Starnes, Colin.  The New Republic.  A Commentary on Book I of
More's Utopia Showing its Relation to Plato's Republic.  Ontario:
Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1990.  Pp. xiii + 122.
 
Reviewed by Ross Scaife (Classics, University of Kentucky) 1992.
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This book presents a new interpretation of Thomas More's Utopia
which lays greater emphasis than usual upon the Platonic starting
point of More's thought.  Starnes states his point of view
succinctly in his Introduction: "The thesis of this book is that
More composed the Utopia as a rewriting of Plato's Republic in
which he answered its central question in a form that would be
relevant to his own day.  The Utopia is the Republic recast in a
new mould applicable to the demands of contemporary Christianity
as these were understood by More and his reforming friends.  In a
word, it is a Christianized Republic."
 
Elsewhere in the Introduction Starnes outlines his critical
methodology and so positions his work within the context of
contemporary scholarship on the Utopia.  He first confronts what
some writers have termed the enigmatic nature of the Utopia.
Starnes believes that More wrote for a double audience.  First,
he addressed the relatively restricted circle of Northern
Renaissance Humanists, men who shared the methods, aims and
interests of Erasmus.  Such scholars, Starnes believes, would
have had no difficulty in appreciating the various references and
allusions to Plato and the Republic.  But More also wrote for
"the much wider audience of all educated persons who could read
Latin."  The latter contingent would have had little or no
exposure to Plato.  More therefore wisely avoided creating a work
whose proper understanding depended on a profound knowledge of
Plato.  Starnes compares Augustine, who notes in the Confessions
that he has been inspired by "certain works of the Platonists,"
but who also omits the names of those treatises so as not to
inspire insecurity in a readership which might judge that he
could not be understood without full knowledge of his models.
 
Starnes grounds this interpretive stance in the circumstances of
the initial reception of the Utopia.  Because the work quickly
achieved wide popularity, and because More himself, far from
refuting them, relished the critical tributes his work garnered,
then those modern studies which spiral ever deeper into the
explication of abstruse meanings must be fundamentally misguided.
On the contrary, Starnes maintains the intelligibility and
readability of More's book for a relatively wide circle of people
-- not merely the most bookish.
 
Starnes also questions why More turned to Plato in particular as
his exemplar.  His response is complex, and interesting: first,
Plato more than any other ancient writer was the darling of the
Renaissance Humanists; and More himself is known to have read the
Republic at an early age.  Second, More looked to an authority
outside of the usual patristic or medieval writers because he
felt the need to transcend the Christian writers' creation of two
dominions, the spiritual and the temporal, whose struggle for
power had hopelessly deadlocked.  An age in which the speculum
principis had become "futile moral incantation" (as Starnes
approvingly quotes Hexter) demanded new ideas.  Finally, Starnes
suggests, More found Plato particularly useful for his purposes
because Augustine had praised him as "the epitome of natural
reason."
 
The remainder of the book consists of a stimulating discussion of
the points at which Book I of the Utopia makes contact with
Plato's Republic.
 
The dramatic settings of both works are roughly parallel: both
occur in times of social upheaval related to tumultuous foreign
affairs and the difficult assimilation of novel ideas (new
perspectives on justice propounded by the sophists of ancient
Greece, a new mercantile spirit in sixteenth century Europe).
There are also important similarities of characterization.
Raphael Hythlodaeus is true to the Platonic portrait of Socrates:
a vir eximius, devoted to philosophy, contemptuous of riches and
power, apolitical.  Even the name of More's narrator might be
taken as a commentary on the life of Socrates, since "the healing
one of God, knowing nonsense" is a possible interpretation.
However, one significant difference of characterization
accommodated the propensities of Renaissance Humanists: the
inwardness of Socrates had to be discarded in favor of a greater
worldliness, a love of experience and experiment.  Hence Peter
Giles alludes not only to Plato in describing the character of
Raphael, but also to Ulysses.
 
Starnes expends considerable effort in refuting the claims of
Hexter and others to the effect that the dialogue inserted into
Book I results in crudely discontinuous patchwork.  The dialogue
should instead be understood in part as a necessary propaideutic
for readers of the Utopia, a place for More to suggest the
relevance of the social configuration in Utopia to contemporary
realities.  Moreover, according to Starnes, too many scholars
have overlooked "the profound criticism of the Platonic teaching
which can be seen in the content of Raphael's speeches at
Morton's table."  Two aspects of this teaching, and its flawed
substantiation in later Europe, receive More's particular
condemnation: first, the necessity of separating the guardian
class for the safety of the city, because in fact such
professional soldiers cause endless trouble in times of peace;
and second, the institution of the philosopher-king.  Initially
More (i.e., the character in the dialogue of Book I) urges that
in a well run state, if a philosopher cannot himself be king, as
the next best alternative a philosopher should advise the king.
Eventually, however, Raphael persuades More that such a strategy
is unlikely to succeed, as evidenced in part by the unhappy
experience of Plato himself with Dionysius in Sicily:
philosophers cannot overcome the propensity of rulers to win
glory in foreign adventures, contrary to the true interests of
their citizens; and likewise rulers cannot be prevented from
living in excessive luxury, again at the expense of their
subjects.  By leading More to aporia on this point, Raphael
prepares the way for the radical solution of Book II, the
abolition of private property.
In his Conclusion, Starnes briefly discusses correlations between
Utopia and the teachings of Christ, as distinct from the
practices of the ostensibly Christian nations of More's day.
Starnes notes that Raphael identifies monastic communities as the
"truest societies of Christians," and he agrees in part with
those who see Utopia as a gigantic monastery.  On the other hand,
he also argues that More introduced important differences between
monastic life and Utopia so as "to move beyond the collapsing
division of the sacred and the secular that was the root cause of
the problem in his day."  Hence, for example, Utopians do not
take vows or adopt a position of ascetic poverty, but in fact
enjoy a wide variety of pleasures.  Finally, in the Conclusion as
elsewhere in his book, Starnes attributes to More a decisive and
critical turn from Plato and towards modernity, in which
solutions to social problems are both applicable to and derived
from experience, not from abstract principles or intellectually
conceived universals.  The point is best made, perhaps, in the
hexastichon which More himself appended to his work: "The
ancients called me Utopia or Nowhere because of my isolation.  At
present, however, I am a rival of Plato's Republic, perhaps even
a victor over it.  The reason is that what he has delineated in
words, I alone have exhibited in men and resources and laws of
surpassing excellence.  Deservedly ought I to be called by the
name of Eutopia or Happy Land."
 
This closely-argued, well-written, and provocative book will be
read with profit by all teachers of Plato and More.
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COPYRIGHT:  1992 by Ross Scaife
 
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