Identity and values in the making of a utopia : reading Campanella's The City of the Sun

Abstract

First coined by Thomas More in the title of his homonymous work -that "truly golden booklet,,2 describing an imaginary island and its inhabitants - the word ''utopia'' (a "non-place") has since been used as an eponym for the literary genre encompassing various forms of fictional descriptions of ideal societies. Both in political philosophy and political science there has been a long-standing tendency to dismiss utopianism, if not ridicule it outright. Its association with idealisms of various kinds, coupled with the apparent impossibility of its realisation, turned utopian writing into the antithesis of the realpolitik that increasingly came to shape political thought and practice in recent centuries. Such views have at once characterized and been characterized by the commonplace dichotomy between "this-worldly" and "other-worldly" theory and practice, fiction and reality or idealism and realism. Although less known than More's magnum opus, Tommaso Campanella's The City of the Sun is often cited as one of the best examples of Renaissance utopianism. Indeed, outside of the rather restricted circle of Campanella scholarship, very little else is known about the Calabrian philosopher's life, thought, and works. This often results in rather skewed representations and interpretations of his ideas. In what follows I would like to briefly discuss what I consider to be three interconnected aspects of Campanella that serve as an indispensable background - painted here, of course, in very broad strokes - to reading and appreciating his most well-known work. I will attempt to do this in a manner that in some way links to the themes of "identity" and "values".