Original scientific paper
The End of Utopia as the End of Truth
Slobodan Simović
; Institute for Social Science, Beograd
Abstract
The paper discusses different variants in the usage of the concept of Utopia, as well as the theses of »the end of Utopia«. The epistemological background of these concepts and the relationship of various utopian projects towards »science« and »imagination« are analysed The concepts of Utopia are divided into the classical and the romantic ones, where the classical concepts are observed in two ways: as »projections of ideality« and as »projections of wishes«, while the romantic concepts are observed in the context of their taking over the theological understanding of history and the anthropological thesis of the openness of human nature.
An analysis of the discourse about the »end of Utopia« shows that there are several ways of expressing this idea. The end of Utopia is discussed as the end of hope, a reconciliation with destiny and an unwillingness to change; as the end of imagination, a turning to the »scientific prediction of the future«; as the end of illusion and the ideology that demanded the sacrificing of the contemporary generations in the name of some future happiness; and, finally, as the end of truth, that the great Utopian projects of Modernism refer to as their basis.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
155118
URI
Publication date:
31.12.1990.
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