What I found to be most confusing to me was that the people of Utopia thought it wisest to seek out pleasure. I saw  three main ideas of pleasure that the Utopians believe in, but there are probably more. Firstly, since there is no reward for seeking out pain, pleasure should be sought out as far as the law allows it. Secondly the Utopians believe in sacrificing one’s own pleasure for the sake of someone else’s pleasure in the name of their religion, since they believe that it will be rewarded later on. What this reward will be is a mystery, but my guess would be greater pleasure. Thirdly and most importantly they try their hardest to seek pleasure that is good and honest. For example, “forbidden things” might be considered pleasurable, but they are not because they have some bitterness to them, like hunting. Good and honest pleasures are ones that are pleasurable on their own.

The pleasures that are good and honest are called true pleasures. They are divided into two groups, bodily and mental. The mental pleasures are  “knowledge, and in that delight which the contemplation of truth carries with it; to which they add the joyful reflections on a well-spent life, and the assured hopes of a future happiness.” The bodily pleasures are also divided into two groups. They are the those that alleviate, like eating and drinking and those that are secretly pleasurable, like music and most importantly health and freedom from pain.

I thought that many of these ideas about pleasure were contradictory to how the rest of Utopian society is set up. Since, in Utopia  you can take as much as you want in the marketplace, wouldn’t all these pleasure seeking people take as much as they want. It is also contradictory to the way the family structure is set up, to keep the young people quiet and the youngest absolutely silent. This seems to me a way to free themselves from fear of the unknown or undesirable thoughts, rather than the pursuit of true knowledge, which can actually be quite dangerous.

It does seem though that More might be trying to speak more about the excesses and inequality of pleasure dynamics in Europe at the time. The Utopian form of pleasure seeking is moderate compared to the extremes of aristocracy and court of the More’s time, but it is also extremely better than the inability for the European peasants to seek even the basic pleasures that the Utopians have.

It is also hard for me to think that all pleasure is derived from goodness, since most people in our society find pleasure out of things that aren’t really all that good for themselves or others. Human nature is such that we would need a completely different kind of nature for Raphael’s version to be true. If we took pleasure only from the things that the Utopians think is pleasurable we would have evolved to a higher form of being, without are base instincts and sentiments we share. This is probably what More wants, even if he doesn’t know it, that is, a better human, not a better society. Therefore the Utopians must be a different species then we are. Furthermore humans are pleasure seeking, but we seek pleasure more towards the actions and thoughts of Oscar Wilde’s fictional character Dorian Gray, whose hedonism would shock and repulse, even the most understanding of the Utopians.

-Matt M.