Search results for ""author saint thomas more""

In Thomas More's hugely influential Utopia, a traveller recounts his discovery of an island nation in which the inhabitants enjoy unprecedented social cohesion and justice. The book imagines a community in which laws, personal relations and professional ambition are based on reason, in contrast with the tradition-bound superstitions of Europe, which were, in More's eyes, impediments to equality and peaceful coexistence.One of the indicators of the profound cultural and political influence of More's masterpiece is today's common use of the word "Utopia" - a term he invented. This extraordinary treatise on the values of rationality and reason - here presented in a sparkling new translation by Roger Clarke and accompanied by copious notes and additional texts - questions what a philosopher can do to enact change in society, and how idealized visions can inform political practice.

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“This translation offers a fresh and vital encounter with Thomas More’s Utopia for a twenty-first century audience.”—Elizabeth McCutcheon, Utopian Studies Saint Thomas More’s Utopia is one of the most important works of European humanism and serves as a key text in survey courses on Western intellectual history, the Renaissance, political theory, and many other subjects. In Utopia, More introduces the mysterious traveler Raphael Hythloday, who tells of an island nation that he considers the most perfectly organized and harmonious in the world. Preeminent More scholar Clarence H. Miller does justice to the full range of More’s rhetoric in this masterful translation. In an Afterword to this edition, Jerry Harp contextualizes More’s life and Utopia within the wider frames of European humanism and the Renaissance.

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