Thomas Molnar is a 20th-century, Hungarian-born philosopher whose contributions to conservative thinkers, especially from a Christian point of view, can no longer be ignored. As an invaluable critic of Utopia—of the socialist’s nature—Molnar revealed the gnostic and pseudo-religious aspirations of Utopians and presented credible philosophical evidence that the path to the ‘best society’ is not the Utopian fantasy, but rather the vision grounded in realism. To encounter Molnar is also to face the sorry fact that Utopian aspirations always turn out to be stubborn and totalitarian substitutes for religion.
Thomas Steven Molnar (Molnár Tamás István) was born in 1921 in Budapest, studied abroad, then emigrated to the USA where he lived until his death in 2010.
He enjoyed an education in Belgium where he joined a Catholic conservative youth group. At 23 years old, he was detained in the concentration camp in Dachau where he remained until the end of the war. Once released, he witnessed the Communist takeover in Hungary and left for the United States. There, while teaching for multiple universities and colleges, he led a prolific life, writing on philosophical, religious, political, historical, and sociological issues, penning over 40 books and 1,500 articles in French, English, German, Spanish, and Hungarian.
Molnar’s firsthand encounter with Nazism and Communism inspired him to take up a subject that became central to his critique of modernity: utopia. Both the national-social and the Marxist-Communist projects for society proved ruinous, as Molnar experienced, and he endeavored to find the root defect that was shared by both. In his main and pivotal work, Utopia the Perennial Heresy (1967), he delineates the genealogy, inherent dangers, and practical impact of the “Utopian mindset,” as he called it. The book presents plentiful examples, drawing from modern philosophy and beyond, some of which I attempt to sketch out here.
Perhaps the most singular contribution Molnar makes to the discussion of Utopia is in defining it as “heresy.” The choice to use this religious term is not haphazard, as the Utopian seeks to establish the perfect society, the ‘city of god’ on earth. But this compulsion, without the proper Christian foundation, results in “self-divinization” and the denial of God. Molnar succinctly notes: “Our thesis here is that utopia is to the political realm what heresy is to the theological:” Utopians are confident of the perfectibility of human endeavors, but choose to ignore their dependency on a divine being and aid from ‘above.’ Utopia is, therefore, always a selective choice of political perfectibilities within society, which loses sight of the ‘whole’.
Indeed, what else is a heresy, but a ‘choice’ (from the Greek hairesis), the choice to remove one or more beliefs from a complete set of interrelated propositions?
One reason Molnar applies the category of heretic to utopians is partly due to the concept’s Christian origin. Its genesis lies in the late Middle Ages with millennialism, specifically that of Joachim of Fiore, and continues into the Renaissance in Girolamo Savonarola and Thomas More, to name a few examples. The tectonic shift it demarcates is the moment when men ceased to seek a ‘golden age’ in the past and instead looked to the future for a fulfillment of history, a parousia.
Another reason Molnar may have chosen the term is that Utopians ‘choose’ one element of society—economics, education, etc.—unroot and sever it from its original context, and focus their attention on improving upon it, without regard for related issues.
This particular characteristic was manifested by the recent EU ban on the internal combustion engine. Politicians and lobbyists pushing for the ban demonstrated a certain disregard for its repercussions on economics, policies, and personal lives. Ecological utopianism promotes first and foremost a ‘green future.’ The push for such a ban arises from the Utopian conquest of the ‘moral high ground,’ secured through attractive yet empty promises, at the unheeded expense of the rest of life and politics.
Molnar elaborates on some 14+ features of Utopianism which cannot be presented here at length. Some suffice to illustrate his case and present evidence of the deceitful and subversive rhetoric of the utopians to which many leading European politicians (and voters) have already fallen prey.
Utopians believe, as Molnar states, in an “unspoiled beginning and attainable perfection” on earth. “The concept of ‘unspoiled beginning’ is not exhausted by insistence on the cyclical theory of time; it posits also an imaginary first state of affairs … which serves for the model of restoration of the end of the cycle,” argues Molnar.
Utopians harbor pessimism towards human nature but optimism towards societal perfection. In other words, man as an individual cannot save himself. But, redemption does not come ‘from above’ (such as through grace in Christianity) but rather through societal and political change. For the Utopian, the end justifies the means, as long as it brings about the ‘perfection of society.’
In this frame, the individual with his recalcitrance to change is the main obstacle in this endeavor. Utopians hold certain presuppositions about the human race and its nature. Central here is the Enlightenment idea of the “liberation from heteronomy” and the attainment of autonomy, especially in the moral sector. Human nature is not seen as something permanent (as exemplified, for instance, in Marx) but as something that is ‘created’ by man himself. Man becomes an object of his willed transformation. The “real objective,” argues Molnar, “is the creation of a new human being.”
This statement gains evident relevance in view of transhumanism. As Yuval Harari notes in his bestselling Homo Deus: “In the twenty-first century, the third [largest] project of humankind will be to acquire for us divine powers of creation and destruction, and upgrade Homo sapiens into Homo deus.”
The 21st century Utopian, consequently, is focused on scientific progress, ‘science’ here referring to the empirical sciences exclusively, most pronounced through digital and mechanical technology. It is modern science that leads the Utopian to believe that the “path to perfection has become considerably shorter and the objective more clearly visible.” A feature of this science-fideism is the conviction that better communication and rigid order will result in better action—the expectation when society is ordered ‘scientifically.’ This diagnosis was clearly evident in the slogans wielded by public officials during the corona-crisis, its related restrictions, and lockdowns.
The Utopian, finally, is a political “monist.” The human race must be united at all costs. That unity is his Leitmotif.
In this process of unification, “cohesion” becomes “uniformity” which in turn evolves into “coalescence,” into one indistinguishable mass. “Universal love” is the adhesive that holds everything together while serving as the perfect mimicry of the Christian message. As Molnar points out, for the Utopian, this unified and uniform mass is enabled by the “abolition of war” which in turn can only be safeguarded by a “supranational agency, ultimately a world government.”
This temptation is rooted in philosophical Monism, a conviction that understands “the entire universe as one substance, diversified in space and time by various immanent forces … universal, self-creating and self-sufficient” and that the end of history is equally a “spiritualized whole.”
Many are the examples and manifestations of this “permanent thought pattern,” as Molnar calls it. Molnar himself gave plenty of attention to it, not just in this volume, but in his writings on Sartre, the history of intellectuals, the counter-revolution, and various articles in search of the essence of modernity and its relation to Utopia and myth.
Molnar has much to say about current world affairs and the known—or lesser known—philosophical roots thereof. Conservative thinkers in particular would do well to mine the rich treasure of ideas and research that Molnar’s work embodies. In contrast to the Utopians, the Hungarian philosopher presents another school of thought, that of the realists—in the Christian and even Thomistic sense—who admits man is sinful but does not fall into a nihilistic pessimism that abandons the human condition to idle regress and degeneration. Realists of this nature assess the human being realistically and recognize that the final end of man—as an individual, as well as a whole race—and even the end of history, is not found in imminence but in transcendence.
