The line between utopia and dystopia is thin. (Source: Bonhams/Wikipedia)
Key takeaways
- According to Dostoevsky, people would rather be free in an imperfect world than be unfree in a perfect world.
- As seen in Plato's Republic, the line between utopias and dystopias is not always legible.
- Many utopian thinkers choose truth over freedom.
Tim Brinkhof
Copy the link titled Article to Share Utopia: Does Living in a Perfect Society Mean You Have to Give Up Your Freedom? Share Utopia on Facebook: Does Living in a Perfect Society Mean You Have to Give Up Your Freedom? Sharing Utopia on Twitter: Does living in a perfect society mean you have to give up your freedom? On the LinkedIn
"Since man is a man who has been endowed with strange qualities, what else can he expect from him?" Dostoevsky asked in his 1864 novella Notes underground. "Sprinkle every blessing of the world on him, drown him in the ocean of happiness, so that on the surface only the bubble of happiness can be seen; Giving him financial prosperity leaves him with no other way but to sleep, eat cake, and be busy with the continuation of his species. ”
"Even so," Dostoevsky continued, "men will play you some lewd tricks out of sheer ingratitude, out of sheer resentment. He would even risk his cake and deliberately crave the deadliest garbage, the least economical absurdity, just to introduce elements of his deadly fantasy into all this positive goodwill. All he longed to keep was his dreamy dreams, his vulgar stupidity, just to prove to himself—as if it were very necessary—that men were still men, not the keys of the piano. ”
When Dostoevsky wrote these verses, Russian writers were obsessed with utopian ideas. They wrote stories and essays on how to replace the increasingly dysfunctional Tsarist empire with a society free of suffering or conflict. Their vision of the future has inspired the imagination of countless people, from armchair philosophers to armed socialist revolutionaries, who aspire to turn this speculative novel into a political reality.
Dostoevsky, however, was not impressed. As explained by the quote above, the authors of Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov argue that, by definition, utopia is incompatible with human nature, which tends to be free. He believes that people would rather be free in an imperfect world than be unfree in a perfect world. Since the line between utopia and dictatorship is unclear, the author also argues that planning one necessarily leads to the creation of another.
Notes from the underground are not the first texts to address this dilemma. The relationship between utopia and human nature has plagued thinkers for centuries, with contradictory reactions at different times. Plato believed that there was no contradiction between the two. Today, thanks in part to the bloody legacy of the Soviet Union and other communist countries, most readers living in the Western world tend to side with Dostoevsky. But are the authors' conclusions really that convincing?
The life of Plato's philosopher king
Although Plato's dialogues shaped the development of democracy in Europe and elsewhere, the ideal society he described in the Republic was hardly democratic. This society is not ruled by popular votes, but by philosopher kings: rulers ruled by philosophy. Not every member of society is qualified to be a philosopher king; Instead, they were selected from the ruling elite. Qualifications are not based on strength, wealth, or descent, but on a love of truth and the ability to reason.
"Until the philosopher becomes king," socrates character told his interlocutor, "or the kings and princes of this world possess the spirit and power of philosophy ... Cities will never rest in peace from evil,—— no, nor will humanity, because I believe that only then will our nation be able to survive and see the light of day. To the modern reader, Plato's trust in philosophers may sound short-sighted and arrogant. However, the Greek thinker had his reasons.
Plato divided the soul into mind, body, and spirit. He founded a tradition from St. Augustine to the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who saw physical and mental impulses such as jealousy or desire as the source of all evil; These impulses—not to mention the pain they cause—can be remedied by the ability of the mind: reason. Just as Socrates used philosophy to reveal the benefits of self-control, the philosopher-king will use philosophy to maintain the perfect balance of society.
The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius is often cited as a model for the philosopher king. (Credit: Nicholas Hartman/Wikipedia)
"In Plato's non-democratic [republic]," one article reads, "ensuring justice means that certain elements of the state (as in the soul) are subordinated to others." Spiritual elements in the soul and the state (in the soul, anger and pride; in the state, the guardian class of warriors) and the element of appetite (in the soul, desire; The state, merchants and craftsmen) must succumb to the wisdom of the "best" class of the people, the philosopher king, in whose soul reason is victorious. ”
In Plato's Republic, reason dominates every aspect of life, even the production of art. Socrates said that when the Republic went to war, its poets were not allowed to write about cowardice, because doing so might soften the resolve of the soldiers. Plato's distrust of civil liberties may have something to do with his experiences in Athenian democracy, in which voters were easily persuaded by demagogues who lured them into the Peloponnesian War and authorized the killing of Socrates.
The Republic had a lasting influence on utopian writing in the West. St. Augustine, author of the 426 book The City of God, also envisions a universe in which existence unfolds in the direction of higher (and this time religious) forces. Thomas More, author of Utopia in 1516, inherited Plato's anti-democratic sentiments; His Perfect World abolished private property, a right that America's founding fathers inscribed centuries later in their country's constitution.
The Russian utopia before the Soviet Union
More and (in a way) Plato never thought of realizing their utopia; They are thought experiments, not viable blueprints for actual regimes. This is in stark contrast to 19th-century Russia, where book writing is often done with real-world aspirations in mind. As a result, utopian ideas are often at the forefront of political movements. One of the earliest examples was the Decembrists who appeared after the sudden death of Tsar Alexander I.
Like the socialist parties that followed in their footsteps, the Decembrists split into several branches. The more moderate of these branches drafted a constitution that would turn the Russian Empire into a federal republic similar to that of the United States. According to historians Alexander Yassanovsky and Alvin Rubinstein, the basic idea of the document is that self-determination — not dictatorship — will bring peace and prosperity.
Utopian illustration by Thomas More. (Credit: Mazarine Library / Wikipedia)
Another, more radical branch of the Decembrists formed around the revolutionary pavel Pestel. In a paper titled Russian Pravda, Pestel said he believed federalism was "incompatible with Russia's historical experience" and would lead to "political disintegration." His vision for the future of the nation was to establish a centralized republic. In this republic, citizens are united under a unified banner, language and culture, while minorities will be forced to choose between Russification or deportation.
Pestel's utopia, inextricably linked to national identity, resonated with Slavic and Orthodox Christians: as Riasanovsky and Rubinstein put it, the determinists believed that "the historical development of Russia is unique" and that "with their true faith, a higher sense of commonality and a sense of justice for civic duty [of the Russian people]." Despite the suppression of the Decembrists in 1825, Pestel and his chauvinist ideas survived the current regime of Vladimir Putin.
Vladimir Lenin wrote in the socialist writer Nikolai Chernyshevsky's 1963 book What to Do? It shows how revolutionary heroes broke away from tradition and superstition and created a society free of economic exploitation. Like the Soviet Union, communism came at the expense of individual freedom. The socialist way of life is the only way of life, and citizens must rotate jobs to ensure that everyone gets the same work experience.
Lack of agency is a common theme not only in socialist literature, but also theoretically. According to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, history unfolds according to the class struggle: the clash of social forces is beyond the control of the individual. In the Communist Manifesto, the two declared that the inevitable outcome of this struggle was an international uprising that would put an end to global capitalism. Ordinary people have as little say in this process as they did in the governance of platonic republics.
Freedom doesn't matter
Utopian thinkers throughout history paid little attention to free will. That's because they spend their lives searching for answers to life's biggest questions: the secret to lasting happiness, the management of perfect justice, or— more broadly, the fundamental laws of human nature and the universe. They did not like the independence of human beings, which led to chaos and unnecessary bloodshed. Instead, they look for something that can show them the right way—a concept or principle.
Like Marx, the Bolsheviks believed that the end of capitalism was inevitable. (Credit: A. Sdobnikov / Wikipedia)
Plato's guide is philosophy—a tool for insight into the world of form. For St. Augustine, it was faith in a benevolent and omniscient God. At the same time, Chernyshevsky believed in the inevitable demise of capitalism. These thinkers are unconditionally committed to their ideals. Still, they didn't consider themselves slaves. In fact, it is quite the opposite. By serving what they believe to be the truth about the world, they believe in their own liberation from lies.
Bolshevik Aleksandr Arosev, who wrote in his diary that he "feared the tenacity, persistence, and fearlessness of the human mind, especially in this mind — or rather, beneath it — loomed more than thought, something primitive and incomprehensible, something that made it impossible for people not to act in a certain way, not to experience such a powerful impulse to act, to death, If you block its way, it will also appear powerless. ”
History, however, seems to have endowed Dostoevsky with victory. After all, every attempt to create the utopia described by humanity's greatest thinkers has failed. Many were all-out catastrophes that resulted in regimes being more destructive and unorganized than the regimes they replaced. But while utopian fiction spawned some real-world dystopias, it also inspired readers to think creatively about solving the social problems of the time—something valuable.
Culture History Philosophy Psychology