A Philosophy of Hope

I’m back after doing some work to try to summarize a thrilling book on HOPE, by one of the most considered living Nordic philosophers, Lars Svendsen, published in 2023 in Norwegian and English and edited by Reaktion Books LTD.

« As the world situation currently looks, there is undoubtebly reason for discouragement. Towards the turn of the millenium all the pointers seemed to be aimed equally at the sky. There is definitely less reason for optimism now than there was just a few decades ago, but that is precisely why there is all the more room for hope. Not because our hopes should now have a higher likelihood of being fulfilled, but because hope contains resources to help us deal with the setbacks we are now experiencing. It gives us goals to reach for, goals that it will also contribute to helping us achieve. » 

The author’s goal is not to arrive to a new definition of hope, but to offer a broad description of hope’s place in human life.

Hope isn’t something that suddenly appears from thin air in your emotional life. It has to be learned and developed. It is often referred to as a feeling, and athough hope undoubtedly has an emotional side it is probably just as connected to reason as it is to feelings. As such, hoping is neither rational nor irrational, and it can be done both well and badly. Hope is in no way the same as optimism ; one can be both pessimistic and hopeful at the same time. You can be a functioning pessimist, but without hope you simply will not live a full human life.

Hope is good because it gives people a kind of grip on the future, and thus a degree of control over life.

The word « hope » seems to have quite different meanings and values for different people. For some, to hope is to become passive, to stop believing that you can accomplish something yourself and instead indulge in a belief that external forces will ensure things go as you wish ; for others, hope is active and linked to creating possibilities, seen in an as yet undetermined future, a reality. Hope can be both of these things. Hope can also be used in many different ways and in a variety of contexts, from the extremely trivial to the deeply essential.

I found this book not only interesting by its proposition, to elaborate on hope from different standpoints, by its structure and relative easiness to understand. I also found, that it is perfectly suited in today’s context and it allows us to take a step back from an extremely dense and heavy newsflow. Hope is present in our every day life now. If not for more personal reasons for some of us, but more generally, I believe, that we all hope for several things : an end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and peace conditions that would be acceptable for Ukraine, an end to the devastating war against the Palestinians in Gaza that would not lead to displacing the population to build a new Riviera ( !) and, or a huge gaz and oil terminal, an end to the Trump administration’s sabotage of the American democracy… Just to name the three most obvious ones right now.

In the « Philosophy » section of the « Main Themes » part in this blog, you will find the excerpts that struck me the most. Enjoy, there is a lot of food for thought !

https://www.thegoalisthepath.blog/projects/philosophy