Utopia: the Pleasure Ethic

Abstract

The ultimate end of the Utopians is pleasure. It is characteristic of our time that this should generally be thought either to be not very important, or (after some minor qualifications have been made) to be easily and directly assimilable into Christian belief. ‘It is not extravagant to say that the whole Utopian state is waiting breathlessly, as it were, for fulfillment in the reception of Christ’s faith and morals. Christ would not come to destroy the Utopian law and the Utopian prophets but to fulfill (Matt. 5.17). Little would have to be discarded: nearly all could be retained.’¹ Fr Surtz does register some reservations about euthanasia and divorce by mutual consent (which are entirely logical extensions of the pleasure ethic), but if the secularisation of Christian thought continues at its present pace, it is unlikely that these too will not soon be discovered to be entirely compatible with Christianity. In his discussion of hanging in Book I, Hythloday complains about the way some men ‘determine in everything how far it suits them that God’s commandments should be obeyed’. In so far as they bring God in at all, that is essentially the way the Utopians think.