SOURCE: "Utopia" in The Meaning of More's "Utopia," Princeton University Press, 1983, pp. 131-253.

In the following excerpt, Logan describes Utopia as a "best commonwealth exercise" in the classical tradition, pointing to the echoes of Plato and Aristotle in the work.

To examine the theoretical questions advanced at the end of Book I of Utopia, More employed the original and central exercise of Greek political philosophy, the determination of the best form of the commonwealth. [In a footnote, the author adds: "To preclude misunderstanding, let me say at once that this statement does not imply that Utopia must be More's ideal commonwealth. The exercise can … be undertaken for reasons other than elaborating one's own ideal."] This exercise, which has its ancestry in the inveterate Greek practice of comparing polities, and its literary antecedents in such passages as the debate among spokesmen for monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy in Herodotus' Histories...