Introduction: Towards Utopian Possibilities

Paul Tillich highlighted the essential tension of utopian hope, which the authors of the essays in this volume address from a variety of perspectives. As Ruth Levitas explains, although utopia has “real power to transform the given, social world, including the economic”, Tillich warns that a side effect of the struggle “to negate the negative in human experience” is disillusionment as a result of the failure to recognize the provisionality of utopian possibilities (Levitas, 2013: 17–18). This tension is essential to modern utopian thinking, one set in play by Thomas More, who Fátima Vieira argues, is responsible for reconfiguring utopian desire as a tension between the affirmation of a possibility and the negation of its fulfilment (Vieira, 2010: 4). Engagement with this tension is critical to realizing the best possibilities from utopian thought and action.