Utopia - The Impossibility of Perfection"The last end of [this] Commonwealth forgets the beginning." ?William Shakespeare, The TempestFrom Plato's Republic to Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto, the search for a perfect social state has never stopped; its ultimate goal of achieving a human society that exists in absolute harmony with all due social justice, however, has proven woefully elusive. The pure concept of utopia can be theoretically visualized as a perfect geometric circle: a circle that is seamless, all-encompassing, but impossible to represent in reality. In 1516, Sir Thomas More described in his famous Utopia what he imagined would be a The ideal state is one that frees its citizens from material worries by imposing economic equality among them and impartially dividing social responsibilities. More's work, however brilliant, cannot hide the serious fallibilities and troublesome limitations of utopian thoughts; and being the ambivalent creator that he was, he more consciously emphasized the paradoxical nature of his ideal society. A century later, in his final work The Tempest, the great playwright William Shakespeare presented his audience with a mystical Commonwealth that is a reflection of the golden age of classical literature. This fantasy, wrapped in the greater fantasy that is The Tempest, will return the human race to the purest state of nature. The Tempest, however, can be interpreted as a criticism of the utopian state. If apparent paradise can only be sustained by magic and the deconstruction of human civilization, Shakespeare seems to imply, then utopia is entirely unattainable and impracticable. There is no doubt that Sir Thomas More's Utopia is a work of... paper......forgeries. Utopian philosophy falters because it refuses to address the darker side of the foundations of human nature, chief of which are greed and malice. It is necessary to remember that human evils generate oppressive systems, and not vice versa. By revolutionizing the social system in an apparently just form, one does not redeem or remedy the intrinsic moral defects of its citizens. Utopian philosophy remains, after all its research, an empty icon on the altar of aspiration. Works CitedPiù, Thomas. Utopia. Robert M. Adams. New York: W. W. Norton, 1992. Nietzsche, Fredrich. "Morality as fossilized violence". The prince. Robert M. Adams. New York: W. W. Norton, 1992. Ovid. "The golden age." Utopia. Robert M. Adams. New York: W. W. Norton, 1992.Shakespeare, William. The Storm. Stanley Wells. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.