The Story of Utopias · Chapter
XIV explained
The chapter examines the National Utopia, arguing that while uniformity and national unity brought certain benefits like common laws and reduced local barriers, nationalism ultimately creates major barriers, undermines cultural unity, and c
What happens
The chapter examines the National Utopia, arguing that while uniformity and national unity brought certain benefits like common laws and reduced local barriers, nationalism ultimately creates major barriers, undermines cultural unity, and confuses the proper roles of temporal (local, multiform) and spiritual (universal) communities.
Themes in this chapter
Nationalism and the State
The chapter critiques the National State for creating major barriers while breaking down minor ones, and for perpetuating irrelevant conflicts in the Kingdom of the Spirit.
The Role of Ideas and Myths
Discusses the 'idolum' of the National State as too narrow for culture and too big for genuine community, highlighting the shabby pretensions of the national utopia.
Community and Social Harmony
Contrasts the temporal community (local, multiform) with the spiritual community (universal), arguing that nationalism confuses and damages both.
Characters to notice
- Auguste Comte
Quoted for his insight that the temporal community is local, restricted, and multiform, while the spiritual community is universal.
Key passages
“The National State seems historically to have arisen in some part through the relief which the people of the Middle Age experienced in being able to travel under the protection of the King’s law along the King’s highway, and their discovery that common laws and customs, common weights and measures, were on the whole an advantage over a multitude of senseless irregularities which continued to exist in particular neighborhoods.”
The National State emerged partly because medieval people valued safe travel under royal protection and found that standardized laws, customs, and measurements were better than local chaos.
Explains the historical benefit of national uniformity.
“On one hand, the idolum of the National State is too narrow, because the world of culture is man’s common inheritance, and not the mere segment of it which is called “national literature” or “national science.” And on the other hand, the idolum is too big, for the reason that there is no bond except a paper one between men who are as far apart as Bermondsey and Bombay, or New York and San Francisco.”
The national ideal is too narrow because culture belongs to all humanity, not just a nation's portion, and too big because distant people share only a legal connection, not real community.
Critique of the National State's idolum as both too narrow and too big.