Utopia, the possibility of the impossibility: a reading based on Thomas More

Abstract

This essay shows, on one side, the vitality of utopia and, on the other, it highlights the scale of its necessity in contemporary society. Thomas More’s Utopia is presented as a paradigm of utopian thought because of the influx it has exerted on different societies. Besides, it erects itself as the epitome of all possibilities of envisioning a better world, as the ultimate expression of the symbolism of the Renaissance and it is the principal work of the humanism of that period. Utopias are not just the mere impossibility that is suggested by their semantic structure. Utopias are the possibility of building the best of possible worlds, of retracing hope on its correct perspective and it is the whole of the symbolic construct of the human.