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More on Utopia*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Brendan Bradshaw
Brendan Bradshaw
Affiliation:
Queens’ and Girton Colleges, Cambridge
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Extract

J. H. Hexter's brilliant analysis of More's Utopia in the Introduction to the Yale edition of the text in 1965 was favoured by a resounding endorsement from Quentin Skinner in a no-less-brilliant analysis of the Yale edition in Past and Present in 1967. Given the status of both scholars as interpreters of the political thought of the early modern period, Skinner's prediction that Hexter's analysis would ‘cause a reorientation of [the] entire historiography’ of the subject was bound to be something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Skinner, in any case, clearly considers the claim to have been justified in the event. In his recent masterly study of the history of political thought in the early modern period his treatment of Utopia is especially-and avowedly-indebted to Hexter's work. Meanwhile, the most stimulating challenge presented to Hexter's thesis-by Dermot Fenlon in the Transactions of the Royal Historical Society in 1975-serves in its way to vindicate Skinner's prediction. Fenlon is concerned not to contradict Hexter's basic hypothesis but to stand it on its head. Fenlon's thesis in turn was assimilated into the survey literature when it was adapted by G. R. Elton to hammer Christian humanism in his Reform and Reformation in 1977.

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Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , March 1981 , pp. 1 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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References

1 The complete works of St Thomas More, IV, ed. Edward Surtz, SJ. and J. H. Hexter (New Haven and London, 1965: hereafter cited as Yale Utopia), xv-cxxiv. Quentin Skinner, ‘More's Utopia’, Past and Present, XXXVIII (1967), 153–68.

2 Skinner, ‘More's Utopia’, p. 157.

3 Skinner, Quentin, The foundations of modern political thought (2 vols., Cambridge, 1978), 1, 223, n.1; 255, n.1.Google Scholar

4 Fenlon, Dermot, ‘England and Europe: Utopia and its aftermath’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society xxv (1975), 115–35. For a discussion of Fenlon's interpretation see below pp. 5, 18, 20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Elton, G. R., Reform and Reformation (London, 1977), pp. 42–7Google Scholar. Cf. Elton, , Reform and renewal (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 4–5, 158.Google Scholar

6 Yale Utopia, pp. cxxv-clxxxi, 267–570.

7 Skinner, ‘More's Utopia’.

8 The distinction I have in mind here would be described in scholastic terms as that between the finis operis and the finis operantis. For a recent demonstration of the relevance of the author's intentions and purposes to the interpretation of literary texts, see Quentin Skinner, ‘Motives, intentions, and the interpretation of texts’, New Literary History, III (1972), 393–408.

9 For a bibliographical note on these two traditions of interpretation see Skinner, Foundations, 1, 257, n. 1. To the works cited by Skinner add D. Baker-Smith, Thomas More and Plato's voyage (Cardiff, 1978). Approaching Utopia from a base in literary studies Professor Baker-Smith makes no reference to the current historiographical discussion. His treatment is also rather limited in scope: it constitutes an inaugural lecture delivered at Cardiff in 1978. Nevertheless, his central theme, indicated in his title, draws attention to an inadequately explored dimension of Utopia's intellectual provenance, about which more anon. Meanwhile, Professor Baker-Smith's work may be associated with the conservative tradition of interpretation which argues for an ‘idyllic’ rather than an ‘ideal’ understanding of book II, see Baker-Smith, Plato's voyage, pp. 14–17. I am grateful to Dr David Starkey of the London School of Economics for drawing this study to my attention and for providing me with a copy of it.

10 Hexter, Introduction, Yale Utopia, pp. xlv-cv. Cf. Skinner, ‘More's Utopia’, pp. 153–4.

11 Hexter, ‘Introduction’, pp. c-cxxiv. Skinner, Foundations, 1, 255–62.

12 Fenlon, ‘England and Europe’, especially p. 127. Elton, loc. cit. (n.5). It should be said that for Dr Fenlon and Professor Elton Utopia seems to be endowed with a studied ambiguity. On the one hand it represents ‘an urbanized extension of More's household, which together with the London Charterhouse, was the best model of a Christian society known to him’, Fenlon, ‘England and Europe’, p. 122. On the other hand it is ‘the best form of society imaginable without Christian revelation’, ibid. p. 124.

13 Hexter, ‘Introduction’, pp. lxxiv-lxxviii. Cf. Skinner, Foundations, I, 232–3.

14 Ibid.

15 Hexter, ‘Introduction’, p. lxviii.

16 Ibid. p. lxxvi.

17 For a discussion of the Enchiridion see below, pp. 10ff. For a statement of Erasmus's conviction of the fundamental and unique importance of a knowledge of the revealed teachings of Christ for Christian living see his preface to his edition of the New Testament in 1516, the Paraclesis, ed. Olin, J. C., Christian humanism and the Reformation (London, 1965), pp. 92–106. An English version of the Enchiridion is provided in The Enchiridion of Erasmus, ed. Raymond Himelick (Bloomington, Indiana, 1963).Google Scholar

18 For Erasmus's distinction between the noble pagan and the Christian see The education of a Christian prince, ed. L. K. Born (New York, 1936), p. 152. Having made that distinction Erasmus went on to insist that true Christianity was not a matter merely of creed or of ritual but of virtue. Erasmus, therefore, excludes both the possibility that mere (pagan) virtue constitutes the essence of Christianity or that creed and ritual does so, ibid. p. 153.

19 Hexter, ‘Introduction’, p, lxxv.

20 Chambers, R. W., Thomas More (London, 1935), pp. 126–8.Google Scholar

21 E.g., Born (ed.), The education of a Christian prince, pp. 148, 152, 160, 165, 171–2.

22 St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 2 ae, Q. 109, art. 1–4. For a somewhat different account of the relationship between scholastic theology and the Erasmian polemic see the Introduction by A. H. T. Levi to the Penguin translation of Erasmus's Praise of folly (Harmonds-worth, 1971), pp. 16–32.

23 Himelick (ed.), Enchiridion, p. 37.

24 Ibid. pp. 38–44, 47.

25 Ibid. pp. 46–58; see especially p. 47.

26 Ibid. p. 47.

27 Ibid. pp. 48–50, 55–7, 132. On the Platonic concept of knowledge see Guthrie, W. K. C., A history of Greek philosophy (Cambridge, 1975), iv, 241–65.Google Scholar

28 For a recent exposition of Erasmianism and, in particular, of the Enchiridion, which finds Erasmus's perspective ‘emphatically un-sacramental’, see McConica, J. K., English humanists and Reformation politics (Oxford, 1965), pp. 13–43Google Scholar, especially pp. 19–23: A more nuanced view is provided by Roland H. Bainton. Nevertheless, his exposition of the Enchiridion concludes that ‘the thrust [of Erasmus's discussion], despite all disclaimers, made for rendering the outward apparatus of religion superfluous’; Bainton, , Erasmus of Christendom (New York, 1969), p. 67. Whilst not arguing explicitly against this position John B. Payne was able to extract from Erasmus's writings a generally orthodox theology of the sacraments; Payne, Erasmus: his theology of the sacraments (W. E. Bratcher, 1970).Google Scholar

29 Himelick (ed.), Enchiridion, pp. 47, 99–100, 111–12.

30 On this see especially ibid. pp. 109–10. The alleged dualism of the Enchiridion, with which the foregoing exposition takes issue, is often related to the alleged dualism of Platonic philosophy from which the philosophical framework of the Enchiridion derives. Thus, the supposedly dualistic structure of the Platonic universe, in which sensible reality - the visible material world-is set over against intelligible reality-the unseen, conceptualized world of the mind-is paralleled with the supposedly dualistic structure of Erasmian religion: the external religion of cult and the internalized religion of virtue. Such a formulation not only misconceives the conceptual structure of the Enchiridion: it misconceives the structure of Platonism also. The source of the confusion seems to be a failure to distinguish between Plato's epistemology and his ontology. His disparagement of external reality and of sense experience occurs at the former level. He is not concerned to reject material reality but rather to ensure a proper knowledge of it. He is not concerned to reject sense experience but rather to delimit its boundaries as a source of knowledge. On the other hand, the fundamental postulate of Plato's ontology, far from being dualistic, affirms the harmonious and unitive structure of the universe. In Plato's view external and internal reality, the material and the spiritual, are functionally related in the fulfilment of this unitive design. This is precisely the perspective of Erasmus in the Enchiridion. He is not concerned to repudiate cultic religion but to repudiate misunderstandings about it and to show how it relates to the inner life of virtue in the fulfilment of God's design for human sanctification, Guthrie, W. K., A history of Greek philosophy (Cambridge, 1978), v, 441–5.Google Scholar

31 Hexter, ‘Introduction’, p. lxxvii.

32 Yale Utopia, pp. 218–19.

33 Ibid. p. 219.

34 Loc. cit.

35 Hexter, ‘Introduction’, pp. cv-cxxiv. For Aristotle's attack on the Republic see Politics, bk 11, 1260b-1266b, and below, n. 43.

36 See below, pp. 16–17.

37 Hexter, ‘Introduction’, pp. cii, civ.

38 Ibid. p. cxvi.

39 Ibid. pp. cxi, cxiii.

40 Loc. cit.

41 Aquinas: selected political writings, ed. A. P. D’Entreves (Oxford, 1959), pp. xxxi-xxxii, 166–75.

42 Yale Utopia, p. 107. Aristotle, Politics, bk. VII, 1329a.

43 Yale Utopia, pp. 101, 105. Hexter detaches Utopia from the Platonic tradition by arguing that a proper communist system is not found in the Republic at all. Common ownership is there confined to the Guardian class as a means of segregating them from ‘the lumpish mass’, ‘Introduction’, p. cx. The situation is more complex. As Aristotle pointed out, it was not the case that Plato specifically confined common ownership to the Guardians. Rather he neglected to specify whether it was to apply to the other classes as well. In fact, Aristotle's criticism of the Republic proceeded on the assumption that Plato envisaged a fully fledged communist system, Politics, bk. 11, 1261a, 1264a. Furthermore, Plato's own cursory summary of the Republic in the Laws speaks of a system in which common ownership ‘is put into practice as widely as possible throughout the entire state’, Laws, book 5, 739. Therefore, More was in good company in supposing that Plato advocated communism as the ideal system of socio-political organization.

44 Aristotle, Politics, bk 11, 1260b-1264b.

45 Hexter, ‘Introduction’, pp. cx-cxi.

46 Yale Utopia, pp. 101, 105, 243. Above, p. 13.

47 Skinner, Foundations, 1, 255–62. Above, pp. 3–5.

48 Yale Utopia, pp. 48–51. For an especially fine elaboration of More's use of the metaphor of exploration in relation to Hythloday see Baker-Smith, Plato's voyage, pp. 4–5.

49 Yale Utopia, pp. 20–1.

50 Plato, Republic, bk. 11, 372–4. Guthrie, , History of Greek philosophy, IV, 446–9.Google Scholar

51 Plato, Republic, bk V, 471–4, bk VI, 498, bk IX, 592; Guthrie, loc. cit. pp. 483–6.

52 Guthrie, ibid. pp. 338–65, 503–21.

53 Plato, Laws, bk v, 739.

54 Erasmus made precisely this point about the Republic in his prefatory letter to the 2nd edition of the Enchiridion, , for which see Christian humanism and the Reformation, ed. Olin, John C. (London, 1965), p. 122. Again, Castiglione presents his courtier as a Platonic ideal, and he justified the exercise in similar terms to those used by Plato, The book of the courtier, ed. George Bull (Harmondsworth, 1976, orig. 1967), pp. 35–6. It is clear that this was the common humanist understanding of the function of the ‘ideal type’.Google Scholar

55 Yale Utopia, pp. 54–5, 74–5, 88–9, 96–7.

56 Skinner, Foundations, 1, 218, 259.

57 Hexter, ‘Introduction’, pp. lxxxiv-xcii, civ-cv.

58 Skinner, Foundations, 1, 213–21.

59 Yale, Utopia, pp. 86–7.

60 Plato, Republic, bk VI, 497–502. The discussion in the Republic represents an early statement of Plato's repudiation of rhetoric and political activity against Isocrates and the Sophists. His position was to be put even more forcefully in the Gorgias and finally reiterated in more considered tones in the Phaedrus; Guthrie, , History of Greek philosophy, IV, 412–17.Google Scholar

61 Yale Utopia, pp. 87, 107. In his treatment of this episode Baker-Smith does not seem to appreciate the relevance of the debate about philosophy, rhetoric and politics in the Republic; Baker-Smith, Plato's voyage, pp. 16–17.

62 The cultivation of eloquence, as of good letters, was, of course, a major feature of the humanist revival of rhetoric. The deeply felt conviction about the mutuality of eloquence and wisdom derived from Cicero. He had attempted to harmonize rhetoric and philosophy following their division into separate and competing disciplines as a result of the controversy between Socrates-Plato and the Sophists; Cicero, De Oratore, especially bk III, 52–73; Seigel, Jerrold E., Rhetoric and philosophy in Renaissance humanism (Princeton, 1968), passim: attention might be drawn, incidentally, here to the implications of this consideration for recent attempts to identify Hythloday as Erasmus. In his commitment to eloquence and good letters, and in his conviction as to their public utility-as instruments of public reform by persuasive rather than coercive means-Erasmus was nothing if not a Ciceronion. The anti-rhetorical stance of Hythloday is hardly one with which he would have sympathized. As to his attitude towards royal service in the precise historical circumstances of 1515–16, the suggestion that More sensed Erasmus's disapproval of his decision to enter service is based on the necessarily problematic evidence of silence. Against it, the positive evidence is of Erasmus's expressed delight at the prospect of humanists flooding into the princely councils of Europe, and of his hope, in consequence, for the dawning of the longed for golden age. And, after all, he became a royal councillor himself to the young Charles V, The epistles of Erasmus, ed. F. M. Nicholls (3 vols., London, 1901–18), II, 412–21; III, 45–7, 379–86, 421–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

63 The book of the courtier, ed. Bull, pp. 264–5. Thomas Starkey, A dialogue between Reginald Pole and Thomas Lupset, ed. K. M. Burton (London, 1948), p. 38. Starkey survived just long enough to register his disillusionment; Bradshaw, Brendan, ‘The Tudor Commonwealth: reform and revision’, Historical Journal, XXII (1979), 467–8.Google Scholar

64 Plato, Republic, bk VI, 488.

65 Yale Utopia, pp. 98–9.

66 Ibid. pp. 56–7, 86–7.

67 Ibid. pp. 100–101

68 Ibid. pp. 96–101.

69 In this light it is possible to agree with Professor Elton that More entered public service willingly, though this does not imply, as Professor Elton tends to argue, that he did so with enthusiasm, Elton, G. R., ‘Thomas More Councillor’, Studies in Tudor and Stuart government and politics (2 vols, Cambridge, 1974), 1, 129–54.Google Scholar

70 Yale, Utopia, pp. 244–5.

71 Skinner, Foundations, 1, 259, Cf. Hexter, ‘Introduction’, pp. 1-liv.

72 Yale, Utopia, pp. 106–7, 244–5. Above, p. 16.

73 A precisely parallel case occurs in Thomas Starkey's Dialogue between Reginald Pole and Thomas Lupset, written some fifteen years after Utopia. A long discussion about the best form of government concludes that a system of elective monarchy is most appropriate to a community ‘governed and ruled by civil order and reasonable life, according to the excellent dignity of the nature of man’. On the other hand, it is also concluded that in existing circumstances in England, and considering the turmoil that a change would be likely to provoke, retention of the existing system of hereditary monarchy is a more practicable proposition. Nevertheless, Cardinal Pole makes the point explicitly that to defend the status quo as the lesser of two evils is not to maintain that it is good in itself; Thomas Starkey, Dialogue, pp. 99–105.

74 The same point is made, and attention drawn to its Ciceronian antecedents, in Baker-Smith, Plato's voyage, p. 12.

75 Yale, Utopia, pp. 108–9.

76 Ibid. pp. 108–9, 180–1.

77 Ibid. pp. 18–19, 54–5, 58–9.

78 See Dennis H. Wrong, Skeptical sociology, for much the same thesis argued from a very different standpoint, namely that steady social progress demands a continuing exploration at the theoretical level of ‘the limits of the possible’, balanced by a scepticism that comprehends the ‘tragedy that is inherent in human aspirations and our inability to realize ideals’.