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- English
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The Utopian Dilemma in the Western Political Imagination
About This Book
In this volume, John Farrell shows that political utopiasâsocieties with laws and customs designed to short-circuit the foibles of human nature for the benefit of our collective existenceâhave a perennial opponent, the honor-based culture of aristocracy that dominated most of the world from ancient times into early modernity and whose status-based competitive psychology persists to the present day. While utopias aim at equality, the heroic imperative defends the need for personal and collective dignity. It asks the utopian, Do we really want to live in a world without struggle, without heroes, and without the stories they create? Because the utopian dilemma pits essential values against each otherâequity versus freedom, dignity versus justiceâfew who confront it can simply take sides. Rather, the dilemma itself has been a generative stimulus for classic authors from Plato and Thomas More to George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. Farrell follows their struggles with the utopian dilemma and with each other, providing a deepened understanding of the moral and emotional dynamics of the western political imagination.
Introduction, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 15, Chapter 16, and Conclusion of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Half-Title
- Title
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: Imagining a World Without Heroes
- 1 The Hero and the City: Homer to Diogenes
- 2 Thomas Moreâs Imaginary Kingdom
- 3 Francis Bacon and the Heroism of the Age
- 4 Jonathan Swift and Utopian Madness
- 5 Voltaireâs Garden Retreat
- 6 Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Land of Chimeras
- 7 Adam Smith and the Utopia of Commercial Society
- 8 Karl Marx and the Heroic Revolution
- 9 Fyodor Dostoevsky and the Ungrateful Biped
- 10 Edward Bellamyâs Invisible Army
- 11 William Morris and the Taming of Art
- 12 H. G. Wells and the Samurai
- 13 Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Mothersâ Utopia
- 14 Yevgeny Zamyatin and the Scythian Horde
- 15 Aldous Huxley and the Rebels against Happiness
- 16 George Orwellâs Dystopian Socialism
- 17 B. F. Skinnerâs World Without Heroes
- 18 Anthony Burgess and the Revenge of the Dandy
- Conclusion
- Index