Abstract:
This thesis investigates the relationship between an account of the ideal state and the historical context in which that account was written. The standard view of the ideal state is as what I call a shining beacon on the hill: it is a distant goal, which we might choose to bring our existing societies closer towards. It is often thought of as a general solution to the problem of social organisation, a scientific or quasi-scientific analysis of political relations, usually based on laws of human nature. I argue that the shining beacon view is incomplete; an ideal state is better understood as a particular solution to specific local problems. An ideal state will attempt to solve a local problem, to create a society in which that problem cannot occur. More than this, I argue that an account of the ideal state has this local focus even when its author explicitly takes themselves to be engaged in the kind of general, scientific project mentioned above. Almost in spite of themselves, ideal-state theorists are engaged in solving particular local problems, not in providing a (quasi-)scientific account of the laws of political relations. To demonstrate this, I will use five important texts from the history of ideal state theory as case studies. I begin with two base cases, ideal states whose local application is well-understood by scholars: Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract (1762). More’s focus on the local problem seems to be deliberate; Rousseau’s may not be. These texts will help us to clarify the process of just how an ideal state can be said to solve a local problem. From there we will examine our three main case studies: Plato’s Republic (c. 380 BC); Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651); and Karl Marx’s and Friedrich Engels’s The Communist Manifesto (1848).
