The Utopian Propensity (trans. D. Chabrajska)

Frank E. MANUEL

Fritzie P. MANUEL

Dorota CHABRAJSKA

John Paul II Institute, Faculty of Philosophy, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Al. Racławickie 14, 20-950 Lublin, Poland , Poland

Abstract

In the introduction to their seminal work Utopian Thought in the Western World, Frank E. Manuel and Fritzie P. Manuel discuss the universality of utopian thinking, pointing to the special place it occupies in the Western civilization and analyzing the evolution of utopias in European culture, beginning with anticipations and prefigurations of the conception of heaven on earth that underlies most utopian ideas. They introduce basic classifications of Western utopias and attempt to draw their boundaries as well as draw the main lines of the critical study of utopia, which developed throughout history alongside the genre in question. The authors confront utopias with myths and with political ideas, in which they were frequently inherent. The passage includes references to the most important ideas and conceptions in the history of utopian thinking in the Western world, and it simultaneously provides an outline of the entire work from which it has been excerpted.

Summarized by Dorota Chabrajska

“The Utopian Propensity” translated and reprinted by permission of the publisher from Utopian Thought in the Western World by Frank E. Manuel and Fritzie P. Manuel, pp. 1-29, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1979 Frank E. Manuel and Fritzie P. Manuel.

Keywords:

utopia, history of utopia, Christian utopia, utopia and politics, utopia as a literary genre