Utopian Imperative: from the Intention to the Modeling of a Perfect Society

The article provides an understanding of utopia as a universal cultural form of sensual and rational reflection of social reality in images-concepts that synthesize ideas about happiness and harmony, satisfy a people’s need to anticipate and model alternative versions of historical development. The characteristics of utopian function and utopian model are given. Their connection is the utopian imperative, which is the intention of a happy collective existence.
The utopian function in culture is a constant that permeates its entire history, and the utopian genre appears in the Renaissance. It is associated with the construction of mental models of the best social structure. The basic features of the classical model of utopia are isolation, achronia, autarky, urbanism, regulation, kalokagathia, and eudaemonia.
The final part of the article illustrates the thesis of the utopian imperative by the example of Utopia, in which Thomas More described the conditions for a person’s happy life in society as fully as possible. The article examines utopia at the intersection of two research paradigms: utopian studies and futures studies. This research concludes that despite the global socio-cultural crisis, human aspirations to solve the enigma of universal happiness and look into the future do not disappear – and it means that the ground for utopias in culture remains.