Utopia and Fatalism | Professor Frank Furedi

A full list of lectures at The Academy 2023: https://ideasmatter.org.uk/academy-20...

PROFESSOR FRANK FUREDI
sociologist and social commentator; executive director, MCC Brussels; author, 100 Years of Identity Crisis: culture war over socialisation


One of the overlooked casualties of the ‘end of history’ period was the idea of utopia. With the end of grand ideological battles came the end of the idea that society might, in the future, be radically, wholly different. If ‘utopian’ had always been used as an occasional insult for those promoting ideas that would be difficult, or impossible to realise, today there are few ideas even remotely grand enough to warrant the dismissal as utopian.

Utopia had been a key part of Western thought, going back at least as far as Plato. Almost every revolutionary moment in Western history was attended by a new series of utopian visions for how the future might be. If the idea of Utopia was finally buried by the end of history, it was put into question in the aftermath of the Second World War, tarnished by its association with the totalitarian ideologies that insisted, with macabre determination, that ‘anything is possible’. All the leading lights of postwar thought, including essential thinkers like Arendt and Camus, roundly condemned the aspiration towards Utopia.

But without Utopia, are we left unable to imagine a truly different future? Utopia, after all, is not just an aspiration towards reform. Without genuinely transformative ideals, what is there to fight for – merely a marginally better version of today? Perhaps change as such draws its power from Utopia – impossible, perhaps, but certainly inspirational?

Today, when a grim realism seems to be setting in, and the future’s wings clipped by everything – from green austerity to economic malaise and the return of ‘might-is-right’ realism to political disenchantment – do we need a return to Utopia?

00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:40 Why utopia mattered?
00:04:10 Thomas More's Utopia
00:09:35 Utopia and science
00:11:40 Progressivism and utopia
00:18:40 Transhumanism
00:23:00 The past, present and future
00:26:20 A return to utopian thinking?
00:31:30 The 'new normal'
00:37:20 Determinism
0040:10 Aristotle