"Utopia", according to the Greek etymology of the word, means "non-place", "non-existent place". In fact one can define a "utopia" as an unreal place, a fair and perfectly functioning world whose philosophical invention is a model to be imitated, an asymptotic ideal to be aimed at, which one should try to implement in the real world, usually after a traumatic realisation of the essential injustice and imbalance of the historical circumstances in which one is living and acting. Historically, over the centuries various outstanding philosophers and politically active individuals have invented and put forward in their works ideal models of the fairest imaginable world, which only the wisest and most just people would be permitted to rule.

The proposed analysis aims to reconstruct the history of the philosophical genre of "utopia", following it through the centuries from the first utopia in antiquity - Plato's Republic - to the most modern, political utopias, and also pointing to the dangerous abuses - which have actually occurred in the history of mankind - of the most famous utopian masterpieces, exploited and distorted in an attempt to implement the imagined models in a blind and absolutist fashion, no longer considering them as sources of inspiration and enlightenment but as diktats to be rigorously applied at any cost, whether to reestablish an Eden or "golden era" of human history or to implement a perfect state in the present day.

"Utopia", according to a famous word play by Thomas Moore, the author of a well-known book with precisely that word as its title, can be heard both as "non-place" (ou-topos) and "good place" (eu-topos), but when did it lose its positive meaning? Also, an important question arises concerning the present day: when can a utopia truly retain and express its potential for improvement?