Utopia

In 1516, a brilliant English lawyer and humanist named Thomas More invented a word. He called it Utopia—a pun crafted from Greek that means both "Good Place" (eutopia) and "No Place" (outopia). More than five centuries later, we still use that word. But the book that gave it to us is far stranger, funnier, and darker than its legacy suggests. It begins with fact. More, a real historical figure, travels to Flanders on royal business. In Antwerp, he meets his friend Peter Giles and a weathered, sun-bronzed sailor named Raphael Hythloday—whose surname, for those paying attention, translates wryly as "skilled in nonsense." Hythloday claims to have sailed with Amerigo Vespucci and been left behind on the far edge of the New World. There, he discovered an island: Utopia. Here, there is no private property. Gold is used for chamber pots. Atheists are tolerated, though not permitted to argue in public. Divorce is legal. Euthanasia is compassionate. Priests may marry. War is outsourced to mercenaries. And every household, in this most perfect of commonwealths, owns two slaves. Utopia unfolds as a literary hall of mirrors. Is this the blueprint for an ideal society—or a satire so subtle that for four hundred years, half its readers have missed the joke? Is Raphael a philosopher, or a fool? Did More endorse this vision, or was he exposing the impossibility of human perfection?