Philosophy
Yesterday was the 533rd anniversary of the birth of Sir Thomas More, author of Utopia. What More pictured as utopian would hardly strike us now as such. For example, in Utopia, there is slavery,
Clearly, Utopia is not a utopia. If one were to re-write the work now, what elements would a contemporary utopia include?
- Bondage Of The Free
Ta-Nehisi Coates has a short piece over at The Atlantic about reminiscences from former slaves who wax longingly for "the old days." He points out that the usual naive narrative we've constructed around slavery holds that every moment of enslaved...
- Universality Of Games
Had a student in my logic class mude with some friends about the universality of games. It turns out that kids in the US, Burma, and Nepal all play both hide and seek and freeze tag. Their question was whether that was an indication that these games were...
- Bullshit Or Not: John Locke Edition
This week's quotation for adjudication comes from the Second Treatise on Civil Government: Thus this law of reason makes the deer that Indian's who hath killed it; it is allowed to be his goods, who hath bestowed his labour upon it, though before...
- A Nightmare Scenario?
"The New Bill Gates, Philosopher-King of the Nerds" by Alexis Madrigal July 10th, 2010 The Atlantic Plato imagined philosopher-kings guarding his utopia. Here in Aspen, a modern day utopia, we have Bill Gates. Since his retirement from Microsoft, Gates...
- Strange, Old Global Maps
"Strange Maps" California as an island, utopia in the shape of a skull, and other cartographic curiosities. by Frank Jacobs November. 30th, 2009 Slate "Strange Maps"...
Philosophy
Utopia
Yesterday was the 533rd anniversary of the birth of Sir Thomas More, author of Utopia. What More pictured as utopian would hardly strike us now as such. For example, in Utopia, there is slavery,
"THEY do not make slaves of prisoners of war, except those that are taken in battle; nor of the sons of their slaves, nor of those of other nations: the slaves among them are only such as are condemned to that state of life for the commission of some crime, or, which is more common, such as their merchants find condemned to die in those parts to which they trade, whom they sometimes redeem at low rates; and in other places have them for nothing. They are kept at perpetual labor, and are always chained, but with this difference, that their own natives are treated much worse than others; they are considered as more profligate than the rest, and since they could not be restrained by the advantages of so excellent an education, are judged worthy of harder usage. Another sort of slaves are the poor of the neighboring countries, who offer of their own accord to come and serve them; they treat these better, and use them in all other respects as well as their own countrymen, except their imposing more labor upon them, which is no hard task to those that have been accustomed to it; and if any of these have a mind to go back to their own country, which indeed falls out but seldom, as they do not force them to stay, so they do not send them away empty-handed."Nor any premarital embracing,
"Their women are not married before eighteen, nor their men before two-and-twenty, and if any of them run into forbidden embraces before marriage they are severely punished, and the privilege of marriage is denied them, unless they can obtain a special warrant from the Prince."Everyone wears the same thing,
"Throughout the island they wear the same sort of clothes without any other distinction, except what is necessary to distinguish the two sexes, and the married and unmarried. The fashion never alters; and as it is neither disagreeable nor uneasy, so it is suited to the climate, and calculated both for their summers and winters."And they have only two games,
"They do not so much as know dice, or any such foolish and mischievous games: they have, however, two sorts of games not unlike our chess; the one is between several numbers, in which one number, as it were, consumes another: the other resembles a battle between the virtues and the vices, in which the enmity in the vices among themselves, and their agreement against virtue, is not unpleasantly represented; together with the special oppositions between the particular virtues and vices; as also the methods by which vice either openly assaults or secretly undermines virtue, and virtue on the other hand resists it."
Clearly, Utopia is not a utopia. If one were to re-write the work now, what elements would a contemporary utopia include?
- Bondage Of The Free
Ta-Nehisi Coates has a short piece over at The Atlantic about reminiscences from former slaves who wax longingly for "the old days." He points out that the usual naive narrative we've constructed around slavery holds that every moment of enslaved...
- Universality Of Games
Had a student in my logic class mude with some friends about the universality of games. It turns out that kids in the US, Burma, and Nepal all play both hide and seek and freeze tag. Their question was whether that was an indication that these games were...
- Bullshit Or Not: John Locke Edition
This week's quotation for adjudication comes from the Second Treatise on Civil Government: Thus this law of reason makes the deer that Indian's who hath killed it; it is allowed to be his goods, who hath bestowed his labour upon it, though before...
- A Nightmare Scenario?
"The New Bill Gates, Philosopher-King of the Nerds" by Alexis Madrigal July 10th, 2010 The Atlantic Plato imagined philosopher-kings guarding his utopia. Here in Aspen, a modern day utopia, we have Bill Gates. Since his retirement from Microsoft, Gates...
- Strange, Old Global Maps
"Strange Maps" California as an island, utopia in the shape of a skull, and other cartographic curiosities. by Frank Jacobs November. 30th, 2009 Slate "Strange Maps"...