Lewis Mumford The Story Of Utopias Analysis

For centuries, ideas that open up possibilities and enable men to become free of what constraints may befall them. One such idea that perhaps more than many is the idea of Utopia, Lewis Mumford in his book The Story of Utopias describes as such. Mumford was a historian, critic, sociologist and philosopher in his own right. His works ranged from urban architecture to urban planning, and to the study of the human condition. In The Story Mumford analyses a range of topics relating to the idea of Utopia, he achieves this by discussing Utopias such as Plato’s Republic, Fourier’s Phalanxes, H.G Well’s fictitious Utopia, and Sir Thomas More’s Utopia. Mumford then further surveys the Utopias presented and explains how these Utopias arose and for what reason.

Mumford explains that the Utopia of Sir Thomas More and others originates from two main points. Firstly, the possibilities of the open sea provided a great movement of new romantic ideals about what lay out there, and the need to go find what these possibilities are. Perhaps more influential however was the breakdown of the town economy. The town economy of the Middle Ages was a development of the self-sufficing household economy. The town economy was also important “for different trades grew up within the town and the right to trade within the town and in the …show more content…
A change that would be accompanied by distress, so the Utopias written allow for an imagination that dreams of a better life, and a anesthetic to the pain and hardships that accompanied the