Utopia Fiction: Recovering the Political Science of the Imagination

FAIN: FT-53936-06

Nathan William Schlueter
Hillsdale College (Hillsdale, MI 49242-1298)

From its origins in ancient Greece political science was characterized by the quest to understand political life in the light of an imagined articulation of the best regime. It operated, then, under the conviction that works of the imagination can be a source of genuine scientific knowledge about politics. This project seeks to recover that original understanding through a careful study of leading works of utopia fiction. It also seeks to show how the faculty of the imagination is itself a necessary and important object of political science. I have been offered a contract to publish this project with Lexington Books.