The contemporary utopia of self-realization

Utopia in classic literature is a place in which community is a value in itself. The individual is tied to a collective that gives him a meaning for his own life and his moral value is based on his participation to the utopian collective. Imaging a utopia in this perspective is a form of moral rebellion, which is possible only foreseeing a better future in a progressive historical timeline. Contemporary societies put in question such assumptions, starting from breaking the social and collective prerequisite. Postmodernity contradicts its salient characteristics: there is no more a space for an absolute common good when society is liquid and focalised on present, every individual is in search of a its own happiness instead of creating a community, short-time has become the timeline of contemporary culture. This paper will describe the utopian dimension of contemporary societies by showing its contradictory feature compared to the classic model, referring to the theories of pragmatic sociology and the rise of project as ontological dimension of contemporary life.