More, Thomas
More, Thomas
(1478-1535) Lord chancellor of England. One of the leading humanists along with his friends Colet and Erasmus. He was beheaded for his refusal to recognize the king as the head of the church. In his classic, Utopia, he has left a vision of an Ideal state in which war and all glories connected with it were abhorrent. The prince and all magistrates were elected. Nothing is private. All work and all enjoyment are shared. There is no oppression, neither industrial nor religious. The work gives no philosophical analysis of the nature of the state, but merely an exposition of what the author conceived to be and what we have since come to call utopian. — L.E.D.