This is my summary for Thomas More's view on the perfect society. I was not 100% sure how I was suppose to do this so I will just discuss what I wrote in my notes. The first concept of the first society that I found was apparent on the first page. Thomas more lived in the monarchy time period so he believes that the perfect society is a monarchy. I disagreed with this concept because we know today that societies work better when the people have the say in their government. Second, on page 10, this concept came from the character Hythoday, but because Thomas More created this character I still counted his ideas as Thomas More's. His solution to stop crime would be to not punish thievery with death, but rather have the thief return the item to the person and then be forced to work for the rest of his life. I agreed with this concept because to me it seems this would eliminate crime, not the criminals. Finally, on page 18, Thomas More presents his finally idea for Book 1. He believes that a society can never be ideal until private property is abolished and communal should be established. I disagreed with this because it sounded a lot like communism which history shows does not work. Like I said this is what I took notes over. I was not sure what else to write about.
4 comments:
I'm going to address your points one by one:
1. Monarchy
I definitely agree here. The people do not have enough input in their government in a monarchy, so there is a much greater chance of power abuse.
2. Slavery
I don't agree here. Although it may be all right to have prisoners do public works for a short time, it is much too harsh to force them to work the rest of their lives for something as petty as theft.
3. Communism
I agree with your last point also. The concept of communism seems really good in theory, but human nature will never let people cooperate to such a degree, and the society will end up crumbling.
I agree that thievery cannot be solved through putting them all to death. This doesn't teach them anything because they aren't allowed to fix their problem. Also, if the king would help his people financially, they wouldn't need to steal.
I agree with most of your points, but I have to disagree with the punishment of prisoners. You can take a look at many examples to show that More's idea of proper punishment is very outlandish. From Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, the protagonist steals a loaf of bread to feed his starving self, yet is imprisoned for many years, showing the ridiculousness of the punishment. Sure, crime is a bad thing, but that does not mean Draconian methods should be enforced to stop the pettiest of crimes.
I wasn't sure on how to go about writng mine too, so you are not the only one!
I also disagree with the monarchy type of government, but that is all he knew. People do not get enough choice in what is happening with them as a whole society.
I also agree with your ideas on theives. You cannot always solve the problem by just getting rid of them.
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