Utopia: Project Summary

Though the word "utopia" was not penned until Thomas More's 1516 writing of an imaginary society by the name, the debate over the "perfect society" has been ongoing since the time of the Ancient Greeks. Plato's The Republic is commonly considered the foremost work in search of the perfect society, almost always based on political structure. Sir Thomas More's naming of the phenomenon, however, took it a step further by dubbing it "Utopia," Greek for "no place," a pun on "eutopia," or paradise.