Abstract

What is the difference between the earthly paradise, the Golden Age and the ideal city? This question is most important for whoever is interested in the various ways human societies have had for imagining an ideal state of perfection or social harmony. If we are not to confuse such different systems of representation as mythical thought, millenarianism and Utopia, it is absolutely necessary that we do not reduce the descriptions of an earthly paradise and a Golden Age to simple precursors of the ideal city of the Utopians. ’ It is especially important not to call &dquo;Utopian&dquo; every representation of the ideal society, Utopia being only one-and the most. recent-of its modalities. ’ The Utopian dream Translated by Jeanne Ferguson 1 The principal approaches to an analysis of the various types of visions of the ideal state of social perfection (paradisiacal myth, millennium and Utopian city) are found in Laplantine, 1974 and Wunenburger, 1979. The latter is mainly inspired by that of G. Durand, 1979a and 1979b. 2 Even the sociological approaches to Utopia tend to confuse it with the