Thomas More "Utopia": Humanism in the Renaissance
Thomas More memorial
Utopia: An English Renaissance Book Written in Latin
Thomas More’s Utopia is, in many respects, a typical product of Renaissance humanism.
In fact, we might argue that due to its publication in the sixteenth century, it provides a later example and certainly one much more likely to have been influenced by the half-century of Italian and Northern European humanism, which predates it.
Utopia bears all the signs of a humanist interest in the classical languages and forms and, like Erasmus's The Praise of Folly and Valla’s On the True and False Good, was preoccupied with ancient philosophical views on ethical values.
It is written in Latin with numerous allusions to classical Greek as well.
Thomas More portrait by Hans Holbein
The Ideal Modern Commonwealth but With Ancient Influences
Its subject matter, the ideal commonwealth, had its origins in two classical works, Plato's’ Republic and Aristotle’s Politics.
Both Erasmus and More were admirers of the Greek satirist Lucian, and in its introductory sections, Utopia is loaded with the kind of satire, irony, and wordplay one might associate with that ancient writer.
What makes the work even more typical of Renaissance humanism is its concentration on applying classical ideas to contemporary society and politics.
In this respect, More could be said to be like Bruni, who believed the application of ancient political ideas would create the ideal state.
Utopia is, in many respects, a hybrid of humanist thought.
It is both a pithy, satirical and ultimately serious hypothesis of an ideal commonwealth, broached in classical language and form, and a disguised critique of the social inequalities of sixteenth-century Europe.
As a humanist, he framed Utopia as the philosopher's example of what is good for mankind, but as a realist, he knew that it would take more than classical ethics, humanism, and, for that matter, religion to change his own society.
It is no accident that Raphael Hythloday, an “angelic fool,” is the narrator of Utopia and that the character More is the dubious recipient of his tales of Utopia. Perhaps both characters represented the real Thomas More, a humanist idealist and sceptical realist.
More's Influences: Fellow European Humanists
Desiderius Erasmus hugely influenced Thomas More. The two friends hugely admired the Greek satirist Lucian. More had introduced Erasmus to the writer, and the influence of this can be seen in The Praise of Folly. In one fundamental respect, More and Erasmus are very much alike. That is in their insistence that correct Christian ethics were essential to Renaissance society.
The Praise of Folly bears all the signs that Erasmus truly believed that Christian ethics offered the best values system for his age. Like More, he begins his book with a debate on what constituted the “good for man” and then investigates the various Greek philosophical schools on his way to suggesting that none on its own is good for man.
Behind all their work was the humanist desire for progress.
His choice of Lucian’s texts to praise makes it clear that he has an underlying desire to address contemporary issues. More needed to recreate his understanding of the ancients in a modern context.
More diverges from this path in his fictional account of the ideal commonwealth. Erasmus and Valla, and for that matter, Bruni, all seem grounded in their own environment. More’s Utopia is deliberately a further remove geographically and socially from Europe, a gently fantastical fiction or wish fulfillment but always with a serious message.
It offered More the opportunity of apparently objective opinions and allowed him to suggest ways in which this “ideal” place with its society ran according to philosophical reason could be juxtaposed with sixteenth-century Europe.
Was Utopia About Being a Good Christian?
More’s underlying aim, it could be argued, was a concern for public morality and the corruption by mortals of Christian ethics.
Utopia was a land where everything was done and achieved for the common good, and these were Christian precepts. The main difference in Utopia is that reason is insufficient.
For all of Hythloday’s idealisation of Utopia, some of its social practices, such as euthanasia, show exactly what happens when reason is stretched beyond its limits.
The common good was admirable, and in sixteenth-century Europe (particularly Italy), More saw the kind of society formed when wealth, pride, and envy reigned.
His own society reflected this. He was a wealthy man himself, but at heart, his conscience led him to desire a life of simple Christianity. Utopia is free from the effects of More’s society, and its “commonwealth” is arguably its most attractive feature. With closer readings of Italian humanism, we need to ask whether this idea was typical of all Renaissance humanism.
Italian humanists were steeped in a reverence for the ancient classical past, and the Roman era particularly was obviously of huge interest due to its geography.
Bruni and Poggio
In his book On the Inconstancy of Fortune, Gian Francesco Poggio searches among the debris of ancient Rome and refers to his and his friends' concern to rediscover “the art of right living”.
Four years before this, Leonardo Bruni had inferred in his preface to his book The History of the Florentine People that Roman laws, customs and politics provided an example which the Florentines of his own time were emulating.
Bruni and Poggio had different concerns, but the classical influence was essential for both to understand not only their own age but also the influence of their own work on the future.
Lorenzo Valla, writing at about the same time as both these men, took his interest in the ancient texts to more practical lengths and used the ancient forms to deliver stinging rebukes on what he saw as the corrupt elements of his own society.
In this respect, Valla is arguably a link between Italian and northern humanism. His influence on Erasmus was, in its turn, possibly accountable for More’s work.
Self Fashioning: The Courtier and The Prince
Humanists in Italy also held powerful positions in political life and at court.
Castiglione’s The Courtier emphasises the need for courtiers to be useful to their masters and respected for their usefulness by others. Machiavelli would take an opposing position with his novel The Prince; these books tell us that life at court was gaining importance, whether you were a courtier or master of your subjects. Castiglione's book, in particular, emphasises the life of the ambitious man at court.
It seems to emphasise a “code of practice” for the aspiring “upwardly mobile” man at court.
More’s own position remains enigmatic. On the one hand, he was a pious, devout Catholic, and Utopia is arguably an exercise in criticising a society without a correct Christian standard by which to live. On the other hand, he was an ambitious statesman, but unlike Castiglione’s model, he was a reluctant courtier, his conscience tested by human and spiritual tensions.
Call to Public Office
The call to public office also placed huge pressures on a person, sometimes spiritually and morally.
More is an example of such an individual. His writing, his religion, his work as both a lawyer and politician, and his rise to high office must have created tensions which were peculiar to the era in which he existed. Of course, his later stance over the succession to the English throne saw all these tensions seemingly implode in events beyond his control.