Full Description
This innovative book explores the role of utopian thinking in law and politics, including alternative forms of social engineering, such as technology and architecture. Building on Levitas' Utopia as Method, the topic of utopia is addressed within the book from a multidisciplinary perspective.
The book addresses central questions surrounding utopian thinking: What are its implications for law and politics? To what extent does it constitute a desirable vision? What are its risks or dangers? How is utopia related to ideology? An impressive selection of contributors reflect on the challenge of utopianism and its attraction, advancing the global public debate on social and political issues. Divided into three accessible parts, this book discusses the relationship between utopia and the law, the notion of utopian politics and utopia in architecture and technology.
Addressing the topic of utopia from a variety of perspectives, this book will be an interesting read for academic scholars and students in the field of law, legal and political theory, philosophy, ethics, sociology, religious studies, technology and architecture. In particular, it is relevant for scholars who are interested in the dynamics of social, legal and political change.
Contents
Contents:
PART I UTOPIA AND THE LAW: SKETCHES FOR
A NEW SOCIETY
1 Introduction: A return to utopia 2
Bart van Klink, Marta Soniewicka and Leon van den Broeke
2 Finding hope in hopeless times 19
Lynne Copson
3 The rule of law: Between ideology and utopia 38
Bart van Klink
4 Legislative hope and utopia 59
Carinne Elion-Valter
5 A secular form of grace: A place for utopia in law 76
Leon van den Broeke
PART II UTOPIAN POLITICS: REDEMPTION OR A
'RECIPE FOR BLOODSHED'?
6 The politics of hope: Utopia as an exercise in social imagination 96
Marta Soniewicka
7 The utopian ideals of the political order of the European
Union: Is a European republic possible? 116
Jan Willem Sap
8 'The coming community': Agamben's vision of messianic politics 134
Oliver W. Lembcke
9 The allure of utopia: Klaas Schilder's stress on the
relevance of hic et nunc 150
George Harinck
10 The Islamic state 167
Maurits Berger
PART III UTOPIA IN ARCHITECTURE AND
TECHNOLOGY: THE QUEST FOR PERFECTION
11 An ideal city vs 21st-century pragmatism 187
Ernestyna Szpakowska-Loranc
12 Planning utopia 207
Danielle Chevalier and Yannis Tzaninis
13 Technological utopias: Promises of the unlimited 226
Marc J. de Vries
14 A better way of being? Human rights, transhumanism and
'the utopian standpoint of man' 245
Britta van Beers
15 The posthuman: Around the vanishing point of utopia 266
Anna Bugajska
16 Being an agent in a robot and artificial intelligence age:
Potentiality or dystopia? 284
Zeynep İspir and Şükrü Keleş
Index
