Chapter 20

Reading the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that were agreed upon by the United Nations in 2015 in the document Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (sustainabledevelopment.un.org), I am struck by the high level of aspiration not to say idealism. The Goals do indeed demand a transformation and, besides focused technological innovations, crucial [...]

Worldviews often orient themselves to particular ideals, about human individuals and societies. Famous descriptions of an ideal society in literature are known as utopias: a place (τοπος) that is good (ευ) – or, in another interpretation, is not (ου). In his book Utopia (2006), Achterhuis proposes three criteria for a imagined future to be a [...]