Encyclopaedia as a Social Utopia

Abstract

This paper considers the encyclopaedia as a social utopia by analyzing some great encyclopaedic projects that have greatly influenced the history of encyclopaedic studies of the world and of Croatia. First we analyze the French Encyclopédie as the encyclopaedia that marked the great encyclopaedic revolution of the 18th century, but also as a work that was a realistic social utopia, a programme of social change based on the idea of a reasoned society of personal freedom and political equality, and as such was the main source of radical democratic thought that, in the second half of the 18th century, brought about the »revolution of the spirit«, one of the greatest changes in the entire history of humanity, that was not only a philosophical revolution, but also an economical, technological, political and administrative, as well as a moral, legal, educational and aesthetic revolution. Then we analyze two encyclopaedic social utopias of the 20th century: H. G. Wells’ project of a permanent World Encyclopaedia and Miroslav Krleža’s Encyclopaedia of Yugoslavia, which was understood as an instrument of radical social change and the creation of a new socialist consciousness and culture. At the end we consider the utopian character of Wikipedia as the great encyclopaedia of our time.