Utopian retreats that replace politics with design recapitulate rule by experts over laypeople.

Evidence

In The Republic, the philosopher-king applies the ideas as the craftsman applies his rules and standards; he “makes” his City as the sculptor makes a statue; and in the final Platonic work these same ideas have even become laws which need only be executed. … This substitution introduces a division between the expert/designer and the layman/executor, or “between those who know and do not act and those who act and do not know.” Such a division is evident in Walden Two: the workings of the Code are hidden from the members, whose only job is to live out Frazier’s dream. It’s also their job not to interfere. Arendt writes that these escapes “always amount to seeking shelter from action’s calamities in an activity where one man, isolated from all others, remains master of his doings from beginning to end.” — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 196

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the expert/layman division Arendt identified in utopian retreat designs, central to Odell’s argument that retreat-as-design fails.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s aim of distinguishing Odell’s ‘capaciousness’ from evasion; Arendt’s division between knowing-doing and acting-not-knowing is the philosophical spine of the withdrawal critique.