LIFE AS FORM OR AS ENERGY IN THE UTOPIAN APPROACH OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT
LIFE AS FORM OR AS ENERGY IN THE UTOPIAN APPROACH OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT

Summary/Abstract: Life as Form or as Energy in the Utopian Approach of the Enlightenment. For many distinguished intellectuals of the past and the present, Paradise equals with the nostalgia for a utopian existence. We usually say – and this is a strong stereotype of the scholarly literature dedicated to utopia and dystopia – that the longing for a perfect land is a sort or reenactment of Paradise, a wishful regression. The paper demonstrates that the stereotype of regression does not function in one of the most representative dystopian texts of the Enlightenment, Dr. Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas, which advocates, on the contrary, an escape from Paradise, as a prerequisite of any authentic existence, conceived as struggle, dynamic experience and active search for knowledge.

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