58 pages • 1 hour read
Thomas MoreUtopia
Thomas MoreFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1516A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
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BetaBook 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Book 1 Summary
As Book 1 opens, More explains how his friend Peter Gilles introduces him to Raphael Nonsenso during a visit to Antwerp. Raphael is a Portuguese sailor and autodidact who once traveled with the famed merchant Amerigo Vespucci. Raphael regales the two friends with tales of his travels and faraway lands. Impressed by Raphael’s learning and worldliness, Gilles suggest that Raphael should enter the service of a royal court, where he could be very useful in matters of state. Raphael rejects this idea, saying that kings are too interested in waging war and enriching themselves to be concerned with good governance (20). Courtiers support kings in these matters and rarely revise their views as a matter of protecting their reputation. In England, Raphael says he saw these tendencies first hand at a dinner with Cardinal John Morton. An English lawyer attending the dinner complains that capital punishment has failed to deter theft in England. Raphael responds by suggesting that thievery is driven by poverty (22), and that this is driven by the greed of the rich who displace farm workers and leave them nowhere to go.
Throughout Raphael’s tales, Gilles and More both suggest that the knowledge Raphael has developed from his travels would make him a useful member of a royal court. Raphael rejects the notion that his advice would be focused solely on how best to govern, as kings are more interested in wars and wealth than ideal government. Raphael then recounts conversations about crime and justice with Cardinal Morton and an English lawyer over dinner. Throughout, Raphael suggests that injustice and justice are matters of broad systematic problems of social organization. Rather than treating symptoms of social disorder, those in power should strive to eliminate their causes. In working to eliminate thievery, for example, one should attack the root causes of poverty, which motivates theft. Raphael asserts, “Until you put these things right, you’re not entitled to boast of the justice meted out to thieves, for it’s a justice more specious than real or socially desirable” (27). Raphael also asserts that many features of the English justice system are not consistent with the values of Christianity (28). As he discusses these issues with the dinner guests, he illustrates his points with examples from nations he has visited, such as Tallstoria, Nolandia, and Happliand, occasionally alluding to Utopia.
In conversation with More and Gilles, Raphael revisits the idea that kings would never take his advice, being too fixated on amassing wealth. Because of this and related economic issues, a just society will never be achieved until private property and money are totally abolished, according to Raphael (44). More disagrees that communal ownership would solve these problems. Raphael rejoins, explaining that there is an example of such a society: the remote island nation of Utopia (46).
Book 1 Analysis
The first book of Utopia sets the narrative into motion and articulates the work’s ideological and intellectual conflicts. The book takes the form of a series of philosophical dialogues on questions regarding governance and social organization. These reflect central problems in social and political philosophy: What are the origins of social problems? How should these problems be addressed? What is the nature of justice? What would the ideal society look like?
Raphael offers provisional answers. In his discussion with the lawyer and Cardinal Morton, Raphael makes liberal use of the language of sickness, medicine, and health in expressing his approach. The lawyer is puzzled by the inability of capital punishment to deter thievery. This is no mystery at all, Raphael says, if one simply diagnoses the source of crime. According to Raphael, theft is driven by economic displacement and poverty. To address this issue, it is not enough to treat the symptoms (e.g., through capital punishment); instead, it is necessary to root out the original cause of the problem. Piecemeal reforms and half-measures are not enough to eliminate the problem, as they combat one set of social maladies by producing others. An example of this can be seen in the lawyer’s insistence that poverty helps grow the army, as individuals without other opportunities turn to military service to secure a livelihood. Raphael insists that keeping a standing army is a massive waste of resources and a threat the state itself. As long as a standing army exists, there is the possibility of military coup d’état. The attempt to alleviate one symptom of poverty merely encourages new symptomatic expressions rather than solving the problem.
Reflected in Raphael’s comments is a view of social problems as systematic and solutions as structural. The ultimate reform measure, Raphael claims, is the elimination of private property. According to Raphael, the very existence of private property is at the basis of various forms of social and political exploitation, abuse, and injustice. This approach to social organization anticipates Marxism as it arises in the 19th century. For Raphael, as for Marx, society should be organized through a radical restructuring that eliminates the causes of social problems. For both, this is a matter of abolishing private property.
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