More’s ideas about Utopia are revolutionary for his time. The political and sociological satire towards orthodox dogmas, privatization of property, wealth, killing thieves, and wars is mostly glorified and considered as what makes such a strong state.
The book consists of two parts:
Book One acts as a prologue to the main story about Utopia in Book Two. In Book One, we are introduced to Raphael Hythloday (Nonsenso) as our primary source into the Republic of Utopia. Yes, Nonsenso.
Book Two explains how Utopians live their lives. It outlines the geographical, political, economic, and social landscape of Utopia. In Utopia, the actual workday is only six hours (they can study what they want during spare time), marriage is esteemed only for people who are sure about their couple (only 18-year-old women and 24-year-old men can do this), war is avoided if possible (and still, Utopians are experts at it), no private property (every good is owned by the public); similar to Plato’s Laws that the “first-best society” must attempt to remove all forms of ownership from life, slaves are only captured prisoners, divorce/euthanasia is permissible under certain circumstances (and suicide is condemned, your body will likely be thrown to a dirty place), Christianity is introduced, but no Utopians are forced to accept it as their religion; they’re free to worship any Supreme Being (Mythras, they said), as long as there is no disturbance of Utopia’s peace.
But this is Utopia. Should we remember Plato’s Republic or de Pizan’s City of Ladies that somehow also talk about how the ideal world/society should be.
There may be some problematic aspects that we—I find, such as, in Utopia, though we are carefully free to choose which Supreme Being we worship, Christianity is considered the superior one; though women are welcome to join any wars or participate in everyday market labor, sexism was still very common (at his time).
Yet despite its problematic aspects, this book is progressive in some instances; thus, fundamental truths about our society are exposed.