scholarly journals Comparative Study on Sir Thomas More & Hakim Abolqasem Ferdowsi, in Subject & Utopia

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 45
Author(s):  
Hamid Reza Kasikhan
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Physical Structure ◽  
Analytic Method ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Ideal Society ◽  
Job Classification ◽  
Sir Thomas More ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Ideal

The present study compares two poets and scholars (English and Persian) in terms of subject and utopia. Sir Thomas More’s Merry Jest is compared with one piece of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh in terms of the common subject or message they convey in classification of people’s occupations. Having a civilized and more disciplined society, both poets believed in classifying people based on their skills, competence and efficiencies; and insisted that each group should remain in their own category and avoid interfering or entering the profession of which they know nothing. Moreover, as social scholars, both put forward the theory of utopia and describe the ideal society in which people can live more comfortably and pleasantly. Living in the 16th century, the principles proposed by More for his utopia basically turn round modern social interactions and attempts to recognize the reason of problems at the first step, and then amending them through the laws he suggests. In Ferdowsi’s utopia, however, the ideal society is based on two distinct factors: physical structure of towns, the number of necessary architectural buildings constructed, and the moral enhancement of its residents in holding high human values as honesty, integrity and knowledge. The present research aims to probe, examine and find answers for two main questions: what affinities and dichotomies are there in “job classification” and the concept of “utopia” held by Ferdowsi & More? The research method is library-based and the obtained results are categorized by descriptive-analytic method.

Cosmopolitan Politesse

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-99
Author(s):  
Nigel Rapport
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
The Other ◽  
Georg Simmel ◽  
Public Address ◽  
Common Humanity ◽  
Class A ◽  
The Common ◽  
Cultural Reality ◽  
Individual Human

In an earlier work (Anyone: The Cosmopolitan Subject of Anthropology, 2012), I considered a solution to the ‘problem’ of society as identified by Georg Simmel. The fact that we only come to know the interactional ‘Other’ by way of distortion, by virtue of the imposition of alien and alienating labels, categories and taxonomies, Simmel (1971) described as ‘tragic’ (cf. Rapport 2017). We distort the Other’s identity when we ‘know’ them in the conventional and collectivising terms of a symbolic classification of cultural reality. In response, I argued for a linguistic and behavioural style of public address and exchange, and an ethos of good manners, that I termed ‘cosmopolitan politesse’. This was an interactional code by which we presumed the common humanity and the distinct individuality of whomsoever we engaged with, but classified the Other in no more substantive fashion than this. We accepted that in our social interactions we were engaging with an individual human other – ‘Anyone’ – and not with a representative of some more substantive class: ‘a woman’, ‘a Swede’, ‘a Jew’, someone ‘working class’, ‘primitive’ or ‘pious’, and so on.

Two Tudor Witnesses to “the Corps of Christendom” – More and Shakespeare

Moreana ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 47 (Number 181- (3-4) ◽  
pp. 94-107
Author(s):  
Peter Milward
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Richard Iii ◽  
Tudor England ◽  
Overwhelming Evidence ◽  
Sir Thomas More ◽  
History Play ◽  
The One ◽  
The Ideal

In the literary history of Tudor England, I venture to propose two names as standing out and claiming comparison with each other as witnesses to the ideal and reality of Christendom – those of Thomas More in the reign of Henry VIII and William Shakespeare in the reign of Elizabeth I. In the case of More, little needs to be said, it is so obvious that he bore witness to the ideal and the reality, even to the shedding of his blood as a canonized martyr. But in that of Shakespeare, much more has to be said in view of the seemingly overwhelming evidence to the contrary. For this purpose it is necessary to take account not just of the dramatist’s indebtedness to More’s Life of Richard III in his history play of that title, nor just of his contribution to the MS Book of Sir Thomas More, nor of the one explicit mention of More in the play of Henry VIII, which is commonly attributed to John Fletcher, but of the whole corpus of Shakespeare’s plays in their chronological order as bearing witness in their totality to what More called in his last speech at his trial in Westminster Hall “the whole corps of Christendom”.

Giving It All Away? Thomas Reid’s Retreat from a Natural Rights Justification of Private Property

1993 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 367-389
Author(s):  
K.A.B. Mackinnon
Keyword(s):  
Private Property ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Sir Thomas More ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Right

[P]roperty must exist wherever men exist, and…the right to such property is the necessary consequence of the natural right of men to life and liberty.Thomas Reid 1788I proceed therefore to consider in what State or Order of Society there is the least temptation to ill conduct, and I confess that to me the Utopian System of Sir Thomas More seems to have the advantage of all others in this respect. In that System, it is well known there is no private Property. All that which we call Property is under the Administration of the State for the common benefit of the whole political Family.Thomas Reid 1794The few remarks on property that are found in the Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind of the eighteenth century Scottish “Common Sense” philosopher, Thomas Reid, have led at least one commentator to treat him as a fairly traditional advocate of the natural right to (private) property, albeit one with a concern for the very poor. In an article on William Paley and the rights of the poor, Thomas Home remarks in passing that Reid’s (and Adam Ferguson's)major concern was to justify natural rights to property and that their interest in the poor was so little that a reader who accidentally skipped a paragraph or a page would miss all they had to say on the topic.

Micro Remote Islands: Lands of Freedom or Lands of Despotism?

Pólemos ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 277-296
Author(s):  
Elisa Bertolini
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Ideal Society ◽  
Literature And Philosophy ◽  
Remote Islands ◽  
Commonwealth Caribbean ◽  
The Ideal

AbstractThe paper addresses the narrative that qualifies micro and remote islands as lands of freedom, suggesting that they can also be lands of despotism. Philosophers from Plato to Aristotle, to Thomas More, to Montesquieu and Rousseau have claimed that micro polities, preferably insular, represent the ideal society, where everyone is actively engaged in public affairs and pursues common good. Literature has represented islands as lands of freedom, opportunity, challenge, success, adventure, redemption, away from the corruption of Europe. However, in the nineteenth century a new narrative has emerged in fiction, which abandons this idyllic approach: islands as lands of despotism. Islands are interpreted as lawless lands, characterised by rivalries between individuals. Moving from these contrasting suggestions from literature and philosophy, the paper discusses the constitutional arrangements of Commonwealth Caribbean and Pacific micro states, in order to investigate where they stand with respect to the dialectic freedom/despotism.

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