Of Utopia & Eutopia: The Difference That Makes All the Difference

R.G. Collingwood (1891-1943) 

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)

Don't blame Collingwood or Arendt for the foibles of my thought. But they both inspire me.

During a discussion during the Hannah Arendt Center’s Virtual Reading Group, the discussion led to a comment that our current (“capitalist”) system must surrender its reliance on “domination. We must learn to live as a culture (i.e., economy, politics, society) that doesn’t rely upon domination as an aspect of economic, social, and political relationships. One response to this was to label this aspiration “utopian.” I want to unpack some thoughts based on this interchange. 

1. Utopia can mean “nowhere” (except in the imagination) or it can--with a slight variation in spelling--indicated a “good place,” a “eutopia.” 

2. I don’t want to denigrate the power and importance of imagination, but the effort to establish utopias has gone nowhere. Humans must imagine what an ideal human life would be like, but the gap between our imagination of such a place and our ability to realize as always eluded us. 

3. But our ability to imagine a eutopia, a better place, is crucial to our survival. Places and eras are not equal in the quality of life that they offer to us. Sometimes this may be the result of a natural disaster, but more often than not the quality of life is diminished by human decisions. 

4. We need to distinguish what is achievable from what is imaginable, and there’s no infallible test for this. I suspect that the only way that we can hope to achieve an acceptable level of discernment for any project for the improvement of the human lot is via serious thought, dialogue, and experiment (that will certainly entail failures). 

5. In thought, we can look at the parameters of human life that we know from history (as Collingwood describes it, for instance) and our understanding of the human condition, as for instance, Hannah Arendt defines it. One might add “human nature” to this list, but both Collingwood and Arendt eschew this term as too confining. (Certainly we humans are a part of nature and can be seen in some ways through the lens of science, but we are also apart from Nature and define ourselves through history, which, to follow Collingwood explicitly (and Arendt implicitly), is the realm of human thought and action. It is through thought and action (joined at the hip, as it were) by which we continually define the human. Our thoughts and actions take us in new, unforeseen (or even unforeseeable) directions. 

6. But still, we are haunted by what I label human fallibility. The main components of human fallibility are ignorance and fear. Ignorance comes from our inability to perfectly comprehend the natural world around us and our inability to know the future with any comforting certainty.  As to the future, I’m referring to the unpredictability of the outcome of human actions and choices, which are not only impossible to calculate (even if simple such as simple supply and demand curves) but the complexity of which is made all the more vexing by the strategic choices that humans make in competition with one another over scarce resources. Scarce resources run from food and minerals to political power to social prestige to the choice of mates. We try to out-game each other; we’re always gaming the system. 

7. Fear is the result of our ignorance and uncertainty. Fear is our early warning system that we too often try to use as a guidance system. When fear, rather than thought, guides human conduct, the outcomes are rarely good. (That fear provokes and motivates thought is the preferred course.) 

8. Because of scarcity and fear, humans engage in rivalry and mimetic desires (Rene Girard). Thus, long before capitalism (or any other socio-economic evil of choice), humans have exercised the libido dominandi (St. Augustine), and we can expect humans to continue to do so at least until all scarcities--material and relational-- are eliminated. And what about time, the ultimate scarcity? Only until, or more realistically, if, humans can eliminate mortality from the human condition will time scarcity no longer remain a subject of rivalry. 

9. So, for these reasons, I look askance at utopian visions, but I welcome eutopian visions. We can and must do better. I agree with those who see “existential” (survival) threats to the human species in climate change and environmental degradation, the potential for nuclear warfare, and the intentional manipulation of biological systems (whether developed for warfare or an experimental virus escaping a lab or Frankenstein’s monster escaping the lab and our control). 

10.  To this end, I sometimes describe myself as a “revolutionary Burkean” and on other days a “Burkean revolutionary.” Either way, we have to rebuild our craft (culture, society, polity) while keeping ourselves afloat. We must pursue dramatic and unprecedented change without unleashing the Four Horsemen. We need to throw out “capitalism” and “socialism” as past their “sell by” date. Yet we can’t throw out what we’ve learned and gained about (for instance) markets, collective action problems, and the public good. 

11. Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. I contain multitudes (of ideas and influences). We’ll have to sort them out as we set sail for the future. Human actions have no guarantees for desired results. A good will doesn’t guarantee good results. But set sail we must.