Utopia

by Thomas More

What conclusions can we come to as regards the

purpose behind the writing of Thomas More's Utopia?

ANSWER-
More's purpose in writing Utopia was to call certain
aspects of his society into question by fabricating an ideal
society against which it could measured. The fact that he
named the book "Utopia," Greek for "no place," demonstrates
both that he intended the book to be somewhat satirical in
nature, but also to show that he had no illusions that the type
of society he described was attainable (or perhaps even
desirable). However, as the fictional character Raphael
Hythloday says, studying the ways of the Utopians could go a
long way toward "correcting the errors of our own cities and
kingdoms." So More's book is not necessarily prescriptive:
private property, for example, was very unlikely to be banned
in Europe as it was in Utopia; working people in More's day
were very unlikely to ever be able to spend substantial
amounts of time in study; and even the religious tolerance
observed among the Utopians would have been almost
inconceivable among More contemporaries. But he still hoped
to show that many of the institutions that he viewed as
oppressive and unreasonable could be altered if people were
made aware of how unreasonable they were. Utopia is written,
to a great extent, for that purpose. It is a humanist approach
to social criticism.