Thomas More, Utopia (1516). I read this book when I was in my early 30s and it changed my life. It’s so much more fascinating than people say, especially the first book, which is not about utopia but rather about the enclosures in England.
This one was on the syllabus of a literature course that I attended during the early days of Covid. The topic was dystopian worlds, but there were some utopian works on the syllabus, too. It was great (though strange) to discuss them during that time.
Hobbes, Leviathan (1651). People think Hobbes says people are evil, but he actually says people are rational. My favorite line: “words are wise men’s counters, they do but reckon with them, but they are the money of fools”.
Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882). “we must become the best learners and discoverers of everything that is lawful and necessary in the world: we must become physicists in order to be able to be creators”
Du Bois, Darkwater (1920). “What I had to show was that no real reorganization of industry could be permanently made with the majority of mankind left out. These disinherited darker peoples must either share in the future industrial democracy or overturn the world.”
Freud, Civilization and its Discontents (1930). The socialist project promises a greater sharing out of goods. Yet, to be successful, Freud says, socialists must abandon their fantasy of what the Erfurt Program called “universal harmonious perfection,” social harmony beyond class-society.
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