Abstract

This article explores the seemingly paradoxical thesis that the society depicted in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is anti-utopian because it seeks to eliminate suffering. As Huxley suggests in The Perennial Philosophy and other works, suffering is a necessary condition for acquiring knowledge of God, and such knowledge constitutes genuine happiness. Since the Brave New World seeks to eliminate the necessary condition for its citizens' happiness, it is, therefore, anti-utopian.