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Download 102 KB Texto completo en español More publications of: Irving Kristol More works in Estudios Públicos > Index by Subject > Culture and Society > Utopian Thought Estudios Públicos > Index by Number > Estudios Públicos Nº 31-40 > Estudios Públicos Nº 33

Man is, inevitably, a dreamer. However, one must overcome the dreams of reality; la impossibility of doing so is what is known as "utopianism."
According to Kristol, utopian thought is a type of philosophical thought that arose, historically, when the philosophy of myth was separated and its independence declared. The Republic of Plato is, in the opinion of this American thinker, the first known utopian text. Utopian thought emerged strongly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries because of certain forms of thought that the author identifies as millennialism, rationalism and "scientism." These utopian beliefs, however, were domesticated by the liberal individualism in which the bourgeois society forced them to accommodate. Is this individualism an authentic alternative in our century? Irving Kristol says it is not since in order for it to work, it needs a certain type of person, the bourgeois citizen who is on the road to extinction. Our opportunity at this time is to meditate, reflect on our condition because the true antidote to utopianism is understanding it from within. Overcoming this crisis without destroying the modern world itself requires, in the opinion of Irving Kristol, new ideas or new versions of old ideas. Ideas cannot be underestimated. According to the author, we desperately need to reform modern utopianism in order to get out of the crisis.