Sunday, March 30, 2008

Throughout the second book of Utopia by Sir Thomas More, we are able to see that More’s idea of Utopia surround three basic principles, including happiness, money, and personal values. These are a few notes I took…

*Happiness
-Nations will not be created equal with money and property involved
-Happiness has nothing to do with material objects
-The source for happiness is a much disputed subject
-People can gain happiness from the improvement of the mind
-Utopians are much more happy in their next state of life
-No one should ever harm or criticize another to make themselves happy
*Money
-People do not have money to buy things, so they steal
-Money should not be equal to the value of human life, therefore, capital punishment should not be made for all crimes
-Slaves cannot ask for money from others
-Any money gathered from Utopia’s exports is used to build up armies
-Money is also raised through land revenues
*Values
-Everyone respects their elders, wives obey husbands, and children listen to their parents
-Utopians kill animals, only when they deem necessary, and not for sport
-Labor is valued highly
-Utopians take care of their bodies, because they believe God gave it to them to keep
-Marriage is extremely valued, polygamy is illegal, and divorce is hard to obtain

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

We seem to havce founf alot of the same things. I really agree whith more on his concepts of Happiness and Money. I do believe that his beliefs on Personal values are ideal but they could only exist if certain conditions were meet and really it would make this perfect society more communistic, which in a sense would be the perfect gov't for this type of society