- This event has passed.
The 7th Joseph Vella Memorial Lecture
Utopias between Past and Future – by Prof. Jean Paul De Lucca
February 21, 2025 @ 7:30 pm – 8:30 pm
Situated between the 400th anniversaries of the publication of two seminal early modern utopias – Tommaso Campanella’s The City of the Sun (1623) and Francis Bacon’s The New Atlantis (1627) – this lecture will explore the two utopian islands, visiting their temples, inhabitants, narrators, and interlocutors (including a Hospitaller Knight, no less). Contextualising these utopian texts within their authors’ broader intellectual frameworks shows that they are not mere abstract constructs. Rather, they represent metaphorical and ‘poetic’ articulations of worldviews deeply rooted in critical perspectives on their contemporary societies, with an emphasis on themes such as justice and technology.
The 20th century’s problematic association of utopian thinking with totalitarianism gave rise to an “anti-utopian age” or “utopophobia”. One of the last century’s greatest thinkers, Hannah Arendt, is often portrayed as rejecting utopian thinking entirely. However, a nuanced reading reveals that early modern utopians have more in common with Arendt than previously acknowledged.
Campanella, Bacon, and Arendt – all writing in what they termed “dark times” – keep prompting us to consider the value of hope and thoughtful action, and to question our capacity to imagine and articulate potential futures, challenging simplistic dismissals of utopian imagination.
Prof. Jean-Paul De Lucca is a resident academic at the Department of Philosophy, the University of Malta. His main areas of research include early modern philosophy and intellectual history, political philosophy and the philosophy of law. He was a research scholar at the Università di Roma Tre, a Frances Yates Fellow in Intellectual and Cultural History at the Warburg Institute (University of London), and an Invited Visiting Fellow at the DeWulf-Mansion Centre for Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy, KU Leuven. He is a member of the editorial boards of several international peer-reviewed journals, and he has published extensively, especially on Tommaso Campanella (1568-1639).
Attendance is free of charge, but seat reservations, by sending an email to events@heartofgozo.org.mt, are recommended.
