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Chapter 2 - Funding Utopia

Security, Fiscal Policy, and Humanist Association

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 September 2025

David Glimp
Affiliation:
University of Colorado Boulder
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Summary

Sir Thomas More’s Utopia provides an occasion to delve into how fiscal policy and administrative activity constitute forms of worldmaking. This chapter argues that More’s Utopia places the challenges of defining and funding security at the center of its project, both in Book One’s critique of contemporary rule and in Book Two’s thought experiment about how to govern security. Utopia, as an alternative to contemporary Europe, can be seen as an attempt to resolve the fiscal security dilemmas besetting European governments by eliminating private property and money. The presence of other polities, though, complicates the effort to imagine a world in which security is distributed equitably, a world without fiscal conflict or the violence that monarchical wealth enables. Utopia thus provides both a powerful diagnosis of the shortcomings of contemporary governmental practice and a meditation on the limits of the ability to govern security.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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  • Funding Utopia
  • David Glimp, University of Colorado Boulder
  • Book: Security, Fiscal Policy, and Sovereignty in Renaissance English Literature
  • Online publication: 04 September 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009618762.002
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  • Funding Utopia
  • David Glimp, University of Colorado Boulder
  • Book: Security, Fiscal Policy, and Sovereignty in Renaissance English Literature
  • Online publication: 04 September 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009618762.002
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Funding Utopia
  • David Glimp, University of Colorado Boulder
  • Book: Security, Fiscal Policy, and Sovereignty in Renaissance English Literature
  • Online publication: 04 September 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009618762.002
Available formats
×