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Pros And Cons Of Utopia And Plato's Republic

940 Words4 Pages

Imagine a child having many fathers and many mothers, but no parents. Imagine being born out of necessity not out of love. Now imagine being the unfortunate one deemed too weak or unfit to continue living in the perfect society. This is the case in many Utopias. Eugenics and Infanticide are often the very foundation of a utopia. Keeping bloodlines pure, having the strongest soldiers, needing individuals who can pull their weight. I am certain many can see there are pros of such practices, but at what cost? Looking at More’s Utopia and Plato’s Republic we will see how the practice of breeding people and the killing of offspring is a stain on humanity.
First, let us look at how More brings men and women together. In Utopia the people are allowed to marry for love, though the Utopians practice an unorthodox method of preventing dishonesty by those entering the marriage (92). When two people want to enter a marriage they are “shown to the …show more content…

As stated before, in Utopia children remain with their parents in their household (68). They know who their parents are and who the head of household is (68). They live a rather normal childhood, this type of upbringing would be most beneficial as they have both the sense of family and community. In the Republic we see that the infants are taken to the fold right away and the mothers are only beckoned when they are “full of milk” (48). Mothers are prevented from recognizing their children and are expected to nurse every child as their own (48). This can only cause immense distress and depression among the new mothers. Every man who was given a child in a shared time frame is known as father and every woman as mother. All infants born in the time frame are considered siblings. This is unfortunate as many children will wonder which mother and which father are actually their parents. This would create quite the identity crisis in these children as they become

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