What do the descriptions of London and Paris in Dickens’s novel A Tale of Two Cities say about what an ideal society is like?

Two Cities, One Question: What is the Ideal Society?

Philosophical Analysis of London and Paris in Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities

Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities is not only a dramatic narrative reflecting the historical atmosphere of the French Revolution; it is also a text of moral and social philosophy. In this work, Dickens constructs London and Paris not only as two cities, but also as embodiments of opposing ethical and political forms. In this context, the city descriptions in the work offer us a kind of “negative ontology” about what the ideal society is not: Dickens leaves a philosophical echo of this question in the reader’s mind map by showing what the ideal society is not, rather than what it is.

I. Paris: The Evolution of the Quest for Justice into Tyranny

In Dickens’s descriptions, Paris is the setting of pre-revolutionary aristocratic degeneration and post-revolutionary mass violence. Paris before the revolution is a scene of feudal despotism, where justice is subject to class privileges, where lineage is prioritized over the rights of the citizen. In this sense, it is a system in which the individual submits to arbitrary authority, not to the general will, as Rousseau criticized in The Social Contract.

However, Dickens’s real criticism is that the revolutionary movement that developed in response to this degeneration lost its inherent righteous anger, giving way to blind revenge and violence. The character of Madame Defarge transforms personal trauma into collective anger, completely erasing the sense of justice. Here justice becomes not a “golden ratio” as Aristotle put it in the Nicomachean Ethics, but a “justice of ressentiment” in Nietzsche’s sense: the morality of the oppressed emerges as a force legitimizing repressed resentment.

This transformation in Paris is the opposite of the ideal society: here there is no nomos (law), only thymos (anger). The social contract is rewritten not by the will of the people, but through mass lynching and destruction. In this case, there is a return to the state of nature described by Hobbes in Leviathan: a state in which everyone is at war with everyone else.

II. London: An Orderly But Indifferent Society

London, at the other pole of the novel, is presented by Dickens as a relatively stable city where law and order prevail. Here, individuals are in relative security; the aristocracy has not established absolute sovereignty; public order continues without the threat of revolution. However, this order has no moral face. Although justice exists at the institutional level in London, there is a lack of moral sensitivity at the individual level.

This situation coincides with a point that liberal societies are often criticized for: while the rights and freedoms of the individual are protected, the ethical responsibility of the individual towards the other is ignored. In Emmanuel Levinas’ words, the “face of the other” becomes invisible. While society confines individuals to safe areas, it makes them insensitive to the suffering of others.

So London is another extreme of the ideal society: orderly but insensitive, free but unrelated. Here, the citizen is neither hostile nor friendly to the existence of others; he is simply indifferent. In this context, London is not the city of the ideal society, but of moral neutrality.

III. Dickens’s Moral Dialectic: Humanity Between Two Extremes

With the tension he establishes between these two cities, Dickens suggests neither pure revolutionism nor sterile order to his reader. For Dickens, the ideal society is neither a place where only justice reigns nor a place where only order is provided. The true ideal is a structure where the individual bears an ethical responsibility towards the other, where justice is provided not through hatred but through virtue, where order is blended with sensitivity.

The character of Sydney Carton is the embodiment of this understanding. His death can be read as an ethical salvation and a possibility for a social ideal rather than an individual tragedy. Carton is neither one of the blind revolutionaries of Paris nor one of the indifferent citizens of London. His sacrifice is a dramatic reflection of Levinas’ idea of ​​infinite responsibility and Kant’s principle of seeing the other as an end, not a means. In this sense, Carton’s death is a silent question for Dickens:

“When does society recognize and value the individual as a human being?”

IV. Philosophical Scheme of the Ideal Society

A Tale of Two Cities is not two cities in Dickens’s pen, but two separate ethical worlds:

Paris is the dystopia of a society where justice has turned into violence and anger has become law.

London is the criticism of a society where order is equated with insensitivity and ethical relations have faded.

According to Dickens, the ideal society is beyond these two poles. He reminds us of Aristotle’s definition of zoon politikon: man is not only a political being, but also an ethical being. Society is a structure where not only rights are protected, but also the value of the other is recognized.