Utopia for Our Century

Inspired by the humanist and Catholic martyr Thomas More, David Albertson and Jason Blakely imagine a new politics of hope In Thomas More’s Utopia, a traveler from the New World delivers a shocking message: on a lost island beyond the horizon, people live far better lives than in Europe. A leading intellectual of his day, More was murdered by Henry VIII in 1535 for refusing to sign a loyalty oath, but his utopian vision inspired some of the most consequential movements in the modern world. In their provocative manifesto, David Albertson and Jason Blakely retrieve More’s insights and apply them to our moment. Amid the decline of liberalism and the rise of authoritarianism, Albertson and Blakely resist the dystopian fears taking root in the twenty-first century. Utopian politics, they argue, can help us break free of today’s entrenched polarities and recast what is possible. They return to the “virtuoso dreamers,” ranging from Plato and Saint Augustine to Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King, Jr., who faced dire circumstances yet were buoyed by indestructible hopes. Channeling More’s spirit of experimentation, creativity, and levity, their utopianism is invested in making new worlds—the most serious kind of play. Social reality, they remind us, has an irreducible imaginative component. Inviting us to dream more boldly, this book offers a radical alternative to the ecological, political, and spiritual crises that plague our world.