Abstract
Utopia as architecture is its culturally most familiar mode: imagining a reconstructed world and describing its social institutions. This is the terrain of utopian fiction. It is also the mode anti-utopians like best, keeping the possibility of living differently safely bound between book covers. As we have seen in Part I, the expression of utopian desire cannot be confined in this way but leaks into every aspect of human culture. Utopia as architecture incorporates the ontological mode, positing inhabitants who feel and want, as well as behave, differently from ourselves. Therein lies the education of desire. The balance between institutional and ontological concerns varies. This final chapter addresses the social forms demanded by the principles of dignity and grace outlined in Chapter 9, keeping in view the self-creating and institution-creating capacities of human beings.
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Notes
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© 2013 Ruth Levitas
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Levitas, R. (2013). Utopia as Architecture. In: Utopia as Method. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137314253_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137314253_10
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