The adventures of Telemachus
Les Aventures de Télémaque (Eng. The Adventures of Telemach ) is a didactic - fictional work by François Salginac de la Mothe Fénelon , which was first published in 1699. It was a popular book for young people in France in the 18th and 19th centuries and is an important part of the early Enlightenment .
content
On his travels Telemachus comes to the land of Bátika, where he learns a lot about the local society from Adoam who lives there, which is so fundamentally different from other societies.
For example, Adoam reports disparagingly about the other peoples for whom the accumulation of goods is paramount: “These peoples are very unhappy that they have put so much effort and work into corrupting themselves! This abundance slackens, intoxicates, and torments those who possess it; it entices those who lack it to obtain it through injustices and acts of violence. Can you call the abundance, which only serves to make people unhappy, a good? ... do they lead a freer, calmer, more comfortable life? On the contrary, they must be jealous one of the other, always tormented by a shameful and pernicious envy, always live in restlessness ... since they are slaves of so many imaginary needs on which they let all their happiness depend. ”In Fénelon's fictional Bátika has overcome capitalism and there is a community of property . Its inhabitants live in freedom and peace because there are no useless riches and deceptive amusements.
Even wars are overcome and be called into question, "overtaken not death already people early enough? Do they still have to kill each other by force? ”The people in Bátika smile when you talk to them about kings who cannot agree on the borders of their countries. “Is there a fear,” they ask, “that the earth will be lacking for men? There will always be more than they can build. As long as there are still abandoned and undeveloped stretches of land, we would not even defend our own against neighbors who want to seize them.
Violence is not only rejected there against humans, but also against animals: "Human blood has never reddened this ground, hardly that one has seen the blood of the lambs flow."
The people of Bátika live again in a state as they did before the fall of the ghost and sometimes also reminds of Plato's banquet when it says: "The man and the woman seem to be just one person in two different bodies ."
literature
- Helmut Swoboda (editor): The dream of the best state. Texts from utopias from Plato to Morris . Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 1987 (3rd edition), p. 218ff