Picture Imperfect: Utopian Thought for an Anti-Utopian Age
Russell Jacoby
Language: English
Pages: 240
ISBN: 0231128959
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Many observers judge utopians and their sympathizers as foolhardy dreamers at best and murderous totalitarians at worst. However, as noted social critic and historian Russell Jacoby argues, not only has utopianism been unfairly characterized, a return to an iconoclastic utopian spirit is vital for today's society. Jacoby reexamines the anti-utopian mindset and identifies how utopian thought came to be regarded with such suspicion. He challenges standard readings of such anti-utopian classics as 1984 and Brave New World and offers stinging critiques of the influential liberal and anti-utopian theorists Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, and Karl Popper. As Jacoby demonstrates, iconoclastic utopianism, shaped by the works of Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Gustav Landauer, and other predominantly Jewish thinkers, revives society's dormant political imagination and suggests new and more imaginative ideas of the future.
pestle.” Hesiod’s utopianism sounds no more dreamy than do the maxims of Benjamin Franklin. Do not postpone for tomorrow or the day after tomorrow; barns are not filled by those who postpone and waste time in aimlessness. Work prospers with care; he who postpones wrestles with ruin.4 Most scholars see the poem enjoining a decent and disciplined life. Its “central thesis,” writes one classicist, is that “injustice arises from trying to win livelihood and wealth without working for them.”5 To be
Poverty. While Popper’s language is frequently idiosyncratic, if not misleading—this was only the second work he wrote in English—his anti-utopian convictions stand out. Popper identifies as overlapping failings historicism, historical prophecy, and utopianism. He frequently uses formulations like “Utopianism and historicism agree.” For Popper, historicism posits laws and rhythms of history; it seeks to know the future and, sometimes, to intervene to control or quicken “impending social
bloodletting. The imbalance of this liberal critique derives partly from biography. Marxism attracted these scholars in a way that Nazism could not. For a few years, Popper considered himself a communist. Both of Arendt’s husbands had been Marxists; and her arguments about totalitarianism bear the imprint of the second, Heinrich Blücher (to whom she dedicates Origins of Totalitarianism), a former member of the German Communist Party.139 Moreover, Marxism was a worthy target for these critics
intro. Mirra Ginsburg (New York: Avon Books, 1999), p. 174. 39. Zamyatin, “H. G. Wells,” in Soviet Heretic: Essays by Yevgeny Zamyatin, ed. and trans. M. Ginsburg (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), p. 286. To be sure, Zamyatin did not use “utopian” consistently. In an essay from the following year, he protested that an increasingly conformist Soviet literature juxtaposed “useful” and “harmful” works. Even if revolutionary commissars approved “useful” literature, it remained
64. See David Stern, “Was Wittgenstein a Jew?” and Brian McGuinness, “Wittgenstein and the Idea of Jewishness,” both in Wittgenstein: Biography and Philosophy, ed. J. C. Klagge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 221–71. 65. Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of a Genius (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), pp. 19–25, 312–18. See Allan Janik, Essays on Wittgenstein and Weininger. 66. On Engelmann, see J. Bakacsy, A. V. Munch, and A.-L. Sommer, eds. Architecture Language