In this volume, John Farrell shows that political
utopias—societies with laws and customs designed to short-circuit
the foibles of human nature for the benefit of our collective
existence—have 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 other—equity versus freedom, dignity versus justice—few
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.
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