Noua Atlantidă, o utopie altfel
The New Atlantis, a one of a Kind Utopia

Summary/Abstract: As a literary genre, utopia puts forth the model of a social-political theory, and the scope of the latter encompasses various sub-models. In this context, it is clear that the theme of the construction of imaginary worlds has pervaded the entire history of philosophy, receiving various names according to time and space: The Republic in Plato, Utopia in Thomas Morus, The City of the Sun in Tommaso Campanella, Christianopolis in Johannes Valentinus Andreae etc. In the English philosopher and political man Francis Bacon, a successor of the series of modern utopias, this dream bears the name of The New Atlantis. In most utopian writings the central place belongs, on the one hand, to the criticism against the society in which the authors live and work and, on the other hand, to the imagining of a world ruled by the greatest good. Yet, in The New Atlantis Bacon emphasises the position held by science within the community of Bensalem. This thesis is revealed progressively through the opinions of the governor of the House of Strangers. The starting point is, in fact, the great plan of reforming and reorganising philosophical knowledge, such as it is described mainly in the New Organon. In brief, the construction presented in the New Organon shows that science means power or, in other words, that man’s science and power are identical notions. This idea permeates as a red thread Bacon’s utopia, and this is what we are going to demonstrate in this study, thus being entitled to consider The New Atlantis a one of a kind utopia or a “scientific utopia”.

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