laws, book 5, 739. Therefore, More was in good company in supposing that Plato advocated
communism as the ideal system of socio-political organization.

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 MORE ON UTOPIA I 7

with scholasticism on the issue of communal ownership in the context of the

earlier debate between Plato and Aristotle on the same subject. SetLin that
context, the strategy of his argument becomes clear. His ploy was, in fact, to
appropriate the Aristotelian argument to rout the scholastics. In the Politics
Aristotle defended the status quo against Plato's communist system by an appeal
to reason and experience.44 It was precisely on the same basis that Hythloday
proposed to reinstate the radical argument. In book I he sought to demonstrate,
by appealing to the experience of the European nations, that a social system
based on private wealth is not conducive to social justice, the norm of which
is the common wealth. In book II he sought to demonstrate by recourse to
reason that a system of communal ownership is so conducive.
Once again, therefore, the polemic of Utopia is seen to depend on accepting
book II at face value as the account of a purely rational society not of a truly
Christian one. The rational defence of common ownership in this way also
served another function within the structure of the Utopian polemic. Strangely,
Professor Hexter's exposition fails to relate Utopian communism to the moral
teaching of the New Testament. Indeed, he is dismissive of any such relationship
beyond a vague inspirational influence.45 Apart from any consideration of his
own hypothesis this seems odd indeed, given the ethos of Christian humanism
from which Utopia emerged and the explicit references in the text itself. In
his view, therefore, Utopia has no significance for the steady tradition of
interpretation from the Fathers onwards which relegated the New Testament
commendation of common ownership to the category of a 'counsel of
perfection'. According to this interpretation common ownership was not
presented in the New Testament as a moral norm operative in the ordinary
conduct of human affairs. On the contrary, its function, like that of celibacy,
was to set those who practised it apart as an 'eschatological witness', i.e. a sign
of the transience of earthly values and of the reality of the transcendent ones
in which man's ultimate fulfilment lay. In fact, Utopia posed a challenge to this
entrenched position precisely by arguing from reason and experience. If reason
taught that common ownership was the system of social organization most
conducive to social justice, to the common wealth, then afortiori the teaching
of the New Testament in the matter belonged not to the sphere of Christian
asceticism but to Christian morality. That is to say, the primitive Christian
community depicted in Acts, who 'held all things in common', represented not
a model for a spiritual elite but the system of social organization appropriate
to the ordinary Christian community. Thus, as noted in the previous section,
the argument moves in book II of Utopia from reason to revelation. Having
undergone the purificatory process of living in fidelity to reason, the Utopians
perceive the true import of the New Testament teaching. And thus Hythloday,
having invoked Plato in his introductory speech in book I on behalf of
communal ownership, can in his peroration in book II invoke also the
authority of Christ.46

44 Aristotle, Politics, bk ii, I 260b- I 264b. 45 Hexter, 'Introduction', pp. cx-cxi.

46 Yale Utopia, pp. ioi, 105, 243. Above, p. I 3.

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 BRENDAN BRADSHAW

Professor Hexter argues persuasively that the achievement of Utopia in

linking an egalitarian social gospel to the notion of reform by social engineering
places the work at the source of modern secular radicalism. It is no less just
to claim that Utopia's achievement in linking an egalitarian social gospel with
the moral teaching of the New Testament places it at the source of modern
Christian socialism.

IV

If Utopia lies at the source of these traditions is More to be regarded as their

patriarch? That is one way of posing the problem about More's ultimate
purpose in writing Utopia with which the final sections of this study will be
concerned. As we saw at the outset, the debate on that issue has centred on
the question of whether the Utopian commonwealth is to be regarded as
idealistic or idyllic, a question which, in turn, in the post-Hexterian historio-
graphy has been formulated in terms of the nature of More's critique of
humanism. By actualizing the humanist vision of a true commonwealth in the
communist society of Utopia was More endeavouring, as Professor Skinner has
it, to bring the humanists to accept the radical implications of their own
ideology; to persuade them, that the task of achieving the just society entailed
not simply educating the ruling caste in virtue but abolishing a socio-political
structure based on degree and propped up by wealth; that for More, therefore,
the radical structural transformation described in book II of Utopia provided
' the solution - the only possible solution - to the social evils already outlined
in book I'. Alternatively, by actualizing the humanist vision in the beautiful
isle of Nowhere, was More endeavouring, as Dr Fenlon has it, to bring the
humanists to a realization that the enterprise of renewing society by reforming
the state was an illusory one; that, therefore, the true commonwealth of book
II provided an impossible solution in view of the dynamics of European
politics - egoism, wealth, power - laid bare in book I ?4
It will be argued here that More's ultimate purposes in relation to Utopia are
revealed in the same way as his immediate intentions, by the guidance which
he provides for the reader in the text itself. The relevant guidance, in the
present instance, is provided by the very title of the work and by the manner
in which Hythloday, the narrator of book II, is presented in the introductory
part of the text. By these means More indicates both a philosophical tradition
and a prototype in terms of which Utopia must be understood. The philosophical
tradition is the Platonic one and the prototype is the original 'ideal common-
wealth', Plato's Republic. Hythloday, the text stresses, is not an explorer of
places but of political forms and ideas, and his ship is Platonic philosophy.48
Like Plato he believes that he has discovered 'the best form of a commonwealth',
the ideal Res Publica. All of this received additional emphasis in the early
editions through the prefatory contributions of Peter Giles in conversation with

47 Skinner, Foundations, I, 255-62. Above, pp. 3-5.

48 Yale Utopia, pp. 48- 5 I. For an especially fine elaboration of More's use of the metaphor of
exploration in relation to Hythloday see Baker-Smith, Plato's voyage, pp. 4-5.

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 MORE ON UTOPIA I9

whom, as More acknowledges, the Utopian commonwealth took shape. In his

commendatory letter to Jerome Busleiden and his pseudonymous verse in
praise of Utopia which appeared in the early editions, Giles claims that Utopia
not merely emulated Plato's Republic but excelled it.49 Against this background
More's presentation of Utopia as 'the best form of a commonwealth' acquires
a precise philosophical connotation. What this is must be elucidated by
reference to Plato's Republic.
Plato explains within the dialogue itself how he intends the Republic to
function as a philosophical ideal. At the outset he makes it clear that the
philosophical city he is about to construct belongs to the real world, not to the
world of fantasy. He does this by agreeing, in response to objections by his
interlocutors, to abandon the project of building in the idyllic conditions he
had first proposed and to establish his commonwealth instead in the conditions
of the actual world, a world that possessed the amenities of civilization but
which, unlike the world of the idyll, was imperfect in itself: a world of wars,
of toil, of trade, a world in which people grew old and ill.50 Yet, as the
construction of the philosophical city proceeds Plato is forced to agree that the
scale of perfection on which he is building in theory makes his project unlikely
of implementation in practice. Nevertheless he insists on the practical utility
of the exercise. This is summed up in the famous passage which concludes book
IX, the last section of the Republic proper, in which Plato refers to his
brainchild as 'a pattern laid up in heaven where he who wishes can see it and
establish it in his own heart'.5' It is clear from the discussion that precedes,
a discussion that has developed over three chapters, that we are here in the
realm of the Platonic Form or Idea, the theory fundamental to Plato's
epistemology. According to this theory the phenomena which we apprehend
through sense experience in the historical world, the world of space and time,
are partial and imperfect representations of their paradigms or ideal forms
which exist in the higher reality of the world of ideas which can be apprehended
only at the level of intelligible experience.52 The Republic is, therefore, an
attempt to describe the paradigm of the commonwealth, a paradigm to which
all temporal commonwealths relate, as the imperfect to the perfect, and which
no particular commonwealth existing in historical reality can successfully
reproduce.
Bearing in mind that for Plato the res publica - the commonwealth - was a
moral and not a formal political concept, the practical utility of the exercise
was twofold. To establish the paradigm of the commonwealth was to establish
the criteria by which the moral quality of existing political communities must
be assessed. It was also to provide the ideal of ajust society to which all existing
political communities must aspire and which their structures must seek to
enshrine. Thus in the Laws, when Plato faced the task of providing a

49 Yale Utopia, pp. 20- I .

50 Plato, Republic, bk. II, 372-4. Guthrie, History of Greek philosophy, IV, 446-9.
51 Plato, Republic, bk v, 47I-4, bk VI, 498, bk Ix, 592; Guthrie, loc. cit. pp. 483- 6.
52 Guthrie, ibid. pp. 338-65, 503 2I.

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 20 BRENDAN BRADSHAW

constitution for a proposed new state, he began by recalling the perfect model
of the Republic and enunciated the principle that the task of the constitution-
maker was to frame a set of laws and institutions designed to establish a
commonwealth that would approximate as nearly to the paradigm as existing
conditions would allow.53
Set in this philosophical context neither the thesis of Skinner nor of Fenlon
seems adequate. It is true, as the latter argues, that Utopia is Nowhere. That
is not to say, however, that it belongs to a fantasy world of idyllic perfection,
remote from and indifferent to the world of historical reality. Undoubtedly,
as a paradigm, as 'the best form of a commonwealth', it can have no existence
in the historical world, the world of sense experience. It belongs in the realm
of ideas. Nevertheless, More like Plato constructs his philosophical city in the
midst of 'real life': in the world of wars, of toil, of business, of illness and old
age. The name Utopia, therefore, serves to associate the work with a
philosophical genre, the Platonic paradigm, not with a literary one, the idyll.
It follows that the purpose of More in contrasting the ideal commonwealth
of book II with the world of jungle politics depicted in book I was not, pace
Fenlon, to assert the futility of the ideal in the light of the reality. On the
contrary, the utility of book II lay precisely in providing a contrast. It provided
a standard by which to judge and a model by which to reform the political
practice depicted in book I.
On the other hand, it follows also that the purpose of the contrast for More
was not, pace Skinner, to assert the futility of any other means short of the ideal
by which to reform the reality. Utopia was 'the best form of a commonwealth'.
As such its function was not to stipulate the essential preconditions for reform
but to indicate what reform might ideally achieve. Book II, therefore, did not
represent 'the only possible solution ... for the social evils depicted in book I'.
It represented the best possible solution for them.54 However, on the way to
Utopia Hythloday encountered other commonwealths which were in some
degree imperfect but which, nevertheless, contained 'not a little on which to
model the reform of our own cities, nations, peoples and kingdoms'. Thus, the
constitution of the Polylerites provided a model of ajust criminal system; that
of the Achorians a means of safeguarding against the baneful consequences
of dynastic ambition; that of the Macerians - significantly, 'a people not very
far from Utopia' - a way to curb royal avarice.55 Like Plato in The Laws,
Hythloday in book I of Utopia shows a readiness to commend the virtues of
second best which Professor Skinner fails to take into account when analysing
the notion of Utopian reform. Such an analysis must indeed provide for the

53 Plato, Laws, bk V, 739.

54 Erasmus made precisely this point about the Republic in his prefatory letter to the 2nd edition
of the Enchiridion, for which see Christian humanism and the Reformation, ed. John C. Olin (London,
I965), p. I22. Again, Castiglione presents his courtier as a Platonic ideal, and he justified
the exercise in similar terms to those used by Plato, The book of the courtier, ed. George Bull
(Harmondsworth, I976, orig. I967), pp. 35-6. It is clear that this was the common humanist
understanding of the function of the 'ideal type'.
5 Yale Utopia, pp. 54-5, 74-5, 88-9, 96-7-

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 MORE ON UTOPIA 21

radical thrust which the Utopian concept of reform acquires from the absolute
moral criteria it brings to bear, from the perfection on which it insists as an
ideal, and from the strategy of social engineering which it employs. Nevertheless,
true to the Platonic mould in which it was formulated the Utopian concept
of reform combines its moral idealism and its radical thrust with a calculated
pragmatism which is no less essential to the concept. For it is this readiness
to take account of the necessary imperfection of the human condition while
urging the possibility of progress that ultimately distinguishes Utopia as an
ideal and not an idyll.

It would seem from the foregoing that More was committed.to the concept
of reform for which Utopia stands. However, adherence to the interpretative
method employed in this study suggests one final difficulty. It is necessary to
consider the significance of the fact that More placed himself in opposition
to the advocate of Utopia, Raphael Hythloday, on the two issues which serve
to frame the dialogue as a whole, i.e. the 'problem of counsel' and Utopian
communism. It is necessary to consider, therefore, whether Utopia offers a
critique of Utopianism within the text itself.
Professor Skinner dismisses this possibility by appealing once again to
Morean irony.56 Ironically, he does so in order to protect Utopia's critique of
humanism. He point out that Hythloday's steadfast repudiation of the role of
princely counsellor as well as his steadfast vindication of Utopian communism
set Utopia outside the mainstream of humanist political literature. To take More's
opposition to Hythloday on these issues seriously would seem to reduce him
and his work to humanist conventionality.
Leaving consideration of the question of communism until later, it may be
said at any rate that to rescue More on the subject of princely counselling in
this way is hardly satisfactory. Firstly, the appeal to irony has no textual
warrant, which in itself suggests that More intended his observations to be
taken literally. Secondly, the ironic interpretation rescues him from Scylla only
to forfeit him to Charybidis. For while More was supposedly denouncing royal
service in the lofty moral tones of Raphael Hythloday, he was in practice
ensconcing himself in office under Henry VIII - a turn in More's career which
Professor Hexter does not hesitate to treat as the fall of a prophet.57 In fact,
however, by accepting More's criticism of Hythloday at face value, the text
is found to yield an interpretation which both rescues More from inconsistency
and Utopia from conventionality.
Professor Skinner's formidable command of the texts of renaissance political
literature enables him to show the uniqueness of Hythloday's stand in the
context of the humanist discussion of princely counselling.58 However, having
situated Hythloday's argument ideologically, Skinner's contextual analysis

56 Skinner, Foundations, I, 218, 259. 57 Hexter, 'Introduction', pp. lxxxiv-xcii, civ-cv.

58 Skinner, Foundations, I, 2I3-2 I.

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 22 BRENDAN BRADSHAW

surprisingly fails to situate it philosophically. Surprisingly, because the text

itself does so explicitly. Like the notion of Utopia itself, the Utopian debate
on the problem of counsel finds its philosophical referent in Plato's Republic.
A comparison of the two reveals that if Hythloday's stand is unique in the
context of the humanist discussion, it is not unprecedented. It is, in fact, a
restatement of the classical Platonic argument. When More sought to invoke
Plato on behalf of the notion of princely counselling Hythloday was quick to
point out that his philosophical mentor's commendation of that role was strictly
conditional upon the existence of a consensus between the philosopher-
counsellor and the ruler.59
Plato's argument was firstly that in any other circumstance, involvement
would prove futile. Unless government shared the moral values and the
rational approach of the philosopher it would not, because it could not, apply
his advice. To offer it would do the commonwealth no good. Secondly, it would
do the philosopher harm. It would divert him to no purpose from intellectual
pursuits, and it would be bound to compromise his moral integrity. In order
to find common ground with those in high places who did not share his outlook
he would be obliged to conduct himself as a politician rather than as a
philosopher, which would mean deviating from the strict path of reason (i.e.
truth) into 'mere' sophistry and 'empty' rhetoric. This, then, was the dilemma
of the Platonic philosopher. Morally and intellectually he was uniquely
equipped to participate in government but he was precluded from doing so
while government was dominated by the false values and the cosmetic methods
of politics. For Plato the resolution of that dilemma would be achieved only
when philosophers became rulers or rulers became philosophers.60 The public
role of the philosopher meanwhile was to strive for moral and intellectual
change by propagating knowledge of the true philosophy - hence The Republic.
Against this background Hythloday's stance on the problem of counsel needs
no elucidation. He perfectly embodies the Platonic position: the intellectual
committed to the cause of social justice who nevertheless refused to place his
expertise at the service of government because he can see no room for morality
and rationality where government is directed to political ends; self-interest,
power and wealth. As he pointed out, the public duty of the intellectual in these
circumstances is to strive for a change in mentality by propagating his
ideas - hence Utopia.6'
More's criticism of this stance must be seen in relation to the conventional
humanist criticism of it. Here the soft-centred nature of the humanist ideology
is revealed. The conventional humanist response to the problem of counsel

59 Yale, Utopia, pp. 86--7.

60 Plato, Republic, bk VI, 497-502. The discussion in the Republic represents an early statement
of Plato's repudiation of rhetoric and political activity against Isocrates and the Sophists. His
position was to be put even mort forcefully in the Gorgias and finally reiterated in more considered
tones in the Phaedrus; Guthrie, History of Greek philosophy, IV, 4I2-I7.
61 Yale Utopia, pp. 87, I07. In his treatment of this episode Baker-Smith does not seem to
appreciate the relevance of the debate about philosophy, rhetoric and politics in the Republic;
Baker-Smith, Plato's voyage, pp. I6--I7.

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 MORE ON U'FOPIA 23

entailed a repudiation of Plato's scepticism in favour of a naive confidence in

the power of a reconstituted alliance between reason and eloquence to bring
the political beast to heel - thereby resolving the intellectual's dilemma by
refusing to acknowledge its existence. While humanist discussions of the
question often stressed the corrupting power of politics they did so only to
magnify the reformative power of counsel, i.e. philosophy mediated through
eloquence.62 Castiglione maintained that by means of wise counsel vicious
rulers would be brought to virtue, virtuous ones would be protected from
flatterers. Thomas Starkey urged that instead of presuming with Plato that the
times were unpropitious for entering government the intellectual ought to
presume them to be opportune, and this would, indeed, prove to be the case.63
The novelty of More's position lay in confronting the Platonic dilemma
which conventional humanism refused to face and in resolving it in favour of
political involvement. More's criticism of the Platonic stance is graphically
conveyed by his use of the metaphor of the ship of state upon which Plato had
also drawn. What good can the skilled navigator do, asked Plato, if the crew
will not acknowledge the need for his expertise but struggle to gain control of
the helm themselves in order to pillage the cargo?64 In contrast, More used
the metaphor in a way that emphasized the intellectual's moral responsibilities
which Plato had obscured by posing the problem in utilitarian terms. 'You
must not abandon the ship in a storm', he declared, 'because you cannot
control the winds'.65 The moral obligation of the intellectual towards the
commonwealth was, in fact, the essence of More's case against Hythloday.
Despite the personal inconvenience, despite the apparent futility, 'nothing
more pertained to the duty of a good man than to serve the commonwealth '.66
Thus, More argued, Hythloday (Plato) claimed a freedom of choice regarding

62 The cultivation of eloquence, as of good letters, was, of course, a major feature of the humanist
revival of rhetoric. The deeply felt conviction about the mutuality of eloquence and wisdom
derived from Cicero. He had attempted to harmonize rhetoric and philosophy following their
division into separate and competing disciplines as a result of the controversy between Socrates--
Plato and the Sophists; Cicero, De Oratore, especially bk III, 52-73; Jerrold E. Seigel, Rhetoric and
philosophy in Renaissance humanism (Princeton, I 968), passim: attention might be drawn, incidentally,
here to the implications of this consideration for recent attempts to identify Hythloday as Erasmus.
In his commitment to eloquence and good letters, and in his conviction as to their public utility - as
instruments of public reform by persuasive rather than coercive means - Erasmus was nothing if
not a Ciceronion. The anti-rhetorical stance of Hythloday is hardly one with which he would have
sympathized. As to his attitude towards royal service in the precise historical circumstances of
1515-1i6, the suggestion that More sensed Erasmus's disapproval of his decision to enter servi
is based on the necessarily problematic evidence of silence. Against it, the positive evidence is of
Erasmus's expressed delight at the prospect of humanists flooding into the princely councils of
Europe, and of his hope, in consequence, for the dawning of the longed for golden age. And, after
all, he became a royal councillor himself to the young Charles V, The epistles of Erasmus, ed.
F. M. Nicholls (3 vols., London, I90I-18), II, 4I2-2I; III, 45-7, 379-86, 42I-3.
63 The book of the courtier, ed. Bull, pp. 264- 5. Thomas Starkey, A dialogue between Reginald Pole
and Thomas Lupset, ed. K. M. Burton (London, I948), p. 38. Starkey survived just long enough
to register his disillusionment; Brendan Bradshaw, 'The Tudor Commonwealth: reform and
revision', Historical Journal, XXII (1979), 467- 8.
64 Plato, Republic, bk VI, 488. 65 Yale Utopia, pp. 98-9.
66 Ibid. pp. 56-7, 86-7.

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 24 BRENDAN BRADSHAW

public service which, morally speaking, the intellectual did not possess. His
second criticism related to the inadequacy of Plato's conception of the
intellectual's role. Given unfavourable conditions it was as much his business
to endeavour to keep the ship afloat as it was, in other circumstances, to speed
it towards its destination. Even if conditions were not right for the
implementation of Utopian schemes, the intellectual could still perform an
important public service by contriving to minimize the consequences of
irreformable abuses: 'that which you cannot turn to good, so to order it that
it be not very bad '.6 Thus, the duty of the intellectual to public service and
the function assigned to him in that regard forced him to risk the hazards of
political involvement. More's third criticism of the Platonic stance shows how
fully he accepted the implications of his argument. Plato's fundamental
objection to politics, as we saw, sprang from his disdain for the techniques of
politics - sophistry and rhetoric - which were concerned with cosmetics, with
illusion, instead of the truth to which rational philosophy resolutely adhered.
In, perhaps, the only passage in his debate with Hythloday which conveys
a real sense of irritation More inveighs against this attitude. He scorns the use
of philosophical arguments on politicians. He insists instead on a 'more politic'
method. And it is clear from his description of it - 'a philosophy that recognizes
and adapts itself to the occasion' - that he has in mind the methods of sophistry
and rhetoric which Plato spurned. Once again he justifies his argument by
appealing to the overriding claims of the commonwealth. For, he urges, it is
only by respecting the constraints of politics and working within them that the
intellectual can hope to achieve anything for the commonwealth by means of
his political involvement.68
The issue in the.debate between More and Hythloday, therefore, concerns
the possibility of pragmatic politics for the Utopian reformer. While More
rejects conventional humanist optimism about the capacity of the intellectual
to transform the moral wasteland of politics into an environment propitious
to radical social reform, he also rejects the alternative proposed by the classic
radical intellectual, Plato, to opt out of politics. Commitment to radical social
transformation in the long term does not relieve the intellectual of the
responsibility of striving to ameliorate the situation in the short term by
engaging in pragmatic politics. It follows that when More entered royal service
against Hythloday's advice in I5I6 he was not, as Professor Hexter has it,
succumbing to temptation. Rather, he was resisting it.69
In the light of the foregoing Professor Skinner's dismissal of More's second
criticism of Hythloday seems less persuasive than might otherwise have been.
If More's criticism in the first case turns out to be serious after all one finds
oneself less attuned to the note of 'desperate irony' which Professor Skinner

67 Ibid. pp. Ioo--IoI. 68 Ibid. pp. 96--IOI.

69 In this light it is possible to agree with Professor Elton that More entered
willingly, though this does not imply, as Professor Elton tends to argue, that he did so with
enthusiasm, G. R. Elton, 'Thomas More Councillor', Studies in Tudor and Stuart government and
politics (2 vols, Cambridge, I974), 1, I29-54.

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 MORE ON UTOPIA 25

detects in the second. On the other hand, to take More seriously would seem
to involve him in a frontal assault upon the notion of Utopian reform since
the object of his criticism in this case is common ownership on which the
entire Utopian edifice is reared.
Professor Skinner's case is based on the form which More's objection to
common ownership finally takes. Reflecting on Hythloday's description of
Utopia in one of the concluding passages of book II More notes that a
communist system 'utterly overthrows all the nobility, magnificence, splendour
and majesty which are, in the estimation of the common people, the true glories
and ornaments of the commonwealth'.70 Now, since Utopia as a whole is
devoted to exposing the illusory nature of these so-called glories, Professor
Skinner argues that More's objection is not intended as an objection at all but
as a way of ironically endorsing the Utopian system which discards such
illusions.71 The difficulty with this explanation is that it ignores the rest of the
passage in which the observation about communism is made. More's remark
occurs in the course of a long reflexion in which he indicates reservations about
quite a number of features of the Utopian system: the method of waging war,
ceremonial, religion, institutions. If the objection to Utopian communism is
ironic then all the other objections must be ironic also. But there is no indication
of this in the text. It seems more reasonable to interpret the passage as a whole,
therefore, as an indication of More's serious reservations about the ideal system
which Hythloday has just outlined. On that basis it is possible to place quite
a different construction on More's criticism of communism, one associated with
his earlier endorsement of pragmatic politics.
In this connexion the political perspective from which More offers his final
comment on Utopian communism is worthy of note. It is highlighted by
contrasting that criticism with the case against communism propounded by
him when Hythloday first commended it in book I. By the end of book II two
of More's three objections have disappeared, the Thomistic ones concerning
the need of an economic incentive and of a means of apportioning use in the
interests of social harmony. His criticism now rests entirely on the jeopardy
of removing the prop of political order: total equality would eliminate 'the
authority of magistrates and respect for their office '.72 Therefore, by the end
of book II More seems satisfied that Hythloday has overthrown the scholastic
case. Nevertheless, private property is the prop of the existing political
structure, and the practical man of affairs - the role in which More casts
himself in the dialogue - must consider the implications of the theoretical
argument in the light of existing circumstances. If, in the existing state of thing
political order is maintained by social deference, the feasibility of removing th
basis of social deference must be questioned. From this point of view the fact
that the 'common estimation' was based on illusion is irrelevant. To put it
another way: Utopian communism seems to assume that society at large will

70 Yale, Utopia, pp. 244-5-

71 Skinner, Foundations, 1, 259, Cf. Hexter, 'Introduction', pp. I-liv.
72 Yale, Utopia, pp. I06--7, 244- 5. Above, p. i6.

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 26 BRENDAN BRADSHAW

respond to radical reform with the political maturity of Hythloday himself and
his few humanist colleagues. This is an assumption that the pragmatic
politician must question.73 Thus, despite More's delight in Hythloday's
bursting of the bubble of chivalry it does not follow that his reservations about
its disintegration were purely ironic.
However, the really important question is not what these final remarks on
Utopian communism mean for More's view of private property but what the
concluding reflexion in which they occur means for the interpretation of Utopia
as a whole. If Professor Skinner is correct the work ends with a resounding
endorsement of Hythloday's views. In that case it corresponds nicely to its
Platonic prototype. Utopia, like The Republic, reaches a definitive conclusion
regarding the nature of the ideal commonwealth. It is quite clear, however,
from the way Utopia ends that, unlike The Republic, the dialogue has not
concluded: it has simply broken off. Having registered his mental reservations
about Hythloday's ideal commonwealth, More closes the conversation by
remarking on the need for further reflexion and discussion on the matter in
hand. The conclusion is in keeping with the nature of the Utopian dialogue as
a whole. Unlike The Republic, the interlocutors do not exist simply to raise
spurious objections to be crushed by the inexorable logic of Hythloday's
argument.74 The debate of book I like that of book II breaks off without
resolution.
The open-ended quality of the Utopian dialogue draws attention to the real
irony of More's final critical reflexion and to an aspect of Hythloday's polemic
which tends to be ignored. It is often overlooked that Hythloday's peroration
in praise of the content of Utopian reform at the end of book II is matched
by a peroration in praise of the mentality of Utopian reform at the end of book
I. 'This trait', he declares, 'is the chief reason why, though we are inferior to
them neither in brains nor in resources, their commonwealth is more wisely
governed and more happily flourishing than ours'.75 The trait on which
Hythloday lavished such praise was the manner in which the Utopians
responded to new ideas. It was a response that combined critical judgement
with openness to change. The eagerness with which the Utopians picked the
brains of Hythloday and his companions was one manifestation of this critical
open-mindedness, as was the manner in which they had earlier availed
themselves of the knowledge brought to them by some Roman and Egyptian

73 A precisely parallel case occurs in Thomas Starkey's Dialogue between Reginald Pole and Thomas
Lupset, written some fifteen years after Utopia. A long discussion about the best form of government
concludes that a system of elective monarchy is most appropriate to a community 'governed and
ruled by civil order and reasonable life, according to the excellent dignity of the nature of man'.
On the other hand, it is also concluded that in existing circumstances in England, and considering
the turmoil that a change would be likely to provoke, retention of the existing system of hereditary
monarchy is a more practicable proposition. Nevertheless, Cardinal Pole makes the point explicitly
that to defend the status quo as the lesser of two evils is not to maintain that it is good in itself;
Thomas Starkey, Dialogue, pp. 99--105.
74 The same point is made, and attention drawn to its Ciceronian antecedents, in Baker-Smith,
Plato's voyage, p. 1 2.
75 Yale, Utopia, pp. io8 9.

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 MORE ON UTOPIA 27

travellers thrown upon their shores by chance.76 Indeed, Hythloday himself

perfectly embodied this attitude in his qualified approval of the political
arrangements which he encountered in the course of his philosophical voyage to
Utopia. That we are here concerned with a major polemic of the work is clear
from the way in which Hythloday emphasizes the closed and hidebound
mentality which he observed everywhere in the west, as well as by the fact that
Peter Giles, More's historical collaborator, drew attention to it in his prefatory
verse that appeared in the early editions of Utopia.77
The message thus conveyed is clear. Reform in Utopia was not just a 'once
for all' exercise conducted by King Utopus. Rather it was a continuous process
made possible by the readiness of the Utopians to respond critically and yet
receptively to new ideas. The irony of More's concluding critical reflexion on
Utopia is that it shows that he had learned the lesson well enough to apply
it to the teachings of the master himself. However, in view of the role which
More plays throughout the dialogue - that of the practically minded man of
affairs - the message has still a deeper implication for those concerned with the
reform of the commonwealth. It is that the possibility of constructive social and
political progress resides neither in the moral idealism of the intellectual alone
nor in the sceptical pragmatism of the politician, but in a constructive and
continuing dialogue between the two.78

76 Ibid. pp. Io8-9, i8o-i.

77 Ibid. pp. i8-i9, 54-5, 58-9.
78 See Dennis H. Wrong, Skeptical sociology, for much the same thesis argued from a very diff
standpoint, namely that steady social progress demands a continuing exploration at the theoret
level of 'the limits of the possible', balanced by a scepticism that comprehends the 'tragedy tha
is inherent in human aspirations and our inability to realize ideals'.

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