![]() ![]() Was not private ownership a fixed feature of Renaissance Europe? What permitted More to think beyond one fixed feature (private property) but not another (patriarchy)? The failure of this line of reasoning can be demonstrated by the fact that More was able to construct a society without private property, the embeddedness of which (in Western Civilization) is commensurable to that of gender prejudice. In brief, according to this myopic mindset, the profound embeddedness of gender prejudice was simply too great for any one man to oppose. Such logic reflects the tendency that Tocqueville ascribed to historians in democratic ages who are apt to “attribute almost no influence to the individual over the destiny of the species or to citizens over the fate of the people,” but instead emphasize the force of “general causes,” of which every individual is but the plaything. But to conclude on the basis of this that More was unable to imagine an unpatriarchal one is specious. That More inhabited a patriarchal world is plain. ![]() ![]() The idea that men should be regarded as inherently superior to women was apparently for More such an obvious and natural one that it never occurred to him that gender inequality should be among the various other social hierarchies leveled in his ideal society.” Īrguments of this sort do more to expose the critics’ conceits than they do More’s. “That More was unable to imagine a society in which women were genuinely the equals of men thus stands as a reminder of the profound embeddedness of gender prejudice in Western society. On this understanding, More inhabited a world that was so rigidly patriarchal that he simply could not envision an unpatriarchal one. Such shortcomings typically are explained if not explained away on the grounds that More was but the product of his times. To cite but one example, in Utopia, where there are no class distinctions to speak of, women are kept mired in a perpetual state of subservience. Included in More’s “truly golden handbook” are incongruities too glaring to escape notice-incongruities between the ideal appearance of that commonwealth and the quotidian and morally problematic practices of its inhabitants. Even a perfunctory read of Utopia is likely to give one pause. ![]()
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