ABSTRACT
The context in which the word ‘utopia’ appears most often in everyday discourse is the phrase condemning an idea, a project, an expectation as a ‘mere utopia’. The phrase marks the end, not the beginning of an argument; one can still quarrel, to be sure, whether the verdict applies to a particular case, but provided it does, further consideration of the possible merits of the idea in question will make little sense. The indictment amounts to a flip and irrevocable dismissal of the idea as a figment of unrestrained fantasy, unscientific, at odds with reality-i.e. loaded with all those features which mark off an idea as something to be kept at a safe distance from scholarly discourse.
