Utopias Of The British Enlightenment (cambridge Texts In The History Of Political Thought)

This is the first major collection of eighteenth-century British utopias. Seven tracts, spanning the century, show how the image of the ideal society was used as a form of social criticism, and particularly as a means of focusing on ideas of progress and commercial development.

This collection of eighteenth-century British utopias shows how the image of the ideal society was used as a form of social criticism, particularly as a means of focusing on ideas of progress and commercial development. The texts chosen reveal important trends in the development of liberal rights theories, of proto-socialist concepts of property distribution, and of conservative notions of the ideal hierarchical community. The introduction examines their relationship to the key issues and developments in the political thought of the period.