Manuel F.E., Manuel F.P. Utopian Thought in the Western World

Boston: Belknap Press, 1979. — 912 p. — ISBN10: 0674931858; ISBN13: 978-0674931855.This masterly study has a grand sweep. It ranges over centuries, with a long look backward over several millennia. Yet the history it unfolds is primarily the story of individuals: thinkers and dreamers who envisaged an ideal social order and described it persuasively, leaving a mark on their own and later times. The roster of utopians includes men of all stripes in different countries and eras--figures as disparate as More and Fourier, the Marquis de Sade and Edward Bellamy, Rousseau and Marx. Fascinating character studies of the major figures are among the delights of the book. Utopian writings run the gamut from fictional narratives to theoretical treatises, from political manifestos to constitutions for a new society. The Manuels have structured five centuries of utopian invention by identifying successive constellations, groups of thinkers joined by common social and moral concerns. Within this framework they analyze individual writings, in the context of the author's life and of the socio-economic, religious, and political exigencies of his time. Concentrating on innovative works, they highlight disjunctures as well as continuities in utopian thought from the Renaissance through the twentieth century. Witty and erudite, challenging in its interpretations and provocative in the questions it poses, the Manuels' anatomy of utopia is an adventure in ideas.Introduction: The Utopian PropensityThe Ancient and Medieval WellspringsParadise and the Millennium
The Golden Age of Kronos
The Great TransmissionThe Birth of UtopiaThe Passion of Thomas More
A Città Felice for Architects and Philosophers
Heaven on Earth for the Common ManFlowering and Death of the Christian UtopiaPansophia: A Dream of Science
Bruno, the Magus of Nola
Bacon, Trumpeter of New Atlantis
Campanella’s City of the Sun
Andreae, Pastor of Christianopolis
Comenius and His Disciples
Topsy-Turvy in the English Civil War
The Sun King and His Enemies
Leibniz: The Swan Song of the Christian RepublicEupsychias of the EnlightenmentThe Philosophes’s Dilemma
The Monde Ideal of Jean-Jacques
Freedom from the Wheel
Turgot on the Future of Mind
Condorcet: Progression to Elysium
Kant: Beyond Animality
V. A Revolutionary Diptych
New Faces of Love
Equality or DeathThe Union of Labor and LoveThe Battle of the Systems
Saint-Simon: The Pear Is Ripe
Children of Saint-Simon: The Triumph of Love
Fourier: The Burgeoning of Instinct
Owen’s New Moral WorldMarx and Counter-MarxMarx and Engels in the Landscape of Utopia
Comte, High Priest of the Positivist Church
Anarchy and the Heroic ProletariatThe Twilight of UtopiaUtopia Victoriana
Darwinism, the Ambiguous Intruder
Freudo-Marxism, a Hybrid for the TimesEpilogue: The Utopian Prospect