On The Concept And Political Significance Of Utopia

The most difficult thing in Utopia study is the confusion of its concept, but I find that "imagination" and "perfection" are always the most stable ingredients of Utopia. Through the analysis of "imagination" and "perfection", I generalize the basic meaning of Utopia on three levels: Firstly, Utopia is the nature of every people in the political life, and everyone is born to have an ability and inclination to imagine the perfect political life. Secondly, Utopia pursues the absolute justice in terms of the positive meaning. Thirdly, Utopia declares the crisis of real political legitimacy in terms of the negative meaning. Utopia is the rebellion, escape and transcension of the injustice political reality.Utopia is a clue of human history. The conception of Utopia could be divided into four periods in historical perspective: ancient Utopia, pre-industry Utopia, industry Utopia and post-industry Utopia. Every kind of Utopian conception is the responses of ideologist to the political reality.The transformation of Utopian conception into activity makes utopianism. It includes many negative ingredients and has brought forth serious disasters, but this cannot lead to the denial to Utopia itself, because Utopia has its own reason to exist. The key of the problem is to cope with the limit of Utopia correctly, i.e. to keep Utopia within the domain of imagination and criticism, and not to change into a radical form to intervene political reality.