We are men or general?
It is perhaps no coincidence that as I write these lines I am reminded of the School of Athens by Raphael. In this fresco the gesture of Aristotle and Plato are exactly signify the dual propensity of Western thought in looking at things and that is the ephemeral world as indicated by Aristotle el ' instead it is imperishable ideal for Plato. Two movements that indicate basically two different conceptions of life. As Coleridge would say, men are born Aristotelians or Platonists. For the first reality are not abstract concepts while the latter's world is nothing but a faint echo of another place where everything is perfect. But these differences in the propensity to look at the earth or the sky opens up another important issue that affects the discourse on the nature of utopian thought and that is the relationship between the individual and the general, between the individual and the ideal of individual. The Aristotle rejects the generic / ideal because it considers the individual irreducible and without equal. An ethical qualms prevents him from being with abstractions. The Platonic look with regret on the contrary, the finite nature of man and aspire to understand the signs of a universal law, since for him the universe is an ordered cosmos. There are two main strands of thought that often, over the centuries, have battled, mingle together. They want to say, Aristotle and Plato on the one hand Aristotle, Locke, Hume, William James on the other Plato, Spinoza, Kant.
These two visions of the world have celebrated the first triumph of reality as a criterion for discrimination between place and place actually reached an illusion to believe the reality is the only true place, the other the idea a need to overcome the human condition in an absolute perspective, the sometimes illusory hope of a deliverance from the evils of existence both at the individual level, both politically and socially.
But perhaps the problem lies in not seeing these two separate and irreconcilable thoughts but, rather, as two experiences that are often contaminated and completed. Utopia without a grounding in reality would become an intellectual exercise but a matter of life eminently tied to reality without utopian impulses could become a set of behaviors without a soul. Niccolo Machiavelli, from this point of view, is a compendium of utopian impulses and sense of reality that is expressed through the maximum according to which the means justify the ends. In The Prince, dedicated to Lorenzo Piero de 'Medici, utopia does not affect a place, but an individual. Prince concentrates in itself the virtues and taste and is committed to the state government with the same spirit of an artist who is dedicated to a 'work of art. As stated Galimberti utopia becomes an opportunity to correct or supplement an existing religious or political situation. So it's not just an exercise in intellectual abstraction or a dream generic, but a force of transformation of the reality on the art of making possible change. In this sense, Crespi (1996) argues that utopia can be a 'openness to non-mystified possibility of different realities from those so far tested.
These two visions of the world have celebrated the first triumph of reality as a criterion for discrimination between place and place actually reached an illusion to believe the reality is the only true place, the other the idea a need to overcome the human condition in an absolute perspective, the sometimes illusory hope of a deliverance from the evils of existence both at the individual level, both politically and socially.
But perhaps the problem lies in not seeing these two separate and irreconcilable thoughts but, rather, as two experiences that are often contaminated and completed. Utopia without a grounding in reality would become an intellectual exercise but a matter of life eminently tied to reality without utopian impulses could become a set of behaviors without a soul. Niccolo Machiavelli, from this point of view, is a compendium of utopian impulses and sense of reality that is expressed through the maximum according to which the means justify the ends. In The Prince, dedicated to Lorenzo Piero de 'Medici, utopia does not affect a place, but an individual. Prince concentrates in itself the virtues and taste and is committed to the state government with the same spirit of an artist who is dedicated to a 'work of art. As stated Galimberti utopia becomes an opportunity to correct or supplement an existing religious or political situation. So it's not just an exercise in intellectual abstraction or a dream generic, but a force of transformation of the reality on the art of making possible change. In this sense, Crespi (1996) argues that utopia can be a 'openness to non-mystified possibility of different realities from those so far tested.
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