Enlightenment and Self-Analysis

“Utopia does not ask the ultimate questions; rather, it confines itself to the penultimate ones,” Polak notes, and he goes on to say that it does ask “incessantly about the meaning of human existence,” but with the following qualification: “insofar as it concerns life here on earth.” Although it is questionable which ‘last questions’ are at all meaningful behind these ‘penultimate’ ones, it seems to be more important first of all to examine the motive for the incessant questioning and the influence that the utopian answers gain on the respective following questions, i.e. how utopia is motivated to keep up the constant questioning and which development the utopian motivation itself undergoes in the process.