Utopia: An End, or a Quest?

Posted by Keith Tidman

Detail from the original frontispiece for More’s book Utopia

In his 1516 book Utopia, the English statesman and writer Sir Thomas More summed up his imagined, idealised vision of an island society in this manner:

‘Nobody owns anything but everyone is rich — for what greater wealth can there be than cheerfulness, peace of mind, and freedom from anxiety?’

A laconic, even breezy counterpoint to the imperfect and in some cases heavily flawed dystopian societies that actually populated the world — More’s utopia presenting a republic confronting much that was wrong in the 16th century. More’s utopia promulgates the uplifting notion that, despite humankind’s fallibilities, many ills of society have remedies.

Two other writers, Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift, who wrote Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels respectively, were both authors of popular 18th-century stories that took inspiration from the utopian principles of Thomas More.

The word ‘utopia’, coined by More, is from the Greek, meaning ‘no place’. Yet, it seems likely that More was also punning on a different word, pronounced identically, which applies more aptly to history’s descriptions of utopia — like that captured in Plato’s Republic (of ‘philosopher-kings’ fame), Tommaso Campanella’s City of the Sun, and Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis — that word being ‘eutopia’. The word is also of Greek origin, but signifies ‘good place’.

Some see utopias and eutopias alike as heralding the possibility of reforming present society toward some idealised end point — what Herbert Marcuse, the 20th-century German-American philosopher, referred to as ‘the end of utopia’, when ‘material and intellectual forces capable of achieving the transformation are technically present’.

However, long ago, Aristotle pushed back against the concept of utopia as an unattainable figment — a chimera. Later political theorists have joined the criticism, notably More’s contemporary, the Italian political philosopher and statesman Niccolò Machiavelli. In The Prince, Machiavelli concurs with More’s notions of cynicism and corruption seen in society generally and in politics specifically. As such, Machiavelli believed that the struggle for political supremacy is conflictual, necessarily lacking morality — the ‘effective truth of the thing’ in power politics. ‘Politics have no relation to morals’, he stated bluntly. Machiavelli thus did not brook what he regarded as illusory social orders like utopias.

Nonetheless, utopias are, in their intriguingly ambitious way, philosophical, sociological, and political thought experiments. They promulgate and proclaim norms that by implication reproachfully differ from all current societies. They are both inspirational and aspirational. As H.G. Wells noted in his 1905 novel, A Modern Utopia:

‘Our business here is to be Utopian, to make vivid and credible, if we can, first this facet and then that, of an imaginary whole and happy world’.

In that vein, many thinkers have taken their definitions to the next level, offering concrete prescriptions: deconstructing society’s shortcomings, and fleshing out blueprints for the improved social order envisioned. These blueprints may include multiple dimensions: political, economic, ecological, moral, educational, customs, judicial, familial, values, communal, philosophical, and scientific and technological, among others.

The 17th-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, however, paints a bleak dystopia, even in the highly reformed architecture of utopia:

‘For the laws of nature … of themselves, without the terror of some power, to cause them to be observed, are contrary to our natural passions’.

That is, given that the ‘natural condition of mankind’ is to incurably and quarrelsomely seek ever more power, the civilizing effects of laws and of governance are required to channel people’s energies and ambitions, and to constrain as necessary.

Yet legal constraints can reach too far: this kind of utopian theorizing lapses into a formula for authoritarianism. The German professor of literature Artur Blaim has summed up, as forthrightly as anyone, the suppressive nature associated with a political system of this kind as:

            ‘Utopias die, utopianism does not’.

The apprehension, then, is that even in a declared utopia, powerful leaders might coerce reluctant conformists to fit into a single mold. Dangerously patriarchal, given possibly counterfactual evidence of what’s best for most.

Certainly, there have been occurrences — ‘utopian’ cults, cabals, compounds, religions, and even nation states’ political systems — where heavy-handed pressure to step in line has been administered and violence has erupted. In these scenarios, repressive measures — to preserve society’s structural demands — are at the expense of freedom and liberal drives. As Bertrand de Jouvenel, a 20th-century French philosopher, counseled, if somewhat hyperbolically:

‘There is a tyranny in every utopia.’

So, might ‘utopia’ be defined differently than any single idealised end point, where ‘satisfied’ architects of utopia feel comfortable putting their tools down, hinting ‘it’s the end of history’?

Or instead, might utopianism be better characterised as a dynamic process of change — of a perpetual becoming (emergence) — directed in the search of ever-better conditions? The key to utopianism is thus its catalytic allure: the uninterrupted exploration, trying out, and readjustment of modalities and norms.

As the 20th-century German philosopher Ernst Bloch pointed out,

‘Expectation, hope and intention, directed towards the possibility which has not yet arrived, constitute not only a fundamental property of the human consciousness but also … a fundamental determination at the heart of objective reality itself’.

Machiavelli’s Understanding of the Art of Politics

Posted by Bohdana Kurylo

Can Niccolò Machiavelli’s political philosophy be compared with a dance?

Niccolò Machiavelli, who is often regarded as the founder of modern political science, is generally deemed a propagator of cruelty and immorality. Yet while he broke with the conventional language of politics in his day – based upon Christian values and a Ciceronian belief that a prince achieved glory through virtue – it is more appropriate to think of him as a pragmatist who introduced a greater realism to political philosophy. More important still, it was Machiavelli’s creative interpretation that helped him convert politics into scientific art which could be applied in everyday practice.

In The Prince, Machiavelli offered a pragmatic approach to politics which, rather than focusing on moral values, combined the importance of skill and prudence. Inspired by the success of the Roman State, Machiavelli thought of history as being cyclical – as he thought, too, of political issues. His understanding of politics thus came with an interest in history and statecraft, and he drew his conclusions from historical examples of agents. This contributed to his pessimism in regard to human nature and morality. Therefore, his most famous work, The Prince, which shuns the received views, Christian and Ciceronian – in fact warns against them – states that a successful ruler should act according to the circumstances, whereas being ‘good’ will lead to his downfall.

It could be claimed that Machiavelli sought to justify vices when speaking of the conflict between morality and reality. However, as the political philosopher Leo Strauss rightly suggests, it would be unfair to echo ‘the old-fashioned and simple opinion according to which Machiavelli was a teacher of evil’. As an example, when making an analysis of Agathocles of Sicily, who came to power with wicked cruelty, Machiavelli clearly condemned his actions and stated that ‘one cannot call it virtú to kill one’s citizens, betray one’s friends, to break one’s word, to be without mercy, without religion’. In addition, Strauss remarks that many extreme statements of Machiavelli were not intended to be taken seriously, but rather had the pedagogic intention of freeing ‘young’ princes from effeminacy. In the view of professor of politics Maurizio Viroli, he did not ‘construct a new language’, but provided a new, more pragmatic assessment of the art of politics.



In The Prince, Machiavelli proposed the twin conceptions of virtú and Fortuna. Whereas Fortuna is chance or contingency, virtú is open to interpretation, and may be associated with prudence, skill, and the ability to adapt to contingencies. This further emphasises the fact that he introduced a new kind of political understanding which was independent of any established norms, and tied to the idea of flexibility. The Prince provides Cesare Borgia as an example of a ruler who acquired his principality by chance, and had great virtú in taking advantage of his power. Although virtú alone is likely to be useless for the achievement of the highest goals and glory, Machiavelli believed that, through flexibility and bravery, it could win over Fortuna, since ‘Fortuna is a lady’. In doing so, he made room for chance and flexibility in politics, knowing that focusing on rigid scientific rules would be detrimental.

Understanding Machiavelli’s perception of politics is complicated by the presence of both scientific and creative elements in it. At first sight, The Prince gives historical examples and practical advice. However, despite pragmatic scientific elements, it is more art, as it understands that there is more than one interpretation for doing politics. Mutatis mutandis (the necessary changes having been made), there is a likelihood of failure if the prince does not continue to adapt to changing circumstances, because ‘he will continue to behave in the same way’. Moreover, Machiavelli emphasises that the notions of luck and flexibility are influenced by one’s own interpretation, thus further highlighting that there is no set way by which success is achieved. The text shows, too, the importance of self-presentation and the ‘creative use of deception’ as a part of virtú, describing politics as a ‘space of appearance’.

In many ways, Machiavelli’s perception of politics can be compared to a political dance – for which one should learn the right moves, but also listen to the melody and be flexible enough to adjust to its flow. Clearly a dance, like politics, can be different to other dances, and would require different costumes, too, to accentuate the movements – which recalls Machiavelli's statement that the prince’s qualities should change, depending on the situation. In fact, The Prince, as much as it is political science, exemplifies the artistic side of Machiavelli’s understanding of politics, which applied the art of politics to everyday practice.

Machiavelli’s Understanding of the Art of Politics

Posted by Bohdana Kurylo

Can Niccolò Machiavelli’s political philosophy be compared with a dance?

Niccolò Machiavelli, who is often regarded as the founder of modern political science, is generally deemed a propagator of cruelty and immorality. Yet while he broke with the conventional language of politics in his day – based upon Christian values and a Ciceronian belief that a prince achieved glory through virtue – it is more appropriate to think of him as a pragmatist who introduced a greater realism to political philosophy. More important still, it was Machiavelli’s creative interpretation that helped him convert politics into scientific art which could be applied in everyday practice.

In The Prince, Machiavelli offered a pragmatic approach to politics which, rather than focusing on moral values, combined the importance of skill and prudence. Inspired by the success of the Roman State, Machiavelli thought of history as being cyclical – as he thought, too, of political issues. His understanding of politics thus came with an interest in history and statecraft, and he drew his conclusions from historical examples of agents. This contributed to his pessimism in regard to human nature and morality. Therefore, his most famous work, The Prince, which shuns the received views, Christian and Ciceronian – in fact warns against them – states that a successful ruler should act according to the circumstances, whereas being ‘good’ will lead to his downfall.

It could be claimed that Machiavelli sought to justify vices when speaking of the conflict between morality and reality. However, as the political philosopher Leo Strauss rightly suggests, it would be unfair to echo ‘the old-fashioned and simple opinion according to which Machiavelli was a teacher of evil’. As an example, when making an analysis of Agathocles of Sicily, who came to power with wicked cruelty, Machiavelli clearly condemned his actions and stated that ‘one cannot call it virtú to kill one’s citizens, betray one’s friends, to break one’s word, to be without mercy, without religion’. In addition, Strauss remarks that many extreme statements of Machiavelli were not intended to be taken seriously, but rather had the pedagogic intention of freeing ‘young’ princes from effeminacy. In the view of professor of politics Maurizio Viroli, he did not ‘construct a new language’, but provided a new, more pragmatic assessment of the art of politics.

In The Prince, Machiavelli proposed the twin conceptions of virtú and Fortuna. Whereas Fortuna is chance or contingency, virtú is open to interpretation, and may be associated with prudence, skill, and the ability to adapt to contingencies. This further emphasises the fact that he introduced a new kind of political understanding which was independent of any established norms, and tied to the idea of flexibility. The Prince provides Cesare Borgia as an example of a ruler who acquired his principality by chance, and had great virtú in taking advantage of his power. Although virtú alone is likely to be useless for the achievement of the highest goals and glory, Machiavelli believed that, through flexibility and bravery, it could win over Fortuna, since ‘Fortuna is a lady’. In doing so, he made room for chance and flexibility in politics, knowing that focusing on rigid scientific rules would be detrimental.

Understanding Machiavelli’s perception of politics is complicated by the presence of both scientific and creative elements in it. At first sight, The Prince gives historical examples and practical advice. However, despite pragmatic scientific elements, it is more art, as it understands that there is more than one interpretation for doing politics. Mutatis mutandis (the necessary changes having been made), there is a likelihood of failure if the prince does not continue to adapt to changing circumstances, because ‘he will continue to behave in the same way’. Moreover, Machiavelli emphasises that the notions of luck and flexibility are influenced by one’s own interpretation, thus further highlighting that there is no set way by which success is achieved. The text shows, too, the importance of self-presentation and the ‘creative use of deception’ as a part of virtú, describing politics as a ‘space of appearance’.

In many ways, Machiavelli’s perception of politics can be compared to a political dance – for which one should learn the right moves, but also listen to the melody and be flexible enough to adjust to its flow. Clearly a dance, like politics, can be different to other dances, and would require different costumes, too, to accentuate the movements – which recalls Machiavelli's statement that the prince’s qualities should change, depending on the situation. In fact, The Prince, as much as it is political science, exemplifies the artistic side of Machiavelli’s understanding of politics, which applied the art of politics to everyday practice.

The Art of War? Obama's Machiavellian Foreign Policy

“The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.” 

- Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (1513)

Is Obama a foreign policy genius - a modern day Machiavelli - or an inept ingénue? 

Consider some recent and some ongoing cases.

1. During the US presidential election campaign, Barack Obama mocked his opponent, Mitt Romney for saying that Russia was a threat  - opting instead to forgive Russia past transgressions, press the restart button and have 'business as usual' relations. China, he asserted, was the real threat, even as Chinese money kept the US economy afloat.

Yet, as has widely been pointed out, the Russian military interventions in Ukraine, which have led to the annexation of the Crimean peninsula and to the entrenchment of separatist enclaves in Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, directly challenge the post-Cold War consensus. Eastern Ukraine follows on other more tentative land-grabs, and in turn will be followed by greater prizes - Estonia, Lithuania… And if incursions there show the NATO lion cannot roar, why not further?

2. In Syria, faced with a choice between supporting the moderate rebels, and leaving the extremists to take over, he opted for the latter policy - with the result that the Assad government recovered lost ground and ISIS became a regional force. Originally, U.S. intelligence saw the terror group as a U.S. strategic asset. Now though, as David Kilcullen, the US military strategist said to have saved Iraq through the 'surge' has put it:

'Western countries have a clear interest in destroying ISIS, but counter-insurgency should not even be under discussion. This is a straight-up conventional fight against a state-like entity, and the goal should be to utterly annihilate ISIS as a state.' 

Just unfortunate then that ISIS has now become a force that would require a greater military effort than that of the original Iraq war. Your move, Professor!

3. But it is in Ukraine that his judgements seem most dangerous. Obama has apparently decided that there is no strategic significance to allowing Russia to annex parts of the former Soviet Union. Of course, the morality of this do not concern him - a man who says in one of his books that he learned his his ethics from the backs of cereal packets. In pursuit of this policy there have been so substantial sanctions, although there is a possibility that the US was involved in the Saudi policy of lowering the world price of oil - which has hurt the Russians. Under Obama there has been no access to arms and training, leaving the hopelessly amateurish and poorly equipped Ukrainian conscripts to be slaughtered in their thousands by the separatists backed by Russian special forces and the very best equipment that the Russians have.

4. In Egypt, Obama sided with the Egyptian military against the democracy movement, in due course helping to usher in a new and if anything even more vicious regime than that run by the US's client Hosni Mubarak.

5. As for the Palestine-Israel conflict, Obama has managed to present the US as both powerless and inept - threatening responses and laying down red lines which he never has any intention of following through on. The Israeli Prime Minster is encouraged to treat him with contempt.

6. And then, earlier this month, his international trade agenda was left in tatters after even the Democratic minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, voted against his plans to for a new bill, going directly against Obama less than three hours after the president begged his party’s caucus to support it.

7. Not to foget the War in Europe, entirely! The economic policies one between Greece and the Eurozone, that is.  Here, Obama weighed in on the side of Greece, ordering the rest of Europe to forgive its trangressions and, well, bend the Eurozone rules a little. Such advice might have been deeeply probematic for the Eurozone if followed - it certainly helped reduce the liklihood of the Greek's seeking a compromise. Result - this week - boom!

The fact is, Obama sees himself as a true Machiavellian Prince, one who presents one face to the world while acting in a quite different way in secret. He sees himself as enhancing US geopolitical and structural power; strengthening the American identity (hence the oft-repeated determination to stop the torture programme and release the extra-judicial prisoners such as those held at Guantanamo,  policies he has no intention of genuinely carrying out) and the search for domestic political consolidation.

According to former US national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski:

'He’s not a softy. But he’s a person who tries to think through these events so you can draw some long-term conclusions.'

The longterm consequence of policy in the Middle East seems likely to be polarisation - between a US-backed series of kleptocracies and ultra-Islamists. In Europe, it is likely to be a 'hot war' between the Western Europeans and the Russians. In general, Obama seems to be sowing the seeds of global chaos - but a chaos in which perhaps for some it can be imagined that Continental United States will be immune. If that is indeed his aim, it is certainly a piece of cynicism worthy of the Italian master himself.


Further, or is it backwards? reading here

Primary colours

23 July 2009

Philosophers and Truthiness

By Matthew Blakeway

The comedian and political commentator Stephen Colbert coined the term truthiness* . This is a way of mocking politicians who claim to know something intuitively but fail to put forward any evidence to support their assertion. Too often in political rhetoric, truthiness presents as fact what is merely an ideological belief – not a real truth, but a truth that we want to exist. As Colbert put it ‘Anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news at you.’

Over the last few weeks, academic economists have started the share the fun. The equivalent term that Paul Romer coined to mock his less-than-rigorous colleagues is mathiness. This, he says, is an argument that looks like robust mathematics and sounds like robust mathematics, but actually isn’t. Sloppy economists create arguments that use terms that are mathematically defined elsewhere but which have subtly different meanings in the argument presented. In this way, an ideological position (e.g. if welfare is cut, the unemployed will all find jobs) can be presented as a solid economic argument. As Romer says: 

‘Academic politics, like any other type of politics, is better served by words that are evocative and ambiguous, but if an argument is transparently political, economists interested in science will simply ignore it.’ 

Mathematical theories, like those created by academic economists, should only be trusted when each term is precisely defined and consistently used. Only then can the conclusions of such arguments be empirically demonstrated to be either true or false. The example that he gives is growth theory, where competing versions all appear to be clearly stated, yet show no converging consensus.

And now that creating words to mock woolly thinking is in danger of becoming an epidemic. It occurs to me that the humanities need one of their own. Or, as Stephen Colbert might say, ‘truthiness’ and ‘mathiness’ just don’t feel right in our context. So I propose that we adopt the word ‘explaininess’ because I think this is a problem that is pervasive throughout writing in philosophy and human sciences. Explaininess is an intellectual Ponzi scheme where one nebulous notion is needed to explain another nebulous notion, but the cumulative whole is presented as an explanation.



For example, in connection with a current project of mine, I recently spent a two miserable weeks reading all the recent academic theories explaining various forms of mental illness. In one paper summarising four theories of borderline personality disorder, I was left struggling to succinctly state the difference between Theory B and Theory C. These used terms like ‘maternal imprinting’, ‘suppressed memory’, ‘learned anxiety’ and ‘secondary emotion’. At least an example was given for the last one: anger turns to shame. But I was left asking: is that normal? I certainly don’t think it happens that way with me, so if we are to talk about how that happens at all, we at least need a box and arrow diagram with meaningful things in the boxes and understandable causal relationships. Otherwise, the existence of secondary emotions is questionable and their causality is entirely unknown. Yet in the world of explaininess, this is a theory of a mental illness where competing theories don’t converge towards consensus because none of them are empirically verifiable.

In philosophy, explaininess is rampant. A particularly egregious example is Jacques Derrida’s theory of deconstruction, based around two terms that Derrida coined differance and presance. These are two perfectly reasonable words intentionally misspelt by just one letter. Geddit? But he tells us that these terms can’t be defined; so how am I supposed to know that my understanding of them is the same as his? After a period of hair-tearing frustration, I was reassured to discover that Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault had both stated that they didn’t understand it either. In this case, if you admit you don’t understand it, then you are in more elite company than if you pretend that you do.

Derrida is famous for his obscurity, but explaininess exists everywhere in philosophy. There are hundreds of books on ‘freewill’, for another example, but few of them offer a robust hypothesis as to what it is. If you are writing a book claiming that this concept is useful, then the burden falls on you to explain to your readers what it is. Too often, writers just presume that I understand the term, but actually I don’t. If freewill is a piece of brain hardware, then that is alright because eventually a neuroscientist will find it in the hypothalamus or somewhere. And if it is a piece of mental software, then eventually some mathy person will build a model of it so that we can all understand how it works; so that is all good as well. But if it is a part of your aura or something that is beamed to you through the aether, then I suggest that some academic philosophers should be seeking alternative employment. Oh, the joys of tenure!

The problem is that if we ban explaininess in philosophy, then there isn’t much left for us to talk about. But I think this points to the real objective of philosophy. Too often, people say that philosophy’s role is to ask questions, but it ends up with us talking ad infinitum about all the questions that can’t be answered – the things that scientists can’t be bothered with. If, on the other hand, philosophy’s objective is to answer questions, then we would all have given up in the 3rd century BC, by which time it was already clear that almost no progress would be made in concrete terms. My suggestions is that the objective of philosophy should be to take unanswerable questions and try to change them into ones that can be addressed in a scientific fashion. For example, if nobody can tell us what freewill actually is, then maybe we should change the question into ‘what is the cause of a human action?’ Already that is starting to sound like a scientific question, rather than a philosophical one. I'd say, pull off that trick, and true progress will have been made.



* More on 'Truthiness'  and on 'Mathiness' - as a PDF*