"Why do artists take the lead? Because they bring with them the power of imagination. Saint-Simon expects that the artists will solve the problems of motivation and efficiency, which are obviously lacking in a utopia composed of merely scientists and industrialists. What is missing, says Saint-Simon, is a general passion.

It is striking that both Saint-Simon and Fourier emphasize the role of the passions. As we shall see, Fourier grafts his entire utopia onto a search about passions; he returns to an old reflection that is present in Hobbes and even in Hume, the notion that a social order is built on passions more than on mere ideas. Saint-Simon writes of his own view: 'artists, men of imagination will open the march. They will proclaim the future of the human species…. [I]n a word, they will develop the poetic part of the new system…. Let the artists bring about earthly paradise in the future… and then this system will constitute itself quickly' (quoted in Desroche, 72; emphasis added). Present is the idea of a shortcut in time; if there is suddenly this kind of fire, this explosion of emotion created by the artists, then what I have called the chain reaction will occur. The artists will open the way and develop 'the poetic part of the new system'" (Ricoeur 1986:294).

Ricoeur, Paul
1984 Lectures on Ideology and Utopia. George H. Taylor, ed. New York: Columbia University Press.

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