Duncan Bell (Cambridge) introduced me to the idea of a recursive literary tradition. It’s the idea (to paraphrase) of a shared framework of thematic and/or formal similarities embraced and alluded to by authors who are familiar with each others works. Bell uses it as one of the ways in which to articulate the existence of (a strain) Utopian fiction.
Now, as regular readers know, I tend to understand Utopian fiction (in which More’s Utopia is paradigmatic) as an exercise in what I once called ‘Socratic Political theory’ (recall) in which the workings or malfunctioning of some important social institutions, norms, practices, and social mechanisms (and their interactions) are magnified and made available for contemplation and, perhaps, improvement/remedy in the art of government. This feature of the recursive tradition is itself exemplified and satirized by Gulliver as Giant in Book 1 of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (with its many allusions to Plato in Book IV).
In my own prior digressions on Utopian fiction, I have emphasized that the tradition we tend to trace to More’s Utopia, itself hearkens back, with recursive allusions, to Plato’s Republic, and, especially, the passage (592) at the close of Book 9. So that we can understand the kind of models, and the inner relations, we encounter in Utopian fictions as patterned after a creative interpretation of the (the divinely crafted) pattern among the stars. In fact, this latter fact is one reason to allow what we now call some ‘science fiction’ into this recursive tradition. And in the Utopian recursive tradition we often find amusing meta-reflections about the role of astronomy (which seems so impractical to human affairs) in it.
In what follows I want to use Bell’s idea of a recursive tradition to start an argument by which I suggest that in its earliest phase, the recursive tradition of utopian fiction we tend to trace to More’s Utopia, itself is always characterized by an attempt to make visible how Athens (what I above have called Socratic Political theory as illustrated by Plato) and Jerusalem (Abrahamic revelation) interact (and, perhaps, suggest reform in the art of government).
Crucially, for my argument, in this recursive tradition of utopian fiction the epistemic complexities of (Abraham) revelation and how it is authoritative is made visible and (thereby) instructive to the art of government and (perhaps also) problematized. This is made to interact with an account of the workings or malfunctioning of some other important social institutions, norms, practices, and social mechanisms (and their interactions) that can be traced to Plato. In More’s Utopia itself Jerusalem is most visible in Part I (recall this post) and Athens most visible in Part II (with its many allusions to Plato’s writing).* But religion, including the introduction of Christianity, is treated, of course, non-trivially in Part II, too.
Bacon’s New Atlantis, which I have repeatedly blogged about, explicitly evokes Plato, More, and revelation (including the role of miracles in it) and their combination (not the least in the hilarious Adam and Eve pools). It also explicitly introduces and repeatedly reminds the reader of the issue of diverging revelations that are Abrahamic in character. It places a new Jerusalem (Salomon’s House on Bensalem) in an updated Platonic environment (Atlantis mentioned in Timaeus, itself a dialogue that refers back to Republic!) In addition, Camponella’s The City of the Sun (written before New Atlantis, but published after) is explicit about some of its debts to Platonic institutions. The religion of the solar-city folk, while not far from Christianity, is patterned on the stars (and, when emendated, close to Christianity—this echoes More).
The previous two paragraphs are not meant to be convincing to those unfamiliar with Plato, More, Bacon, and Camponella. (But they should be to my regular readers because I have explored these resonances over many years.) The recursive Utopian tradition so understood, in which Jerusalem and Athens are conjoined in complex fashion, runs through nineteenth century Christian socialist fiction and Thus Spoke Zarathustra all the way to Omelas (and undoubtedly beyond). My present purpose is not to offer detailed readings of any text. I want to make three points (of which the last two are connected).
First, the recursive Utopian tradition so defined need not start with More. In fact, I think Philo’s Therapeutae (recall) and my favorite Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy ibn Yaqdhan; (Philosophus Autodidactus) are useful earlier exemplars of fictional works that engage in what I have called ‘Socratic Political theory’ in the context of Abrahamic revelation. I would be genuinely surprised if More was unfamiliar with Philo’s work, by the way, for there are plenty of allusions to it in Utopia.+
Second, there is a tendency to treat modern political philosophy as originating either in Machiavelli or (via Bodin) Hobbes. Let’s stipulate this for the sake of argument. In fact, in modern political philosophy there are recurring polemics and tropics against the recursive Utopian tradition in which Plato and Utopia are lampooned jointly— see, for example, the opening paragraph of Spinoza’s posthumous Political Treatise:
[Philosophers] have never conceived a theory of politics, which could be turned to use, but such as might be taken for a chimera, or might have been formed in Utopia, or in that golden age of the poets when, to be sure, there was least need of it. Accordingly, as in all sciences, which have a useful application, so especially in that of politics, theory is supposed to be at variance with practice; and no men are esteemed less fit to direct public affairs than theorists or philosophers.
We find this also (recall) in Hume, who seems to echo Spinoza at Treatise 3.2.2.15-16, and he explicitly writes in “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth,” that “All plans of government, which suppose great reformation in the manners of mankind, are plainly imaginary. Of this nature, are the Republic of Plato, and the Utopia of Sir Thomas More.” Notice that what Hume here calls ‘manners’ encompass what I called above “important social institutions, norms, practices, and social mechanisms.”
Third, what this second phenomenon suggests is that the recursive utopian tradition has an important role within modern thought. It is both a vehicle through which the phenomenon that I called ‘Socratic Political theory’ is explored continuously in the context of the complex interaction of Jerusalem and Athens as well as (and perhaps in virtue of this continuity) an enduringly important (perhaps a kind of negative constitutive principle) alternative to a self-conscious modernity which understands itself as kind of rupture with the ancients.
I leave it as an open question to what degree we have moved beyond the recursive Utopian tradition and this contrasting modernity.
*See, for example, Steintrager, James. "Plato and more's" utopia"." Social Research (1969): 357-372. (This is a rather Straussian piece, but my argument does not require Straussian commitments or familiarity with Strauss’ essay.)
+For a fascinating essay that also ranges over Plethon, Josephus, African polities, see Derrett, J. Duncan M. "Gemistus Plethon, the Essenes, and More's Utopia." Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance 27.3 (1965): 579-606.
We need more utopianism rather than less. The defeats suffered by the left from the 1970s to the recent past have led to a retreat into a politics of managing the legacy social-democratic state while accommodating the power of global finance. As part of this, the various strains of utopian thinking on offer until the 1960s have been dissipated and not replaced. But something more than managerialism is needed to counter the appeal of rightwing demagoguery (typically based on a return to an imagine past, rather than a positive vision of utopia)>