The Relationship between Plato's Republic and Thomas More's Utopia The trite cliche that no man is an island applies equally well to political philosophies. Thomas More's Utopia was written both as a product of his time, and also as a product of a previous time--that of Greek civilization, especially around 380BC, when Plato's Republic was written. The similarities between the two books are not limited to them both being a dialogue. Both contain a description of the perfect state, although they do this for different reasons and they arrive at different types of perfection. To understand the relationship, the two books must be contextualized. An important part of contextualization is to understand the role of Plato in both the period of Humanism and, within that, in the life of Thomas More. On the one hand, More, like many of his counterparts of the period, "had enjoyed good humanist [education] and retained a powerful love of classical literature" (Rice 141). To further complicate matters, though, although he was a politician, he was also a devout Christian who "secretly wore a hairshirt until the day before he died" (Turner/More 14). More specifically, More was a devout Catholic who was executed because he refused to take an oath swearing loyalty to Henry VIII, after the split of the Church of England, over the pope. His religiosity makes some of the differences between the Republic and Utopia more understandable. Plato's Republic was a very controversial work in Europe, even though aspects of the work were popular and contemporary, such as the belief that "the growth of luxury and excess corrupts the good society and must lead to wars of aggression and ultimately to degenerati... ... middle of paper ... ...of a strict sexual moral code, More developed a new blueprint for the ideal state, but one still within some semblance of the Platonic framework. More may have felt that his Utopia was "no place," but in actuality, it was merely a few branches down the tree of human thought from Plato's Republic. Works Cited Ferguson, John. Utopias of the Classical World. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1975. Manuel, Frank E. and Fritzie P. Manuel. Utopian Thought in the Western World. Cambridge, MA: Belknap-Harvard Press, 1979. More, Thomas. Utopia. Trans. Paul Turner. New York: Penguin Books, 1965. Plato. Republic. Trans. G.M.A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1974. Rice, Eugene E. and Anthony Grafton. The Foundations of Early Modern Europe, 1460-1559. 2nd. ed. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1994.
Jesus was born approximately on April 17, 6 BCE, to Mary, a Jewish woman of Nazareth in Galilee. Christians believe that she conceived Jesus miraculously in union with God; which is also why many people refer to Jesus as the Son of God. She married Joseph, a shepherd, and accompanied him to Nazareth, where Jesus was born. So, as prophesied by Isaiah, Jesus was born to a descendant of King David.
Few men have impacted the world in the way that Jesus and Muhammad have. They are the two prominent names in Christianity and Islam. These men were born in separate times. However, they served very similar purposes during their lives. Together, they have influenced the lives of more people in the last two thousand years than any others. Both are considered the main pillars of their respective religions and are highly regarded figures amongst their followers. Jesus was responsible for the promotion of Christianity, while Muhammad helped to spread the word of Islam. Both Jesus and Muhammad became known for the role they played in the establishment and strengthening of each religion and their messages are still being carried out today.
Thomas More was born in London in 1478. He studied at Oxford where he took a profound love of classical literature. In Utopia, More shows his own skills in humanism. In this story, modeled after Plato's Republic, More examines his culture against a hypothetical culture he invents. His Utopia varies greatly from both his society and our society today. Four ways Utopia differs from our society are social system, attitude towards jewelry, marriage customs, and religion.
More, Sir Thomas. "Utopia." The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Vol 1. Ed. David Damrosch. New York: Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc., 1999. 637-706.
Jesus the Christ and Mohammed no two single men have touched more lives. They founded two related yet separate religions that today have seem to become the main stream of society around the world. In the year, “0” B.C. near the town of Bethlehem Jesus was born. Almost 600 years later in the town of Mecca the Prophet Mohammed was born. These two events changed the course of history for all humankind.
More, Sir Thomas. Utopia: A New Translation, Backgrounds, Criticism. Ed. and trans. Robert M. Adams. Toronto: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1988.
According to the book of Matthew, “Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king,” indicating he was born between 6 and 4 BCE (Matthew 2:1). The Bible refers to this as the virgin birth because Joseph and Mary never conceived him. He was a human being in which God took his form. Very little is known about his childhood and the Bible only reveals a picture of Jesus and his teachings when he was approximately 30 years of age. Whatever happened to Jesus during these years is a mystery to us all, but whatever happened transformed him into the divine being which he is today.
Thomas More’s Utopia conceptualizes a fictional island, Utopia, in which private property is eliminated, work is universalized, and punishments are equitable to the crime. In doing so, the eponymous island seemingly idealizes egalitarian society. More does this by splitting the novel into two parts or “books” which serve to distinguish between problem and solution, and reality and fiction. As a result, the discrepancies between the two books illustrate that while Utopia may be some sort of perfected society, it is ultimately fiction and thus unattainable.
The second book of the Republic shows the repressive quality of Plato’s society. Plato, talking through Socrates, wants
The sources of understanding of the figure of Jesus Christ in the two religions are, of course, Quran and the Holy Bible — the most respectable books, which include the main concepts of each faith. The information about this important figure cannot be denied, because even historians admitted his existence. The birth of the little child was described in a similar way by the two religious believes. Both: the Bible and the Quran believe that he was born by the virgin woman, whose name was Mary. Bible says: “..."the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger" (Luke 1:6-7, Christianity and Islam).On the other hand the Quran also describe Jesus and...
Thomas More is a humanist and creates the island, Utopia. Utopia is fictional work of Thomas More.
The Republic is the most important dialogue within Plato's teaching of politics. It deals with the soul, which, as we know from the beginning, at the level where one must make choices and decide what one wants to become in this life, and it describes justice as the ultimate form of human, and the ideal one should strive for both in life and in state. Justice as understood by Plato is not merely a social virtue, having only to do with relationship between people, but virtue that makes it possible for one to build their own regime and reach happiness.
In his famous work Utopia, Sir Thomas More describes the society and culture of an imaginary island on which all social ills have been cured. As in Plato's Republic, a work from which More drew while writing Utopia, More's work presents his ideas through a dialogue between two characters, Raphael Hythloday and More himself. Hythloday is a fictional character who describes his recent voyage to the paradisal island of Utopia. Throughout the work, Hythloday describes the laws, customs, system of government, and way of life that exist in Utopia to an incredulous and somewhat condescending More.
Manuel, Frank E. and Fritzie P. Manuel. Utopian Thought in the Western World. Cambridge, MA: Belknap-Harvard Press, 1979.
“Mahavira's disciples compiled his words into texts or sutras, and memorised them to pass on to future generations. The texts had to be memorised since Jain monks and nuns were not allowed to possess religious books as part of their vow of non-acquisition, nor were they allowed to write. Jain theology developed after Mahavira through the teachings of particularly learned monks - these teachings too, had to be memorised - and so the amount that the monks had to remember steadily increased. Unfortunately many of the original teachings of Mahavira have been lost.”