The Quest for Utopia
| 20 July, 2022 | Filled under Previous Events |
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Inspired by the ‘enlightenment salons’, which emerged from the literary and philosophical movements of the 17th and 18th centuries, the Liverpool Salon invites audiences to enjoy serious conversation in convivial surroundings.
The Salon has been hosting public discussions around philosophical, political and cultural topics on Merseyside for over seven years.
The Quest for Utopia was held on Thursday 15 September @ 6.30 pm at Liverpool’s historic Athenaeum club. Watch the film:
About the event
The Quest for Utopia is the first in a new series of public conversations that take utopia as a theme for exploring the possibilities of building other, and better, societies, while reflecting on the shortcomings of our own. In this opening discussion, we’ll explore the origins of modern political systems in utopian stories and the way they have shaped contemporary understandings of science, our relation to the natural world and belief in what makes a good society.
Written at the dawn of the modern age, Thomas More’s Utopia imagined the possibility of humanity taking control of its destiny to create an ideal commonwealth, where happiness and justice reigned supreme. Deriving from the Greek ou (not) and topos (place), but also referring to eu (good) – the ideal place that does not exist – Utopia prefigured many social and economic experiments that followed in reality. Published almost 150 years later, James Harrington’s The Commonwealth of Oceana was both an exposition of an ideal constitution and a practical guide for running England’s new republican government.
One of the most striking of Utopia’s many ‘excellent perfections’ arises from the absence of private property and the abolition of money, where all things are held in ‘common to every man’. A very different idea of perfection existed in the highly technocratic Bensalemite nation, conjured up a century later in Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis. For the rulers of Bensalem, perfection lay in an endless expansion of knowledge and power over nature to enlarge ‘the bounds of Human Empire, to the effecting of all things possible’.
The voyage of discovery – part of the historical context for Thomas More’s Utopia and Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis – would become a central theme in utopian, dystopian and science fiction literature and films.These fictional travellers’ tales, emerging at the dawn of an era of scientific exploration, reflected a growing fascination with real-life voyages of discovery, aimed at collecting, recording and classifying the wonders of newly discovered worlds.
While many of the problems and imagined solutions that excited early utopian thinkers continue to perplex us, we seem today more inclined to expect the worst than hope for something better. Haunted by the horrors of colonial history, dictatorial governments and Faustian dystopias of social and ecological collapse, are we right to fear that the roads to disorder and tyranny are frequently paved with dreams of perfection? If one man or woman’s utopia is another’s hell on earth, then perhaps the fundamental question at the heart of the endless Quest for Utopia is not so much the possibility, but the desirability of realising a perfect world.
Speakers
Rachel Hammersley, Professor of Intellectual History at Newcastle University, working on themes of republicanism, democracy, constitution-building, common land, and revolution in early modern Britain and France.
Rachel is the author of several books, including The English Republican Tradition in Eighteenth-Century France (Manchester University Press, 2010), James Harrington: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford University Press, 2019), and Republicanism: An Introduction (Polity Press, 2020).
Vanessa Pupavac, Associate Professor at the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham.
Vanessa previously worked for the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia and other international organisations. She has written extensively on human rights politics and humanitarianism and is co-author of Changing European Visions of Disaster and Development: rekindling Faust’s humanism (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020).
Ronnie Hughes, A Sense of Place, calls himself “an occasional and formerly enthusiastic utopian practitioner, who’ll bring intellectual interest, his reading, practical knowledge and working experience to our discussion.”
“And, if you’ll excuse my dropping out of the third person here as it’s obviously me writing this, to which self-aggrandisement I’d add: it’s fair to say I’ve had more than a little trouble with the concept and chequered history of utopia during my recent years of studying it at the University of Liverpool. Meaning I now approach the whole idea as a confirmed sceptic who nevertheless experiences occasional patches of enthusiastic sunshine about it all. Some based on my own memories of how practical utopianism, used as a method, has occasionally helped communities in Liverpool change their lives and places for the better. Which I’ll talk a bit about when we meet. More here at A Sense of Place. Twitter: @RonnieWriting.
Robert Huxley is a Research Associate and retired Principal Curator at the Natural History Museum, London, where he led the team responsible for the botanical collections including the 17th and 18th century collections of Sir Hans Sloane. Robert now lives in Liverpool where he is a museums and heritage consultant and writer on the history of natural history and collections. He is a an Associate Editor for the Journal of the History of Collections, author of the edited collection, The Great Naturalists (2019) and contributor to Rare Treasures from the Library of the Natural History Museum (2015), Naturalists in the Field (2018) and The Collectors: Creating Hans Sloane’s extraordinary herbarium (2019). Rob is also President of the Liverpool Athenaeum and actively involved in its library.
The Quest for Utopia will be chaired by Pauline Hadaway, co-founder of the Liverpool Salon.
Pauline completed her doctoral research at the University of Manchester, examining the cultural economy and the politics of peace building in Northern Ireland after the Good Friday Agreement. Pauline works as a researcher and writer, most recently: ‘Escaping the Panopticon’ in Photography Reframed: visions in photographic culture (2018); ‘Callaghan in Northern Ireland’ in James Callaghan: an underrated Prime Minister (2020).
The Liverpool Salon is a not-for-profit organisation. While it can cover expenses, it does not pay fees and gratefully acknowledges the generosity of its speakers and supporters.
The Athenaeum’s Dining Room is taking pre-bookings for a post-event dinner. To make a booking please contact [email protected] or phone 0151 709 7770
More about the discussion
Each Salon lasts around 90 minutes, beginning with brief introductions from our speakers (no more than 10 minutes), setting out their take on the discussion theme. We then weave a conversation back and forth between the speakers and the audience. After around 30-40 minutes of conversation, we return to the speakers for their concluding thoughts.
The Quest for Utopia explores the origins of contemporary thinking about political organisation, science and human development in stories of ideal societies that excited the imagination of readers in the early modern era.
Written in the midst of the corruption and misrule of the English government and society of that time, Thomas More’s Utopia imagined the possibility of humanity taking control of its destiny to create an ideal commonwealth, where happiness and justice reigned supreme.
Described by some as a communist manifesto avant la lettre, one of the most striking of Utopia’s many ‘excellent perfections’ arises from the absence of private property and the abolition of money, where all things are held in ‘common to every man’. A very different idea of perfection existed in the highly technocratic Bensalemite nation, conjured up a century later in Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis. For the rulers of Bensalem, perfection lay in an endless expansion of knowledge and power over nature to enlarge ‘the bounds of Human Empire, to the effecting of all things possible’.
Though idealised and seemingly out of reach, Bacon’s rational technocracy and More’s utopian commonwealth recognisably prefigure numerous social, economic and technological experiments that have followed in reality. Published almost 150 years after More’s Utopia, James Harrington’s The Commonwealth of Oceana was both an exposition of an ideal constitution and a practical guide for constituting England’s new republican government. Beyond the accumulation of wealth and power, Bacon’s vision of a society founded on reason and science would find expression in the quest to expand the bounds of human knowledge that inspired real life journeys to collect, record and classify the natural world.
While many of the problems and imaginary solutions that excited early utopian thinkers continue to perplex us, we seem today more inclined to expect the worst than hope for something better. The horrors of the colonial past, fears of dictatorial government and Faustian dystopias haunt our dreams of building a better future. For, hasn’t history taught us that one man or woman’s vision of Utopia is another’s hell on earth? And that the road to dystopias of disorder and tyranny have frequently been paved with dreams of perfection? Perhaps the fundamental question at the heart of the endless Quest for Utopia is not so much the possibility, but the desirability of realising a perfect world.
The Athenaeum’s Dining Room is taking pre-bookings for a post-event dinner. To make a booking please contact [email protected] or phone 0151 709 7770
The Liverpool Salon is a not-for-profit organisation. While it can cover expenses, it does not pay fees and gratefully acknowledges the generosity of its speakers and supporters.
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