The Uses of Utopia by Joad Raymond Wren review – can the ideal society ever exist?

This fascinating intellectual history of imagined paradises takes us from Thomas More to Ursula K Le Guin By definition, utopia cannot exist. In 1516, educated readers of Thomas More’s Utopia would have appreciated a tension between two possible derivations of this novel word: the Greek “eu-topos”, meaning good place, and “ou-topos”, meaning not a place at all. It might have been a compact warning that one should never attempt to turn utopias into reality. Those who have tried usually witnessed the model societies they founded devolving into grungily dysfunctional communes, weird sex cults, or

This story was reported by Culture | The Guardian. EUROPES curates Europe's most relevant coverage — read the full report at the original source.