From utopia to dystopia – a vision of human nature in Renaissance political utopias and classical science-fiction dystopias

Abstract

The reason to write this article is to set Renaissance utopias by More or Campanella against classical science-fiction distopias by Zamyatin, Huxley, Orwell or Lem from a perspective of a vision of human nature within them and the destruction that threatens it. The text has been inspired by a thesis by Chad Walsch who claims that there has been a surprising “psychological shift” in human political thinking which means turning utopian thinking into dystopia one. The article is an attempt to trace the context of this shift and to present social and philosophical conditions which influence the fact that a notion of human nature, a vision of happiness and ideal society as well as a model of individual existence have become perceived in a completely different way. The phenomenon has eventually resulted in a gradual relinquishment of utopian way of thinking in favour of distopia texts that suggest the danger of creating such systems.