{"id":2882,"date":"2015-12-02T14:31:56","date_gmt":"2015-12-02T14:31:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/improve-research.eu\/?page_id=2882"},"modified":"2015-12-02T14:31:56","modified_gmt":"2015-12-02T14:31:56","slug":"abstracts-500-years-of-utopia-3-february-2016","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/hosting.uantwerpen.be\/improve\/?page_id=2882","title":{"rendered":"Abstracts 500 years of Utopia, 3 February 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

Abstracts 500 years of Utopia, 3 February 2016<\/strong><\/h2>\n

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Thomas More\u2019s Utopia<\/em> as a Dystopia in its Particular Place in Time<\/p>\n

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Guido Latr\u00e9 <\/h3>\n

More than a century before Thomas More, Geoffrey Chaucer already dealt with aspects of an English society that was increasingly becoming \u2018mercantile,\u2019 and prepared itself for what we would now call a \u2018capitalist\u2019 community. If his Canterbury Tales<\/em> seem fully aware how the Flemish towns provided already fully-developed models of this new society, Thomas More\u2019s Utopia<\/em> appears to be even more conscious of the mercantile structures that defined a \u2018polis\u2019 like Bruges, or even more categorically Antwerp. In this place, some humanists were to a large extent directly in charge of the affairs of the town, and as a lawyer, More had himself been a key figure in \u2018negocia\u2019 between London and Antwerp.<\/p>\n

This lecture investigates how More mixes utopian and dystopian visions to express his ambiguous attitude towards the well-established mercantile society in the Low Countries, and the more recent one developing in his own country.<\/p>\n

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Utopia and the elimination of poverty<\/p>\n

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Philippe Van Parijs<\/h3>\n

Abstract: “Does the elimination of relative poverty, as defined by the European Union, make sense as a social objective? Is it too utopian in the sense of being unachievable? And\/or is it not utopian enough in the sense of providing a picture of a better society that can support our hopes and mobilize our energy?”<\/p>\n

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Pieter Gillis Lecture 2016<\/p>\n

Utopia<\/em>, a Republic of Letters<\/p>\n

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Joanne Paul<\/h3>\n

Hythloday tells the character of More that to approach the island of Utopia is to risk death; only someone who already knows its secrets can reach its hallowed shores. We might say the same for the book itself; for almost 500 years scholars have puzzled over this text, trying to work out its secrets. At the same time, we have every reason to believe that the audience for which More intended his text, the humanist scholars of sixteenth-century Europe, understood its meaning far more clearly than we do.<\/p>\n

By understanding Utopia<\/em> as a continuation of the themes central to the collective work of Erasmus and More, this talk not only explores Utopia<\/em> in the context of the humanist Republic of Letters, but demonstrates it to be a literal \u2018Republic of Letters<\/em>\u2019 to be shared amongst its members. In Utopia<\/em>, More presents a central humanist theme, that of prizing what can be held in common over what is one\u2019s own, leading to reflections on friendship, politics and mortality. In the end, to approach Utopia<\/em> is indeed to face death, acknowledging our common fate, and our essential equality.<\/p>\n

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Abstracts 500 years of Utopia, 3 February 2016     Thomas More\u2019s Utopia as a Dystopia in its Particular Place in Time   Guido Latr\u00e9 More than a century before Thomas More, Geoffrey Chaucer already dealt with aspects of an English society that was increasingly becoming \u2018mercantile,\u2019 and prepared itself for what we would now…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2882","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hosting.uantwerpen.be\/improve\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hosting.uantwerpen.be\/improve\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hosting.uantwerpen.be\/improve\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hosting.uantwerpen.be\/improve\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hosting.uantwerpen.be\/improve\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2882"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/hosting.uantwerpen.be\/improve\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2885,"href":"https:\/\/hosting.uantwerpen.be\/improve\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2882\/revisions\/2885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hosting.uantwerpen.be\/improve\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}