The Enlightenment's critique of utopia and the issue of anti-utopia

The first half of the 18th century was equally marked by a number of attempts to classify utopian works into an independent category of its own and by the emergence of a modern, critical view of the classical ideal of the community of virtues, as it was embodied by 16th- and 17th-century. utopias. As this paper suggests, towards the middle of the 18th century this ethical critique of utopia was incorporated into a larger set of arguments, both ethical and political, directed against utopian works. This shift is best noticeable in Gaspard de Real de Curban's encyclopedic treatise La Science du Gouvernement, mainly a product of the natural law tradition, but it has its parallel theoretical equivalent in the political positions of the French Enlightenment. Charles Francois Tiphaigne de la Roche's anti-utopian narrative Histoire des Galligenes and Robert Wallace's account of the inevitable decay of an utopian government in his Various Prospects are both symptomatic of this critical reappraisal of utopia.