Abstract vs concrete utopia (preliminary)

This section is devoted to collect the preliminary definitios one can hold about the Abstract vs concrete utopia concept, as a first step in a further inquire of the core concepts of political philosophy in the information age. The question "what is an abstract vs a concrete utopia?" is posed to participants in the seminar "From Ancient Utopias to Cyberutopias. An introduction to political philosophy" in a very early stage. Thereafter, participants are invited to write down here their understandings of the term trying to group them in the definitions provided by other participants.

Please, before providing your definition take a careful look to the previous ones and ammend them if you consider necessary, leaving a note in the discussion tab (top, left). Indeed the discussion page can be very productive in a free confrontation of the different understandings as a dialectical approach to a better common understanding.

Preliminary definitions of the concept

Abstract vs concrete Dystopia can be understood as the difference between something fictional and something tangible.

For an example, an abstract Dystopia would be something like Dune with an more or less all knowing God Emperor, Warhammer 40.000 with an unified Humanity which although is caught in an never ending Conflict with god like Forces and “Xenons”, the worlds build up in Novels like 1984 or Fahrenheit.

On the other hand, we do have real life Scenarios and examples which showed how a concrete Dystopia could play out. From the French Revolution, to the tyranny of certain Communist Systems, the violence some religious extremists brought over us in order to create their own version of an Utopia which we would consider probably a Dystopia on itself, to the reality of liberal Capitalism which stands nowadays in our own lives often contrary to our claimed values or the extreme example for Germany itself; the third Reich.

In the mentioned cases, certain key values got taken to the extreme and/or perverted. In the case of liberal Capitalism, the liberty itself became a commodity as knowledge itself.

Supporters of this understanding: Alexander Prugger