A Philosophical Analysis of Hope

A Philosophical Analysis of Hope Jayne M. Waterworth

A Philosophical Analysis of Hope

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A Philosophical Analysis of Hope Jayne M. Waterworth

© Jayne M. Waterworth 2004 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2004 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 1–4039–0435–9 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Waterworth, Jayne M., 1954– A philosophical analysis of hope / Jayne M. Waterworth. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–4039–0435–9 1. Hope. I. Title. BD216.W38 2003 128—dc21 10 9 13 12

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In memory Jean, Ada, Lizzie To my children Matthew and Emma

This, then, is the destiny that not only the young women affront – you must betray or, more fortunately perhaps, you must be betrayed. [ . . . ] We shall never know what it was at the very start of life that so deeply impressed on the young James’s mind this sense of treachery; but when we remember how patiently and faithfully throughout his life he drew the portrait of one young woman who died, one wonders whether it was just simply a death that opened his eyes to the inherent disappointment of existence, the betrayal of hope. The eyes once open, the material need never fail him. Henry James’s novel, The Portrait of a Lady From the Introduction by Graham Greene

Contents

ix

Acknowledgements Introduction

1

1

3

An Analysis of Everyday Hope 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5

2

3

4

Humans, other animals and hope Expecting or anticipating? Adopting hope or despair Objectives and objects Summary

4 8 14 26 29

Phenomena in the Neighbourhood of Hope

31

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5

32 43 56 64 66

Passions and emotions Related negative phenomena Related positive phenomena Imaginative possibilities and memory Summary

The Domain of Agency and its Perspectives

67

3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4

Goals and objectives Exercising authority Commitment: projects and persons Summary

68 75 83 91

Meaning in Life: Confronted by Suffering

93

4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6

Aspects of hope; aspects of character Giving and finding hope Suffering in extraordinary circumstances Suffering in ordinary circumstances What, if not hope? Summary vii

94 101 104 107 114 116

viii Contents

5

Meaning in Life: Confronted with Death

118

5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4

119 123 130 142

Thinking about dying and death A medical context for suffering A healthy approach to unhealth and dying Summary

Summary

143

Appendix

146

Notes

149

Bibliography

178

Index

183

Acknowledgements The writing of a book is a task suitably undertaken in hope. From origin to end it is a hope I have shared with others. At this stage, I am pleased to be able to acknowledge some of those who have made a variety of valuable contributions to the development of this work: Professor Onora O’Neill, Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge; Professor Emeritus Mats Furberg, Gothenburg University, Sweden; Professor Naomi Scheman, University of Minneapolis, USA; Dr Hildur Kalman, University of Umea, Sweden; Professor Ingvar Johansson, University of Umea, Sweden; Professor Sten Lindstrom, University of Umea, Sweden; Ann-Katrin Minnhagen, University of Umea, Sweden; Professor Jeff Malpas, University of Tasmania, Australia; Dr Jeffery Geller, University of North Carolina at Pembroke, USA; Dr Philip Stratton-Lake, University of Reading, UK; Dr B. Hooker, University of Reading, UK; all seminar colleagues, especially Peter Nilsson, Rognvaldur Ingthorsson and Per Nilsson. Warm thanks to my friends Stephan M. Rohrl, Niklas Dahlin and Mattias Hanson for companionship. To my family, my son and daughter, a heartfelt thank you. Hope needs a past and a future. This work is dedicated in part to my mother, grandmother and auntie, and in part to Matthew and Emma.

ix

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Introduction

Hope is a pervasive phenomenon in human life that is often overlooked, partly because of its very familiarity. But familiarity does not entail understanding. As familiar and pervasive as hope is, there are questions about its structure and appropriate place that call for careful investigation. Human beings have a capacity for rational thought and action. And human beings are language users. These are central characteristics of being human. That human beings hope is also of the very character of humanness. What is hoped forms the contours and content of human life. When hope is called upon shows its relation to values and a perception of meaning in life. In what way, and to what extent, is hoping implicated in orienting thinking and motivating action in human life? How can a reasonable person value hope? What does hope show about the humanness of human beings? In pursuing answers to these questions, I consistently take a secular human-centred view of the phenomenon of hope and related phenomena like despair, hopelessness, fear and trust. I describe how hope appears in a variety of contexts beginning with familiar situations in which people express what they hope and why they may despair. Staying within ordinary everyday contexts, I ask questions about agency concerning how people comport themselves in the world when they have hope, and how they conduct themselves. I investigate how people use ideas about the possible hopes of others in order to come to an understanding of the conduct of others. In addition, it may be asked how we move from ordinary hopes, to what we may think of as extraordinary hopes, in quite ordinary situations. What is it that changes? And how does it change? 1

2 A Philosophical Analysis of Hope

I raise questions about suffering, this time in contexts which are quite extraordinary in a number of ways, as well as in ordinary contexts. Typically, hope is called upon in adversity. How, then, does it show its significance? The appearance of hope changes quite markedly across diverse contexts, though in some ways it remains the same. How is this effect achieved? I argue that hope is a multifaceted phenomenon in a class of its own, in some sense. There are many questions that can be posed about hope – it may seem almost too many. What I aim to do is provide an account of how we may begin to think about hope across a diversity of contexts to see something of how it contributes to agency and meaning in life.

1 An Analysis of Everyday Hope

Moods and emotions, like hopelessness, despondency, anxiety, fear and despair, are countered by hope, and all are familiar phenomena in human life. Hope itself is an ‘everyday’ kind of phenomenon, as common as laughter and tears. Hopelessness, despondency and despair are also common. However, these particular phenomena differ from hope with respect to the seriousness of their objects. Hope is certainly relevant where serious issues, events or states of affairs are concerned, but one can also hope for trivial objectives, and for a whole range of objectives in between the light-hearted and those of the utmost seriousness. In this initial chapter, I will concentrate on hope and despair since they form a bi-polar opposition within which various gradations of feeling, mood and emotion can be situated. Firstly, it will be useful to gain a clear idea of what we mean when we explicitly refer to hope and despair in speech, and it is important to characterise the respective expressions of hope and despair in conduct. To do this I will begin with a dictionary characterisation of hope and despair, and ask to what extent this is commensurate with what we mean and what we do when we speak of, and engage in, hope and despair. Secondly, an analysis of ordinary hopes can reveal a number of parameters, for example, between hopes and wishes, and it can show conditions which form necessary boundaries of hope itself, whatever the nature of hope’s objective. Thirdly, it is important to begin with ordinary cases of hope and despair to appreciate hope’s role in motivation and to be in a position to recognise a distinction between two kinds of despair. To distinguish between non-serious and serious objectives of hopes, I refer to ordinary hopes (as above) and extraordinary hopes respectively. The family resemblances will become apparent in due course. 3

4 A Philosophical Analysis of Hope

Questions may be asked about (a) what hope is, (b) what hope does, (c) how hope relates to other phenomena and (d) the objectives of hope. I address these questions in an ongoing and interrelated way throughout the development of the entire thesis because hope is a complex, multifaceted phenomenon comprising a set of family resemblances which show themselves in different combinations with different degrees of prominence in diverse contexts. In brief, there is no short answer that can be given at the beginning of the text which would then serve as a framework for a technical discussion. I proceed by examining many circumstances of human agency and its conditions, human interaction and the engendering of meaning, since these are the arenas where that which is of significance to human beings is to be found. In the first chapter, I am primarily concerned with what may be termed hope because of reality and I discuss hope in spite of reality more thoroughly in later chapters. Hope in spite of reality is usually expressed by the phrase ‘hoping against hope’ in English language use. Initially, hope because of reality can be thought of as probability hope (grounded in what is perceived as relatively likely in the short to medium term on the basis of what is), and hope in spite of, that is, hoping against hope, as possibility hope (grounded in what is perceived that could be the case, at least in principle).

1.1

Humans, other animals and hope

Let us take the respective Oxford English Dictionary (OED) characterisations and use them as a starting point for considering what is generally taken to be involved when hope and despair are spoken of and expressed in conduct by human beings. According to the OED, ‘hope’ means: expectation of something desired; desire combined with expectation and ‘despair’ means: to lose or give up hope; to be without hope.1 Hope is characterised in terms of expectation and desire while despair is characterised in terms of (a lack of) hope. Expecting and desiring are themselves quite complex phenomena including: (1) estimates of probabilities and (2) the recognition of some wanted good/object(ive), respectively. Subsequently, I shall argue for an amended characterisation, but let us accept this one provisionally. The elements of expecting and desiring would appear to rule out certain classes of things or beings

An Analysis of Everyday Hope

5

from experiencing either hope or despair. Amongst those ruled out are: stones, seeds, trees, flies and snakes. Whatever is meant by panpsychism, it is not to be imagined that these things are expecting and desiring in like manner to human beings. We speak neither of the conduct, nor of the behaviour of stones, seeds and trees. Insects exhibit certain ‘behaviour’ (ascribed on a chemico-mechanistic basis), though not conduct, when, for example, bees perform their allotted function in the hive and ants build and secure their nests. In higher primates, anthropomorphism can make sense (to us), of the behaviour of some animals, partly by making their behaviour more predictable. This may be significant for some human purposes, like tending animals in a zoo, caring in terms of veterinary treatment or in hunting animals, whether for food or sport. Anthropomorphism aside, it may be an open question whether some higher primates like monkeys and gorillas, or even cats and dogs, hope and despair, though their doing so is dubious. There is a remark in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations which supports my view that hope is a uniquely human phenomenon. Wittgenstein writes, One can imagine an animal angry, frightened, unhappy, happy, startled. But hopeful? And why not? A dog believes his master is at the door. But can he also believe his master will come the day after tomorrow? – And what can he not do here? – How do I do it? – How am I supposed to answer this? Can only those hope who can talk? Only those who have mastered the use of a language. That is to say, the phenomena of hope are modes of this complicated form of life. (If a concept refers to a character of human handwriting, it has no application to beings that do not write.)2 Wittgenstein is asking us to consider what it is we do when we hope. The crux of the matter in this example revolves around the temporal character of hope. What is hoped for is futural, not in the sense of its being in the next moment, but its being ‘the day after tomorrow’. Very many human hopes have a temporal extension greater than this; think, for example, of hoping to become an Olympic athlete and the years of strenuous training involved in pursuing this hope. Do greyhounds hope to win their race, or do they just run as fast as they can in chasing the hare when released from the starting gate? Do greyhounds hope to become regional champions? Here, the tenuous link between what human beings do and what can plausibly be ascribed to animals in terms of interpreting their observable behaviour begins to break down

6 A Philosophical Analysis of Hope

with reference to hope. One reason human beings hope to become Olympic athletes or regional champions is because of what these things symbolise within communities and their practices. The notion of the symbolic representation of goals and values is not one typically ascribed to other members of the animal kingdom. It is only within an extended temporal horizon that such symbolism can occur. However, the fact (if it is a fact) that hope is not available to other members of the animal kingdom does no more than situate hope in the human realm. Assuming that hope is a uniquely human phenomenon, that of itself would not prove that hope is a kind of state realisable in a human being independent of social context. Although I will give further reasons for thinking that hope is a uniquely human phenomenon, the reason it is not shared with animals is not that there is, or must be, some specific state, of hope (in this particular case), that human beings can be in, yet animals cannot be in – as though the human brain can realise some state that an animal brain cannot realise. It is that the conditions of possibility of hope and hoping imply an interpersonal or intersubjective context within which hope may be adopted. One inference which may be made from Wittgenstein’s question about what we do when we hope is that there is a distinction to be drawn between emotions like being happy or sad, and hope. And I draw this distinction more fully in Chapter 2. However, the first point I will address in detail from the quoted example concerns the temporality of hope. By temporality I mean the following complex: (1) the futureorientedness of an objective of hope, (2) an act of hope occurs in present time and (3) to qualify, hope must have a minimum duration, hoping is not an activity of the instant. It seems reasonable, prima facie, to infer that a dog cannot hope his master will come the day after tomorrow. I acknowledge that there is a considerable difference between saying ‘A stone cannot hope’ and ‘A dog cannot hope’. And an objector may ask whether we should not say ‘A dog does not hope’, for at what point does ‘does not’ merge into ‘cannot’? Significant as the difference is between stones and dogs, I think the complexity of hope makes it highly improbable that hope can be transferred unproblematically to other animals, however high in the primate order they stand. One reason for some confusion here may be that desiring is a part of hoping, and there is little difficulty in imputing to animals desires to eat and mate. On this basis one may be tempted to think that if animals desire to eat and mate, then they hope to eat and mate. I think this temptation should be resisted because of the ways in which hope outstrips desire.

An Analysis of Everyday Hope

7

For it to be possible that a dog could hope, a dog would have to have a complex temporal horizon permitting a projection such that we would say a dog’s experience of time is protensive. Furthermore, a dog would have to be capable of manipulating complicated symbolic mental representations at a level of abstraction which does not pertain, as far as is known. Such a hope on the part of a dog would require the coordination of a conception of his master, the notions of presence, absence and return, all within a protensive futural horizon. Hope is primarily future oriented. Although one hopes in the present, what one hopes for is yet to come. What difference would it make, if any, were an alternative question to be posed? Instead of asking whether a dog can believe his master will come the day after tomorrow, let us instead ask whether a dog can hope for a walk when his master takes down the leash. Does a dog with master and leash have a greater prospect of having a present hope than a dog whose hope is clearly future directed? Here a definite ‘No!’ might appear rather more dogmatic. A response to this question will emphasise the difference between the present and the future with respect to hope, and introduce the element of uncertainty which ineliminably belongs to hope. Firstly, referring back to the OED characterisation, it has to be assumed that a dog enjoys going for a walk. If a walk were not desired then it would not be an objective of hope. Imagine the scenario and its possibilities – master appears, takes down lead: (1) dog hopes for walk, (2) dog desires walk and (3) dog expects walk. In order (1) to hope, a dog must both expect and desire, whereas in (2) to desire and in (3) to expect, desire and expectation, respectively, are sufficient independently. Clearly, some additional information is required if an accurate description of this scenario is to be given. It will be useful to know whether the master only takes down the leash prior to a walk, or does he sometimes take down the leash prior to a beating? Does the master use the leash for some purpose(s) unrelated to the dog on occasion? If the master habitually takes down the leash only when taking the dog for a walk, then perhaps it would be most appropriate to say the dog expects to go for a walk when he sees the leash taken down (on a stimulus– response model of interpreting behaviour). Empirically, dogs do seem to become accustomed to routines. While it may not be a matter of ascribing an expectation proper to a dog, equally it may not be stretching anthropomorphism too far to say that when a dog hears his master’s footfall at a certain time of day, then the dog expects to go for a walk. Perhaps the dog expects to go for a walk, and is surprised or startled, on this last occasion, to receive a beating? If we employ this piece of anthropomorphism, notice that we would say a dog expects to go for

8 A Philosophical Analysis of Hope

a walk irrespective of whether or not a dog desires to go for a walk. And corollatively, a dog may desire to go for a walk without expecting to do so. This parallels the case with what we would say about human beings. A child, for example, may expect to be taken on an outing to the park on Fridays, irrespective of whether she wishes to go there, while on another occasion she may want to visit the park without expecting to do so. Concerning the dog, if there is no associated alternative, for example, a beating as opposed to a walk, as opposed to his master using the leash as a belt, then there will be no possibility at all that what is going on in this scenario could be construed as hope. The reason for this is that the concept of hope entails a notion of uncertainty. The options of walk, beating, or belt, represent an element of uncertainty in this particular example. In order for a dog to hope it must be cognisant of possible alternatives, and be capable of ranking them, so that it can either hope for a walk, or fear a beating. Alternatively, or additionally, a dog must have a more abstract ability to conceive of a distinction between the possible and the impossible, if unaware of any concrete and specific alternatives. If we were to ask ‘Can a dog hope his master will appear, take down the leash, and take him for a walk the day after tomorrow, next week or next year?’ we are returned to a question of the form of Wittgenstein’s question. From the above it appears that it is dubious at best whether a dog can hope at all. At a present time, when a master takes down a leash, a dog can be described as being happy, unhappy and so on, as Wittgenstein says, but can we really apply the word hope to this case? If a dog has been beaten on previous occasions instead of walked, then, empirically, the more common response of dogs is to cower first, and tail-wag second, after some reassurance, indicating that a leash could instigate fear much more readily than hope. This is because although emotions are undoubtedly complex phenomena, it is plausible to think that some emotions are more ‘biological’ than others, and fear is a prime example of such a one. Hope has a kind of complexity which makes it not best rendered as an emotion in the sense that fear and anger are so classified. There are feelings, like nausea, for example, where there is no belief or thought involved, and fear is more like nausea than is hope. Despite its element of desire, hope is a highly cognitive phenomenon.3

1.2

Expecting or anticipating?

In order to characterise hope and related phenomena with perspicuity it is important to be as precise as possible in detailing the respective

An Analysis of Everyday Hope

9

descriptions. In this section I will argue that contrary to the OED usage, it would be more appropriate to think about hope in terms of anticipation to more accurately describe the phenomenon. Regarding hope, it can be seen that Wittgenstein refers to belief and the future in his question about what we do when we hope. Expectation and desire are not mentioned. The OED, on the other hand, provides a characterisation of hope employing the terms, expectation and desire. To have an expectation an individual must have some beliefs about her present circumstances, and some conception as to ways in which those circumstances could be changed. While preparing a meal, for example, I may expect the arrival of my guests who have been invited to dine with me. Etymologically speaking, expecting an event means to ‘look out’ for it or to ‘await’ it. Now, expectation can refer either to the idea of ‘looking out’ for something, or it can refer to degrees of probability of something being the case. In terms of probabilities I may, for example, reasonably have little expectation of winning a national lottery. In the use of either sense of the word, there will be associated beliefs involved about the state of the world, about that which is looked out for, and the likelihood of its occurrence. Although one’s expectations may be more or less, depending on the degree of probability in a given instance, one can expect without hoping. Also, one can have an expectation entirely devoid of desire, as when one expects to receive a lawyer’s bill for services rendered. Expectations have a ‘looking out’ or ‘waiting’ aspect, and an estimative aspect. One can expect without hoping or desiring. But can one hope without expecting or desiring? My answer is that one can hope without expecting but not without desiring. Despite the OED combination of expectation and desire, I differ on the point of expectation. Now, I will give my reasons. Firstly, one cannot hope without desire so I think it correct to claim that desire is partially constitutive of hope. Secondly, hoping must have an element that is expectation-like, but I think this expectation-like element is, in fact, anticipation. Etymologically, the roots of the meaning of anticipation lie in the idea of ‘seizing or taking possession beforehand’ (OED). This etymological root conveys the original connotations of activity that the word carries. In anticipating something, one reaches out towards that which is anticipated and unites oneself with the objective, phenomenologically speaking. Commonly, in contemporary ordinary English usage, the term, anticipate, carries connotations of desire and positivity, for example, one anticipates the pleasure of a fine wine, or good company,

10 A Philosophical Analysis of Hope

or a weekend holiday break and so on. Anticipation implies an active orientation towards something perceived as pleasurable. However one may, strictly speaking, also anticipate that which may not carry connotations of pleasure, for example, ‘The foreign minister anticipates the outbreak of war.’ While it may be a more common practice to express this in other ways such as: (1) expecting war, (2) calculating the probability of war or (3) reckoning the likelihood of war, anticipation can accord with that which may be feared as well as that which is an object(ive) of desire or hope. An estimative reckoning may be allied with anticipation and is revealed in usages such as ‘He should have anticipated her reaction to the news’ or ‘The general should have anticipated resistance in the jungle’. Just as one estimates (roughly) the likelihood of that which is expected coming to pass, so also one can estimate (roughly) the likelihood of what one anticipates coming to pass. However, there is a marked difference between ‘looking out for’ or ‘awaiting’ in expectation, and ‘seizing or taking possession beforehand’ in anticipation. Also, expectation is associated with certainty whereas anticipation is associated with uncertainty with respect to these rough estimates. It may be objected that anticipation as ‘seizing or taking possession beforehand’ of a possible state of affairs makes little sense, except metaphorically. Even then, it may be argued, do not the features of the metaphor preclude features central to the analysis of hope? If one grasps the idea of the state of affairs in advance, for example, where is the uncertainty in that? An adequate response requires looking at the location of uncertainty and its relation to relevant phenomena. When one hopes there is no doubt that one hopes (grasping an objective), whether one’s hope is meagre or fulsome. There may be, however, indeterminacy (a form of vagueness), leaving one uncertain in characterising the objective of hope. In such cases it would not be unusual to find a degree of uncertainty as to precisely what would count as fulfilment of such a hope. There may be a range of satisfactory alternatives that could count as fulfilment. Also, uncertainty may reside primarily in prospects for the objective’s potential manifestation (from a third person perspective) or it may be situated in the hoper’s assessment of the conditions for the possibility of its fulfilment (i.e. from a first person perspective). 4 There are two further points to be made, one of which relates to the discussion in Section 1.1. Fear is an opposite of hope. Despite this opposition, fear and hope are not entirely equal and opposite with regard to their respective features and relations to other phenomena. It was considered whether a dog may hope for a walk or fear a beating as an element of uncertainty in possible events. It is

An Analysis of Everyday Hope 11

worth noting though that one can fear that which is expected in a similar manner as fearing that which is anticipated. On the contrary, from a logical point of view, one cannot similarly hope for that which is expected just as much as one may hope for that which is anticipated. There is no reason to hope for that which is expected since it is already considered to be securely in prospect. The second point concerns the difference in the relationship between expectation and hope (as anticipation) to (positive) value(s). Expecting x is more value-neutral than hoping for x. Although in practice one may value whatever it is that one expects, the fact that whatever is expected can be divorced from being valued, in principle, points to the conclusion that the relationship between expectation and valuing x is extrinsic. On the other hand, hoping for x implies at least a preference for x over not-x, or between x, y, z and so on. If A tells B that she expects V, then B may further inquire of A if she is pleased or happy about V. Whereas, if A tells B that she hopes for V, then B already knows that A regards V positively, ceteris paribus.5 The relationship between hoping with anticipation and preferring/valuing x is intrinsic. Considering the way in which a hoper is united with the objective of hope through this idea of seizing in advance, plus the positive way in which a hoper views what is seized, I would say the most precise characterisation of ordinary hope should be, ‘hope’ means: anticipation of something desired; desire combined with anticipation. In retrospect, it can be seen that three components of hope have been identified: (1) anticipation, (2) desire and (3) uncertainty. Now, hope admits of degrees, and the degree of hope can be dependent upon either desire or uncertainty. This will yield different kinds of degree. First, note that anticipation, taken in the sense of seizing or uniting oneself with an objective, is not a variable component in hope. Now, let us refer to the uncertainty intrinsic to hope as the estimative aspect of hope since one may be a little uncertain or extremely uncertain about states of affairs or the outcome of events. When one speaks of having high hopes it is the estimative aspect of hope which is the referent of the phrase, whereas when one speaks of fervent hopes one is referring to the desiderative aspect of hope.6 In times past when kings distributed largesse to encourage their subjects’ vociferous approval during ceremonial processions, a king could have had high hopes of hearing his subjects’ voices ring out cries of ‘long live the king’. On the contrary, a miserly king may have had only faint hope of this (unless he also had a reputation for swift retribution in the event of his displeasure). Generous and malevolent kings might equally hope to be regaled with cries of

12 A Philosophical Analysis of Hope

‘long live the king’, though the relationship of this hope to their respective beliefs and the precipitating causes of its fulfilment would be quite distinct. However, there must be some relation to other phenomena like beliefs, attitudes and/or knowledge. Fervent hopes or ardent hopes signify that which is highly desired or valued, while its estimated likelihood may be slight. Robinson Crusoe may have had a fervent hope of rescue, while recognising its fulfilment to be unlikely, though not impossible. It is interesting to note that although the degree of intensity of the desiderative component of hope may vary, there is a minimum threshold below which it cannot fall without the verdict being rendered that a person no longer hopes. If a certain enthusiasm and preparedness to pursue a hope where pursuit is possible is lacking, then is it really hope? I think not. This suggests that there is an investment in one’s hopes, different to and greater than whatever it is that is invested in one’s wants, desires and wishes alone. 1.2.1

Ordering anticipation and expectation

Although, pre-reflectively, expectation is taken to be a component of hope (as it appears in the OED), I have argued that anticipation is a better term to use in characterising hope. In ordinary language use, the term expectation confers a greater degree of certainty upon its object than does the use of the term hope on its objective. If I say, for example, that ‘I expect him to return tomorrow’, it means that ‘I believe he will return tomorrow’ – either, I am sure of it, or, with the proviso, barring any unforeseen eventuality.7 If I say that ‘I hope he will return tomorrow’, it means that ‘I want him to return tomorrow, and think he may’ – but, I already apprehend a possibility of its not being the case. If I were to say ‘I wish he were returning tomorrow’ then I would be indicating a desire without any expectation. It may be objected that wishing can be subsumed under hoping, and that hoping, in turn, can be subsumed under expecting. The objection runs, given that desire is partially constitutive of hope, if you hope for x, then you must wish for x. I would concede this point, in so far as a wish and a hope both entail a desire. Typically, in everyday language use, having a desire for x would be expressed by saying ‘I want x’. However, although one can say that wishing and hoping both contain wanting, in hoping one is typically doing more than in wishing. In hoping one is indicating a different quality of orientation towards the objective of one’s hope than is present in wishing. In some very ordinary cases of hoping, there may be little to choose, conversationally, between hoping and wishing. But, even in popular usage, in the majority of

An Analysis of Everyday Hope 13

cases, there is a difference worthy of note. Hoping for x always implies a possible change in the person or the world, whereas wishing for x typically implies a desire for x without any possibility of change being perceived. The question remains whether hope can be subsumed under expectation. One can ask whether it is true to say (in the above example) that if ‘I expect him to return tomorrow’, then also do ‘I hope for his return tomorrow’? As has already been seen, there may be a divergence from that which is expected, hoped or desired. Expectations are easily divorced from hopes and desires. So why should an expectation be thought to entail a hope? On the contrary, speaking in terms of expectation is typically to exclude a hope. Let us take another example. I may say: (1) ‘I expect to take the 17.30 train to London’ or (2) ‘I hope to take the 17.30 train to London’ or (3) ‘I wish to take the 17.30 train to London’. The main difference between this and the previous example is that now I am the one who determines the matter as opposed to being the one who waits for another to fulfil my expectation, hope or wish. It seems that little else has changed. In expecting to take that train, I mean that I see no reason why I should not do so (it is what I intend to do). In hoping to take that train, I already perceive some possibility that I may not take that train (though I am intentionally directed towards that train). In wishing to take that train, I mean that if I could take that train, then I would, but I cannot, hence, the wish (I am intentionally directed towards that train, but nothing follows from it). Taking a given speaker and context into account, this may pass as one of those circumstances in which a particular speaker may be prepared to act on her wish to try to ensure that she takes the 17.30 train. Usually, in wishing, one has already perceived that there is no possibility of what one wishes occurring, or one is undecided about whether the circumstances indicate any possibility. It has already been seen that the meaning of expectation is rooted in ‘looking out for’ and ‘awaiting’ some object or event. This etymological root carries connotations of passivity in the notions of waiting and observing. One may expect some event and perfectly well await its arrival patiently. Apart from these elements of passivity, there is a connection between expectation and certainty which is reflected in ordinary language use. If I expect to be met at the station then I feel certain my sister will be there. The connection between hope and uncertainty has already been commented on briefly. If I hope my sister will meet me at the station I do not feel certain she will be there. As one might expect, I feel decidedly uncertain about the prospect of her presence at the station.

14 A Philosophical Analysis of Hope

To reiterate: in anticipation one ‘seizes’ or ‘takes possession’ of that which is conceived of, in advance of its arrival. When one hopes for an objective, its arrival is actively sought and prepared for prior to its coming. Although in some particular contexts expectation may on occasion signify a lively expectation, that which one anticipates always signifies an active orientation towards the objective in question. It should be noted that with respect to despair the more appropriate term is expectation. To despair is to lose or give up hope, and in despair what one loses or gives up primarily is uncertainty. In despair, that which was desired and which may have been seized in advance is perceived as no longer having any availability. Thus, in despair there is an expectation that what one once hoped for will not come to pass (though one may desire it still). Alternatively, it may be that there is an expectation that what one fears will come to pass. Either way, expectation and despair are more closely related than anticipation and despair, while anticipation is the optimum term that captures one of the distinctive features or characteristics of hope.8

1.3

Adopting hope or despair

In Section 1.1, I claimed that hope and despair are phenomena available only to human beings. In this section I will explore various ways in which hoping and despairing can be comprehended in relation to the notion of activity. There are different kinds, or forms, of activity. In the section above, I discussed one way in which hope, as anticipatory, is active while despair, as expectant, has connotations of passivity. In writing about mankind’s historical situatedness and perspective as a decisive human mark, Immanuel Kant explicitly writes of human cares, and implicitly refers to human projects – a different kind of activity. In linking cares with troubles, Kant also implies ideas about the contingency and uncertainty of the arena in which these cares unfold. Hope, also, is implied without the term being mentioned. Kant writes, This capacity for facing up in the present to the often very distant future, instead of being wholly absorbed by the enjoyment of the present, is the most decisive mark of the human advantage. It enables man to prepare himself for distant aims according to his role as a human being. But at the same time it is also the most inexhaustible source of cares and troubles – cares and troubles of which animals are altogether free.9

An Analysis of Everyday Hope 15

This Kantian observation emphasises the temporal character of being human. It is ‘distant aims’ which distinguish man from other animals and the fact that human aims admit of ‘troubles’ shows that they are subject to uncertainty. Therefore, human ‘cares’ are appropriate objectives of hope since their tending and fulfilment is necessarily in doubt, in principle. Though there are characteristics that human beings share with other animals, and there may be many, the phenomenon of hope is a strong candidate for inclusion into the matrix of characteristics that apply solely to human beings. Kant also takes hope to hold a central place in the questions that are of interest to reason. 10 In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant writes, All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I do? 3. What may I hope? 11 Arguably, the combination of this set of questions comprises the fundamental anthropological question of what is man. The third question Kant considers to be both practical and theoretical, with primacy given to the practical. A second formulation of the question of hope is given as, ‘If I do what I ought to do, what may I then hope?’ 12 Each formulation embodies a distinct emphasis. Asking ‘What may I hope?’ directs attention to the objective of hope, that is, that for which one may hope. Alternatively, asking ‘If I do what I ought to do, what may I then hope?’ primarily directs attention to the relation between the future end(s) and past act(s) of the agent. This second formulation explicitly refers to notions of possibility and desert, and it raises the issue of what one is entitled to hope for. Underlying this second formulation is Kant’s notion of the summum bonum as the coordination of happiness and virtue. For Kant, hope is implicated in the employment of reason, so hope is deemed relevant to orienting thinking and guiding action. I will argue that to hope is a human ‘doing’ which modifies perception and action. Acting with hope concerns not only what objectives are set but also how one approaches or approximates the objective(s). The objectives of hope tend to reflect the character and temperament of the hoper, and I will have more to say on this point in later chapters. First, I will deal with the activity of hope and despair in relation to action. It should be noted that despair of someone or something is a human

16 A Philosophical Analysis of Hope

‘doing’ also, for which a person bears responsibility. However, being in despair is a state over which a person may have less control, though even if one is assailed by despair one need not capitulate. Despairing, or being in despair, also carries some responsibility. Hope is a stance and despair a response towards other human beings and the world which one may adopt. Hope is not willed, nor is it an urge or a sensation. Neither is hope compelled by particular situations. This applies equally to despair. Adopting hope or despair is not an action ‘doing’ (though its having been done may be expressed in action). However, one may be considered partly responsible for becoming the kind of person who is likely to hope or despair in situ.13 One cannot hope for that which is known to be impossible since hope is the phenomenon par excellence occupying that range between the highly probable and the not impossible. 14 Even in hoping against hope, one is ‘hoping against the odds’, not hoping for the impossible. Hoping against hope is like putting probability in the balance against possibility. Hoping primarily concerns that which is hoped being realised in the world. Thus, anything known or believed to be impossible is not an appropriate objective of hope. Knowing one is alive, one cannot hope one had never been born, though one may wish it. The situation with belief is different from that of knowledge, in principle, though in practice, any given piece of knowledge and any given belief may work to the same effect on a potential hoper. Believing it impossible to navigate the rapids, for example, I do not hope to journey downriver by boat. On the other hand, if there is accumulating evidence for the belief that a man’s wife is a spy, he may yet hope that it is not so. This hope may be based on a counterbelief that evidence can be manufactured or misconstrued. Or, it may be based on his knowledge of his wife and his belief in her. In principle, adopting hope requires: (1) a conception of possibility (including probability) – the uncertainty criterion, (2) a desire for an objective, (3) a desire that one’s desire be satisfied and (4) an anticipatory stance towards the objective. In principle, adopting despair requires: (1a) a discrimination between possibility and impossibility (in favour of impossibility), (2a) an unsatisfied desire, (3a) a desire that one’s desire be satisfied and (4a) an expectation that one’s desire will not be satisfied. In speaking of hope and despair, I have used these words as nouns and I have also used the verbs, to hope and to despair, in the present continuous form of hoping and despairing. Hope as a noun can be expressed in various usages: (a) ‘her friend gave her good hope’ or (b) ‘she hasn’t a hope of x, y, z’ or (c) ‘she has hope of going to South America’. To say

An Analysis of Everyday Hope 17

that someone has a hope and that someone is hoping are merely two linguistic devices for describing the same phenomenon. Alternatively, one does not have despair, nor can one be given good despair. Rather, one despairs or not. In its noun form despair denotes a state. Despair is the name of a state one may be in, in which case one could be said to be in despair, or despairing, or it may be said of her that she despairs. Even in the state sense of despair there is a difference between ‘working oneself into despair’ and ‘being overwhelmed by despair’. The end state, despair, may result from something a person does, in part, or it may be experienced as that which happens to a person. Despairing of someone or something is done by an agent; it is not something that happens to an agent. It may be asked what it is that is adopted when hope is taken as a stance towards others and the world. Rather than trying to provide a comprehensive answer to the what is hope? question at this stage, I want to draw upon a latent understanding of hope and despair to begin with and examine what difference their use makes to what is done and how it is done. I address the ‘what is hope?’ question in Chapter 2 with regard to basic categorisations of mood, feeling, emotion and attitude. 1.3.1

The placing of one’s hope

One may place one’s hope in another human being, for example, when in sickness I place my hope in a doctor. Or, one may hope for something for another human being, for example, I may hope you are successful in your charitable fund-raising venture. Human beings can, and often do, place their hopes in one another. This may be done asymmetrically as in the case where I place my hope in a doctor. Alternatively, it may involve the reciprocity of individuals placing hope in one another as when a group of people unite in a joint undertaking in the hope that together they will achieve their shared aim. An example of this is the work of organisations dedicated to the aim of protecting human rights. Each hopes that in working with the others, together, they will generate sufficient influence so as to affect the practices of certain governments or groups. Where individuals join together with a common aim whose joining and aim is expressly known, each to the other, it may be said that the placing of one’s hope in another is an intersubjective act. On the other hand, Robinson Crusoe’s hope in rescue parties would not qualify as an intersubjective act. In cases where one individual places her/his hope in another, the other becomes the hope of that individual whether the other wishes it

18 A Philosophical Analysis of Hope

so or not. It is another matter as to whether the party in whom the hope is placed accepts the placing of the individual’s hope and renders assistance. Take, for example, a fugitive who places his hope in his brother. The brother then is a hope for his fugitive brother, and may be the fugitive’s only hope of money or a safe hiding place. However, the brother may, or may not, respond to the needs of his fugitive brother.15 When an objective of hope is hoped on behalf of another, it depends on the nature of the objective as to whether we would say that the hoper’s hope is placed in another, or if it is for another. If I hope my daughter will pass her driving test, I hope that she will pass the test, but my hope is placed in her as she is the effective agent in the fulfilment of my hope. However, if I hope she has fine weather on her hiking holiday then I hope that she will have good weather, but this hope is placed neither in myself, nor in her, as neither of us are effective agents with respect to the weather. If (some of) my hopes for my children (now adults) do not coincide with their hopes for themselves, then I may hope to have some influence on them (so as to give some prospect to effecting my own wishes for them), though I could not expect to effect my hope (for them) myself. Depending on the nature of the objective of hope this may be a scenario in which I would place my hope for themselves in themselves, for example, in hoping that they would successfully overcome some adverse circumstances. Below I give a general account of hopes and the location of effective agency. 1.3.2

Focal points of agency

In addition to the distinction between an asymmetrical and reciprocal placing of hope in another, a further distinction can be drawn with respect to the element of effective agency in hope. On many occasions when an individual has a hope for an objective, there is most likely something an individual can do to contribute to bringing about that which is hoped for, for example, if one hopes to become a surgeon one can study hard on the relevant courses and attend diligently to practicals. To be efficacious in fulfilling a hope, the hoper must be able to imagine herself and/or the world becoming otherwise than it is currently. Also she must believe she has some possibility of achieving her projected aim. Otherwise, taking the above example, one would not hope to become a surgeon, instead, one would wish oneself were a surgeon or imagine the outcome realised. Whatever actions are made manifest in the world, as a consequence of a person having hope, will be preceded logically by there being an objective of hope, and a placing of hope in x, on the part of the person

An Analysis of Everyday Hope 19

who hopes. In hope, anticipation is typically a precursor to action. Where the effective agency for the fulfilment of hope is deemed to reside in the individual, this hope can be referred to as agent-orchestrated hope. Referring back to the above example, it can be seen that hoping to become a surgeon is an agent-orchestrated hope. Let us take a different example. If a pair of climbers who are stranded on a glacier hope for rescue, then this hope is an other-orchestrated hope. There is an objective of hope (the rescue), and the climbers place their hope in other individuals or in a group; in this case, in the mountain rangers emergency service or the like. This example, amended, will serve to introduce a further distinction. Let us suppose that while on the mountain, the climbers receive news over their radio of a storm which may turn in their direction. They hope it will not do so. They hope the storm will bypass them. Here again is an objective of hope (to be missed by the storm). There is nothing either of the climbers can do to affect the path of the storm but clearly they hope, placing their hope in the world, in its most general form of expression. This is a worldorchestrated hope. Hoping for a sunny day is a world-orchestrated hope, as is hoping to win on the roulette wheel. The term ‘world-orchestrated hope’ may conceivably give rise to the view that what is at issue is whether, or to what extent, the world is ‘well-ordered’. This is not what I mean to convey by utilising this term. Whether, or to what extent, the world is well-ordered begs the question of precisely what is meant by well-ordered, prior to being able to decide what features or circumstances in the world may constitute such an ordering. By world-orchestrated hope I mean the possibility that it may turn out to be the case that the natural world or the world structured by human institutions and practices (such as a sunny day and winning at roulette, respectively) conforms to or is at least compatible with my hopes. Similar to the examples above, if I hope to see a rainbow, then there are various conditions that must hold for this hope to be fulfilled. The only parts dependent upon myself would be having my eyes open and looking at the sky. Likewise, if I hope to win the jackpot then I must procure a ticket for the draw. Either the whole or the main part of hope’s fulfilment is out of the hands of the agent in world-orchestrated hope. Finally, recall the example from the Section 1.3.1, concerning the human rights workers. They place their hopes in each other so that together they will make progress in achieving their hope of securing justice for others. Justice is the objective of hope, and placing their hope in each other constitutes reciprocal intentional acts. This I refer to as mutual-orchestrated hope.

20 A Philosophical Analysis of Hope

These distinctions are necessary because it is important to be clear about the ways in which the hoper is related to other persons and states of affairs in the world, both in the present and with respect to an anticipated future. Also, these distinctions form a hierarchy which reflects the active nature of hope and its intrinsic purposiveness in pursuing objectives of hope so as to fulfil them. Expressed simply, if or if but if and if

I can, I do (try) we can, we do (try) I cannot, you may you cannot, the world may

agent-orchestrated hope mutual-orchestrated hope other-orchestrated hope world-orchestrated hope. 16

This ranking reflects the fact that hope is an active, activating, agentcentred phenomenon. In so far as hope is hope for that which is believed possible, in principle, any would-be hoper requires a subjective belief, or at least a subjective ‘taking-for-granted’, that there is some locus of agency or power, if not her own, which could, in principle, fulfil her hope. What any given individual hopes for is dependent upon the belief system the (situated) individual has since all hope is hope for what is believed possible, or ‘taken to be possible’. However, what is believed possible varies from time to time, from place to place and from individual to individual also. That is one reason why an account of hope cannot begin by collecting and categorising objectives of hope. By that method one may acquire a stockpile of interesting items but it would reveal little about the structure or function of hope in human affairs. There is a difference between what is subjectively believed possible and what is (objectively) possible logically, conceptually, metaphysically, nomologically and according to situated human agency;17 the last I will call real possibility. Hence there is scope for disagreement over the soundness of objectives of hope from agent and observer perspectives. What constitutes an appropriate objective of hope with regard to what is and what is not possible in all these different ways is something that is not usually self-evident. This is another way in which a hoper is in a precarious position with respect to the pursuit of her objectives. It might be objected that someone could then hope to jump over the moon, as a cow is reputed to do in a children’s nursery rhyme, since some individuals believe (or purport to believe), all manner of things, or at least claim to have idiosyncratic ‘takings-for-granted’ at their disposal.18 The so-called ‘beliefs’ contained in a hope to jump over the moon could only be an attenuated form of belief from a pre-theoretical understanding of

An Analysis of Everyday Hope 21

belief. We (rational adults) may imagine such an attenuated belief in a child’s hope to jump over the moon, which seems only a little larger than a football, suspended, as it appears, just at the tip of a tree across the field. This may be an endearing attenuated belief. The child does not realise that what is hoped is, in fact, impossible. In comparison, the lunatic’s hope to jump over the moon need neither concern nor detain us. At this point, the relationship between hoping and imagining should be clarified. Being able to imagine is one of the necessary conditions for being able to hope. However, imagining x does not imply hoping that x, even though hoping implies imagining. The fact that all manner of entities and eventualities can be imagined does not thereby indicate that all of these imaginings are candidates as objectives of hope. Here we are returned to thoughts akin to those expressed in one of Wittgenstein’s questions about the relation between imagination and consciousness. Wittgenstein asks, Could one imagine a stone’s having consciousness? And if anyone can do so – why should that not merely prove that such image-mongery is of no interest to us?19 So, even if it is the case that someone could imagine a certain state of affairs, this of itself would not provide good reason for taking the imagining seriously, nor for regarding it also as a hope, especially as a sound hope.20 Before leaving this point, let us first look briefly at a more serious counterclaim that might be given in the following form. If we look back in history, then objectives which could only be imagined at one time subsequently became possible, therefore objectives of hope, and eventually became real, as did the power of (assisted) flight for human beings. A question could be asked as to whether the power of flight became real because it was hoped for, or, did the power of flight become an appropriate objective of hope once a glimmer of its possibility arose in material terms? The question of the relationship between hope and reality is neither as simple nor precise as might be imagined from thinking of hope in a popular psychological manner. 21 Rather, addressing this question requires thinking about the relationships between different kinds of possibility ranging from logical and conceptual possibility to real possibility (i.e. according to human endeavour).22 1.3.3

Putting despair in its place

One may despair of many things for which one may equally hope, for example, I may hope you like my new hat, or I may despair of you not

22 A Philosophical Analysis of Hope

liking my new hat. Similarly, a mother may hope her child will relish what is good for him, like spinach, but she may come to despair of him acquiring an appetite for green vegetables.23 In this sense, despair is plentiful in ordinary everyday experience and one can despair of many states of affairs. Or, one can despair of another person. Despairing of an object can be an ordinary matter, or it can pertain to the extraordinary, that is, despairing of an object can be non-serious or serious. 24 Here a parallel is drawn with ordinary and extraordinary hope. I do not think the class of ordinary despair is as extensive or varied as that of ordinary hope, but when it comes to despairing of an object then despair does have a less than serious application. Despairing of an object can be done for someone else, in a similar way that one can hope for an objective for someone else. When my friend tells me she has miscarried in her pregnancy (again), for example, I may despair of her giving birth (for her). Under these circumstances, my friend may be in despair while I despair of her attaining that for which she had previously hoped. Although my friend is the one who will carry a pregnancy to term (if she does), so that she has this capacity, or not, when I despair of her doing so, I am despairing of her (prior) objective of hope being fulfilled, rather than despairing of my friend herself. Recall that when I placed my hope in my daughter, with regard to her driving test, then I hoped that she would succeed, but my hope that she would do so was placed in her. The difference between these two scenarios rests on the ascription of responsibility for x and y being the case. A woman is not responsible for an incapacity to carry a pregnancy to term, ceteris paribus, whereas an individual is responsible for preparing themselves for whatever test they are taking, voluntarily. The above example could be said to be a serious case of despairing of x, especially for the person who hopes to have a child, but the situation is not necessarily immediately life-threatening for the person involved, nor does it impinge on an individual’s capacity for agency in general. In the situation where I despair of my friend giving up smoking, for example, then there is an objective about which I give up hope, but it is my friend of whom I despair. In this case, she bears some responsibility for having become a smoker, and for what she could do in order to affect her present condition or status. An individual may be in despair of her own condition, or that of another. Common causes of being in such despair in contemporary Western society are ill-health and unemployment. One may also be in despair about social/world conditions more generally. Whether it be

An Analysis of Everyday Hope 23

through direct acquaintance, or indirect knowledge, of some event(s) or state(s) of affairs, there are sufficient ills of various types so as to call being-in-despair a reasonable response. Even so, despair is not compelled by circumstances, as evidenced by the possibility of its refusal in the face of catastrophe. In serious matters, one individual cannot be in despair for another, in the sense of Jim being in despair instead of Joe, though Jim can both be in despair about Joe’s condition and he can despair of Joe’s own response (or lack thereof) to it. Despair can be communicated amongst people and in this respect we speak of people infecting each other with despair. The spread of hope, on the other hand, is typically considered a boon for all concerned (though not without exception), while the spread of despair is generally regarded as a virus or an epidemic. When one is in despair, the despair is ineliminably one’s own, even though despairing is also about someone or something else. One cannot be in despair without despairing of someone or something (however indistinct the something may be), but one can despair of other persons or states of affairs, without being in despair of oneself, even in serious cases. Hope and despair are not states or conditions which simply occur. Human beings do not just happen to hope or despair in like manner to breathing or digesting food. Neither hope nor despair can be considered an involuntary condition of a human body, in this sense. Although hope or despair are common responses to various kinds of suffering, whether man-made or natural disasters, hope and despair themselves are not suffered by human beings but constitute directed responses to the social and natural worlds. Adopting hope or despair is something that human beings do as a response to their perception of their own situation, or to their perception of circumstances, in general, and its attendant conditions. This perception is a thick perception which includes beliefs about, and attitudes towards, that which is perceived in a gestalt kind of way. One may be in despair at the news, for example, that the peace accords have been violated yet again. And in a sense, one can despair of everything, through this one thing, because ‘how can there be “normal” life in the midst of violence, death and destruction?’ one may ask oneself. In cases where one despairs of a particular object, as opposed to the general situation, there is inevitably a background/ foreground context to one’s perception, with the perception being evaluative and value-laden. Someone’s being in despair is a response which is adopted only with respect to that which is valued. If to despair of a person is to lose hope in that person, then hope and despair cannot coexist with respect to that person. Similarly, if to

24 A Philosophical Analysis of Hope

despair of a state of affairs coming about or changing is to lose hope that it will happen or change, then hope and despair cannot coexist with respect to that state of affairs/object(ive). From the examples of contexts of hope and objectives of hope discussed thus far the following points can be made: (1) hope primarily concerns a future conceived of (subjectively) as good as, or better than, the present, (2) uncertainty is a component of hope, (3) hope is anticipatory and (4) hope may be agent-orchestrated, mutual-orchestrated, other-orchestrated or world-orchestrated. A number of similar points can be made with respect to despair though not all the points are strictly parallel. Further reasons for a lack of strict parallelism will be explored below and in Chapter 2. Of despair it can be seen that: (1) despair primarily concerns a present feeling that one’s future will not improve, or will be worse, (2) despair is closely allied with certainty, (3) despair is expectant and (4) one may despair of x without being in despair about x, but not vice versa. 1.3.4

Determinate and indeterminate hopes

An objective of ordinary hope may be quite specific, for example, whether I hope to beat my personal best time when I swim tomorrow, or whether I hope my friend will arrive on time, there can be no doubt as to what is the objective of my hope, nor precisely what will fulfil it. Such hopes as these are highly determinate hopes. But hopes may, and often do, have a less determinate character, like my hope to write another book. Though the idea of the book is determinate, my idea of what the book will contain and how it will turn out is much less so. Determinate hopes with longer term objectives can be seen to modify a pattern which emerges in an individual’s conduct. In the example of the girl hoping to become a surgeon (Section 1.3.2), this hope will regulate and coordinate diverse actions over a considerable period of time as the fulfilment of the hope is approximated. That is, her conduct will be modified by her hope to become a surgeon. We may say that she moves hopefully towards her objective (of hope) by allowing it to coordinate subsidiary hopes and intentions which contribute to its fulfilment. Hopes range from determinate to indeterminate in character, such as the hope to be a good parent or a hope for good health. Once undertaken, parenting lasts a lifetime, in two senses. First, once having borne a child, a woman is always a mother, whatever course of events follows. Second (active), parenting can last a lifetime – but this notion includes the idea that one ought to know (or learn) when and where to set aside

An Analysis of Everyday Hope 25

some (previous) responsibilities, and (possibly) assume alternative or new responsibilities at an appropriate juncture, as one’s children develop and mature. Many a young parent appreciates grandparents babysitting, for example, but there are far fewer young adults who appreciate being babysat themselves. The first point is ontological, the second point is moral. However, because active parenting is a long, complicated process, one cannot pick a certain point in time and claim, ‘right, that’s it – I’m a good parent now and nothing can change that’, ceteris paribus. An individual may have been a good parent of a particular child, up to age ten, for example, but what about the next ten years (assuming both survive)? If the parent does not develop with the child, but continues ‘to parent’ as-if the child were always ten years old, then it will not be true to say that nothing can change the so-called ‘fact’ that that individual is a good parent. If the assessment is retrospective only, there remains the possibility that, nevertheless, it may come to be seen as having been mistaken, in the future. In the case of hoping to be a good parent, the hope orchestrates an expansive web of diverse actions and events over a prolonged period of time. It should be noted that although provisional and partial summations may be given in respect of judging good parenting, there is no set terminal point at which a list of desirable attributions, though indeterminate at the outset, would become determinate such that it would become known for certain just in what good parenting consists. This holds for particular cases and in general. A list of prohibitions of practices which are not conducive to good parenting can be generated with relative ease (though even here it may be incomplete and contain a number of qualifications), but in respect of prescribing what will work, one can only draw a much smaller number of the most general conclusions. There is an analogue of this difficulty in trying to specify what perfection consists in. There are some obvious candidates for exclusion from a perfect world, but what would a detailed positive specification consist in? It is the question of the possibility of a determinate account itself that is brought into question. 25 One may hope to be a good parent, especially in the beginning, but further along the path of parenting one may equally despair of it. Similarly, one may hope to maintain, or regain one’s health, or one may despair of it. One point to be noted here is that while these objectives of hope are also candidates as objects of despair, that is, despair may be directed towards these objects, nevertheless, when one despairs of regaining one’s health, for example, one directs oneself towards health

26 A Philosophical Analysis of Hope

in such a way as to simultaneously distance oneself from it. Although the object of one’s despair is present or expected in the future, from a phenomenological perspective, one separates oneself from the object by despairing of it. In agent-orchestrated hope, the possibility of fulfilling indeterminate hopes is even more uncertain than in cases where hopes are determinate. This is partly due to the fact that indeterminate hope has a more tenuous relation to conditions in the present. Also, the means appropriate to its future fulfilment, and the criteria of fulfilment will be more obscure to the one who hopes for indeterminate objectives. Many and varied are the pitfalls along the path to good parenting, for example, despite one’s best subsidiary hopes and intentions along the way. Both parenting and maintaining or regaining one’s health may be thought to be precarious processes. If one thinks of parenting and staying healthy, or regaining one’s health, as precarious processes, then they become something within which hope has a place, even if one is fortunate at present. However, hopes for particular objectives always have a point of origin in response to an agent’s circumstances. With regard to health, one hopes about it when one fears for it. Health is very much ‘taken-for-granted’ unless and until there is an awareness of one’s vulnerability due to age, lifestyle or some other precipitating cause. If one enjoys good health at present, one typically expects it to continue in the short to medium term. But one may hope for it to continue in the longer term. Such hope could and would modify conduct and practices. In the case of health and ageing, for example, it may be most appropriate to speak of approximating an objective of hope rather than fulfilling it. 26

1.4

Objectives and objects

I have written consistently of the objectives of hope and objects of despair, and I will conclude this chapter by making explicit my reasons for doing so. What is going on when a hoper hopes is that she hopes to stand in a certain relation to a state of affairs in the world, be it social or natural, in the future. 27 This hoping minimally involves an anticipation of a goal, and significant hopes typically involve a striving towards a goal, that is, one typically achieves one’s goals (objectives) through such striving. In despair there is no similar notion of striving. There is, though, a relationship between despair and non-striving. In this respect it may be said that hope and despair are the mirror images of each other; hope is to striving what despair is to non-striving.

An Analysis of Everyday Hope 27

1.4.1

Objectives of hope

Using the term ‘objective’ of hope, as opposed to ‘object’ of hope, is a practice I have adopted from J. J. Godfrey who does this in A Philosophy of Human Hope. 28 I have already distinguished between determinate and indeterminate hope, and it is the extensive class of possible determinate hopes which may obscure one form of the relational quality of hope from view. Hence, using ‘objective’ instead of ‘object’ serves as a reminder that in hoping the hoper tends to look beyond what is expressed, for example, by ‘I hope to have a new hat for the parade’. Also, although philosophers are accustomed to think of mental objects as well as physical objects, not infrequently, the use of the term ‘objects’ brings to mind first and foremost images of mediumsized physical objects in conjunction with thoughts about perception (rather than anticipation or the pursuit of goals). These ideas are already a step away from that which is most characteristic of hope. Whether one hopes to become a surgeon or to make someone a good wife, there is a transformed future state of affairs bearing a relation to oneself in that possible future where one may attain one’s objective. In other-orchestrated and world-orchestrated hope, the objective remains a future state of affairs bearing a certain relation to oneself, but the means of fulfilling the objective is not in the agent’s own hands. Provisionally it can be said that an objective of hope is a future condition anticipated or striven for on one’s own behalf or on behalf of another. A hoper hopes for actions and occurrences which will engender a future different from the present.29 It may be asked whether one cannot reasonably hope that a present state of affairs should continue, as opposed to hoping for a different future. The correct response to this query is to point out that while one could hope for a present state of affairs to continue, one would not do so unless there was an awareness of an element of uncertainty sufficient to raise a doubt about the continuance of a given state of affairs. Some human projects, like retaining one’s health, are intrinsically uncertain, in principle, though in the usual course of events one is not hoping continually for one’s health, just as one is not hoping continually to reach one’s next birthday, ceteris paribus. However, hope is always available with regard to health and comes to the forefront of attention when one’s healthiness is noticeably questioned. Once a particular objective of hope is fulfilled, the hope is terminated in its fulfilment. One may hope to gain a professional post, but once in the post in question, one no longer hopes for it, though one may hope

28 A Philosophical Analysis of Hope

to retain one’s position. There is a difference between getting and retaining, and the balance between the two will depend on the nature of the hoped for objective. If, and only if, one fears losing that which has been attained, could one hope for the maintenance of that state of affairs. It should be noted however, in contradistinction, that one may desire a state of affairs to occur, and further, that the desire for a given state of affairs may continue once the desire is satisfied by the establishment of that state of affairs. This applies to things as diverse as chocolate bars and sailing. One continues to desire the chocolate even as one consumes it. The desire does not disappear when the chocolate bar is in hand, nor at the first bite. Similarly, one desires to sail, but the desire does not depart as the yacht leaves the shore. One may continue to enjoy the desire to sail throughout the activity of sailing. 1.4.2

Objects of despair

Like hope, despair has to have a conceptually appropriate complement. One cannot hope persons or animals, nor can one despair persons or animals, though one can hope in them (persons), or hope for them, and despair of them, or despair about them. One cannot despair of numbers, nor of concepts, though one may despair of understanding certain concepts. Whatever is despaired of is despaired of under a certain description. Not only is it the case that what one despairs of will fall under some description, but one’s perception of, and beliefs about, the object under that description will be held to be accurate or true by the despairer. 30 One’s despair is directed towards an object and that object may be perceived as present or as in an inevitable future. It is due to one’s perception of, and beliefs about, a given object that one may respond by despairing of it. Remember the OED definition, that to despair is to lose or give up hope, or to be without hope. Let us first take the case of despairing of someone. To despair of someone is essentially to lose hope in them in some respect. A parent, for example, may despair of a child mending his ways if the child continues to bully classmates. Also, a teacher may despair of students handing in assignments on time. What these examples have in common is an evaluation, by the one who despairs, of another’s past or present performance in terms of character traits, conduct or actions, and an assessment regarding a prediction concerning continuity of disposition or future conduct. The despair arises due to a combined evaluation of past and present times in conjunction with a resulting conviction that the person’s future possibilities are foreclosed in some way. Despair can be said to be oriented to the future to the extent that

An Analysis of Everyday Hope 29

the one despaired of is perceived as lacking in the possibility of that which is desired by the one who despairs. Although being in despair is not compelled by circumstances (past, present or future), since it can be resisted and refused by adopting or sustaining hope, it may be experienced as that which overwhelms one on occasion. Being in despair may be thought of as that which is adopted by default when hope is deemed unavailable by the despairer, though the default option is neither necessary, nor to be thought of mechanistically. When in despair, one is focused on one’s present feelings though the object which has engendered one’s despair may be in the past, the present or in the future, for example, one may be in despair at the death of a loved one six months past, at the outbreak of war, or at the prospect of hostilities perceived as unavoidable. An objective, by its very nature, implies that which is aimed at but which is not yet attained. In cases where we may say ‘the object of the exercise is to . . .’, here, ‘object’ may equally well be replaced by ‘objective’, and ‘object’ can be understood as a short-hand way of expressing this. In despair, on the other hand, its object appears as something that is viewed with expectation, that is, with certainty, even if the object engendering one’s despair still lies in the future. A significant feature of despair is its intrinsic tendency to interpret present or envisaged future circumstances as fixed and immutable. Contrary to the anticipatoriness, striving and openness characteristic of hope, there is an expectoriness, a stasis or fixity, and closedness characteristic of despair. 31

1.5

Summary

In this preliminary examination of hope and despair I have focused on the phenomena as they occur in the everyday experience of ordinary hoping and despairing. I have provided reasons for thinking that hoping is a distinctively human phenomenon. I have also argued that hoping is an activity of human beings, something they do, rather than its being something that happens to them. Throughout, hope has been compared and contrasted with despair to clarify the characteristics of each phenomenon. Each is necessary for understanding the other. Trying to understand either without any reference to the other would be like trying to understand what ‘left’ means without any reference to ‘right’. There would be no place to situate ‘left’ without an idea of ‘right’. With regard to hope I have drawn attention to the differences in the locus of effective agency concomitant upon the different objectives that may be hoped. I have identified agent-orchestrated, mutual-orchestrated,

30 A Philosophical Analysis of Hope

other-orchestrated and world-orchestrated hopes in this respect. I have argued that hope is primarily an agent phenomenon and that in hope one is motivated to action, ceteris paribus. Where action is not possible on one’s own behalf, the fulfilment of one’s hope continues to be anticipated. It should be noted that in experience the placing of one’s hope in a locus of effective agency is always accompanied by an objective of hope. Also, I have claimed that hope primarily concerns a future conceived of as good, that uncertainty is a component of hope, and that (most importantly) hope should be associated with anticipation and dissociated from expectation. It has been important to begin an investigation of hope and despair with familiar everyday examples and situations because it is through the experience and understanding of the phenomena in these contexts that hope and despair are grasped and comprehended to some extent in cases that are less common, or in cases that may be considered marginal in some respect. Focusing on everyday examples of ordinary hope means, in effect, focusing on cases where having hope and hoping are noticeably present to one’s self-conscious awareness. This is true also of despair. The effects or consequences of hoping are largely to be found in the ways in which hope modifies thinking and acting.

2 Phenomena in the Neighbourhood of Hope

In the preceding chapter, I have used examples of ordinary everyday hope and despair to illustrate both necessary and characteristic aspects of each of them. Uncertainty is a central feature of hope whereas perceiving matters as certain is a central feature of despair. In this chapter, I will use the axis of uncertainty to illuminate features of phenomena in the neighbourhood of hope; phenomena related to hope in various ways. Firstly, I will consider some of the ways in which hope has been viewed; by Benedict de Spinoza, René Descartes and David Hume. The similarities in their respective views of hope concern uncertainty, primarily. The differences in their respective views of hope concern the way hope is related to other phenomena. I shall comment critically upon these accounts of hope and its purported relation to other phenomena like fear, confidence and despair presented in them. Secondly, many psychologists and some contemporary philosophers, including R. M. Gordon and O. H. Green, view hope as an emotion. I will give reasons for thinking that hope is not best thought of as an emotion in general terms. Also, in particular, I will address the motivational implications of Gordon’s view of hope. Hope acts as a counter to various moods and emotions like anxiety, hopelessness, fear and despair. And hope is also related to confidence and trust. Hope’s relation to negative and positive phenomena is examined while its difference is maintained. Memory and imagination are necessary conditions for the possibility of hope. In turn, memory, imagination and hope constitute a nexus of conditions of possibility in thinking and acting. In considering the role of memory and imagination in relation to hope, I will further develop the temporal characteristics and complexity of hope. Memory and imagination are considered to be specific faculties, whereas hope is not. However, given the difficulty of ascribing hope to an existing category 31

32 A Philosophical Analysis of Hope

like those faculties, or the emotions, attitudes, desires, thought, will and so on, I propose that hope be viewed as a primitive phenomenon in a class of its own. Situating hope in one category or another seems to obscure some aspect(s) of its multifaceted nature from view, as I aim to show in this chapter. The respective conceptual links between hope and uncertainty and despair and certainty is one contributory factor in making hope or despair mutually exclusive alternatives. 1 It will be one task of this chapter to chart the uncertainty in phenomena related to hope, and to clarify the role of certainty in despair, noting what is included in that conception. I have already begun to examine the difference that hoping or despairing makes to a person’s orientation in thinking and acting. Hoping and despairing have effects not only on what is done (or omitted), but also on how any doing is conducted. I now continue that investigation regarding phenomena in the neighbourhood of hope.

2.1

Passions and emotions

The phenomenon of hope has been variously cast as a virtue and as a passion, or emotion, in its chequered history in the Western tradition of thought. Hope appears as a virtue in the ethical writing of St Augustine and in a treatise on the theological virtues by Thomas Aquinas. 2 Aquinas also speaks of despair, as a vice, and in responding to four questions on despair, viz.: (1) Whether despair is a sin? (2) Whether it can be without unbelief? (3) Whether it is the greatest of sins? (4) Whether it arises from sloth? – it is claimed that despair is a sin.3 Discussions of hope, particularly, have continued in a theological framework and in the philosophy of religion though these discussions have made little impact on the development of mainstream philosophical theorising whether in areas of metaphysics, epistemology or ethics. 4 Subsequently, hope appears as a passion, or emotion, in the ethical writings of Spinoza, Descartes and Hume.5 Similar to hope, despair features in accounts of the passions, or emotions, given by these respective philosophers. Although Descartes and Hume are often represented as arch-proponents of the Rationalist versus Empiricist traditions of early modern philosophy respectively, their treatment of hope and despair is markedly similar in significant respects. The influence of Hume upon subsequent philosophical and psychological analyses of hope is noted and subjected to critique by J. P. Day, 6 a critique I shall discuss below. This influence is shown partly in the fact that it is seldom questioned whether hope is appropriately categorised as an emotion. In developing

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my account of hope, I will bring to light characteristics of hope which it does not share with emotions, as they are typically found in experience. 2.1.1

Three views of passions and uncertainty

Firstly, there is a point to be made about terminology in the text. In the translation of Spinoza that I will quote from, Part Three of The Ethics is entitled ‘On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions’, whereas in another translation by Edwin Curley, Part Three is entitled ‘On the Origin and Nature of the Affects’.7 I will use emotion as an umbrella term covering affects since in contemporary theories of emotion (philosophical and psychological) affects are often considered to be part of an emotion (the sensation or feeling part) rather than its being coextensive with emotion in toto.8 Secondly, I wish to note that I am not concerned with the respective mind-body metaphysics of passions and emotions (i.e. whether a ‘movement of the spirits’ is coextensive with the flow of ‘rarefied blood’ to the brain and so on), 9 as with their relations to each other and to uncertainty. 2.1.1.1

Spinoza on hope and related phenomena

In the Definitions, in Bk. II, of The Ethics, Spinoza states, III. By emotion I mean the modifications of the body, whereby the active power of the said body is increased or diminished, aided or constrained, and also by ideas of such modifications. N.B. If we can be the adequate cause of any of these modifications, then I call the emotion an activity, otherwise I call it a passion, or state wherein the mind is passive.10 In giving definitions of the emotions, the first to be named by Spinoza is desire. Desire also appears on Descartes’ list of six primitive passions from which all other passions are said to follow in some admixture. Descartes does not consider hope itself to be a primitive passion. On Hume’s list of direct passions, desire and hope are both included. Spinoza pairs hope and fear together, as does Hume, while Descartes pairs hope with anxiety. However, Spinoza and Descartes pair confidence and despair while Hume leaves aside direct passions aligned with certainty. Spinoza writes as follows, XII. Hope is an inconstant pleasure, arising from the idea of something past or future, whereof we to a certain extent doubt the issue.

34 A Philosophical Analysis of Hope

XIII. Fear is an inconstant pain arising from the idea of something past or future, whereof we to a certain extent doubt the issue. Explanation. – From these definitions it follows, that there is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope. For he, who depends on hope and doubts concerning the issue of anything, is assumed to conceive something, which excludes the existence of the said thing in the future; therefore he, to this extent, feels pain (cf.III.xix.); consequently, while dependent on hope, he fears for the issue. Contrariwise, he, who fears, in other words doubts, concerning the issue of something which he hates, also conceives something which excludes the existence of the thing in question; to this extent he feels pleasure, and consequently to this extent he hopes that it will turn out as he desires (III.xx.).11 On this account, desire and doubt are linked positively and negatively, yielding the pleasure of hope or the pain of fear, respectively. This coupling, between desire and aversion, pleasure and pain, and also good and evil, occurs throughout various works on philosophical psychology, ethics and politics in the philosophical tradition. Desire, pleasure and good are linked positively while aversion, pain and evil are linked negatively. Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan12 is a good example of a single work combining all three levels of analyses, so linked. In Chapter 1, I affirmed that desire is partially constitutive of hope, and below I argue that an element of pleasure in hope is a contributory factor in its being taken (incorrectly) for an emotion. However, though desire may have been thought a passion by some (above), it is clearly not an emotion. 13 While I would agree that an event or state of affairs in the past may spur a new hope for the future, I take the view, as indicated in Chapter 1, that one cannot hope for an objective in the past except in so far as the relevant past circumstance remains unknown. Hence, waiting for news of accident victims I may hope a loved one emerges relatively unscathed or that casualties will be low all around. Once confirmed news arrives, my hope is fulfilled or dashed. One may also hold to hope where it is expected that outcomes may (or even will) never be known – there may be neither survivors nor indicators of how people died, and it may be hoped, for example, that the death of those involved was quick and painless. In these cases, hope expresses a relation of care and concern rather than its being a stimulus to action. Also, it is not to be taken for granted that there is no hope unmingled with fear and vice versa, though

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it is correct to say that she who has reason to hope also has reason to fear. Of confidence and despair, Spinoza writes, XIV. Confidence is pleasure arising from the idea of something past or future, wherefrom all cause of doubt has been removed. XV. Despair is pain arising from the idea of something past or future, wherefrom all cause of doubt has been removed.14 In his explanation of the role of certainty, Spinoza notes that ‘For although we can never be absolutely certain of the issue of any particular event (II. xxxi. Coroll.), it may nevertheless happen that we feel no doubt concerning it. For we have shown, that to feel no doubt concerning a thing is not the same as to be quite certain of it (II. xlix. note)’.15 There are a number of circumstances in which certainty renders confidence (or trust) inappropriate. One does not, for example, have confidence in arithmetical laws, nor trust in the law of gravity. In the sphere of human relations, however, one can admit the possibility of doubt, in principle, without giving credit to it in practice. 16 2.1.1.2

Cartesian hope and other passions

René Descartes is not renown or remembered for his writings on biology or morality. It is his dual ontology between res cogitans (mind) and res extensa (matter), and the epistemology this distinction generates, for which Descartes is famous. However, on a Cartesian account a human being is a mysterious, though ineliminable, marriage between two kinds of substance.17 In The Passions of the Soul he aims to give a comprehensive account of the soul, the spirits and the body. In one sense, Descartes’ moral thinking has a decidedly bodily basis. The soul is equated with thought in its broadest sense, while the spirits are understood in a physicalist sense to be comprised of the warmed, rarefied blood that enters the brain from the heart. Thoughts are considered to be actions of the soul consisting in volitions and voluntary imaginings. Thus, as such, thoughts are active. The activity of volitions is contrasted with the passivity of perception, and Descartes rehearses brief accounts of perception based on the external world, the body and on the soul itself. He writes, ‘The perceptions we refer only to the soul are those whose effects we feel as being in the soul itself, and for which we do not normally know any proximate cause to which we can refer them. Such are the feelings of joy, anger and the like.’18 On Descartes’ account, the passions are so named because they are passive, that is, the passions are

36 A Philosophical Analysis of Hope

states that occur in, or happen to, human beings independently of any act of will. From as early as paragraphs twenty-seven and twenty-eight, in Part One of The Passions of the Soul, Descartes uses the terms ‘passions’ and ‘emotions’ interchangeably. 19 It is in Part Two of this work that Descartes identifies six primitive passions from which he claims all others arise in some combination: wonder, love, hatred, desire, joy and sadness. 20 Further, it is with respect to desire that Descartes introduces consideration of time in order to organise and enumerate his account of the passions. Thus, although desire may lead us to look to the present or the past, for Descartes it is the passion par excellence which leads us to look to the future. 21 Immediately following his outline of desire, Descartes writes of hope and other phenomena (anxiety, confidence, despair, and he includes jealousy), We are prompted to desire the acquisition of a good or the avoidance of an evil simply if we think it possible to acquire the good or avoid the evil. But when we go beyond this and consider whether there is much or little prospect of our getting what we desire, then whatever points to the former excites hope in us, and whatever points to the latter excites anxiety [ . . . ] When hope is extreme, it changes its nature and is called ‘confidence’ or ‘assurance’ just as, on the other hand, extreme anxiety becomes despair. 22 As was noted in Chapter 1, hope admits of degrees, either in respect of its desiderative aspect, or in respect of its estimative aspect. However, hope is not entirely reducible to desire and a belief about probability. These aspects are a necessary part of hope but they are not exhaustive of the constitution of hope.23 When Descartes speaks of hope changing to confidence he fails to appreciate the tension in what he himself writes. Quoting from the above, he states, ‘When hope is extreme, it changes its nature and is called “confidence” or “assurance”.’ 24 It is perhaps the idea of a change that obscures the difficulty. The changing from hope into confidence is not like the change from a grape into a prune or wine, it is more like the change from a grape into olive oil – and the one cannot be extracted from the other. Thus it is with hope and confidence, respectively. Descartes writes of ‘Specific Passions’ in Part Three of The Passions of the Soul, and in this section he pairs hope and anxiety, and confidence and despair. I will use Descartes’ brief summaries as a basis from which to make some general remarks about the relationship between certainty

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and desire with respect to these passions, dealing with certainty first. On hope and anxiety, he writes, Hope is a disposition of the soul to be convinced that what it desires will come about. It is caused by a particular movement of the spirits, consisting of the movement of joy mixed with that of desire. And anxiety is another disposition of the soul, which convinces it that its desires will not be fulfilled. It should be noted that these two passions, although opposed, may nevertheless occur together, namely when we think of reasons for regarding the fulfilment of the desire as easy, and at the same time we think of other reasons which make it seem difficult. 25 I have emphasised this reference to conviction because it seems there is a marked difference between being convinced that what one desires will come about, and perceiving that what one desires is, in fact, possible. One’s rough subjective estimate of probability covers everything ranging from the highly probable to the not impossible.26 Conviction smacks of thinking of x as certain. If I am convinced, for example, that I can leap over the ditch, then I will make the jump expecting to land on the other side. On the contrary, desiring to avoid the muddy water below, but not certain of my prowess at jumping, I leap in hope, without any prior conviction of success. Alternatively, if what I am convinced of does not depend on myself per se, for example, if I am convinced that the laws of history will deliver a communist society to my door, then I may safely turn my attention to other matters and patiently await its arrival. If I await the dawn of communism in hope (with anticipatory desire), then I will necessarily be oriented towards it in an active manner. However, conviction (and the expectation it is based upon) may have little motivating force. If the nature of my conviction can be expressed as ‘I am convinced I can do x, if I exert myself’, and I desire to do x, then I will be motivated to x (with an expectation of success). On the other hand, if I am convinced that ‘I am the chosen one’, then I can simply wait to be crowned the May queen (irrespective of whether I desire it). Conviction, it appears, is another way of expressing certainty, and even if one cannot be absolutely certain, as Spinoza argues, one can feel certain of some matter and act accordingly. This implication of certainty in conviction contradicts the uncertainty intrinsic to hope and thus is best avoided in the interests of avoiding confusion.

38 A Philosophical Analysis of Hope

The second point I wish to make concerns desire in relation to confidence and despair. Descartes writes of confidence and despair, Neither of these passions ever accompanies desire without leaving some room for the other. For when hope is so strong that it entirely excludes anxiety, its nature changes and it is called ‘confidence’ or ‘assurance’. And when we are assured that what we desire will come about, then although we still want it to come about we are no longer agitated by the passion of desire, which made us await the outcome with concern. All the same, when anxiety is so extreme that it leaves no room for hope, it changes into despair; and this despair, representing the thing desired as impossible, entirely extinguishes desire, which applies only to things that are possible. 27 What is interesting to note here is Descartes’ observation that despair extinguishes desire. Firstly, to recap, it has been seen that one may desire something without hoping for it. There are many occasions when people think that it would be in their best interests if their desires were not satisfied, the temptations of cigarettes and alcohol being among the more obvious. In order to despair, one must first have hoped (with its constitutive desire aspect), and then come to believe that one’s hope will not be fulfilled. Depending on the type and degree of significance of one’s hope and one’s temperament, one may despair of a hope’s fulfilment and subsequently adopt a different hope without undue distress. Or, one may be plunged into despair upon despairing of the fulfilment of one’s hope. The very kernel of being in despair is that one has a strong hope that one comes to believe will not be fulfilled. Despair extinguishes hope but it does not extinguish desire. The relationship between hope, desire and despair is an asymmetrical one. Despairing at the death of a loved one, one may not hope to enjoy their company in life any more, but one may continue to desire it, keenly. Whether it is in the sphere of human relationships, the world of work, or some other sphere, it is only the persistence of desire after the point of despairing of one’s hope that binds one in despair, however that despair may show itself.

2.1.1.3

Hume on the direct passions

Hume employs the traditional axis of pain and pleasure, desire and aversion, 28 to found his ordering of the direct passions. He writes,

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The impressions, which arise from good and evil most naturally, and with the least preparation are the direct passions of desire and aversion, grief and joy, hope and fear, along with volition. 29 Hume enumerates six direct passions comparable to the six primitive passions of Descartes. The lists vary in their totality but desire and joy feature on both of them. Again, in a similar vein to Descartes, Hume states, None of the direct affections seem to merit our particular attention, except hope and fear, which we shall here endeavour to account for. ‘Tis evident that the very same event, which by its certainty wou’d produce grief or joy, gives always rise to fear or hope, when only probable and uncertain.30 Hume identifies uncertainty as central to hope and fear. From Hume’s subsequent remarks on probability, it is clear that it is one’s thoughts about an event which produce hope or fear, or joy or grief. So, when one thinks good certain, one feels joy, and when one thinks evil certain, one feels grief or sorrow. When good is thought uncertain then either one feels fear, or one hopes it will occur. Whether fear or hope prevails depends on the balance of probability. Hume writes of two sources of probability, either of which may engender fear or hope, Probability is of two kinds, either when the object is really in itself uncertain, and to be determin’d by chance; or when, tho’ the object be already certain, yet ‘tis uncertain to our judgement, which finds a number of proofs on each side of the question. Both these kinds of probabilities cause fear and hope; which can only proceed from that property, in which they agree, viz. the uncertainty and fluctuation they bestow on the imagination by that contrariety of views, which is common to both.31 Whereas Descartes envisages hope changing its nature to become confidence, Hume construes opposite direct passions as mixing to produce other direct passions. In discussing the fluctuation of impressions of the mind with respect to the role of probability in hope and fear, Hume concludes that, ‘in other words, the grief and joy being intermingled with each other, by means of the contrary views of the imagination, produce by their union the passions of hope and fear’.32 Hume describes the union of joy and grief as like that of oil and vinegar when fear or

40 A Philosophical Analysis of Hope

hope is produced. An imperfect union is posited. In Hume’s view, the mixing of these passions is more like a tangle of differently coloured strands of wool than the mixing that occurs when spices are baked in a cake. While there is no strong reason, prima facie, to think that opposite emotions cannot mix at all,33 it seems implausible that a mixture of joy and grief actually produces either hope or fear. Day gives the example of a mother’s mixed emotions at her daughter’s wedding, where she feels glad at her daughter’s happiness and sad at losing her. The mixed joy and sorrow of the mother seems to amount neither to hope nor fear.34 The mixing of the joy and grief here would be like the different coloured strands of wool knitted together in some pattern, they would be mixed in the jumper in one sense, but though juxtaposed together, in another sense, the individual strands retain their separateness. Imagine a slightly different scenario. The daughter is happy to be marrying, but the mother is less than certain her daughter will be happy. Then it would be perfectly comprehensible to say that the mother hopes for her daughter’s happiness and grieves over her own loss of her child (one and the same event has different aspects). Note that we would not say that the mother hopes for her daughter’s happiness and fears for her own loss of her child, though it would be quite intelligible to express the uncertainty about the daughter’s happiness in terms of fearing for it. It is not the mixing of emotions per se which produces either hope or fear (from the union of joy and grief), but the element of uncertainty present in an aspect, or aspects, of the situation as a whole. It is a doubt as to the fulfilment of a desire which prompts either hope or fear as opposed to the changing or mixing of some prior passion or emotion. 35 2.1.2

The case against emotion

The classification of phenomena is an activity fraught with potential controversy. Putting labels on things tends to provoke counterexamples and alternative schemata. At this juncture I will not give a definitive classification of hope, but rather point to some reasons for thinking that hope is not an emotion. Let us return to a basic conception of hope as a desire plus a belief about probability combined with an anticipatoriness towards the objective of hope. This summarises the main characteristics of ordinary, everyday hope whether that hope be agent-orchestrated, mutual-orchestrated, other-orchestrated or worldorchestrated. This basic schema of hope fits the terminology I have adopted from Day, that is, hope has a desiderative aspect and an estimative aspect. On

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this view, hope simply lacks what it takes to be an emotion. Day makes the point succinctly in stating that ‘the estimation of probabilities is plainly not an emotion’.36 While it is true that an ingredient of x need not be an x itself, the nature of the ingredient does stand in need of careful scrutiny. Take a hank of wool, for example, of itself it is not a jumper but it can be turned into one with the addition of needles, and application of the skill of knitting. Two hanks of wool, however, cannot be turned into a jumper, of themselves, just as two negative numbers cannot produce a positive number by addition alone. When added together, minus five plus minus seven equals only minus twelve. A negative and a positive number may yield a negative or positive number as the sum total depending on which is the greater, and by how much, to begin with. What this shows is that one of the ingredients must bear a sufficient degree of similarity to the thing one hopes to produce from the combination. So, while an estimation of probabilities is plainly not an emotion, is desire an emotion? Again, Day answers negatively, saying that desire itself is a dubious candidate as an emotion since ‘Desire normally lacks two of three constituents thought to be necessary to emotion; namely, some characteristic sensation and some characteristic physical symptom’. 37 There are a number of different theories of the emotions, philosophical and psychological, and in many of these desire has a part to play, but desire itself would not be recognised as an emotion. 38 There is no doubt that occurrent emotions typically have characteristic feelings captured by familiar descriptions. We speak of ‘bursting with joy’ and ‘cowering in fear’. There is no mystery here regarding the expansiveness of the one feeling and the contracting of the other feeling in relation to pleasure and pain, or desire and aversion. There are also typical behaviours characteristic of occurrent emotions, though a manifestation of a characteristic behaviour need not be thought of as a necessary feature of an emotion since the behaviour displayed in any given instance of occurrent emotion will be context dependent. Flight due to fear, for example, will not be an option if one has fallen into a deep well, even though it may contain an abundance of spiders. Emotions are cluster concepts having a set of criteria such that a ‘sufficient number’ of them must be present for the concept to be applicable, though no one of them is necessary or sufficient. Here again, there is no mystery in interpreting a smiling face as one suffused with joy, nor in inferring a feeling of fear when observing someone running from a person brandishing a gun, ceteris paribus. The

42 A Philosophical Analysis of Hope

fact that people develop an ability to hide their feelings does not necessarily indicate that in ordinary circumstances of unreserve, emotions cannot be open to public view in posture, gesture and action. 39 Ilham Dilman expresses this lesson to be learned from Wittgenstein in no uncertain terms when he states, No, the feelings, the intentions are in the behaviour, even though a person can, of course, keep these to himself. The behaviour one meets is human behaviour in the first place, and that means it carries the possibility of expressing as well as hiding emotion, intention and desire. One sees it and responds to it as such, as indeed we all do. That is how we take it in our response to him and that is how our concepts take it – those terms in which we describe the behaviour. It is because we see it as human behaviour in the first place that we may wonder what he is up to when his feelings and intentions are opaque to us.40 Though neither desire nor hope have characteristic sensations or physical symptoms like ‘feeling explosive’ or ‘turning red faced’ (typically thought a characteristic of anger),41 they each share a characteristic behaviour pattern as discussed by Day. He writes, ‘There is indeed a characteristic behaviour pattern characteristic of Desire, and hence of Hope. For if A wishes that P, then he will be disposed to try to bring it about that P.’42 This characteristic behaviour applies primarily to agentorchestrated hope.43 In other-orchestrated hope, the one who hopes is disposed to act in such a manner as to encourage the fulfilment of the hope by the other. In these cases the hoper may exercise influence rather than effect fulfilment. In world-orchestrated hope where the hoper relies upon a happy coordination of institutional facts of the social world, or upon the natural world, there is little or nothing that is within the scope of the hoper to accomplish in action per se. This does not detract from a characteristic of hoping in one of its central aspects, that is, anticipation. Though there is little for an agent to do in worldorchestrated hope, it may be expressed in a look, a gesture, perseverance or silence. 44 It is through its constitutive desire and its anticipatoriness that hope is motivating. Hope’s anticipatoriness is emphasised precisely where no direct action on the part of the hoper is possible in particular circumstances, that is, in cases of other-orchestrated hope and worldorchestrated hope. In these two cases, the hoper’s stance towards the world is that of desirous, active waiting.45 Hope is intangible but not

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necessarily invisible. Remember, in hope that which is hoped for is seized by the mind prior to its actualisation in the world. Though hope may resemble a passion, in the sense that a passion is a catch-all term for anything in the mind which is not a volition (in the sense of a willing), there is no good reason, thus far, to think of hope as an emotion.

2.2

Related negative phenomena

It has been seen that Spinoza, Descartes and Hume take uncertainty, and corollatively certainty, to be of importance in distinguishing between the passions. The traditional axes used by each of them issues in hope, joy and confidence viewed positively as passions generated by some good, and affording pleasure, while fear, anxiety, despair and grief are viewed negatively as passions generated by some evil, and affording pain. Taking uncertainty/certainty as the axis of distinction, one finds the stronger similarities between hope, fear and anxiety regarding uncertainty, and joy, confidence, despair and grief with regard to certainty. Although in hope an objective is desired anticipatorily, and in fear, especially in occurrent states thereof, there is an aversion towards an object of fear, the aversion in fear produces a metaphorical, if not always literal, withdrawing from the object. In this way, fear can be seen to display a mobility similar to that of hope, though its direction is opposite to that of hope. It is interesting to note that trust, which I include on the side of certainty, positively, does not feature in any of the foregoing discussions. In Section 2.3, I will discuss hope and trust, highlighting some similarities and differences between them. Firstly, I will discuss fear and anxiety, then I will offer a critique of Gordon’s treatment of hope. Thereafter, I will introduce hopelessness and distinguish between this mood and a related judgement. 2.2.1

Fearing, hoping and acting

Fear has traditionally been used as the example, par excellence, of a biologically useful emotion in terms of self-preservation. When confronted by an object of fear, be it an axe-wielding maniac, a hungry lion or a tumultuous river barring one’s path, fear is said to prepare the body for action. There is nothing unfamiliar or irrational about this picture. Even where fear is predominantly attitudinal as opposed to its being an occurrent emotion, for instance, in fearing the censure of one’s community, the notion of mobility is retained. An exception to this might

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be thought to be the fearing of old age, as old age is definitely approaching for each individual, ceteris paribus. If the contingent variables are abstracted away, is there a way to think of this fear as a mobile fear? I think so. Though there is no doubt that old age approaches, ceteris paribus, there remains a doubt as to how old age will be experienced or interpreted by the one whose old age it is (and this could be said of anyone, in principle), irrespective of any particular contingent events during that time. If old age were to be dreaded rather than feared, then one would be confident in judging that old age had been both predicated and predicted as being bad or painful, necessarily, that is, with certainty of belief. Otherwise the possibility of different outcomes remains and mobility is retained. Fearing and hoping may succeed each other, as when one hopes to be selected as team leader at t1, yet fears the same task at t2 and so on. Barring cases which may legitimately be deemed pathological, fearing x typically entails having an aversion to x. Having an aversion to x also typically implies distancing oneself from x. However, one exception to this is given by Aristotle. When Aristotle discusses courage, he speaks of it as a mean between cowardliness and rashness. A courageous man, therefore, will confront his aversion and place himself at an appropriate distance in relation to the object of his fear. Achieving an appropriate distance between oneself and the object of one’s fear, if one would act courageously, may entail a movement towards x itself. Also, Aristotle argues that an honourable man will legitimately fear appropriate objects or states like disgrace.46 That is, in Aristotelian terms, a courageous man confronts fear appropriately. Anxiety has been considered a diluted form of fear, as terror has been considered an intense form of fear. Like fear, anxiety may concern either the approach or the retreat of an object, depending on whether one desires the object’s presence or absence. One may be anxious at the approach of a Rottweiler hound and anxious at the retreat of a loved one. It should be noted that one remains averse to the approach or retreat of the object. The types of objects of fear and anxiety are coextensive. Each can be determinate or indeterminate, that is, one can fear or be anxious about spiders, for example, or the future. Connected to fearing the future is a fear of change which may bring a future clearly envisaged or dimly imagined. Fear and anxiety have characteristic sensations and physical symptoms, like a ‘sinking feeling in the gut’ and sweating palms, for fear, while anxiety is characterised by a feeling of ‘tremulous flutters’ in the torso, and shortness of breath as a physical symptom.

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Fear has its characteristic ‘flight’ behaviour. Typically, an anxious person, beset by a high degree of uncertainty, exhibits restlessness and consequently may be, or seem, indecisive. The exact status of such characteristics will vary depending on the type of emotion theory of which they are a part. Anxiety is often considered the existential emotion par excellence and, relatedly, it is not infrequently also considered a mood. 2.2.2

Fear and hope: a contemporary view

In The Structure of Emotions,47 Robert Gordon discusses hope and fear,48 bringing them together in what he takes to be an illuminating example of the behaviour characteristic of each. Gordon’s interest is, as he says, ‘in discovering structural features that will help us to explain the several resemblances between these emotions and belief’.49 He classifies hope and fear as epistemic emotions, and means by this that fears and hopes are the kind of phenomena which can be borne out, or not, subsequently, in experience. He speaks of fears being confirmed whereas a person’s regrets are not the kind of thing to be borne out.50 He opposes this class of epistemic emotions with what he terms factive emotions which are said to rest on a knowledge condition. Gordon says that someone ‘is amazed (etc.) that p only if he knows or believes that p’.51 This is in some respects similar to, but not identical with, the distinction I have drawn between uncertainty and certainty regarding hope, fear and anxiety on the one hand, and despair, confidence and trust on the other. Gordon takes it that an epistemic emotion requires a ‘not-knowing’ whereas a factive emotion requires a ‘knowing’.52 It is when Gordon discusses the topic of motivation and suggests a functional analogy between the epistemic emotions and belief that his analysis demonstrates its narrowness, especially with regard to the so-called characteristic behaviour of one who hopes. I will reproduce Gordon’s example for discussion. It concerns fear and hope and is first set out in Chapter 1. Gordon uses this example to support his claim that in addition to talk about beliefs and desires, emotion terms are necessary for understanding action. He writes, The two farmers. Suppose that two farmers each wish that it would rain, so that the crops will not be ruined by drought. Each believes as strongly as the other that his crops will not survive another week without water, and each cares as much as the other about the survival of his crops. Farmer A sets out pipes in preparation for irrigating the land in case it doesn’t rain. Farmer B, however, takes no such measures.53

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Gordon suggests that if beliefs and desires are the only factors to be considered in motivational difference, then this is an impossible situation. Farmer A behaves as if he believes it would not rain whereas farmer B behaves as if he believes it would, yet they share beliefs and concerns about their crops. Gordon adds that each farmer has information from a trusted source that there is a 50 per cent chance of rain (hence, rain is uncertain). Therefore their respective beliefs do not differ in the relevant respects. Gordon’s explanation for this divergence in behaviour is posed thus, ‘one can suppose that whereas farmer A is afraid it will not rain, farmer B is hopeful it will’.54 On this basis, Gordon claims that if beliefs and desires are to be used to explain or predict human behaviour then the emotions should also be introduced into the explanatory schema. However, while I agree that emotions and emotion terms can have an explanatory role in behaviour, this example does not seem to fit the bill as a persuasive example of that role. If A and B both believe that there is a 50 per cent chance it will rain, then both believe there is a 50 per cent risk it will not. In these circumstances, one may say that any difference in behaviour is ‘due to the fact that A is afraid it will not rain and B is hopeful it will’ but this ‘explanation’ does not do much work since one can as well ‘define’ a hopeful man as a man who, in the circumstances, acts like B, and a fearful man as a man who acts like A. A definition is neither explanatory nor predictive. Gordon’s example overlooks a motivational potency of hope that is freely ascribed to fear. Gordon claims that ‘[t]ypically, fearing motivates people to avoid vulnerability, so that even if what they fear proves true, they will have salvaged what is importantly at stake’. 55 The latter part of this claim is, of course, not necessarily true. Whether what is importantly at stake is salvaged depends on the success of one’s strategies for controlling vulnerability in the face of what one fears. And what is importantly at stake in this example is that the crops are saved, not whether it rains. Consider the following: let us say that fearing x motivates one to act so as to avoid x (and avoiding x means controlling the situation to prevent x’s occurrence). Now, let us return to farmer A who, fearing the ruin of his crops, sets out his irrigation pipes (his means of controlling the situation). Could it not be said, equally, that farmer A hopes to salvage his crops and that is why he sets out his pipes? Let me try an objection on Gordon’s behalf. He may say: (1) what the farmer does not know is whether it will rain, but (2) he knows that his irrigation equipment works and that he will use it, therefore, if knowledge cancels scope for hope, then we would not speak of hope here because he knows he will salvage his crops by this means.56 In response, I would say that what

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this shows is a difference in perspective rather than a difference in motivational potency per se vis-à-vis fear and hope. From a first person perspective, farmer A would not say that he hopes to salvage his crops through irrigation, unless he already has reason to think this strategy may not be successful. But from a third person perspective, saying either: (1) farmer A fears for his crops, and so does x or (2) farmer A hopes to salvage his crops, and so does x, where x is one and the same act, is equally explanatory. This is especially so if an observer lacks detailed knowledge about the situation. Farmer A may feel certain that his equipment works, but as an observer, I do not share his certainty. He may also feel certain that his health will hold up throughout the next week, but again, an observer may share no such feeling of certainty on the matter. Let us turn our attention to farmer B. In the example, farmer B hopes it will rain and does not appear to be motivated to take any action. Farmer B, let us presume, believes that he cannot make it rain, either through prayer or ritual dance. In this case, the farmer’s hope is what I have termed a world-orchestrated hope. However, in such a situation hoping for rain need not preclude contingency planning and preparations. In fact, if one is both rational and able-bodied, typically, it will not preclude such arrangements. If I am going to hike on the Yorkshire Moors, for example, and fear it may rain, then I will take waterproof clothing. Conversely, on the same hike, if I hope it will not rain, I will still take waterproof clothing, especially if my estimate of the probability of rain is 50 per cent. On any given occasion, rain can neither be precipitated nor prevented by the actions of a single individual, but this fact in itself is not the primary determinant of responses to rain or the lack of it. With respect to behaviour, whether the emotion is cast as fear or hope, there need be no difference of behaviour in such a case. The example gains what initial plausibility it has from the fact that Gordon utilises a case of world-orchestrated hope. However, when considering Gordon’s claim about fear and motivation, further implicit factors are revealed. In planning and executing any avoidance strategy, a certain ‘working knowledge’ must be presupposed of the ‘way of the world’ – for want of a better term. Why, according to Gordon, should this not also apply to hope? Hope is, after all, a member of his class of epistemic emotions and of these, fear is held to be motivational – so it may be expected that others in the class will be so, too. One might reasonably think that although the farmer hopes for rain, his ‘working knowledge’ of the ‘way of the world’ teaches him to plan contingently, irrespective of his hope, especially of a world-orchestrated hope.

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Let us introduce despair into the scenario. Had either farmer despaired of rain, he would have irrigated his crops, if he cared about them. If he despaired of rain but did not care about his crops, then he would not have irrigated his crops, or may not have done so. In either case it appears to be the care, rather than the despairing of rain, which motivates the behaviour (or lack of tending). Had the farmer despaired of rain and also been in despair over his crops, this would suggest that he cared about his crops but that (for some reason) he could not irrigate his crops. This suggests that care and concern is as relevant to conduct as feeling itself, and that it is more motivating than the emotion of despair, particularly with regard to tending things. If we recall the discussion in Section 1.4, I claimed that despairing is to non-striving as hoping is to striving. However, it appears that Gordon reverses this and equates hoping with non-striving. Gordon treats fear as a forward-looking motive while he treats hope as an explanatory or interpretative motive for non-action.57 He states, ‘His hopefulness gives him some motivation to leave matters in the lap of the gods, to take no measures to increase the scope of his own control over the things that matter.’58 To reiterate, although the farmer who hopes for rain cannot make it rain, he can execute the same strategies as a farmer who fears it will not rain. Gordon admits this. He writes, ‘One may be hopeful of something, yet by nature or on principle act prudently or conservatively nevertheless.’59 What remains puzzling, then, is the asymmetry between fear and hope on Gordon’s account. If a farmer may hope but yet act ‘by nature or on principle’, what reason do we have for thinking that a farmer who fears and acts, acts on his fear, rather than ‘by nature or on principle’? I have already noted that Gordon’s main focus is on analysing the epistemic emotion of fear in its various guises both as occurrent emotion and in its attitudinal aspect. However, he states that ‘much of what [he] shall say applies equally well to other epistemic emotions’,60 of which he considers hope to be one. Given that hope is the foil against which fear is highlighted and held in contradistinction, it is difficult to see how one might read these examples to gain an equally positive account of the motivating prowess of hope. What may apply to one form of hope, under certain circumstances, is presented, by implication, as a general feature of hope per se. His treatment of hope presupposes no difference between a hope and a wish. One could wish that was otherwise, but having read the text, one could not hope that it was so. Hope and fear are demarcated as the only two epistemic emotions,61 said, by Gordon, to be consonant with other epistemic predicates like

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‘believes’ and ‘suspects’. One of the features which distinguishes these ‘knowledge precluding’ emotions from their ‘knowledge requiring’ counterparts, factive emotions, is the uncertainty whether p or not-p. Now it appears that Gordon makes a distinction for the purposes of analysis which is lost in application to cases, and deliberately so on Gordon’s part. Yet it is this very move which causes problems for his analysis. The presence of fear or hope indicates uncertainty. Why, if the farmers are rational, should they behave as if they are certain when they are not certain? Answer – only if the as-if behaviour could affect the outcome of the object(ive) of the epistemic emotion; as it can in agent-orchestrated hope which can be propositionally stated. If, for example, I hope to complete this chapter at the earliest time, then I will write for some hours yet, rather than go on a hike now. Alternatively, if an actor presents himself as-if confident at an audition (despite feeling anxious), then (if his presentation is successful) he will be perceived as confident, typically making it more likely that he will be offered the role he hoped to gain. There is no guarantee of success from action undertaken in agent-orchestrated hope, but equally, there is no reason to suppose that action should be unhinged, conceptually or practically, from hoping. 2.2.3

A belief–desire theory of emotion

A belief–desire theory of the emotions is developed by O. H. Green in his book, The Emotions.62 Green provides a schema of emotions on a semantic and epistemic basis which he uses to define a set of basic emotions. Green views his criteria as success-functionally related because the beliefs and desires are said to concern a ‘common topic’. There are emotions in which if the belief is thought to be true then the desire is satisfied and these are termed convergent emotions. Also, there are emotions in which if the belief is true then the desire is unsatisfied, and these are termed divergent emotions. A further distinction is the certainty distinction according to which the belief has either a subjective uncertainty of one or of less. These distinctions yield the following four classes: (1) convergent certainty emotions, for example, gladness, (2) divergent certainty emotions, for example, sorrow (3) convergent uncertainty emotions, for example, hope and (4) divergent uncertainty emotions, for example, fear. 63 Although I have queried whether hope is most appropriately categorised as an emotion, in his belief–desire theory Green makes a few distinctions within which some focal points of agency of hope could be accommodated as well as something of its anticipatory nature. Green

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distinguishes, for example, between optative desires and performative desires to differentiate between states of affairs desired without an action of mine as opposed to desired states of affairs to be brought about through an action of mine.64 In agent-orchestrated hope the desire would be performative, whereas in other-orchestrated hope or world-orchestrated hope the desire would be optative. Green also distinguishes imaginative emotions engendered by dispositions to believe with certainty or uncertainty. Here there is scope to relate this category to the anticipated difference (from the present), which is a significant aspect of hope. Many ordinary everyday hopes which can be stated propositionally (such as she is hoping that the taxi will be on time or he is hoping that the letter will arrive) revolve around that which is believed and desired. For all hopes, I have argued that desire is constitutive of hope. Beliefs, or ‘takings-for-granted’, certainly have a role to play in an agent’s subjective conception of that which is possible, in principle, and in her perception of possibility, in practice. Beliefs or ‘takings-for-granted’ also inform her or his rough estimate of probability. It is not surprising, then, that a theory of emotion which focuses on beliefs and desires is better able to accommodate many ordinary everyday hopes than a theoretical perspective which emphasises motivation and behaviour but which nevertheless utilises the least agent-focused form of orchestrating hope that there is as an example of hope. Many hopes, however, concern more than that which is believed and desired. Many hopes concern and express one’s values too. Also, that one hopes, rather than what one hopes for, concerns one’s self-conception as a certain kind of person. I make some reference to an aspect of this in the following section immediately below. I am developing a view of hope as a reflective phenomenon and the concept of hope as a cluster concept consisting of a set of relations and family resemblances.65 In the following chapters my account of hope in agency and meaning extends the reasons for not thinking of hope in emotion terms. 2.2.4

Hopelessness and despair

In Section 1.1, I cited the OED characterisation of despair presented as a lack of hope. If despair entails a lack of hope, then despair is hopeless and it must be a contrary of hope. If despair is accurately characterised as a lack of hope, then, are not despair and hopelessness synonyms? There is certainly much common territory between despair and hopelessness but some differences can be detected upon close scrutiny.

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Feeling despair

With respect to despair I have, in Chapter 1 (in Section 1.3.3), distinguished between being in despair and despairing of an object. In despairing of an object there are at least three interrelated possibilities: (1) when despairing of something, one may despair of one’s looks, one’s health, one’s work, dwindling public services, rising unemployment and so on, (2) when despairing of someone, one may despair of someone doing something (or failing to do something), like stopping gambling or starting decorating the house and (3) when despairing of someone, we may give up on the person as a whole. In (2) one gives up on some particular act(s) or omission(s) of someone, whereas in (3) the person becomes essentially persona non gratis. If (2) is judged of sufficient gravity or extent by the despairer, it may lead to (3). The occurrence of being in despair typically has one of two characteristic brute feels to it. In such despair one may either feel wretched when there is a keen sense of privation of that which is desired, so that one feels shorn of something lost, or searingly conscious of a longing that (it is believed) will never be fulfilled. Or, alternatively, one may feel indifferent towards what is the case, or what it is believed will be the case, because none of what is perceived as present or prospective holds any interest or personal significance for the one who is in despair. I am not suggesting that there is some specifiable sensation located in some particular part of the body or brain which is a necessary constituent of being in despair, but that part of what it means to be in despair is for such a set of relations to hold between the subject, her desires, her beliefs about the world and her perceptions of it, which in typical cases produce feelings or a mood befitting one of these descriptions. The indifferent form of despair could be likened to the objectless sense of existential anxiety previously mentioned. Being in despair does not have a unique brute feel, but it does have a couple of typical brute feels. 2.2.6

Judging a hopeless case

If a situation is judged to be hopeless, then what is conveyed in that judgement is a belief that there is nothing which may be done to remedy or improve the situation. Despite their best efforts, for example, search and rescue workers may judge finding anyone else still alive as hopeless. To say that I am hopeless at drawing is to convey that I have no gift, or even competence, in reproducing what I see about me, with pencils on paper. To be judged hopeless by another is to be assessed as having less than a minimal competence in some (relevant) respect.

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Just as one cannot hope for that which is known to be impossible, so it is inappropriate to judge what is subjectively believed impossible at the outset as hopeless because a person or situation can only be judged as hopeless against a background of prior hopefulness.66 In like manner, one can only suffer the disappointment of unrequited love, for example, after first loving and hoping for reciprocity of love. One may judge a situation hopeless and still desire it, for example, one may acknowledge oneself as unable to sing a note and still want to join a choir. But can one so judge yet still hope for it – foolishly, perhaps? In everyday life, people exhibit inconsistency – sometimes with impunity, often not. However, to judge a situation hopeless is to feel certain that nothing can be done about it and hope requires a conception of uncertainty to find purchase. Finding a purchase does not necessarily mean perceiving some present means of the objective’s fulfilment in the short to medium term, but rather refers to the hope’s internal structure and its originating conditions. One may hope in vain without being a fool. One may hope that one’s assessment of a situation will turn out to be wrong, but that is not the same as ‘hoping’ for that which one feels certain is unchangeable. Even a fool must begin with a subjective belief that what she hopes is possible, but a belief which is both objectively and subjectively insufficient in some way will founder on the rock of experience. Sometimes, we may call hopes foolish because we judge them to be frivolous or their objectives of little worth. This need not imply that the hopes are unsound. A hope would be judged unsound if an observer believed that a hoper was mistaken with regard to what is possible. The answer seems to be that fools may hope foolishly but what this amounts to is unclear. And it is only a fool who hopes for nothing. 2.2.7

Pointless versus hopeless

Some things are pointless rather than hopeless; tasks which are considered impossible at the outset. It is pointless undertaking to count the hairs on one’s head or grains of sand, as it is attempting to name all the stars in the night sky. Also, it is pointless, rather than hopeless, for children to try to fly ‘like Batman’ as they are reminded after watching the programme on television. Many circumstances fall into this category. It is pointless, for example, to devote time to training my goldfish to talk, because it is impossible for a goldfish to talk, however good a teacher I may be (of persons). However, my attempt to train my dog to fetch the newspaper may be judged hopeless, either because this particular dog is resistant to my training technique, or because my technique

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is poor. However, it is not impossible, in principle or in practice, for such training to succeed. In Plato’s Meno,67 Socrates was able to bring Meno’s slave-boy to assent to some mathematical propositions which he could not have expressed without Socratic guidance. However, Socrates could have been confronted by an intractable dullard, and at a certain point pronounced the boy to be hopeless. The particular slaveboy in question was not beyond hope, apparently. To label someone or something as hopeless is to pass a negative evaluation upon the person or thing in question. Change with improvement is believed impossible where it could have occurred, in principle. 2.2.8

Distinguishing hopelessness from being hopeless

Just as it was necessary to clearly distinguish between being in despair and despairing of something, so it is necessary to distinguish between the judgement of being ‘hopeless’ and the feeling or mood of hopelessness. If one judges oneself hopeless in a particular respect, then one may respond to one’s self-assessment with a resolve to refocus one’s energies where some success may be anticipated. That is, judging oneself hopeless, in some particular respect, need not engender a concomitant mood of hopelessness. However, judging oneself hopeless in general typically engenders a feeling of hopelessness, be it fleeting or sustained, though one need not make this judgement explicitly prior to experiencing hopelessness. The judgement provokes the feeling but the feeling does not require an explicit judgement as stimulus. This is contrary to the situation with judgements concerning despair. Despairing of something can engender positive feelings in oneself, though judging oneself hopeless engenders negative feelings. Hopelessness is the obverse of hopefulness. Being hopeful is, to stretch a metaphor, rather like a piece of elastic. When the tension of the elastic holds and it is comfortably in place, everything within its bounds is supported and the elastic goes unnoticed. When it loses its elasticity, its absence is felt as everything it previously supported sags or droops. Neither hopefulness nor hope has any specific feeling typifying its occurrence or presence, but hopelessness has a distinctive kind of ‘deflating’ or ‘deflated’ feel when it occurs like a lack of buoyancy. 2.2.9

Comparing being hopeless and despairing of something

As has been said, to conclude that a situation, a thing or a person is hopeless is to conclude that no change or improvement is possible with respect to it. This is a judgement, as is despairing of something or someone,

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whether in a particular respect or in the sense of giving her/him up (as in (1), (2) and (3) in Section 2.2.5). Hopelessness, on the other hand, is akin to being in despair, although typically it has its own distinctive kind of feeling. One may feel a sense of hopelessness or be in despair for varying periods of time, ranging from relatively short to prolonged periods. However, the recognition that one despairs of someone is a recognition which may encroach gradually on the despairer’s conscious awareness, or the recognition may appear abruptly and seem discontinuous with previous judgements on the matter. Either way, once the point of despairing of is reached, the despairing of itself (unless it turns into being in despair) is typically not prolonged. Despairing of someone can be seen as analogous to making a decision. Once a decision is made, it is not prolonged by something going on which could be called ‘being-ina-continuous-state-of-decision-making’. And thus it is in the case of despairing of someone. Despairing of someone entails the idea of giving up on that person, in part, or on the whole. However, judging someone hopeless is a negative evaluation but the idea of giving up on the person is not entailed in the concept. Equally, despairing of oneself entails giving up on oneself but judging oneself hopeless is just that. Though judging oneself completely hopeless will typically bring a feeling of hopelessness in its wake, one need not give up on oneself. In one sense, despairing of someone is giving up a form of commitment to that person. This aspect of despairing of someone is particularly plausible in personal relationships with partners, family and friends. If despairing of someone is giving up a form of commitment to someone, then what made or sustained the original commitment could be having (had) hope in that person. 2.2.10

Hopelessness and hopefulness

If hopelessness is the obverse of hopefulness, and hopelessness is a feeling or a mood, then what reasons are there for resisting thinking of hopefulness and hope as feelings or moods? A common circumstance of hoping is that of waiting for the return of a loved one from travelling afar, or from war. A woman hoping for her husband’s or son’s return is not in some prolonged affective state for two weeks, months or years; she continues with daily life, though it remains true that she hopes for the return of her loved one(s). Let us say that there are two women whose husbands have both returned after a five-year absence and that in the meantime each woman has continued with daily life. What would be the difference in these lives between the one who hoped for the return of her husband and the one who did not?

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The life of the woman who hoped for her husband’s return would have contained a focal point of anticipation maintaining a residual openness to this possible event. An openness that probably would colour her everyday perception of the world. Whereas, the life of the woman without that hope would have been subjectively foreclosed to this event, though it remained an objective possibility. The woman who hoped would be oriented towards her husband while the woman who had despaired of her husband’s return would be oriented from her husband having given up on the possibility of his return. The hopeful woman views her world in the prospect of her husband’s return, whereas the woman without hope views her world without such a prospect. The hopeful woman expresses a commitment to a future life with her husband, whereas the woman without hope expresses no such commitment. In addition to the idea of commitment, ideas of purpose and unity are common to agent-orchestrated hopes and mutual-orchestrated hopes. 68 Hope orchestrates action conceptually and temporally, that is, from origin to ends. Where those ends are complex, as are a high proportion of hope’s objectives, the subsidiary actions or strategies and intermediate stages pursuant to the fulfilment of hope are organised in the light of it. Thus, hoping for x acts as a guiding principle in selecting courses of action comprising larger projects and in describing an arc of unity in what may otherwise superficially appear as a series of disconnected actions and events. Of two students, who each become surgeons, for example, one may have striven with hope to succeed in the profession whereas the other may have ended up in the family profession after having been singularly indecisive in pursuing any other career option. The difference between these lives would consist in the difference between an orchestrated plan of action being pursued as opposed to a contingent set of events haphazardly reaching a particular point coincident with what could have been planned and executed by human agency. Clearly, in both these examples neither the woman who hopes for her husband’s return, nor the student who hopes to become a surgeon need experience any concomitant affective state commensurate with an occurrent emotional state. One may slip into hopelessness or into despair by degrees. Or, one may be overwhelmed by hopelessness or despair. However, one seldom speaks of being overwhelmed by hope. When one hopes, then one enters the cognitive domain which may be permeated by a hedonic tone of desire. Persons overwhelmed by hopelessness or despair are typically passive subjects to whom these things happen. Persons with hope

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are actively oriented towards present and future possibilities – the very hoping is an anticipatory grasp on what may yet come. In the following section I discuss the relationship between hope and pleasure, suggesting that such pleasure as there is in hope concerns anticipation and thoughts about desire satisfaction.

2.3

Related positive phenomena

The positive phenomena related to hope are confidence and trust. However, before I discuss confidence and trust, I will first address the relationship between hope and pleasure since I think it is the hedonic tone of desire satisfaction which is partly responsible for hope being thought of affectively and in emotion terms. Secondly, I will return to some of my remarks on the views of Spinoza, Descartes and Hume (Section 2.1) about uncertainty and consider the relation between confidence and certainty. I will discuss some qualifications on this relationship. Although there is some connection between confidence and certainty, the nature of it requires an examination because one may think that where there is certainty, there is no need of confidence. Recalling a previous example, one does not have confidence in the laws of mathematics, nor trust the law of gravity. On the other hand, one is confident that p when one does not doubt not-p, although one knows that not-p is possible. 2.3.1

Hope and pleasure

There is an aspect of hope which may have led a number of philosophers and psychologists to classify hope as an emotion. In ordinary everyday hope, a belief that p is probable, combined with a desire that p, may give pleasure. Being oriented in thinking by hope, or acting with hope, entails having a desire for the objective of hope. When hoping to be selected to play in an important ice hockey league match, a player simultaneously desires to play in that match. This is true whether he hopes to play for the sake of the game itself, or if he hopes to play for the usual worldly rewards of winning. Whatever the motive for the hope, there will be a desire to play. Maintaining that desire is constitutive of hope commits me to the view that by conceptual necessity every hope has a desire as one of its parts. One does not hope for that which one does not want to come about, either for oneself or others. Both the anticipation itself (of the objective of hope) may yield pleasure, as may the imaginative projected consequences of the fulfilment of the hope.

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A hedonic tone in hope may be experienced, recognised and affirmed from a first person perspective. However, on occasion, the hedonic tone may be regarded dismissively or be denied by a particular hoper. Although a hoper may protest the occurrence, or extent, of pleasure provided by her hoping, on empirical evidence an observer may judge that she is mistaken about her ‘state of mind’ and claim to be able to see that her hope pleases her.69 Though there is an internal relation between hoping and desiring, the relation between hoping and hedonic tone is not internal in like manner. To hope is to desire, in part. To desire is not, conversely, to hope. Nor is it necessarily the case that one who hopes should experience any hedonic tone at all. A hope for world peace, for example, or for a good digestion, need neither carry nor be imbued with any hedonic tone. Thus, it is not to be presumed that a hedonic tone is part and parcel of every hope, or all instances of some type of hope, or of any particular hope. It is possible to distinguish between hedonic tone and an affective ‘brute feel’ of an emotion as a psychosomatic property. Distinguishing between pleasantness and unpleasantness is not to be confused with the identification of a particular affective state, especially if the said state is deemed to play a role in differentiating emotions. The projected fulfilment of one hope may result in a preliminary, anticipatory feeling of relief or tranquillity whereas the projected fulfilment of a different hope may result in a feeling of excitement. Yet another may issue in a judgement of approval. There is no characteristic feel of hope, just as there is no characteristic symptom or expression.70 Especially where hope is of considerable duration and its content is indeterminate, for example, in the hope to be a good parent, a hedonic tone may be entirely absent as may an affective brute feel. In such cases, hope orchestrates an expansive web of diverse events over a prolonged period of time. Hoping does not have a characteristic feel. 2.3.2

Confident expectation

In confidence one may expect either the satisfaction or the frustration of desire. Assuming satisfaction is wanted, then its confident expectation will afford pleasure and one will be averse to its confident dissatisfaction. Confident dissatisfaction could engender despair but need not do so. One’s aversion may be manifest as disgust, for example, or reluctance. Alternatively, one may be relatively unconcerned at the frustration of any given desire and feel indifferent at its dissatisfaction. The feeling of indifference which is one of the typical brute feels of despair is not necessarily constitutive of despair, hence one may be indifferent

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towards something one is confident of without being in despair over the object. When that which is desired is expected, the confidence one has in the approach of the object allows one to imagine various properties or parts of that which is expected. When expecting to meet a friend, for example, I may imaginatively focus upon the pleasure of enjoying the company of a dear friend, or I may imaginatively focus upon some activity that we will share. Either way, one looks to a future with real possibilities; possibilities that are regarded as already emerging from the present. An expected future is a future populated with this kind of possibility, even though it is known that not all the real possibilities will actually be realised. One may expect to visit either the Botanical Gardens or the Arts Museum though one may know that constraints of time will not permit both. In this situation, to hope for one as opposed to the other would be to express a preference by the hope. In comparison, a possible future is a future which may be anticipated (as has been seen), and a possible future may also contain real possibilities, that is, possibilities that can come to be realised in this world at some point in time. However, whereas a future with possibilities may be said to be emerging from the present, a possible future remains latent in the present, and may be only tenuously connected to the present. The bracketing of doubt that confidence permits rules out certain possibilities as items of concern, particularly from a first person perspective. Being confident of my friend’s arrival, I entertain possibilities transcending the point of meeting which are future possibilities, but not possible futures, in the sense here given. 71 When one person has confidence in another, this typically expresses the opposite kind of evaluation of the person in question as would a judgement of someone as hopeless. To have confidence in another is to believe in their ability to carry out some specific task(s). Or, it may reflect an assessment of character such that it is believed a person can be relied upon to act or conduct herself or himself in certain ways, or to express certain attitudes and so on. On the other hand, to be confident that x, may denote nothing more than one’s being sure of x regardless of whether x is considered desirable or undesirable, good or bad, in itself. Consider smiling; this may be done confidently or hopefully. Or, one may smile nervously, fearfully or maliciously, and smiles may be pervaded by sadness. If one is disposed to daydream, this imagining may be done confidently, hopefully, wishfully, or yet again, wistfully. Even one’s wishes may be vague, or clear and bold, though where one has confidence in a sense it seems to rule out any need of wishing. One may conduct

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oneself confidently or one may act in hope. From an observer’s perspective these may be indistinguishable. 2.3.3

A trusting approach

Confidence and trust are closely interrelated. A trusting attitude towards other human beings or towards life in general implies a confident approach to others or to states of affairs. It is important though, to distinguish between different kinds of trust. One form of trust that I will refer to as instrumental trust is a kind of trust which can be developed over time. It is trust for which reasons are required. If I were seeking a childminder for young children, for example, then I would require thorough interviews and verifiable references before employing a person unknown to me in such a position. In many circumstances, one trusts provisionally, with reason, and trust develops incrementally as knowledge of other persons increases. One might say that instrumental trust is embryonic and that it requires certain necessary conditions in which to flourish. However, ordinarily we do comport ourselves trustingly in the world as we negotiate our way around a host of interactions structured by varying degrees of formality and informality. I will refer to this trust as unreflective trust and I say more about it shortly below. 72 In many circumstances trust is not an issue, it is rather a thing ‘taken-for-granted’. However, when there is something at stake, like the welfare of one’s child, then one’s unquestioning trust which supports daily activities is brought out into the open. When strangers are involved, especially with others of importance to oneself, then reasons to trust are desired to give further support to one’s tendency to trust.73 Let us take another example. In Great Britain today, women have been advised to walk down the street in a confident manner (if they need to be on them at night!) since a confident manner may help to deter a potential attacker, it is said. Bearing this in mind, many women will walk as-if confident but they will not be walking on their home streets trustingly. The purchase of the notion of instrumental trust follows from a Hobbesianlike presupposition that human beings cannot trust each other in an original situation.74 The Hobbesian problem, it will be recalled, is that the conditions of an original situation (Hobbes’ state of nature) preclude the likelihood of cooperation. 75 A conflict is said to arise between the ‘interests’ of the individual and the ‘interests’ of all. Hobbes’ resolution of this problem is the establishment of a coercive political authority with sufficient power to enforce conditions such that a collectivity of human beings, like a civil society, can act as-if they trusted each other. In this situation,

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the first as-if act of trust would be experimental. Success, as it is said, breeds success. Making trial with experimental as-if trust may lead to trust proper, with sufficient degrees of reliability being acknowledged through successive layers of human interaction.76 There is an analogy between these purported conditions of civil society and more informal encounters with other people. Where instrumental trust is embryonic and needs to feed on success in order to grow, we can speak of a logically prior hoping that relation between the one who acts and the anticipated outcome of the act. An as-if act of trust is not an act of trust per se. It is a qualified act of trust. Although it may be argued that all trust is qualified by uncertainty, in principle, 77 as-if instrumental trust is selfconsciously so qualified by the one who would trust. Instrumental trust borders very closely on hope. Acting in hope may be replaced by acting with trust, when a confident expectation in another is acquired. The second form of trust is related to instrumental trust, though it can be contrasted with it. It is a form of trust I take to be more philosophically interesting, given its role in acting and knowing oneself. I refer to this form of trust as unreflective trust because it seems to be a core component in human development. 78 Unreflective trust is a facet of life so pervasive that it is seldom noticed unless and until something goes awry in the world of human interaction. Conceptions of instrumental trust presuppose unreflective trust (though this is not always acknowledged or realised), but the self-conscious presuppositions of instrumental trust are those of Hobbesian-like mistrust noted above. Unreflective trust is logically prior to instrumental trust and it is chronologically prior to hope in experiential terms.79 Rather than being manufactured, unreflective trust is an imperceptible given in human experience. What does this mean? The first point to be made is that unreflective trust is said to be beyond justification in the sense that it is prior to questions of justification. It appears as a metaphysically given condition informing human beings in the world.80 Unreflective trust is that which must be presupposed to enable human beings to give rein to a curiosity about the natural and social worlds, making experiment and discovery possible. Unreflective trust is not a particular kind of feeling. Nor is it a self-conscious mental state or stance adopted towards the world. It is part of the structured background matrix of conditions which support foreground activity. What characterises unreflective trust is that thoughts of grounds or evidence are foreign to its nature. In unreflective trust there is, for example, no subjective belief that my friend is trustworthy. The fact is that unreflective trust rules out such a consideration from the beginning.81 Not only

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does this apply in cases of friendship and the like, but as K. E. Løgstrup points out at the beginning of The Ethical Demand, the presumption of trust is that with which we encounter strangers, unless there is some prior reason not to do so. It seems one needs a prior reason not to dwell in the world trustingly just as one needs a prior reason to doubt that one will satisfy one’s desire before that desire can form part of a hope. Unreflective trust is displayed in a kind of security in one’s comportment which does not depend on any subjective certainty of belief. From this, a form of confidence can emerge. Hope, on the other hand, is ineliminably inscribed with a recognition of uncertainty. When, for example, I trust in my sister’s generosity, I am confident that she will supply what is needful, but if I were to place my hope in my sister then I would be uncertain as to whether what was needed or required would be forthcoming. Although others are typically encountered trustingly, often there is little to be risked in highly formalised social encounters. But consider an activity like climbing. In climbing, one puts one’s life in one’s partner’s hands in a very literal way. If one values one’s life, then one must be able to trust the person on the other end of the rope. In cases like this, one feels certain that one will not be disappointed, one certainly does not expect disappointment, even though one knows it is possible, in principle. Climbing is a risky activity, but if one trusts one’s partner, the risk is not in his or her commitment to the shared enterprise. Climbing with a partner in whom one places one’s hope, on the other hand, is leaving oneself open to greater risk, a risk in the person in addition to the equipment and conditions. It may be asked how is such trustworthiness signified? One way is through someone’s showing love, and its counterparts, care and concern. If someone loves something for its own sake (in this instance, climbing), then they will be motivated to exercise care over it and to pay the right kind of attention to the activity for it to go well. This holds true for other activities also engaged in as cherished ends in themselves. One can trust that one is in safe hands when one can see that loving attention is paid to conducting the activity. 2.3.4

Trusting and hoping

At this point I want to introduce the remainder of the terms that I use to make distinctions within hope itself and its relation to trust. Additional terms are necessary to delineate the relationship between trust and hope in experience, especially in focusing on a first person perspective with regard to action. First I will recap the main terms already used then I will give a brief synopsis of the other terms.

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In Chapter 1, I discussed hopes that I termed ‘ordinary everyday’ or ‘non-serious’ hopes like the hope that you like my new hat, as opposed to hopes that are ‘serious’ or ‘extraordinary’ in some way like the hope to regain my health or to survive persecution. What makes these hopes non-serious or serious, ordinary or extraordinary, is the objective of hope and the context in which a given hope is engendered. I have also discussed determinate and indeterminate objectives of hope. The degree of determinacy an objective of hope has is typically a function of the knowledge a hoper has in conjunction with a capacity to envisage possible changes or alternative states of affairs. It could be said that my hope to write another book is determinate yet unspecific – the idea of a book is determinate but any notion of the content of the book is unspecific. Likewise, holding a babe in arms and hoping to be a good parent is determinate in one sense, as has been seen. However, it is unspecific in the sense that such a long-term project, with as many variables as childrearing typically entails, precludes envisaging what would fulfil such an objective (in any given case) with more than a minimal degree of specificity. It will also be recalled that the distinction between hoping-that x and hoping-in x was marked in Chapter 1 when discussing the difference in emphasis between objectives of hope (hoping that) and acts of hope (hoping in). Now I will introduce a number of terms and distinctions that will be deployed and more fully developed in Chapters 3, 4 and 5, from consideration of more complex examples of human situatedness, agency and meaning. First let me refer to direct hope and indirect hope. From a first person perspective, objectives of direct hope may be determinate or indeterminate. My hope for a sunny day, for example, is direct and determinate whereas my hope for a better world is direct and indeterminate. Direct hopes can be positive or negative also, that is, one hopes that x will occur or one hopes that not-x will prevail. Recalling previous discussions, one welcomes that which one anticipates in hope whereas one rejects or resists what one anticipates in fear (vis-à-vis positivity and negativity). Direct hopes may be called, somewhat loosely, ‘probability’ hopes, as the degree of probability of the fulfilment of any given hope may vary widely from any other. Indirect hope is both similar to and different from direct hope. I think that all hope is intentional in a phenomenological sense. I distinguish between direct and indirect hope to indicate the ways in which hope is related to two kinds of objectives. The objectives of direct hope are particular objectives which may be determinate or indeterminate in character. This distinction can be applied to objectives in experience.

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The objectives of indirect hope are general objectives to which the determinate/indeterminate distinction cannot be rigorously or consistently applied in experience. The objectives of indirect hope are neither determinate nor indeterminate. However, almost by definition, the general objectives of indirect hope lean towards indeterminacy as regards what counts as fulfilling them. Indirect hopes discussed in Chapter 4 are hopes about ‘good lives’, hopes ‘to endeavour’ and hopes ‘to endure’. I refer to acting on the basis of direct hopes as living in hope (in the sense of dwelling in a matrix of particular hopes) and acting on the basis of indirect hope as living in the light of hope. What changes here is hope’s relation to trust. In subsequent chapters I argue that under certain circumstances hope replaces unreflective trust as a basis for acting in the world. The availability of unreflective trust makes possible lives lived with a multitude of direct hopes. The unavailability of unreflective trust requires the availability of indirect hope in its stead to support human agency. This contention is expounded and supported below. Given the typical contexts in which indirect hope occurs, indirect hope may be most appropriately referred to as ‘possibility’ hope. That is, the general objective is possible, in principle, though its likelihood of fulfilment in practice is frequently minimal. Whereas direct hope is typically hope because of reality, indirect hope is typically hope in spite of reality. Also, indirect hope is the form of hope most likely to reflect any significant values of the hoper(s). However, all hopes may express values held by those who hope. To demarcate those hopes imbued with values I use the term expressive hope, as the hope is expressive of investment in a person or persons, principle, quality, event, state of affairs or end. 2.3.5

Hoping and loving

Treating the topic of love other than in brief aspect is beyond the scope of this present work since love presents an extensive topic in its own right. 82 However, at this point I wish to note a couple of similarities between hope and love. A passing fancy does not count as love just as a passing desire does not count as hope. For love to be love, a minimum duration is required. Even those who would speak of ‘love at first sight’ do not do so if the ‘flush’ of ‘love’ only lasts, literally, for five minutes. Similarly, one of the features differentiating hope from fancy, whim and certain desires is the fact that hopes have some durability and are sustained over time. The more significant the hope, the longer it will be sustained, ceteris paribus.

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Whether one speaks of love for a partner, children, animals or nature, one is expressing an orientation of care and concern. Though not necessarily also true of all possible hopes, many hopes express significant human values and are held because of care and concern for others. Or, hopes may be held due to the worthy ends to which they are held to contribute. Thus care and concern is a common element in loving and hoping. When one loves, one pays attention to the particularity of the beloved and when one is oriented in one’s thinking and acting by hope, one cannot but pay attention to the particularity of circumstance since hope rests on conceptions of what is possible from here and now. Therefore, the present must be attended to since its transformation is at stake in hope. In loving another person one makes a commitment to that person in so far as loving someone entails durability, and according to Shakespeare unchangeability, viz. ‘Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.’83 Although a person in love may experience a whole range of feelings with a vividness and intensity perhaps peculiar to love, actually loving someone is, importantly, something shown in conduct. There is no doubt that the objectives and expressions of hope are many and varied; but hope, too, is typically shown in conduct, in one’s actions and striving, and in the manner and quality of one’s interaction with others. Hope, like love, is not presumptuous, though it also seeks fulfilment. In the following chapter, I consider notions of commitment intrinsic to hope and relate this to ideas about responsible agency. I discuss the project of marriage to show an interrelation of hopes, commitment and responsibility from differing perspectives.

2.4

Imaginative possibilities and memory

I have identified imagination and memory as conditions of the possibility of hope. In this, I agree with Bernard Dauenhauer who in ‘Hope and Responsible Politics’84 writes, (1) Hope is essentially connected with the conviction that the future need not be like the present or merely unfolding of mechanisms already presently established. In this respect, hope is linked with memory. If memory shows that, for better or worse, the present is not like the past then, again for better or worse, the future can be different from at least one of them.85

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Although Dauenhauer uses the ‘conviction’ word, for which I criticised Descartes, Dauenhauer uses it with respect to the conditions for the possibility of hope rather than as a way of indicating the perceived certainty of the fulfilment of one’s objective of hope. It would seem that (the latter) is precisely what one cannot have in hope. Where, then, does the certainty enter in? As Dauenhauer suggests, one must feel sure that the future can be different from the past. One does not know from hope alone whether that different future will be for the better or the worse, but that there is some indeterminacy in the future is what gives scope and application to hope. Certainty also enters into hope in so far as what is focused upon is the fact that one hopes, rather than focusing upon an objective of hope. Whether one’s hope is agent-orchestrated, mutual-orchestrated, otherorchestrated or world-orchestrated, there is no doubt that one hopes as regards direct hope. Neither is there any doubt that one hopes when one hopes indirectly. However, from a first person perspective direct hope and indirect hope are typically experienced differently although there may be considerable overlap between these aspects of hope. One may say that indirect hope supports direct hope (though indirect hope itself has a general intentional object). A brief word about imaging and imagination is not out of place here. Clearly, as a condition of hope what is important is an act, or acts, of imagination rather than the particular form they take or the particular content of any given act(s). Still, when one hopes, not infrequently one pictures (as best one can) the fulfilment of that hope. I was told an illustrative story of this point. A keen angler had long hoped to receive a special kind of rod as a gift. Fishing seasons came and went, and eventually one birthday he received the kind of rod for which he had hoped. He had pictured this rod in his mind’s eye many times and unwrapped it excitedly – only to discover that it was the wrong colour! It was not, in fact, the rod he had hoped for. This story can be turned a number of ways to make points ranging from remarks on the specificity and determinate content of hopes to issues concerning the relationship between objectives and their conditions of fulfilment or satisfaction. These issues recur throughout the following chapters in the differing contexts addressed. There is a sense in which the satisfaction of a hope need not be commensurate with its complete fulfilment. It is memory that allows a comparison between the past and the present. It is acts of imagination that permit an agent to conceive of ways in which influence can be brought to bear upon possible futures. Dauenhauer focuses on the agency which imagination underlies when

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he writes, ‘(2) Hope goes hand in hand with the conviction that free agents can, through their activity, influence somehow the character of the future.’86 Memory and imagination are the silent partners of hope, though not sleeping partners, since both are active in creating conditions for the possibility of hope in experience.

2.5

Summary

In this chapter, I have given reasons for thinking that hope is not best thought of as an emotion although I have not offered an alternative strict classification. One reason for this is that the multifaceted nature of hope makes it difficult to capture under a single heading. I have, however, offered critiques of some contemporary theories of emotion where hope is discussed and I have made a number of points about hope on the basis of historical material from Spinoza, Descartes and Hume. I have suggested that hope may be thought of as a primitive phenomenon in human experience. I have discussed phenomena related both negatively and positively to hope. In this discussion I focused on the uncertainty/certainty distinction to bring out salient characteristics of each phenomena and I also used this distinction as a way of situating other phenomena with respect to hope. In my account I concentrate more on hopelessness and despair than on fear and anxiety, as hopelessness and despair are the phenomena most relevant to the significance of hope in the contexts of suffering that I examine in Chapters 4 and 5. These early descriptions are preparatory for the work of subsequent chapters. I find hope to be more closely related to trust than to the emotions although there is a significant difference between hope and trust regarding uncertainty. From a third person perspective the difference may be difficult to discern though it is quite distinct from a first person perspective. Apart from a few shared features, what hoping and loving mostly have in common concerns the manner in which one person approaches another, and I have more to say about this in Chapter 3. I concluded with some brief points about imagination and memory, conditions of the possibility of hope that are connected with the ineliminable temporal character of hope and its directedness. It is these faculties and the features to which they give rise that provide conditions for the possibility of experiencing the world in uncertain terms.

3 The Domain of Agency and its Perspectives

Thinking of hope as an activity and of its importance in acting is a theme continued in this chapter. Human agency per se is a broad and complex topic. One aspect of agency I will be concerned with is forms of authority which enhance or inhibit responsible agency; who or what is taken to be authoritative affects the degree of independence an agent develops from reliance on others. I will consider authority from first and third person perspectives. I will also be concerned with ideas about commitment and responsibility. As regards commitment and responsibility, I take the primary relationship to be that between first and second person perspectives. Although issues of commitment and responsibility arise also from ‘I hope’ alone, they occur most noticeably in ‘I hope in you’ or ‘you hope in me’. Whereas Chapter 1 was concerned with analysing hope at its most accessible point in human experience, and while Chapter 2 built upon that starting point by exploring related phenomena in the neighbourhood of hope, this chapter contributes to the developing concept ecology by introducing core components of responsible human action that are related to aspects of hope in a variety of ways. Throughout this chapter as I compare and contrast first and third person perspectives on hoping and agency, there will be a shift of emphasis from ‘I/we hope that . . .’ to ‘that I/we hope’. This is a shift of attention from the objective of hope to the act of hope and its implications. I also discuss the status of the second person perspective with respect to hope because this is important in diverse ways in both mutual-orchestrated and other-orchestrated hope. The second person perspective can also be relevant in agent-orchestrated hope as a subsidiary perspective to be taken into account. First, I will make some general remarks concerning what it is to have a goal or an objective. I distinguish between having a goal and having an end, and I identify hoping with 67

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the purposiveness of goal-oriented acting. Secondly, I will discuss some issues concerning authority and I argue that acts of hope contribute to responsible agency and authorship. Thirdly, I discuss the notions of commitment and responsibility to elucidate the ways in which they are related to acts of hope. In thinking about an ‘I–you’ relationship, I take an everyday social practice – the practice of marriage, using it as a vehicle through which to develop an extended account of the relationship between commitment and hope as it is found embedded in a context imbued with personal and social significance. From a first person perspective, the role of hope in agency is ambivalent; acting in hope can lead to positive or negative consequences for an agent. However, from a third person perspective, acting in hope can be seen to contribute to responsible agency, that is, hope contributes to action for which an agent can legitimately be held responsible, irrespective of the particular consequences for herself or others. From a second person perspective, hope shows part of its axiological aspect in how one human being approaches and regards another.

3.1

Goals and objectives

There is a general point to be made about how hoping is related to acting at a very abstract level. Previously, I claimed that hoping is motivational in acting and in this respect I have given priority to agent-orchestrated hope (see Section 1.3.2). That hope can be motivating from a first person perspective is not in doubt. This fact permits us to ascribe hope to other persons when we seek to understand their conduct or behaviour, appropriately related to other factors known or believed about the context of action. When a hope is ascribed to an individual or a group from the third person perspective, the one who makes the ascription of the hope is recognising the conduct of those whom she seeks to understand as goal-oriented conduct. That is, in ascribing a hope to another one is treating that person (or group of persons) as self-directed and as bearing responsibility for her (or their) actions. 1 All purposive activity is necessarily teleological, by which is meant that it has a goal, a telos.2 However, purposes and hopes are not entirely coextensive and are not viewed as such, especially from a first person perspective. Human beings, pursuers of goals, are limited with respect to omniscience and omnipotence. This has consequences from first and third person perspectives. From either perspective it can be seen that it is hope which: (1) carries the burden of imperfect knowledge, (2) embodies an awareness of contingency and (3) shows an awareness of vulnerability.

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Hope acts as a spur to success in pursuing human purposes, that is, hoping to succeed motivates action, ceteris paribus.3 It may be objected that much acting occurs without the benefit of hope. It may be argued, for example, that when I enter a darkened room and flick the switch, I am not ‘hoping that the light will come on’, and when I eat my dinner I am not ‘hoping that the food will go in my mouth’. Admittedly, for an average adult, in an environment familiar with electricity, such ‘hopes’ seem contrived. Both the light coming on and my feeding myself (literally) are taken for granted to such an extent that these things are neither topics of belief nor desire, nor attitude, nor will, nor direct hope qua a phenomenology of action. In response, however, it must be noted that some assumptions are made. Although these assumptions in acting are not usually noticed, they are partially constitutive of more global actions that are of interest to, and noticed by, human beings. I do not, for example, hope that water will issue from the tap prior to turning it, as I expect the tap to work. I do not even pay much attention to my expectation of running water if my intention is to make a cup of tea. From a first person perspective, hope may be present though its presence may be experienced indirectly through one’s primary noticing of other phenomena like having the energy or enthusiasm for some project. When projects are complex and extended over a time, an act of introspection is unlikely to reveal any ‘thing’ called hope, whereas the use of memory and reflection upon one’s goals, in addition to the conditions under which they are pursued, will bring hope to the foreground of one’s attentive awareness. From a third person perspective, the uncertainty inherent in the notion of contingency always gives scope for the possibility of ascribing hope to others or their circumstances with respect to some objective. The kind of hope which has no phenomenology proper has two main spheres of application. I shall comment on the least interesting first. The ‘contrived’ hopes in the examples above are hopes that could be ascribed from a third person perspective. It is possible that the light will not respond to the flick of a switch, and it is possible that something will intervene between the food before me and my mouth. There is no end of things which could be otherwise than is taken for granted, or than in fact turns out to be the case. Thus, from a third person perspective on the nature of contingency and possibility, one could say that hope is rampant in the world. However, this kind of view, on this level of specificity of actions, is not what is normally meant by hope, and it gains what purchase it has in talking about hope through its revolving around the ideas of uncertainty and marginal possibility. Hope in this sense could be

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referred to as quasi-hope. There are no metaphysical nor epistemological guarantees that acting will bear its intended fruit and, from the third person perspective, hope is a necessary condition in acting. There are also circumstances in which hoping that ‘the light will come on’ could constitute an appropriate objective of direct hope, for example, if I had been notified that an electrical supplier would be replacing cable on a certain day, then I may hope that everything works as usual (given a ‘working knowledge’ of the world) on my return home. As for feeding myself, an injury or illness would be all that would be required to make this third person perspective on hope a perfectly comprehensible direct hope from a first person perspective. Ordinary direct hopes may be thought of as explicit hopes (from a first person perspective). Direct hopes posited as present, in principle, ‘in a situation’ or as ‘ascribed to others’ may be thought of as implicit hopes (from a third person perspective). Ascribing a hope to others, for example, that ‘she/they will make the team’ or ‘he/they will win the election’, in the singular or plural, makes sense of her/his (or their), various actions which may appear unconnected, prima facie, and it does so in an orchestrated manner. It can be seen that the content of a hope per se does not play the primary determining role in identifying a hope as explicit or implicit as the light coming on and my feeding myself could belong to either class, in principle. Neither does the content of a hope necessarily shed light on its significance, for example, my ‘hoping to walk to work tomorrow’ could be a trivial hope, expressing a preference for taking mild exercise as opposed to taking a bus, but it could also be a significant milestone in a therapeutic programme where ‘hoping to walk to work tomorrow’ would be a worthwhile objective of my hope. There are very many direct hopes which when stated propositionally (i.e. ‘a hope that, for, to’) need make no reference to the placing of the hoper’s hope in another human being. This does not mean that an implicit placing does not take place. A person hoping to acquire a skill, be it playing the piano, in fencing or in performing surgical operations, implicitly places their hope in a mentor, in part.4 ‘Hoping that I will excel as a surgeon’ makes no mention of a particular other, yet without the aid of a mentor my hope will be in vain. The second person singular and the second person plural may be implicitly addressed in hope. When a bank robber ‘hopes that the heist will be successful’, no explicit reference is made to the rest of the gang, yet each must do her/his part for the robbery to be successful. And when a choir master ‘hopes that his choir’s harmonies will ring out gloriously’, he implicitly places his hope in each one of his choristers. The role of particular others, or groups

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of others, in the fulfilment of a given hope may be explicitly or implicitly stated, and the role itself may be direct or indirect. That is, many of ‘my’ hopes implicitly include ‘you’. 3.1.1

Viewing another as goal-directed

The second sphere of application concerns a third person perspective on trying to make sense of the actions and activities of others at a certain level of complexity, and over time. In these circumstances, where an observer is not privy to first party confidence about aims and goals, the ascription of hope (i.e. the presumption of a purposeful guiding direction) is one feature of the way in which we interpret and understand the conduct or behaviour of others. This can apply to individual others or to groups. In commenting on what is taken to be ‘knowledge’ and ‘facts’ in the data that historians deal with, Morton Smith writes, Complete knowledge of the data relevant to any detail is impossible, but complete scepticism as to the general structure of human knowledge is also impossible. The general structure of human knowledge is a colossal complex of successful ignorance. Consequently its nature and limits are defined by our notion of success, which is in turn a function of hope, i.e., of the proposed goals. Thus the knowledge of any society is shaped by its hopes and reflects them. A peaceable and self-contained society will “know” gunpowder as the material used in firecrackers, a belligerent and expansive one, given the same material, will arrive at other knowledge.5 Neither of the societies described from this third person perspective may view themselves as ‘peaceable’ or ‘self-contained’, nor as ‘belligerent’ or ‘expansive’. However, from an observer’s perspective certain practices and values may be recognised as implying hope. Smith’s point is both illuminating and somewhat ambiguous. It is illuminating to the extent that it acts as a reminder of the ways in which hopes are ascribed to societies and other groups, as well as to individuals, in order to understand their orientation, their striving and their practices. 6 What may be ambiguous about the above quote from Smith’s text is a potential double entendre in the use of ‘know’ in relation to gunpowder. It may be objected that if a peaceable society does not know gunpowder is an explosive, and conversely, if a belligerent society does not know gunpowder cracks and illuminates, then it could be said that though knowing a little, it is doubtful whether either society actually knows gunpowder. I think that what Smith is pointing to here is not the issue

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of whether either society knows all that could possibly be known about gunpowder (whatever that amounts to), but rather, he is commenting on what use societies tempered by different hopes will make of the knowledge they gain. Given the many hopes and fears any society has, how will it rank them and deploy the knowledge at its disposal in their respective pursuit and taming? Hopes and fears come in degrees, with strong hopes outweighing mild fears. It will be recalled that the strength of hope may arise from its desiderative or its estimative aspect (see Section 1.2). One may also speak of an evaluative aspect of hope, since many objectives of hope concern what is valued in addition to that which is desired. Hope has a role in agency and a role in expressing meaning in life and human values. As a short-hand way of referring to hopes concerning meaning and value, I shall speak of expressive hopes. It is with respect to expressive hopes in relation to direct and indirect hope(s) that I will develop my account of living in the light of hope.7 Clearly, it is not hopes alone which determine the contours of a given society; fears can also play a part. In one sense, hope and fear stand side by side. Those who fear the displeasure of the gods and hope to placate them, for example, are not bound to attempt to do so by engaging in the practice of ritualised human sacrifice, as the Aztecs did to their god Huitzilopochtli. Other cultures have made offerings of animal sacrifice, fruit or prayer as opposed to the sacrifice of captives of warfare; there is no necessary connection between fearing gods and human sacrifice. Those who fear human enemies and hope to repel or defeat them also have a variety of means at their disposal. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the Great Wall of China was rebuilt in stone. In the Forbidden City itself, the foundations were constructed to a depth of fifteen layers of brick and stone to prevent any enemies tunnelling into the heart of the city from outside its surrounding wall. The fear of invasion, and the hope to avoid it, was met by construction projects on a grand scale in this case. The means of avoiding objects of fear, or quelling fear, are seldom singular, neither are they wholly determined by the nature of the object(s) feared, or the one who fears (or those who fear). In principle, for any fear, a corresponding hope can be framed.8 Strong fears may engender correspondingly strong hopes (directed towards the same objective, though in reverse relation to it). A strong fear of spiders and other insects, for example, may engender a strong hope that one’s journey can be made downriver rather than trekking through the jungle in equatorial climes. For political societies, the stakes are perceived to be high with respect to strong hopes and fears held by their members and those wielding power. Where a country hopes to

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wage a successful war, or a pressure group hopes to influence hearts and minds, it is natural enough to fear that the objective of hope may, in fact, remain unfulfilled. At its simplest, and recalling Spinoza, Descartes and Hume to mind, it could be said that if I fear the sea will be rough for my crossing then, correspondingly, I hope that it will be calm. And vice versa, if I hope to pass a test, then I fear not passing the test. Until the matter is settled, where uncertainty reigns, either hope or fear prevails. Fear is opposite to hope, sharing uncertainty, whereas despair is opposite to hope and is linked with ideas about certainty. There is a significant difference between the complete absence of hope and its absence in particular. The complete absence of all hope is both the absence of direct hope and the absence of indirect hope. In this case, in the absence of both, one would literally subsist in complete hopelessness. 9 The absence of direct hope is the non-existence of a hope, or some set of hopes, with respect to certain circumstances or states of affairs. As regards direct hope, there is a fine but vital distinction to be made between the absence of hope (as non-existence of hope) and not hoping. From a first person perspective, one may perceive something to be a possible objective of hope and yet judge it to be inappropriate in some way. The inappropriateness of the hope may relate primarily to the objective of hope or to the act of hope itself, though typically the two are intertwined. It is possible to hope that a volcano erupts (providing a magnificent spectacle of the forces of nature), for example, but if I know that the eruption will cause death and destruction to those in the path of the lava flow, I may deny myself the hope of viewing its performance (from a safe distance) as I would not hope that the predictable consequences of its eruption would be visited on those in the vicinity.10 Also, one may deny oneself an act of hope if one judges oneself unworthy of the objective, for example, although one believes it is possible that one’s friend will be forgiving, one may judge that one’s act of betrayal discounts one from hoping for forgiveness. Either way, hope is perceived to be possible but is denied adoption by the potential hoper. Hope may also be denied in a different sense. In ordinary language use, in saying that a hope has been denied, one is taken to be saying that a given hope has not been fulfilled. This second sense of a denial of hope, that is, saying of a hope that it has been denied, or that a hope has been in vain, amounts to different ways of expressing the fact that a particular hope is presently unfulfilled. 11 From a first person perspective, a denial of hope of this type is experienced as the awareness, acute or otherwise, of having had an objective of hope.

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3.1.2

Having a goal

In a general sense, hope is built into the very structure of agency for beings capable of developing self-directed activity, yet who do not possess omniscience and omnipotence. To conceive of oneself as having a goal is, in effect, to be oriented towards the world in the light of hope.12 It is to place oneself at a distance from a conceived of, and desired, goal while perceiving a capacity to attain, or to approximate towards, that goal. An objective of hope is no more and no less than a goal proposed by the hoper. From a third person perspective, the attainment of proposed goals cannot be guaranteed any more than the fulfilment of an objective of hope can be guaranteed. In this respect, whichever vocabulary is employed, there is a parallelism between goals and objectives of hope. It is from a first person perspective where noticeable and important differences are to be found. Setting or affirming a goal, anticipating it and pursuing it, all imply the recognition of an objective plus a conception of what counts as successfully fulfilling that objective. So, in one way, hope is linked to the very notion of what counts as success in knowing and doing, since human beings are not omniscient and must therefore set and accept criteria for success and fulfilment internal to aspirations held.13 When it is known that a goal or an objective cannot be attained, then it is pointless to pursue it for its own sake, if, that is, one had hoped for the straight-forward fulfilment of the objective.14 There is, however, a difference between x being known to be impossible and x being believed to be impossible. Where beliefs are at issue, one may consider the facts of the matter as they are presented, and yet still hope. Recalling a type of example from Section 2.1.1.1, if I know a loved one has been injured or killed I cannot hope otherwise, but if I believe it to be so, I can hope to be proved wrong in the event. Even in the case of knowledge, it may not be pointless to pursue a particular goal or an objective as a means to some further end. Take, for example, the defence of a walled city in circumstances of war. The defenders may know that their garrison is woefully inadequate to the task and that most, if not all, will perish. Still, it may be hoped that valiant resistance will have an impact on the acquisitiveness or aggressiveness of the attackers, and on observers. Resistance in the Warsaw ghetto during Second World War, for example, became a beacon of inspiration to resistance against oppression elsewhere, subsequently. On a lesser scale, an individual may think it worth aiming for a goal believed to be barely possible. This is because although aiming to win the race will not guarantee delivery of first place (you rightly believe), nevertheless, it may give you second place, whereas

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aiming to come third is highly unlikely to give you a higher position than that. 15 As regards knowledge, human beings do not have direct access to ‘the ideal swimmer’ or ‘the ideal experiment’. That being the case, the criteria constitutive of success in either case must be internal to a conception of swimming or experimenting. And this in the light of human abilities to engage in these activities under the usual conditions, and not in relation to some inaccessible, scarcely imaginable ideal. Not only is there no direct access to a realm of ideal entities, there seems to be no indirect access either. The notion of Plato’s dialectical ascent to a quasi-Parmenidean heaven, famously expounded in The Republic, and persisting first in theological metaphysics, then to be found ultimately in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, is a notion that makes for a category of unsound hope. Any hope which reduces to a reliance on this Archimidean perspective or ‘God’s eye view’ of the world is conceptually unsound since its fulfilment ultimately relies upon a kind of knowing quite unsuited to a human hoper. 16 Although the structure of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit gives rise to a series of polar oppositions which are transformed in a dialectical synthesis, the entire movement in the process appears to be contained within its origins. The phenomenological observer views the unfolding process retrospectively with the eventual culmination also having been contained within from the beginning. Philosophically, Hegel’s direct comment on hope, under his discussion of the ‘Unhappy Consciousness of Christianity’, can be viewed as applying to his philosophical structure as a whole. This is because where there is secure and complete knowledge, there is no scope for hope. Although a subject situated within an unfolding dialectical process may hope for a variety of particular objectives at each successive stage, the phenomenological observer who attains ‘Absolute Knowing’ knows all. The idea of ‘Absolute Knowing’ contains a necessity completely foreign to hope. Therefore, in the Hegelian dialectic any hoping would be in vain, in principle.17

3.2

Exercising authority

Acting with hope is an intrinsic part of developing responsible agency, that is, autonomy, from a third person perspective. Those who act in hope are presumed to be the authors of their actions. When one aims at a goal, one is self-directed. When one has an end (a terminus), one may be other-directed. 18 Autonomous agency is an important element required in experiencing oneself as a fully-fledged subject whose identity can be shaped by actions of one’s own and others. From a first person

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perspective, the development of autonomy may be shown in the abandonment of a particular hope, for example, despairing of a (persistent) liar keeping successive promises shows that one assesses the performance of the promisor rather than simply accepting the promisor’s view of a possible future. Acting autonomously precludes being unreflectively directed by ‘alien’ authorities, although reflection can endorse critical engagement with ‘alien’ authorities, like the Church, and may affirm some judgements as falling within the limits of reason.19 However, it is not only in institutional settings that the dogmatic authority of others can be encountered. It can be enshrined in political ideology too, however informally its content may be disseminated. Dogmatic authority can also pervade everyday life. This may happen when the views of ‘knowledgeable authorities’ in their spheres infiltrate the structures of folk psychology. An example of this would be the way in which psychoanalytic terms and concepts now populate pre-theoretical discourse (and with it, assumptions), about oneself and others. Increasingly throughout the twentieth century, critical feminist perspectives have been deployed to examine formal and informal knowledge claims which bear upon gender issues in a variety of ways. Nineteenth-century science and medical practice form part of the relevant background to the life and writings of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and both science and medicine have been subject to various critiques. 20 Gilman’s classic short story, The Yellow Wallpaper,21 offers a dramatised critique of the authority structures linking science and medicine, and the somewhat less formal authority of husbands.22 Doctors and husbands frequently exercised ‘knowledgeable authority’ over patients and wives, respectively. Some wives apparently became patients through the singular misfortune of having husbands who were also doctors.23 The malady afflicting Gilman’s central character, Jane, could be cashed out in terms of a conflict between the life she hoped to lead and the life others hoped (for her and for themselves) that she would lead. The previous quote from Smith (see Section 3.1.1) provides us with an example of implicit hope(s) partly reflecting the knowledge that a society acquires and deploys. In such cases, a reasonably orderly fit between hoping and knowing may be observed from a third person perspective. However, it is precisely this descriptive form of implicit hope which is most likely to conflict with the explicit or implicit hope(s) of individual members of a given community.24 Gilman depicts a developing conflict within Jane’s psyche and persona. This can be understood as being generated by a conflict between her individual implicit hope

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and public knowledge. Public knowledge is itself engendered and gendered, partly and implicitly, by authoritative social hope. 25 A monologue of Jane’s near the beginning of the story encapsulates the themes and tensions explored as the story develops; I cite a short section here, John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage. [ . . . ] John is a physician, and perhaps – (I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind) – perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster. You see, he does not believe I am sick! And what can one do? If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is nothing really the matter with one but temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency – what is one to do? My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the same thing. [I] am absolutely forbidden to “work” until I am well again. Personally, I disagree with their ideas. Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good. But what is one to do? I did write for a while in spite of them; but it does exhaust me a good deal – having to be so sly about it, or else meet such heavy opposition. I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus – but John says the very worst thing I can do is think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad. So I will let it alone and talk about the house.26 The themes and tensions concern autonomy and authority. John, as a physician and as a husband (the head of a household), participates in the public realm of civil society. Jane, as a wife, participates in the

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private realm of civil society. John has an authoritative voice in matters domestic and also in the public realm, pertaining to his sphere of competence, medicine. Such authority as Jane is deemed to have is in part wrested from, and in part granted by, John and exercised in the domestic sphere.27 John and Jane are presented as typical of a certain kind of husband and wife, taken to be in no way unusual amongst married couples, as the roles were construed with respect to the institution of marriage during the latter part of the nineteenth century, Gilman’s era. Jane refers to an expectation to be laughed at; the converse of which is an expectation not to be taken seriously. Jane has an obstacle, in the form of John’s authoritative beliefs about the world – in general (i.e. due to his position, John’s voice would be taken to be more authoritative than Jane’s voice by others with decision-making power in the public realm), and with respect to her ‘condition’ in particular. The worldview inherent in this obstacle is compounded by its being shared by her brother. Jane has her own beliefs about her ‘condition’, the ways in which it is possible for her to develop, and how she might live. This is shown by what she asserts directly and what she relates concerning what she tries to do. Jane is striving to write. In her monologue, Jane expresses a desire for congenial work, excitement and change. Underlying this is a desire to be taken seriously as an authority on herself. She confronts an obstacle and strives to overcome it. Jane does not explicitly say that she hopes to become a publicly acknowledged or acclaimed author, but her striving and engagement with a recognised opposition show that she hopes to be taken seriously as a person who has her own beliefs and aspirations for which she is willing to take responsibility.28 In the story, the rest cure recommended for Jane by those charged with taking care of her well-being results in her quarantine in an attic bedroom furnished only with a bed so that there are no stimuli to tire her. This ‘cure’ precipitates madness as she increasingly develops an obsession with the patterned yellow wallpaper of the room, projecting herself into a life within the wallpaper and then attempting to free herself from it. The reader can observe that the character is suspended within a conflict between the life she hopes to lead (implicitly) and a life that authoritative others think she should lead. The consistent denial of her own authority over: (1) her own beliefs and desires and (2) her implicit hope to be taken seriously, plus the withholding of recognition that she has the capacity to take responsibility for her aspiration to write, and for her own well-being, results in a conflict which is ‘resolved’ by Jane’s descent into madness.

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3.2.1

Becoming an authority on oneself

Before continuing, a caveat needs to be entered. At this point, I would draw attention to the even more informal circumstance of one individual accepting and affirming a view of ‘how the world is’ – for no better reason than because it is propounded by another individual whose gender (amongst other things) has traditionally carried the status of ‘authoritative’, especially in the sphere of naming the constituent parts and relations of ‘reality’. To see what is at issue, let us consider autonomy in terms of independence. Autonomy is then seen to be a gradual concept rather than a polar concept because no human being, even of mature age, is absolutely free and independent. There remains some physical and psychological dependence on others. Such independence as any human being has may be won fairly late in life, though a mature age does not guarantee psychological maturity and a fair degree of independence may be wrested from the vagaries of experience by those relatively youthful. However, independence is not something one has from an early age. And such independence as one gains may be renounced. However, I am assuming that despite the best efforts of patriarchy and its heirs (and since autonomy as independence admits of degrees), it is the case that obstacles to the attainment of autonomous thought and action remain less than totally efficacious. Therefore, many women can and do attain a condition of autonomy (even when autonomy is construed as entailing reasoned self-direction). That is, although some ‘autonomous’ choices or acts may turn out to be ‘heteronomous’ on closer inspection, autonomy, in the sense of independence of thought and action, is possible for women, despite some obstacles to its attainment. Hoping to be recognised and treated as an autonomous person is not a common hope which many people would name if asked about the objective of their hope(s). 29 Typical responses to that question would rather include: (1) ‘I’m hoping for rain for the seedlings’, (2) ‘I’m hoping my aunt recovers’ or (3) ‘I’m hoping the peace talks don’t fail’, but (4) ‘I’m hoping to be taken as an autonomous person’, is not the sort of response one expects here.30 Being taken as an autonomous person is typically taken for granted. Some qualification is required to make ‘hoping to be taken as an autonomous person’ an intelligible response, especially in ordinary circumstances. Standardly, ‘persons’ is a term indicating those human beings thought capable of autonomous action, though personhood is a broader concept than that of autonomous agency, and not all persons are agents under all circumstances. However, ceteris paribus, what is common in people is a hope for recognition, shown as having been fulfilled by the individual (or group) being taken

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seriously in the context in which they find themselves striving to participate.31 Also, consider, ‘the patient’, an example I will discuss at greater length in Chapter 5. As a patient, a human being is recognised as requiring a kind of consideration that does not apply to a non-patient. However, part of that consideration is to continue to be treated as a person, even when, or especially when, the patient has a terminal illness and cannot or does not hope for recovery. Hoping to be treated as a person rather than as a redundant bundle of humanity does not cease during illness, nor in facing death. Although hoping to be taken as an autonomous agent sounds odd to the modern or non-philosophical ear, ‘hoping to be taken seriously’ does not. I read Gilman’s novel through the lens of hope because to the reader, the perspectives and motivations of the central characters in the text represent a clash between respective implicit hopes, from a third person perspective. Where interchanges between human beings are concerned, the import of implicit hope, through interpretation and understood retrospectively, becomes visible. In the voices given to the characters, they do not speak explicitly of hope, yet hope denied emanates from their failure to communicate as two independent equally consenting adults. The reasons for this failure are various, but they centre on the notions of authority and autonomy, interlaced by hope. I have made the point that Jane’s monologue shows that she has a willingness to take responsibility for herself. However, it may also be claimed that caring for someone is conceptually tied to taking responsibility for her or him, and that this very often entails a conflict when the person cared for takes a course which the carer thinks wilful or disastrous. Further, it may be claimed that this sort of conflict is unavoidable in any human world. I acknowledge this, and it is easily seen in cases between parents and children, for example, when adolescents may embark on courses of action that responsible parents cannot endorse. In caring for the sick also, patients may insist on disregarding medical or carer advice, preferring to give a higher priority to some other need, value or desire. But, what is at issue between John and Jane is precisely what kind of responsibility and care-taking is appropriate between supposedly consenting adults.32 Gilman’s own experience underpins the chronicle of events concerning her central character, in part.33 Gilman herself was institutionalised and subjected to a rest-cure regime under the supervision of one of the foremost medical authorities of her day.34 However, she survived, made a second marriage and authored reference works as well as literature. The point here is not one about the minutiae of individual experience

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but what this shows about the structures within which experience is interpreted. From the fact that Gilman wrote a number of other works of fiction, in addition to reference works, it can reasonably be inferred that Gilman herself had hoped, at some point, to become a writer. However, given the ‘scientific’ or ‘medical’ knowledge of womanly nature then, and the legal status of women, it would come as no surprise (to us) to find that she had also hoped to be taken seriously in the public sphere. Today, hoping to become a writer would represent neither a dim and distant, nor a monumental, hope for a woman as a woman. And ‘hoping to be taken as an autonomous person’ has a wry connotation of history, a history sufficiently historical to wear such a complexion (for us). 3.2.2

Authority and autonomy

The everyday world of gendered beings has been transformed, in part by the activities of those who were spurred on by their hope for such changes as eventually followed. The socio-political changes which have taken place in Western countries during the twentieth century attest to a widespread recognition of the validity of feminist critiques concerning the injustice of human relations, both private and public, being decided on the issue of gender, as was prevalent in nineteenth-century practices and values.35 The scenario presented by Gilman in her novel, and the reality of social relations which women and men strove to change, both reflect a point which need not be thought only gender specific, nor due to gender difference alone. That is, in human relations, wherever an asymmetry of any sort has been brought about, be it a gender difference, a difference in skin colour or a difference in wealth, the removal of any resulting inequality is assisted by those disadvantaged hoping (with agent- or mutual-orchestrated hope) for change; otherwise, typically, the disadvantage will remain. It should be noted that an asymmetry does not necessarily entail a disadvantage, though it is an empirical fact that many asymmetries between people do result in various advantages and disadvantages accruing to those on either side of a divide, as various contexts throughout history have shown. What one can hope for because of reality will be constrained, in part, by the ‘facts of the matter’ as constituted by knowledgeable authorities of the day.36 The lives of individuals or groups may be shaped positively or negatively by such hopes, though hopes because of reality will not engender social transformation because they will be tapered to that reality. They will tend to perpetuate the status quo.37 However, in hoping against hope, one anticipates the transformation of oneself or of one’s

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environment. A rebellious woman, for example, who hopes to make some man a good wife may find herself hoping against hope that she will do so. However, from a social perspective, hoping against hope, that is, hoping in spite of reality, can affirm a relation between hope and justice where one recognises a situation for what it is while retaining hope because it ought not be (what it is).38 In such cases, hope may not only function as a comparison or evaluation (in terms of individual subjective preferences or a group’s preferences), but also or instead, as a moral evaluation on the present as against the future.39 The present need not be understood as entirely negated by such a moral judgement, but can be understood to be rendered provisional by it. 40 The present is affirmed, with the proviso that change is both possible and desirable. Thus the future is conceived of as open to the possibility of change or moral improvement.41 To hope against hope is to refuse to capitulate to present reality. Hoping against hope, in this way, may contribute to personal autonomy and offer social critique. Throughout this section there have been two main forms of authority intertwined in discussion. The first is most easily identified as the authority that comes with having power over someone. Before women had legally recognised independent property rights, for example, fathers, brothers and husbands acted on their behalf, for good or ill. And today, although citizens have some protections in law, the police force is empowered with a certain authority to stop, question and search those whom they have reason to suspect of involvement in criminal activity. The power upon which the exercise of some authority rests may not be legally or socially sanctioned, that is, a bully may acquire authority over his/her victim. Thus a power-based authority which yields an ability to coerce may be recognised as rightful or as unrightful. The second form of authority is that which stems from knowledge. One may be, or be taken to be, a knowledgeable authority in some sphere, be it medicine, the art of warfare or in culinary matters. Then, as expert, one may expect to be consulted on relevant matters. Typically, one’s advice or response will be esteemed. Being a knowledgeable authority is a condition or position which can benefit others or which can be abused and used to others’ disadvantage, if that is, one hopes to further one’s own position at others’ expense. There is a third form of authority which is distinct from power-based authority and authority based on knowledge (or skill). It is a kind of authority often associated with knowledgeable authority. This is an authority that a person may acquire on the basis of others’ regard for her/his personal qualities or achievements, especially where these

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qualities pertain to what is indicated under the heading ‘strength of character’, or achievements involving an overcoming of difficulties or hardship. This kind of authority is a respectful authority. Being considered authoritative through gaining the respect of others means that others would typically be willing to follow one’s example or advice. Gaining authority on the basis of respect contributes to what is required for a person to be a good parent, sibling, or spouse, or a good police officer, or an expert who deals fairly with others. Authority based on respect is a complement to real knowledgeable authority. 42 What a hoper perceives as possible will depend in part on what she takes to be authoritative, and in what way. In part, acting autonomously consists in weighing the relative merits and claims of different forms of authority and deciding upon a considered course of action. As has been seen, being goal-oriented through having an objective of hope is conducive to responsible action. Also, assessing forms of authority so as to determine possible objectives of hope contributes to responsible action. There is an interplay between hope and forms of authority which has a significant bearing on the degree of autonomy, as independence, that one may win for oneself.

3.3

Commitment: projects and persons

The notion of commitment is deeply rooted in our thinking about agency in a number of different ways. However, I will restrict myself to considering those forms of commitment that are explicitly made by individuals to projects, to a group or within a group and to other individuals, in hope. Within this set of commitments alone there are various ways in which the commitments of hope generate diverse responsibilities. This should not be surprising as commitment and responsibility are conceptually related. Indeed, one cannot understand the notion of commitment without understanding that commitment entails responsibility. As in the previous section, I will focus on the act of hope rather than the objective of hope. However, now I will be concerned with the relationship between first and second person perspectives rather than the shift between first and third person perspectives. This will bring mutual-orchestrated and other-orchestrated hope to the foreground as opposed to agent-orchestrated hope. Through outlining some cases, I will characterise what occurs when one person places her or his hope in another. It is the active placing of one’s hope in another that reveals

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something of the axiological aspect of hope. The relationship between first and second person perspectives is exemplified paradigmatically in interpersonal relationships where notions of intimacy, care and concern are at stake. Along with responsibility, care and concern belong to an ecology of hope, that is, though not necessarily connected, they are notions typically found in the same vicinity and sharing conditions for sustenance or growth. First, I will make some brief remarks on agent-orchestrated hope before proceeding to a fuller discussion of some aspects of placing one’s hope in another. Then, secondly, after considering mutual-orchestrated hope, I thirdly discuss marriage and marrying in hope to elucidate the importance of a second person perspective in hope. Placing one’s hope in another may not be the most common form of hope orchestration but it is certainly a significant form of hope, as regards the nature and quality of one’s relation to others. Briefly, to consider oneself an agent, as opposed to a mere plaything of fate, one must take oneself to have some freedom from which to intervene in a causally ordered world.43 On this basis, an agent perceives herself able to initiate projects and actions in the world for which she holds herself responsible, and for which she expects others also to hold her responsible. Further, if one is committed to a project or an action, then one is responsible for the means adopted to develop and pursue the project, or for the performance of the action(s). Hoping then, with agent-orchestrated hope, leads to actions pursuant to the fulfilment of hope’s objective for which the agent bears responsibility. Where one’s project is complex, is extended over time and necessarily involves the participation of others, responsibilities are incurred to others as well as for the objective adopted and the means employed to fulfil it. 3.3.1

Inviting and making a commitment

In mutual-orchestrated hope a commitment is made. I place my hope in you and you place your hope in me. In mutual-orchestrated hope a provisional ‘we’ is created. Each of us recognises that although able to contribute to the fulfilment of our hope, none of us is able to effect its fulfilment unaided. When we hope in each other, reciprocally, we make a commitment to each other in addition to that made to our shared objective of hope. When individuals participate in mutual-orchestrated hope, they consider themselves united by a common bond which contributes to the identity of the ‘we’ created. Acting in mutual-orchestrated hope is one way of developing the shared identity required for solidarity with others. In fact, it is in the arena of political activity where solidarity

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is at a premium that examples of mutual-orchestrated hope are most evident. In the political arena, hopes may be shared by those in political parties or associations long established within the political structures and institutions of a given community. Equally, mutual-orchestrated hope among newcomers or the disenchanted may forge new alliances or identities. However, not all mutual-orchestrated hopes are political hopes. In fact, mutual-orchestrated hopes may be oriented away from participation in regional, national or international politics, especially if those who so hope have a religious orientation. Mutual-orchestrated hope with a religious orientation may be focused on other-worldly objectives of hope rather than this-worldly objectives. Differently again, one may hope to influence and alter currently widespread farming practices. One way of doing this may be through forming an organisation with like-minded others to disseminate information and develop alternative techniques. The possible applications for the practice of mutualorchestrated hope are quite diverse. However, it should be noted that the fact that one makes a commitment by one’s participation does not of itself determine the strength of one’s commitment, though it does indicate a degree of responsibility towards others involved, and for whatever is the objective of hope. Mutual-orchestrated hope typically results in individuals working together in a cooperative and coordinated way. Other-orchestrated hope differs considerably from mutual-orchestrated hope, particularly with respect to the commitment to joint action in mutual-orchestrated hope. Let us ask when other-orchestrated hope is called upon. Primarily, other-orchestrated hope is called upon when assistance of some sort is needed. One may need help for oneself directly, as in cases when people have need of emergency services like the ambulance and fire services. One may also place one’s hope in the response of these services for others whom one wishes to aid but cannot. Not all needs for assistance, and hopes that the needs will be met, are from those in desperate or dramatic circumstances. When one places one’s hope in such formally constituted services, one is hoping for a swift and professional response to remedy a situation of some concern. The case is different between one individual and another, especially when the individual in whom one places one’s hope does not represent an organisation, like the police, or a practice, like the law. Individuals in whom one hopes may have no special training or expertise relevant to the assistance they are called upon to give. Typically, one places one’s hope in one’s family or friends. I will give examples of this in the second person singular, bearing in mind that what is said is easily transferable

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to the second person plural. Amongst the things I may hope when I place my hope in you are: (1) that you will support me in some way or (2) that you will avenge me or (3) that you will act in my stead. When I place my hope in you, you become my hope. However, this does not necessarily entail that you will affirm being my hope. When I place my hope in you, I do so in the belief that you can aid me, and that you may render assistance. Whether or not you actually do so is not within my control. If it were, I would expect assistance or take its provision for granted, rather than hope for it. If you respond positively, you show a commitment to me and to my objective. If you offer your support, you may act so as to enable me to act for myself subsequently, or you may act with me initially. If you avenge me, you act on your own behalf although you take a stand on an issue, or over an event, in my favour. If you act in my stead, you put yourself in my place and perform that which I cannot carry out for myself. In each of these ways you stand in a different relation to me as regards my agency and your own, but in all of them you make a commitment to me and my objective, for which you assume some responsibility. Addressing another in hope, especially in placing one’s hope in another, as when ‘I hope in you’, is like issuing an invitation. In issuing an invitation one is opening oneself up to another person or persons. And, what is of most interest in the issuing of an invitation is the other person’s response. When I place my hope in you, I invite, but do not demand, your participation in my objective. In hoping in another, one leaves oneself open to the possibility that one’s invitation will be refused. Because of this, placing one’s hope in another can be seen as a genuinely other-regarding way of regarding another human being. Hoping in another carries an invitation rather than an explicit or tacit demand. To use a medieval metaphor, placing one’s hope in another can be thought of as laying down one’s arms (shield and sword), when meeting and addressing another human being face to face. Hoping in another is like letting down one’s guard. It is adopting a stance which invites cooperation and hence indicates a desired avoidance of hostility. A certain strength is required to meet others in this way and proffer the invitation, so it is no surprise to find that courage is a friend of hope. Whether one invites others to share in one’s objective of hope through mutual-orchestrated hope, or one admits one’s dependence on others through inviting them to render assistance, one must overcome any fear of rejection, despite its present and real possibility. This is one of the ways in which courage can be seen to be an inhabitant in an ecology of thinking about hope.

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3.3.2

Keeping a commitment alive

One of the paradigmatic instances of commitment is oath-taking whether it is in swearing fealty to a monarch or in the commitment expressed in partaking of marriage vows. Although the act of marriage occurs at a particular point in time, the vows of marriage are made for life, in principle. Now I will turn to the role of hope in keeping the major commitments of marriage alive in daily life. Hope does not have a place in fairy-tale endings. In the romantic world of princes and princesses we know the couple live happily ever after. Cinderella and Prince Charming are destined for happiness. In the fairy tale, the marriage brings a kind of closure. There is an end, and no doubt, hence, no role for hope. However, marriage outside of story books makes a lively topic for the study of hope and autonomous agency. Marriage provides a very good example of the way in which hope plays an internal role in determining what is perceived as working in life projects undertaken by human beings. In contemporary British society, the hopes and expectations surrounding marriage are very different from those attaching to marriage in Gilman’s era. Despite many socio-economic and legal changes affecting women and men throughout the twentieth century, marriage continues to be viewed as highly significant in personal and social terms, irrespective of whether one hopes to embrace it or avoid it. The ideal of marriage in my own culture, from which I speak, from a first person particular case, consists in the notion of love preceding marriage and being prolonged throughout it, encapsulating a transformation from romantic love into its deeper and more enduring family relation.44 In the first instance I will briefly summarise my working notion of an ideal marriage; it is a relationship between two people, a partnership committed to the mutual good of each particular person involved.45 To some this may seem too brief and abstract to distinguish marriage from other forms of beneficial social relations, being couched in terms reminiscent of a ‘mutual benevolent society’, or be altogether too contractual in tone. Although it may seem odd, I will not speak of love as a necessary precursor to an ideal marriage, partly because love itself is a polymorphous phenomenon whose conceptualisation is much contested. 46 Also, writing love into marriage as a precondition for an ideal marriage seems to display a cultural bias. In my own culture it is initially romantic love that typically propels people into marriage, so it becomes thought of as a structural feature entailed in marriage, or as that upon which marriage is based. This view seems to marginalise at the outset marriages based on other premisses and subordinates them

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in a hierarchy of marriage kinds which can be said to be approximating a conceived of ideal. Let us consider ideas about an arranged marriage. Plausibly, an arranged marriage is, in principle, a union of two people made on the basis of combined personal and family interest. In an arranged marriage the partners are committed to the good of each other and their extended family, in principle. It is expected that care and respect will develop, nurtured by their shared endeavours and concerns.47 This briefly sums up various aspects of an ideal arranged marriage. What is spoken of under the name of love today may historically have been comprehended by speaking of respect. It was a matter of social convention, for example, that aristocratic noblemen and later members of the nouveau riche would marry to unite the interests of their respective families and treat their spouses respectfully. Alternatively, it may have been the case that respect was due to one’s spouse while love was one’s lover’s due. And this is so too, if arranged marriages are thought of as belonging to a culture other than one’s own, instead of as historical. What is betokened by love in one culture may be betokened by respect in another. Or, there may be further differences which are otherwise than those mentioned here. There is no a priori notion which will discriminate amongst values embedded in practices, such as to indicate the scope and meaning of terms. The fact that some actual arranged marriages do not conform to this happy picture is no argument against excluding this form of marriage from the possibility of approximating to a more abstract conception of an ideal marriage. A cursory glance at contemporary divorce statistics will confirm that love-based marriages do not necessarily belong to the class of durable goods, and often do not conform to, or approximate nearly, their contemporary cultural ideal. Feminist analyses of marriage, whether radical or libertarian, have tended to view marriage in Western societies as a form of patriarchal oppression; as a means of controlling women for male sexual access. 48 Feminists of various persuasions differ in the extent to which they perceive women to be, if at all, in the thrall of a female sexual nature. And feminists with differing perspectives disagree on the extent to which it is possible, if at all, for women to liberate themselves from discourses and lives pervaded by patriarchal notions and relations of power and dominance. Some radical feminists think that if women had had a free choice then many would have chosen not to marry and would have preferred celibacy or lesbianism to heterosexual monogamy for life. On the other hand, some libertarian feminists think that if women had had a free choice then many would have chosen a succession of lovers, or

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multiple lovers, rather than a monogamous heterosexual life. From either perspective, marriage is seen as coercive, the implication being that if women had had a free choice that was substantive, rather than formal, then many would have opted for other forms of liaison, association and relationships with a variety of others.49 In contrast to this view of marriage, in The Human Embrace,50 Ronald Hall writes of marriage from a neo-Kierkegaardian perspective. Adopting an existential stance, Hall argues that a true marriage depends on a present and real possibility of divorce. Two advantages are supposed to accrue from this. Firstly, if divorce is a real possibility, and is seen as a real possibility, then one lives in awareness of contingency and not in one or another form of what he terms ‘refusal’ of the human condition, like the ethical life or the aesthetic life (following Kierkegaard). 51 Secondly, this existential sensitivity to the human condition provides a basis from which to address one’s marriage partner as a true partner and not a placeholder. She or he is present in her or his utter particularity, for example, Barbie is married to Ken, not to Tom, Dick or Harry. If the commitment were to the marriage rather than the person, then the implication is that Tom, Dick or Harry would be equally acceptable as Ken to Barbie. Hall’s point, which amounts to an existential requirement to address one’s marriage partner as ‘you’ as opposed to ‘she’, ‘he’, or ‘it’, is the stronger point emerging from his account of marriage. It is Hall’s notion of real possibility that can be called into question with respect to hope. An argument is made for the conceptual inclusion of the real possibility of divorce, perpetually annulled by an existential commitment. He argues that removing the real possibility of divorce precludes a marriage from being lived in existential commitment as a false sense of security is engendered and partners relapse into viewing each other from a third person perspective. Hall gives film and literary examples in which characters marry, divorce and then remarry. 52 In some instances the marriage, divorce and remarriage are public, legal processes involving either remarriage to the original partner, or an existentially real second marriage to another partner. In some instances the marriage, divorce, remarriage is metaphorically signified rather than its taking place as a public, legal event. One is to understand this process, not in terms of shared public legal social practices, but in the light of understanding the meaning of the terms embodied in the manner of one person’s addressing another, ‘I and you’. A marriage is the relationship par excellence in which one places one’s hope in another. There is a certain appeal in Hall’s account of an existentially faithful marriage, but there is also a worry. One main point of an existential perspective is

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that it attempts to capture what is really possible in existence. The worry depends on how literally one interprets what is really possible. Let us return to the idea of arranged marriages and their contexts. If we suppose that in a context supporting arranged marriages there is no legal or socially sanctioned practice of divorce, does this mean that there can be no way of expressing the kind of commitment of which Hall speaks? Not necessarily. For the partners for whom there is no actual divorce, their commitment can be affirmed counterfactually in the thought that ‘if it were possible to divorce, then I would remain in the marriage’. Conversely, dissent may be expressed in this form also, as, ‘if it were possible to divorce, then I would so do’. However, if one is addressing real people, as opposed to existentially idealised human beings, the question of actual divorce is problematic in two ways. Firstly, on a socio-political level, if there were no legal divorce practice, then no marriage in that society as a whole could be conceived of as counting as an existentially faithful marriage, however committed to each other the partners may perceive themselves to be in their own terms. 53 Secondly, lack of divorce practice, or one so circumscribed as to make it inaccessible to women, though possible for men to initiate, would mean that women had formal access to divorce but no substantive or real access, resulting in their being second class existential persons in one sense and less than autonomous in another.54 Imagine a parallel case in the public, political realm; all subjects have a right to vote, and (a) men vote in their daily place of work, (b) women vote every alternate election depending upon their date of birth (though record keeping is inaccurate), (c) women must travel to appointed polling centres (though transport is poor and women generally have no independent financial resources), (d) the polling stations are manned for two hours on polling day and (e) the ballot papers are written in a second language (and women are largely uneducated). I know of no actual place where these specific conditions prevail, but they are simply meant to be representative of obstacles potentially affecting the effectiveness of one’s formal possibilities. In an ideal existential world the woman who cannot actually vote can say, ‘if I could vote, then I would vote (for A)’, or she may say, ‘if I could vote, I would not vote’, and from an existential perspective this counts as a real possibility giving endorsement to a state of affairs. Many a suffragette would be perplexed by how unreal real can be! From an existential perspective one can infer a faithful commitment to a marriage or to political structures by someone’s saying that they would not abandon a partner or process if they could. However, if they would perform that act of

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abandonment, but cannot, the existentialist perspective is hardly adequate to the case. A question of how real is a real possibility is one that is of considerable interest to a would-be hoper. It would seem, prima facie, that if divorce were viewed as a present and real possibility then there would be a continuous role for hope in annulling this real possibility. One may have got married and attained to the condition of an existentially faithful marriage. However, staying married and retaining that state is a different issue. Where there is an ever-present prospect of relapse into viewing each other from a third person perspective, there may persist a hope to avoid it, or to recover from it if it occurs. As we have seen from previous discussions, hopers are interested in paying attention to the particularity of present contexts and circumstances so that the objectives of hope and the hoper’s efficacious agency will not be denied. Hoping for the maintenance of a present state of affairs is different from hoping for a future objective. One could hope for world peace, even if one thinks it will not come in one’s own lifetime. However, one cannot hope to remain married in an existentially faithful way, or in any other way, in anything but one’s own lifetime. Being able to exercise agency in marriage requires both the conceptual and the real possibility of divorce. Although I have some doubts about a number of implications following from questioning how real is a real possibility, I think there is little doubt that a marriage conforming to the picture presented by Hall, where one is addressed as the person one is, and treated with care and concern, contains ingredients central to a marriage worth hoping for.

3.4

Summary

In this chapter, I have given an account of the relationship between hope and agency from first and third person perspectives, and from first and second person perspectives. In the first two parts of this chapter, I have been primarily concerned with the shift between a first and a third person perspective when we act as agents ourselves and when we seek to understand the actions of others. Because hoping is a goaloriented activity, ascribing hopes to others helps us make sense of the human conduct we observe and which we take to be purposive, for the most part. I have claimed that at a basic level of conceiving of purposive action for beings like ourselves, that is, humans subject to conditions of finitude, hoping enters the arena of action implicitly, from a third person perspective.

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I have argued that in interpreting the circumstances of Gilman’s short story, it is possible and instructive to read this fictionalised account of the experience of struggling to overcome obstacles to moral, social and legal recognition through the lens of hope, the hope (ultimately) to be taken seriously as an authority on oneself. In so doing I have identified three forms of authority affecting acts and objectives of hope. Thinking about experience through the lens of hope is one way of perceiving intelligibility and narrative unity. 55 The third part of this chapter has been devoted to examining ways in which hope bears upon relations of agency with the focus having been placed upon hoping from first and second person perspectives. Although a third person perspective on hope has a useful place in our considerations, I think the primary significance of hope is hope from first and second person perspectives, jointly. That is, although as in the case of belief, it is a third person perspective ‘wearing the trousers’, with hope it is first and second person perspectives ‘sharing the trousers’. Also, in this chapter, I have tried to show that the relationship between hope and agency is neither simple nor direct by considering the complex case of marriage: in ideal and real form. Here it can be seen that human hopes may be constrained by a possibility other than conceptual possibility. The difference between a real possibility and a conceptual possibility is an important one for any would-be hoper to grasp. In some base level case, it is one’s beliefs about reality, and one’s actions thereupon, that show one’s rationality. However, it is necessary for one’s hopes to outstrip one’s beliefs about present reality, and possible that pursuit of one’s hopes will change reality. Thus, in principle, hope need never be exhausted by reality, from a reasonable point of view.

4 Meaning in Life: Confronted by Suffering

It may be said that one does not become uniquely human unless and until one confronts the fact of one’s mortality. For present purposes, I will assume that if this is indeed necessary, then such a confrontation will be deemed to have been successfully negotiated. I will assume that the beings I begin with are already human beings, in this sense. The question I will then pose concerns what kind of difference hope makes to human beings who suffer various trials; trials that are inflicted by people upon other persons. Suffering inflicted by one human being upon another diminishes or destroys trust and tempts the one who suffers to despair. Suffering inflicted may bring the spectre of one’s death into view. There is physical death, and there is the possibility of what might be termed ‘social’ or ‘psychological’ death.1 Physical death includes social or psychological death, but not vice versa. In this chapter, I consider how facing death in either or both ways, at the hands of another, impacts on the relationship between hope and trust. In doing so I draw on and expand notions and ideas situated at the margins of previous chapters. When under duress, one’s most cherished values may assume prominence in orienting thinking and guiding action. When under duress, one’s scope for effective action may be severely restricted. In such circumstances expressive hope and indirect hope may be foregrounded in one’s response to one’s situation. It is this kind of context, and the relationship between hope, trust, despair and hopelessness, that I investigate below. In harsh circumstances, the effects of one’s hope on a person’s survival, continuity or development are not necessarily unambiguously positive. However, I argue that while direct hope may produce negative consequences for an agent (and others affected by her), indirect hope contributes to remaining oneself; one continues, albeit altered, rather than abandoning oneself. 93

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First, I begin with a brief reminder of the terms, expressive hope and indirect hope. Then I outline what I mean by good hope and I consider the effect of hope on character and of character on objectives of hope. Secondly, I discuss differing perspectives on giving and finding hope. In certain circumstances, ‘finding’ hope may be experienced as akin to having been given a gift. Thirdly, I address the relationship between hope and trust, and despair and hopelessness, in circumstances of suffering inflicted by human hand or design. This is done through a discussion of torture and rape. I refer to selected writings from some survivors of the Holocaust and to some contemporary theoretical literature on sexual abuse from other disciplines as well as literature from a philosophical perspective. My primary focus in this chapter is on acts of hope rather than on objectives of hope. When the prospects for changing one’s situation are minimal, or entirely absent, persisting in hope may contribute to retaining one’s autonomy in terms of independence of thought and to remaining oneself.

4.1

Aspects of hope; aspects of character

What one values reflects upon one’s character and one’s character partially determines what one values. What one hopes for (the objective of hope) reflects on character and values, and that one hopes (the act of hope) reflects on one’s character, primarily. I use the term expressive hope as a short-hand way of referring to hopes concerning values and meaning in life. Hope that is expressive is intentional in the ordinary phenomenological sense in which I have used the term, direct hope, thus far. There is an aspect of hope, however, which I have termed indirect hope. I intend the term, indirect hope, to be understood in a very literal way. Indirect hope has some direction as opposed to no direction. Indirect hope is not like objectless anxiety, for example, but rather, indirect hope is intentional, though its objective may be thought of as taking a general form. Examples of indirect hopes would be the hope for a good life, the hope to endeavour, or the hope to endure. Indirect hope is a base level hope from which more focused and particular hopes emerge in the pursuit of good lives, in the implementation of endeavour and in the tenacity required to endure. One may abandon a particular direct hope, or a direct hope which orchestrates a subsidiary set of hopes, without giving up hope per se. Indirect hope is what remains when particular hopes are abandoned or denied. Amongst the most important, direct hopes must rank the hopes for good health and self-understanding because without a sufficient degree

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of each of these it becomes increasingly difficult to exercise agency. In Facing Evil, John Kekes opens his book with Kant’s question ‘What may I hope?’ and claims that the general object of hope is a good life. 2 This seems quite an appropriate way of characterising indirect hope. As Kekes notes, what stands between having hope and the fulfilment of its objective is contingency and vulnerability. These are the very conditions that agents cannot afford to ignore if they would maximise the success of their endeavours. What Kekes emphasises throughout his book is the lesson to be learned from tragedy that no matter how virtuous one may be, one may not, even in the very long run, be happy. It is precisely that lack of any kind of moral, prudential or existential guarantee that gives hope its potency both in motivating and sustaining agency and in expressing values and engendering meaning. The term good hope, on the other hand, is employed to suggest characteristics of the effect(s) of hope on the hoper and those in her or his vicinity. Good hope has a wholesome quality. And good hope is the kind of hope that sustains persons suffering various types of trial in a manner which is conducive to a positive outcome from that trial. 3 The term, good hope, is an epithet a hoper may apply to her own hope or to hope that she perceives as coming to her from outside.4 This may be from another individual or from the general features of a given situation. The agent recognises this hope as contributing to her good and she may do so before any particular hope is fulfilled or denied, focusing on a perceived quality of hope as opposed to a particular hope and its objective as such. The notion of good hope most properly belongs to indirect hope rather than direct hopes with particular objectives. Good hope is that which sustains persons against adversity, even if adversity is not ultimately victoriously overcome. In non-philosophical discourse, the idea of good hope is typically associated with good consequences in various spheres (despite the fact of empirical psychology that some human beings appear to hope for evil things or for things which result in the perpetration of evil). In the Greek myth about Pandora, hope is cast as a counter to all manner of ills. In Christian orthodoxy, hope is conceived of as a theological virtue, as I have previously noted with respect to St Thomas Aquinas.5 Francis Bacon writes about the hope of a better world under the title of Advancement of Learning and New Atlantis.6 Conceptions of a better world are not entirely unintelligible without reference to hope, though thinking about realising a better world requires thoughts of hope. That is, we cannot get from here to there (utopia), without hope.7 More recently, Peter Medawar has written under the title The Hope of Progress8

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commenting on the relationship between scientific thinking and its appropriate place in human development and social progress. It seems that, typically, whither goes hope, there is some associated idea of some type of good. Not infrequently the associated idea of good is not merely subjective, that is, it is not exclusively aligned with the needs, interests or wants of a particular subject alone. Rather, the associated notion of good is conceived of as a universal good, like hopes for a world free from hunger, exploitation or violence; a world in which certain diseases are eradicated or prevented. Minimally, a hoper hopes for that which she judges to be subjectively good, and typically hopes for that which she judges to be objectively good.9 4.1.1

Temperament and hope

Let us now consider how temperament and hopes reflect on each other. Someone, for example, with an unsympathetic temperament who routinely hopes for the disadvantage or distress of others would typically be judged a mean person. Someone who hoped for the suffering or elimination of a rival in business or love would be judged not mean, but callous. Hoping evil will befall a rival may be blameworthy though it is understandable through the vices of envy and jealousy. Hoping for the suffering or elimination of innocent others, where one has no stake, in any kind of contest betrays a character implicitly challenging the bonds of a moral community. Such hopes may be thought of as devilish hopes. If the devil were like a man, he too would be motivated by hope, but for devilish things. This extreme may not be all that we would wish to mark under this label. In Section 4.4, I refer to the devilry of acts of rape. What prompts this description is the nature of the regard which a perpetrator of such acts typically displays towards his victim(s). Torture too, whether part of a system, or wanton, episodic and idiosyncratic, seems to have a devilish quality. As Jean Améry, an inmate of Auschwitz recounted, suffering is both physical and social. Both of these acts fall in the class of simple evils as explicated by Kekes. 10 I have stressed some negative objectives of hope in beginning this section to draw attention to this possibility, partly because hope is typically associated with various conceptions of good, as noted above. In contradistinction to negative objectives of hope, objectives which would benefit others, if fulfilled, would likely stem from a kindly temperament and reflect generosity of character. These hopes may be for the good of particular others, or aimed at a wide population. The hopes which have motivated people like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King in the past, and Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi in

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recent years, reflect the ways in which hope can motivate people in the pursuit of justice and political freedom. Hopes may also benefit particular others who would be the effective agents of the fulfilment of an objective of hope, as well as the recipient of that good. Imagine a friend or relative confronted by adversity. Knowing of the temperament of another can affect the placing of one’s hope in another for the other. If I hope in you for you, then it may be with respect to some objective that I believe is within your power to bring about which may ultimately depend upon personal qualities you have, for example, I know of your tenacity and I hope you will succeed in your endeavour. Also directly concerning temperament and character, I know of your courage and I hope you will overcome your present adversity. It should be noted, however, that I can only place my hope in you for you if I believe the objective of hope is one you would affirm for yourself. 11 Tenacity is shown in expressive hope and vice versa. If one holds an expressive hope, then one does not accede to failure at the earliest opportunity. Hope is not a phenomenon of the moment. It is a response in the present, both to the present and towards the future, concerning the kind of world anticipated, and relations therein. Expressive hopes that are direct may ultimately lead a tenacious agent into dire straits. That is one point of Kekes’ reminder of the lesson of tragedy. However, in thinking about the survival or persistence of a person, tenacity may be the means through which indirect hope itself is expressed. As regards objectives of hope, if after fair trial, one judges one’s project to be in vain, and one despairs of that project (whether it primarily involves the realisation of a state of affairs, or aims a certain quality of relationship with another), then one is responsible for that evaluation culminating in a judgement (which itself often prompts subsequent action). If mutual-orchestrated hope and affirming an other-orchestrated hope are both matters of making a commitment to a person, or persons,12 then despairing of someone can be viewed as a giving up on that person, or persons; a giving up with ethical implications, potentially. However, it is true that even when someone is despaired of, this may be in ways that do not reflect ethical concerns. A teacher, for example, may despair of a recalcitrant student developing a passion for her subject, but this is not an ethical matter. On the other hand, the teacher may despair of a truculent student behaving courteously to others, and this is much more a matter of character and conduct which may be subject to moral evaluation. While despairing of the conduct of A, one may continue to hope that A may be rehabilitated in the relevant way (depending on the nature of the conduct and the perceived reasons for,

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or causes of, such conduct). Despairing of A as such proclaims that one judges A to be irredeemable. For the most part, ethical despairings of A typically occur in the sphere of personal relationships, some aspects of which were discussed in Sections 2.2.9, 3.2 and 3.3. 4.1.2

Self-control and control of hope

A matter of central concern in developing excellences of character like the virtues is the matter of self-control. If self-control goes awry, or is lacking, then attaining the golden mean, for example, between rashness and cowardice to exemplify courage, will be inordinately difficult, if not impossible.13 In Section 3.2, I discussed authority and autonomy in terms of relative independence from others and control over oneself. Whether one has control over oneself, and who has control over whomsoever and why, are matters bearing upon ethical thinking. In ‘The Value of Hope’, Luc Bovens refers to what he perceives as an apparent lack of a person’s control over their own hopes – and it is clear that he does not refer simply to one’s own control over the likelihood of the fulfilment of objectives of hope in agent-orchestrated hope. Bovens states that ‘Just like our beliefs and desires, our hopes are seldom under our direct control’14 though he nevertheless seems to think that, Even if direct control over our hopes is limited, our inquiry is still worthwhile in that it will inform us in how far to foster and discourage hopes in our children and how to adjust our own hopes through roundabout strategies of character planning.15 It is an open question whether one can give a sensible response to the matter of hope as expressed above, especially if one would be a responsible parent. Surely, whether hopes are to be fostered or discouraged in our children depends on what kinds of objectives of hope are at issue. With equanimity or pleasure I may foster my child’s hope to ride a pony, for example, though not her hope of riding a bull. Equally, I may foster my child’s hope to become wealthy through legal entrepreneurship, but not through gambling. The idea of fostering unspecific hope may lead to glory, accidentally, but it could equally well lead to disaster. Even if the outcome were positive, the projected success rate must be low if there is little control over hope, after all. While I would agree that the origination of any given person’s particular objective of hope is not always a matter of direct control, I would not agree that hoping is seldom under our direct control, either in origination, or once present. In support of his view, Bovens cites such expressions as

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‘I could not bring myself to hope that . . .’ and ‘I could not stop hoping that . . .’.16 While one may hear such expressions on occasion, it is not clear to what extent they are representative, and one is also perfectly familiar with cases where x is desired and thought possible, but x is not an objective of hope, suggesting that one is not precipitated into hope by desire, although desire is a constitutive part of hope. Desire is not a sufficient condition of hope. Despairing of someone or something is precisely a giving up of hope, and it has already been seen that despairing of y is a common event in daily life. One cannot give up something over which one perceives oneself to have no control.17 In fact, the role that Bovens perceives for hope in terms of adjusting one’s hope to probable attainment (and thus maximising desire satisfaction), as opposed to the supposed frustration of merely possible hoping, depends on a person’s ability to put aside one hope and adopt another. Alterations in values make for alterations in hopes. Typically, human psychology accommodates this change unproblematically. Regarding the control issue, I acknowledge that it is odd to think in terms of hope being under one’s direct control in terms of willing oneself to hope, ‘I will hope now!’ seems absurd. Hope lacks an imperative form. Also, intending to hope is rather odd, ‘I intend to hope tomorrow.’ ‘Intending to hope’ is similar to ‘intending to intend’ – an unnecessary duplication of future directedness.18 Consider an example from film; Scarlet O’Hara, beset by successive calamities in Gone With The Wind, asks herself out loud how she will deal with Rhett’s emphatic departure, and she responds by saying, I can’t let him go, I can’t, there must be some way to bring him back, oh, I can’t think about this now, I’ll go crazy if I do, I’ll think about it tomorrow, but I must think about it now, I must think about it. What is there to do? What is there that matters? Tara – home, I’ll go home, and I’ll think of some way to get him back, after all, tomorrow is another day. Scarlet decides to think about her problem tomorrow but quickly changes her mind. She thinks she must begin to address her problem immediately. Deciding on an initial step, she then defers any further thought as to how she might bring Rhett back. Now, imagine Scarlet saying instead, ‘I’ll hope for that tomorrow.’ Rather, it is that hoping is what makes tomorrow possible, in the sense that one anticipates tomorrow as a day to be engaged with, as opposed its being experienced as a day which will merely come and go. In her saying ‘I will think about that

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tomorrow’, she is intending to begin thinking about x at some time, and for some duration. Scarlet conceives of tomorrow as another day with new possibilities (a sign of hope), whereas, saying ‘I will hope for that tomorrow’, that is, intending to hope tomorrow, would drive a puzzling wedge between then and now. The natural query would be, ‘if then, why not now?’ Scarlet could say that she has neither the time nor the energy to think about the details of her problem straightaway. If so, she would be recognising that thinking takes time and energy. After her trials and tribulations the viewer can see that Scarlet is weary and is not surprised at the postponement of her thinking about her problem. But what about hope? Could Scarlet say that she has neither time nor energy to hope? As has been seen, hope is ineliminably a temporal phenomenon, temporal relations are a condition for the possibility of hope.19 However, unlike thinking, hoping takes no time at all though it has duration, that is, one may hope for redemption, vindication or promotion for a very long time. Though hope is by its nature active, and a particular hope may persist for many years, hoping is not a process. A single hope may be held during the course of many different emotions being experienced, different attitudes being held, and many different actions being performed.20 Hoping is not a phenomenon to be scheduled for a particular point in time but is a response in the present towards the future. Hoping for a particular objective may be likened to giving one’s assent to its realisation in the world. Having indirect hope may be likened to assenting to life itself, despite recognising that not everything in life will be as one would wish. So, hoping is not something that one occupies oneself with in the same manner as thinking. Though different on this temporal point, hoping does, I believe, take a certain degree of energy. It does not seem quite correct to say that one defers hoping until one has the energy, but there is a definite link between the two. Hope and energy go hand in hand, especially indirect hope and energy. If one has some energy then one acts with indirect hope – as I indicate with the term, in the light of hope. If one has indirect hope, then one has some energy (and some interest in life). One may speak of this relationship in terms of perceiving oneself to be engaged with life (having indirect hope and some energy), or perceiving oneself to be disengaged from life (having no hope and no interest in life). At this point, metaphors and allusions abound. It is not the case that indirect hope is just the same as energy or interest or engagement, but that it is an elusive phenomenon on the threshold of what it is to be the kind of beings that we are. Thus it is difficult to capture in an adequate description.

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What is the difference between living in the light of hope and living in hope? I have characterised living in the light of hope as a kind of minimal engagement with life which is like an assent to participation in life. 21 Living in hope is the umbrella term I use to indicate one’s higherlevel engagement in the bustle of direct hopes, be they quite simple and specific particulars or complex and demanding projects extended over considerable portions of time. Living in hope shows a high degree of energy, especially where agent-orchestrated or mutual-orchestrated hope occurs. In other-orchestrated and world-orchestrated hopes where fulfilment of the objective does not depend upon the hoper, there remains a high degree of interest in the outcome. In experience, when one is living in hope and making a personal investment of values in one’s hope(s), one has strengths and weaknesses that are as two sides of one coin. 22 When people hold direct hopes, the objectives of those hopes often involve people in overcoming obstacles of varying kinds with varying degrees of difficulty. However, equally, many of these objectives are chosen by the respective hopers and fulfilment of the various objectives is pursued in a positive and constructive manner, obstacles notwithstanding. In contrast, it is more accurate to characterise indirect hope as hope held in the face of adversity. Not infrequently adversity is not chosen. Typically, people have adversity thrust upon them and hope or despair is a response to that circumstance. I deliberately use the word ‘response’ rather than ‘reaction’ to retain the notion of an element of choice concerning the response. Neither hope nor despair is an inevitable reaction to adversity. There is an either/or, or neither, possibility in such a scenario. Living in hope may occasion bouts of concern when one ponders the likelihood or proximity of hope’s fulfilment. However, living in the light of hope typically signifies a resistance to despair despite scant likelihood of hope’s fulfilment.

4.2

Giving and finding hope

There is, it seems, no shortage of hope. Yet giving and finding hope are not always as straight-forward as one may imagine. When something is given, there is a giver and a recipient, minimally. When something is found, it may be found by a single individual. Giving hope is not like giving a gift. When one person gives a gift to another, the gift passes from the one to the other and the giver relinquishes possession of it. The gift becomes the property of the recipient. When one gives hope to another, one does not thereby cease to have hope oneself though the

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recipient takes possession of some hope. As regards finding hope, an individual may find hope in the words, gestures or deeds of another, or in the general features of a given situation. If so, it is possible that hope thus found could have been placed so as it would be found. Such hope as there is to be so found may be communicated through words, gestures and deeds that are not explicitly concerned with hope at all. When a person is met with kindness, for example, it may increase her (indirect) hope with which she looks on the world. When this happens, an individual may think of the hope she finds as being like a gift, either as given indirectly by an identifiable other, or as donated by an anonymous benefactor. However, conversely, when one aims to give hope to another, one may miss the target and have one’s words, gestures or deeds backfire if they are not attuned to the would-be recipient’s perspective on the world in the appropriate ways. What would count as ‘appropriate ways’ here? When facing adversity, persons are typically concerned with matters of significance to themselves. 23 The would-be giver of hope to someone in adversity needs to be acquainted with at least some of that which is of significance to the one troubled. A half-hearted attempt to foster hope may be worse than none at all if the would-be recipient perceives the faltering demeanour of the giver and interprets it as a failure of genuine attention or consideration. The simplest case of hope being given from one person to another concerns an interaction between two persons where there is mutual knowledge of a serious problem confronting one of them. Alternatively, A and B may share a dilemma, both being sick or captive and they encourage each other not to give up hope of an ambulance or liberators arriving to effect aid. Wherever striving is required, whether it is in the mastery of a new skill or relating to survival, hope may be engendered, sustained or renewed in one person by another. In these simple cases, hope is given with intent. The giver intends hope to be given and the receiver perceives herself to have been given hope whether this is a one-way exchange or a mutual exchange. Hope may also be given to another unintentionally. This is one way in which hope may be seen as coming from outside of oneself. In experience, a giver of hope may be taken to be giving this gift when she is doing no more, though no less, than she would ordinarily do, either in expressing her views and thoughts or in acting in certain ways. Sometimes, the views or actions of one person are taken by others as significant exemplars of what is possible or of what can be achieved, and it is taken as good hope by the one who interprets another in this way. The recipient of hope perceives herself to have been given a gift,

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despite its having been given unintentionally. The ‘giver’ of this hope may be surprised to find herself the occasion of it. This instance of hope being given unintentionally may be mirrored in a wider context. The film Life is Beautiful, by Roberto Benigni, tells the story of a man who wins his sweetheart and with whom he struggles to raise their son in Mussolini’s Italy. Towards the end of the war, the entire family is shipped to a concentration camp and father and son are separated from wife and mother. The father tries to protect his son, both his life and his innocence, by persuading him to keep himself hidden in various places. He concocts a story that they are taking part in an elaborate competition in which they must collect many points to win the first prize. The first prize, the father says, is a tank, something he knows will appeal to his young son. The viewer sees the father’s love for his son and the son’s trust in his father. Although many coincidental events in the entire series of events seem implausible to the viewers (as historical observers), reality appears to ‘confirm’ the father’s story rather than acting as a check against it.24 Throughout, there is no doubt about the father’s commitment to his son. At one point, for example, the child expresses a desire to go home, so his father tells him to get his jumper and they will leave. As they go through the hut door, and before they have gone very far, the father thinks of some further elaboration of his story that makes his son content to remain for another short period after all. They retrace their steps to the hut. No guards have appeared in those few minutes. In reality there is no prospect of their walking out through the gates, but there is no final test of this from reality. The child’s presence remains unnoticed because he plays a hiding game. In this way, a series of close encounters is successfully negotiated. Towards the end of the film, it appears that his father is shot in the general mêlée as the camp is liberated by Allied soldiers (though the boy does not see this). He stays in his hiding place until all is still and quiet, as his father had instructed. Standing alone, surveying a totally abandoned vista of buildings and bare earth, he hears a rumbling noise. Around the corner comes a huge US tank and the soldier, seeing him, stops to collect him. The first prize in the competition has arrived! Trundling down the road in the tank he sees his mother, walking along with others, and is reunited with her. During the whole sequence of events neither the father nor the son once refers to hope by name. The father is trying to protect his son as best as he can under adverse circumstances while the son is trying to win a tank with his father as his partner in a rather unusual competition. Despite the implausible feats pulled off by the father, one of the things

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communicated to the viewer by this film is hope. It is the father’s commitment to his son which gives hope to the viewer. Sometimes hope can only be given by not being the focus of attention of giver or receiver. The father demonstrates implicit hopes for his son’s survival while the boy’s implicit hope is to win a tank. The explicit hope belongs to the viewer as the recipient of this ‘gift’ of hope, evoked by the quality of relationship between father and son. The father is a man who refuses to despair. It is not that he fails to perceive the gravity of their situation, otherwise his story and his strategies would be unavoidably and noticeably ineffective if he misconstrued the circumstances with which he dealt. Neither, in this context, does the viewer get the impression that the father is hoping for a particular objective which he believes may be fulfilled through his actions in a very calculated or instrumental way. That is, the father is not in the grip of a particular direct agent-orchestrated hope whose objective is premised on the thought that ‘if I do x and y, then I will fulfil my hope’. The father acts purposively, however, with no guarantee at all that his efforts will meet with success. The father’s aim (and implicit hope) appears to be the protection of his son for as long as is possible. In some contexts, one’s future horizon may be the next day.

4.3

Suffering in extraordinary circumstances

Human suffering has two main sources. Suffering precipitated by the natural world and suffering instigated and perpetrated by human beings upon each other. I take the idea of facing death here to refer to an imminent facing of death in experience as opposed to an intellectual apprehension that I will die one day and an acknowledgement of the same. In an intellectual apprehension of death, I may overtly or covertly expect my death to be postponed into a generous future. I also take the idea of staying human to imply that one may survive an event, or events, biologically, yet lose capacities or qualities central to making any biographical life a life that one can affirm for oneself. In this regard I further develop the notion of indirect hope. Considering conditions in extremis is one way in which a closer understanding may be gained of how rational creatures can value hope. The first part of this discussion revolves around published accounts and analyses of experiences of internment in concentration camps during the Holocaust. In the second part, I consider some recent literature linking the effects of torture to the effects of rape. Torture and rape are discussed not only due to the link that a number of researchers make between their effects, but because

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they are both unambiguous examples of circumstances in which a victim’s trust in the world can be seen to be diminished or destroyed. At this point I take up the relationship between trust and hope. 4.3.1

Suffering: aggravated or alleviated by hope?

In real life, hope has been viewed both as a blessing and as a curse. Recording and reflecting on his experiences in concentration camps, Viktor E. Frankl, in Man’s Search for Meaning, writes, I asked the poor creatures who listened to me attentively in the darkness of the hut to face up to the seriousness of our position. They must not lose hope but should keep their courage in the certainty that the hopelessness of our struggle did not detract from its dignity and meaning.25 Frankl’s remarks may appear puzzling at first glance, but rather than think him merely confused, I take him to be making an implicit distinction between agent-orchestrated hope and expressive hope as a symbolic act embodying meaning. That is, even if camp inmates believed that death was inevitable, and they also believed that any struggle would be in vain in terms of saving themselves, they could nevertheless hope that ultimately their deaths would not be in vain, individually, collectively or historically. They may hope, for example, that some would survive and others would make a commitment of ‘Never again!’ to oppose in the future such tendencies as led themselves to the camps. Such hopes would, in effect, be hopes for others rather than themselves, members of the group rather than particular individuals. But, as was seen in Chapter 1, there is nothing odd about having a hope for someone else, even if it reflects back on oneself indirectly. In so far as hope embodies meaning for oneself where no manner of survival or salvation is envisaged, it is in the form of resistance to despair and hopelessness till the end of life. Another survivor of internment in various concentration camps, Jean Améry, eschewed hope in favour of what he later called a clear-sighted view of reality.26 In Améry’s view, survival in extraordinary circumstances is not aided by hope or imagination. From his experiences in Auschwitz, Tadeusz Borowski also renders a negative judgement on hope, ‘We were never taught to rid ourselves of hope, and that is why we are dying in the gas chambers.’ 27 Borowski’s view of hope echoes remarks made by Primo Levi regarding a lack of resistance to the pogroms against Jews, and later in the camps themselves. 28 When outward compliance is

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given by those intimidated and coerced, in the hope of an aggressor soon tiring of his sport, (too) many small steps may be taken before it is realised that a point of no return has been passed.29 In certain contexts, hoping for the best can put one’s life at risk. More than one’s physical life may be at stake when suffering is inflicted by another. Though remaining alive, one’s sense of oneself may be destroyed or displaced. Survivors of torture and concentration camps typically report experiencing themselves as two persons coexisting – the past self and a present self, the one shadowing the other. Susan Brison cites Charlotte Delbo’s expression of her return from Auschwitz, life was returned to me and I am here in front of life as though facing a dress I cannot wear.30 Survivors of all types of camp recall and write of circumstances that those who were not there at the time can only try to hear, then remember. I put the matter in this way with remarks of Jean Améry in mind. In At the Mind’s Limits he emphasises the difference between imagination in the sense of mental imaging on the one hand, and on the other hand qualities of the immediacy of experience, especially at the juncture between everyday, ordinary reality and extraordinary circumstances in extremis, Nothing really happens as we hope it will, nor as we fear it will. But not because the occurrence, as one says, perhaps “goes beyond the imagination” (it is not a quantitative question), but because it is reality and not phantasy. One can devote an entire lifetime to comparing the imagined and the real, and still never accomplish anything by it. Many things do indeed happen the way they were anticipated in the imagination: Gestapo men in leather coats, pistols pointed at their victim – that is correct, all right. But then, almost amazingly, it dawns on one that the fellows not only have leather coats and pistols, but also faces: not “Gestapo faces” with twisted noses, hypertrophied chins, pockmarks, and knife scars, as might appear in a book, but rather faces like anyone else’s. Plain, ordinary faces. And the enormous perception at a later stage, one that destroys all abstractive imagination, makes clear to us how the plain ordinary faces become Gestapo faces after all, and how evil overlays and exceeds banality.31

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Améry makes a number of points here. Firstly, a general point, common but easily overlooked, is that all description and categorisation, as description and categorisation, is necessarily abstract. Hoping for x requires an act of imagination, but imagistically picturing x in one’s imagination does not yield an accurate representation of the apprehension of x in reality, nor other qualitative aspects of its fulfilment. Secondly, in reality Nazis do not look like imagined stereotypes of Nazis; they look rather ordinary. Thirdly, and relatedly, regardless of how ordinary looking Nazis appear, they are nevertheless Nazis. This example shows that some important truths about people are not seen in appearances. Not only may many of the hopes held by those in the camps have been ‘hopes for the best’, as outlined above, but according to Améry, conditions in the camps, together with human longing for release, literal and metaphorical, resulted in the camps providing fertile ground for rumours of all sorts from improvements in rations and restrictions to reductions in forced labour, and to imminent liberation by some segment of the Allied armed forces. The overwhelming majority of the rumours were totally without any kind of warrant other than wishful thinking. According to Améry, those who based hopes on such rumours were all the more severely affected by disappointment than those who had given such rumours short shrift. It is hopes based on wishful thinking that Améry regards as inimical to survival.32 Although Frankl urges those in a recognisably hopeless situation yet to have hope, the hope that is urged on others is that which persists to express value in the face of the recognition of catastrophe, that is, expressive hope.

4.4

Suffering in ordinary circumstances

There are major differences between the political phenomenon of totalitarianism and its particular manifestation during Second World War and other contexts, and forms of human abuse. Conflict in the Balkans, for example, has furnished more than enough recent evidence of the sexual abuse of rape 33 deployed as a weapon of war.34 In still different circumstances again, those of ordinary everyday life, acts of rape may be thought sufficiently differently contextualised as to admit of separate analyses.35 While there is a difference of context, many contemporary researchers in psychology and philosophy have drawn parallels between cases of torture and cases of rape, as well as rape under varying

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circumstances. 36 Améry himself makes the connection between torture and rape, Trust in the world includes all sorts of things: the irrational and logically unjustifiable belief in absolute causality perhaps, or the likewise blind belief in the validity of inductive inference. But more important as an element of trust in the world, and in our context what is solely relevant, is the certainty that by reason of written or unwritten social contracts the other person will spare me – more precisely stated, that he will respect my physical, and with it also my metaphysical, being. [ . . . ] At the first blow, however, this trust in the world breaks down. The other person, opposite whom I exist physically in the world and with whom I can exist only as long as he does not touch my skin surface as border, forces his own corporeality on me at the first blow. He is on me and thereby destroys me. It is like a rape, a sexual act without the consent of one of the two partners.37 Améry is describing the experience of torture and the results of torture. In describing the experience of torture he likens it to a rape; an act involving two persons, without the consent of one of the two persons. When Améry speaks of the other person opposite whom he exists in the world and with whom he can exist only as long as the other does not touch his skin surface, he clearly speaks of trust already diminished or destroyed. In a world prior to torture, one moves trustingly through social and physical space with an openness to sights, sounds, smells, and physical contact from objects, other animals and human beings. 38 In principle, the openness stemming from one’s trusting approach need not be thought of as limited. It is experience, and the knowledge gained from reflecting on experience, which results in some limits being applied to the openness that flows, in principle, from a trusting approach to others in the world. Not all limits are restrictive; some are enabling in various ways. If one encounters an unguarded fire too openly, the self-imposed limiting of contact with naked flames will benefit the one who imposes the limit in the future. In this kind of situation, the imposition of a limit indicates a recognition of danger and presupposes a hope to avoid the danger in future. As Marilyn Frye points out, one has to consider the context within which limits operate and ask who benefits by them and who is burdened by them before one can determine whether a limit is restrictive or enabling.39

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The implication of Améry’s analogy between torture and rape is that just as torture diminishes or destroys one’s trust in the world, so too does rape. Améry points out that although different individuals experienced differing degrees of physical brutality in the torture to which they were subjected, it was an awareness of a violation of oneself which provoked a psychological ‘undoing’ of oneself, rather than the degree of psychological trauma being correlated with the degree of physical violence inflicted. Améry’s observations on the effects of torture and its similarity to rape are borne out by a number of contemporary studies in the disciplines of psychology, the social sciences and in philosophy. 40 Various findings support the view that in rape, as in torture, an awareness of violation, rather than the degree of physical violence employed, is a central factor in provoking a traumatic response in the victim. This is not to say, however, that those individuals, if any, who do not experience torture or rape specifically as a violation at the time of the event, nor acknowledge an awareness of violation following it, have thereby not been tortured or raped.41 Both torture and rape are recognised as violations, generally, in the sense of someone’s breaking into an inner sanctum, guarded by everyone’s respect and shown by everyone’s comportment which is as much taken for granted as are the laws of gravity. Those who have been tortured or raped are typically left with their (prior) unreflective trust in the world in tatters. In ordinary circumstances, one’s skin, the boundaries of one’s physical body are not coextensive with the phenomenological boundaries of oneself. What does this mean? Frequently, when an agent acts in the world, a variety of devices or implements are used. Let me give some examples. When taking a baby for a walk in a pram, one holds the handle to push the pram. In crossing the road one attends to the kerb from the wheels of the pram. If the pram is jolted on the kerb, the force is felt from the point of the pram’s contact with the kerb. In this way the pram becomes a part of a phenomenological extension of one’s body for the duration of the walk.42 A person who has spent all her life in a wheelchair, or someone who has become accustomed to remaining in one, attends to activities and general mobility from the wheelchair and towards the object of her interaction in the world. Apart from this phenomenological feature of an extension of one’s body, from one perspective a wheelchair may seem confining while from another perspective it may seem liberating. Whether on foot or in a wheelchair, a person with trust in the world navigates her or his way in the physical and social world with a degree of openness, flexibility and permeability which typically only becomes

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reduced when the last bastion of oneself is under attack. In the extraordinary circumstances of the Holocaust and in the ordinary circumstances of rape, there is a similarity other than that of the fact of violation. As I have stressed, it is in the ordinary everyday world within which most rapes are perpetrated. Just as an actual Nazi need not conform to a stereotype in appearance, so too the rapist is indistinguishable in appearance from the ordinary man in the street. Recall Améry’s points from the quote in Section 4.3.1. A rapist does not signal his approach by his Mephistophelian countenance, nor his close cropped hair and aggressive swagger. He may look just like the boy next door.43 Nevertheless, in rape also, evil overlays and exceeds the ordinary. Let us briefly consider the reportedly common occurrence of acquaintance rape. In this situation there is a one to one relationship between an ‘I’ and a ‘you’. Whatever the particular individual hopes and expectations of each person in some actual personal relationship, the general mode of comportment guiding such relationships from a conceptual point of view includes entailments and implications of each having regard for the particularity of the other and respect for the proper treatment of the other as a ‘you’. Given this conceptual point about personal relationships, it may be inferred that although a girl or woman may ‘know’ about torture and rape, nevertheless she would not expect to meet with it within the confines of a personal relationship. This is not because she has paid insufficient attention of the appropriate sort to the details of her situation, but because it is precisely the sort of relationship within which rape shall not take place, where one is to be addressed as ‘you’. What is particularly devilish about rape is that the rapist’s victim is a human being, in the full sense of the word; a person with feelings and wishes for being treated as an equal, and the rapist does not care for her counting in this way. 44 Rape is a deliberate act. One does not commit an act of rape as one might inadvertently step on the toes of another person, and apologise in a flurry of surprise and slight embarrassment at one’s clumsiness. One may say that a rapist’s excitement is the excitement of a man who voluntarily commits a sacrilege. Further, if a rapist is really devilish, then he is very far from disregarding his victim’s counting as a person; he violates her precisely because he knows how this will affect her. Had he believed that there were non-sexual acts that violated her more, he would have chosen them instead. What would hurt her maximally is what would give him the most satisfaction.45 Greek ethics emphasises the man behind the action(s) rather than the actions ‘in themselves’. Actions are considered important and decisive to the

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extent that if you do them, 46 then you are no longer the person you believe you are. Apart from the taking-for-granted unreflective trusting about which Améry speaks, he also remarks on an equally taken-for-granted unreflective expectation, that of mutual aid, The expectation of help, the certainty of help, is indeed one of the fundamental experiences of human beings, and probably also of animals. This was quite convincingly presented decades ago by old Kropotkin, who spoke of “mutual aid in nature,” and by the modern animal behaviourist Lorenz. The expectation of help is as much a constitutional psychic element as is the struggle for existence.47 The combination of a trusting approach and an expectation of aid leaves persons vulnerable, in practice, to those who would transgress the boundaries of moral and prudential comportment and conduct. 4.4.1

Surviving suffering in the light of hope

That being a survivor is not necessarily an unmixed blessing is attested to by those who write about the complexities of how survivors think and feel about their survival. In referring to Brison’s citation of Delbo’s description of her view of herself after Auschwitz (see Section 4.3), I present one common response to the experience of the violations inherent in camp life. Brison also refers to theoretical work in trauma studies and empirical psychology which points to a tendency for survivors to view themselves as having perished psychologically and emotionally while remaining alive physiologically. 48 Ordinarily, in the death of another, in so far as we know, there is an irrevocable parting between the one who dies and those who remain alive. On the other hand, in the death of oneself psychologically, although it may be experienced in very real terms, there is a possibility of resurrection through transformation. In The Informed Heart,49 Bruno Bettelheim speaks of the many who hoped to remain unchanged both in respect to their standing with family members still outside the camp(s), and in respect of the essentials of personality. Bettelheim also speaks of decisions taken by himself. He writes, I was emotionally drained before the day even began, a day of seventeen long hours that would take all my energy to survive it. While swapping tales that morning, it suddenly flashed through my mind,

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“this is driving me crazy,” and I felt that if I were to go on that way, I would in fact end up “crazy.” That was when I decided that rather than be taken in by such rumours I would try to understand what was psychologically behind them. 50 Bettelheim also relates advice he was given about survival, from a prisoner who saw him struggling with physical and psychological pain, to eat. The other prisoner told him to decide on his response to the question ‘do you want to live or do you want to die?’.51 Bettelheim subsequently speaks of forcing oneself to eat repellent food as a self-chosen act of freedom since it followed upon an initial decision to stay alive. It may be thought that there is no need of hope in this decision-making. That is, I think, right in a sense, and wrong in a sense. In a certain sense, staying alive itself is not something one can decide about because it is a matter ultimately beyond one’s control. 52 The questioner asks whether he wants to live or die, and Bettelheim refers to a decision to stay alive. Thus, there are two kinds of considerations. Let us begin by considering desire and see where hope comes in. Consider that what Bettelheim decides is not that he will stay alive but that he wants to stay alive. Now, if he decides that he wants to stay in life, then he must utilise opportunities and develop strategies, like eating repellent food, that will give effect to this desire. The final outcome (i.e. if he will stay alive) is uncertain, though each successfully utilised opportunity and each successful short-term strategy will contribute to his hope to realise the goal of his decision, staying alive. Short-term successes will increase the estimative aspect of hope but hope would also be presupposed in making a decision in the first instance. Consider, one cannot decide to swim to the USA from Scandinavia because it is impossible to swim across the Atlantic. I, myself, could not decide to swim from England to France because I know that it is beyond my ability. Swimming across the English Channel is possible, however; it is something that someone else may hope to do. It is a course of action that someone other than myself may decide upon. Making a decision can be likened to forming an intention. Unless and until one changes one’s mind and reverses or otherwise abandons one’s decision, one will act upon it as and when opportunities present themselves until the goal is attained. In agent-orchestrated hope and in mutualorchestrated hope, one also intends to fulfil the objective of hope and is motivated to act accordingly. Deciding that he wants to stay alive shows that he hopes to stay alive because if he wanted to stay alive (simpliciter) but did not hope to stay alive (thinking it impossible that he would or

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could survive the ordeal), then he could not decide to stay in life.53 In this context, Bettelheim’s decision that he wanted to live is bound up with an indirect hope to do so. What of the survivor of suffering in ordinary circumstances? A survivor of rape may equally well decide to confront the particular difficulties attendant on this form of violation. However, rather than transferring and reiterating my remarks about making a decision and indirect hope to a different context, I will take up a consideration of survival in terms of trust and hope. It has already been seen that trust in the world is a casualty of rape. What then are the possibilities for a surviving agent in comporting herself in the world?54 Before responding to this question I insert some remarks about personal identity by way of delimiting the area of my concern. As Brison states in her discussion of trauma and personal identity, a typical consequence of rape is that survivors mourn the passing of themselves as the person they were before they were raped. From a third person perspective, it is an open question as to whether a survivor of rape either does not, or cannot, regard herself as continuous with herself formerly, and at what point the one shades into the other. Also, important from a psychological point of view are the ways in which one may perceive oneself to be no longer oneself. Not only is this significant in the life of the individual, but as Brison suggests, there may be implications for the ways in which issues of personal identity are conceived from a philosophical perspective. These related questions about personal identity are questions that I will not attempt to answer. Instead, I will consider issues of comportment and conduct in the change from a person having an unreflectively trusting approach to the world to someone’s lacking such trust in her approach to the world. This is a change which does not encounter any difficulties concomitant upon the notion of a ‘logic of identity’.55 I raise this point because the change from a trusting approach to an approach in distrust is certainly a change but it need raise no concerns over who changes. Typically, a survivor of rape loses trust in others and trust in herself. Let us first recall the discussion of Hall’s account of an existentially faithful marriage (Section 3.3), in which he argues that divorce is viewed as a real possibility which is annulled by a certain kind of commitment to one’s partner. Then let us acknowledge that with trust diminished or destroyed there is a real possibility of the temptation to despair. In a manner analogous to Hall’s account, it can be said that with trust in abeyance, one is alive to despair as a real possibility and committed to resisting it with hope.

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The hope at issue here is indirect hope. If one does not, or cannot, comport oneself trustingly in the world, then one may still comport oneself with indirect hope. This returns us to the idea of living in the light of hope. The scene that is illuminated by the light of indirect hope may be a scene whose general features could most accurately be described as bleak. What one sees in approaching the world with indirect hope is that one’s previous ‘taken-for-granted’ unreflective trust is no longer in place. From a third person perspective, acting with indirect hope looks like how acting trustingly would appear to an observer. There are goals, of a general sort, which motivate strategies for engagement in the world. These general goals orient an agent to seek ways and means to foster the regrowth of direct hope, and ultimately the regeneration of trust. It is from a first person perspective, from the agent’s point of view, that the difference between acting trustingly, and acting as-if trustingly, with indirect hope is marked. For myself, in keeping with many other British women who heed the advice they have been given about walking on their home streets at night so as not to become targets of sexual assault, I walk as-if confident, that is, I walk as-if I approach the world trustingly.56 I shift my perspective between trust and hope, between what I feel certain I know and what I know I cannot be sure of. I trust, for example, that not all men are potential rapists, though I know I cannot be sure that some are not, and thus I hope I will make my journey across country or home from town in safety. Similar to what Frye points out about whether limits are restrictive or enabling, whether one approaches the world trustingly or with hope depends on where one is situated with respect to the features in it.

4.5

What, if not hope?

Let us ask what other possibilities exist. When suffering is inflicted by the hand or design of another, and one’s unreflective trust has become a casualty because of a conflict, let us consider what may follow. Though one’s possibilities for action may be restricted in many ways, there is nevertheless a variety of responses open to an agent. Let us consider how two of these possibilities stand in relation to each other. There is a possibility of despair and a possibility of a slide into hopelessness. Previously, I spoke of hope and energy. Despairing also takes energy. One must have some interest in the world in order to despair of it and be in despair over it. Hopelessness is, I have suggested, a step beyond either hope or despair. Hopelessness is most properly characterised as

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a mood and one may slip imperceptibly into hopelessness just as one falls asleep when intending to remain awake and read one’s book or watch till the end of a movie. Though one typically slides into hopelessness rather than stepping into it, there is nevertheless a real possibility that one may step out of it. Although hopelessness is a step beyond despair in some sense, there is also the possibility of living in the light of hope. Living in the light of hope encompasses even the possibility of hopelessness within its range. It is an awareness of trust diminished or destroyed when living in the light of hope that gives hope one of its most significant places in life in terms of sustaining meaning in life. And now a word about what is going on in hoping and the relationship between indirect hope and direct hope. First, consider the difference between hoping that x will be realised in the world, as opposed to hoping that x will not be realised in the world. Wherein lies the difference? In hoping that x will be realised in the world, I desire x, and I anticipate x; in so doing I affirm my welcome of x’s coming into the world. It could be said that I take a stand in favour of x. In hoping that x will not be realised in the world, I desire not-x, and I anticipate not-x; in doing so, I affirm my rejection of x’s coming into the world. In this case, it could be said that I take a stand against x. For present purposes, let us call a hope that welcomes x’s appearance in the world a positive hope, and a hope that rejects x’s appearance in the world a negative hope. Let us suppose, for example, that I hope my favourite political party will win the next election, then I may intermittently fear that they will not. Conversely, if I hope the ‘Enemies of Liberty’ party will not win the next election, I may also fear they will win it. When one already fares reasonably well in the world, and hope is situated alongside trust instead of hope being substituted in its place, then one has energy and interest to cast one’s net of direct hope(s) quite widely. Typically, when living in the light of hope, when one’s unreflective trust is in abeyance, one’s indirect hope(s) to fare well, to endeavour or to endure, give rise to direct negative hopes. That is, one hopes not to be tortured, not to be raped and so on. Indirect hope itself is positive with respect to its general objectives. Developing a character capable of flourishing depends on achieving a degree of self-control and this is connected to evaluating one’s hopes and desires. Evaluations may concern non-moral or moral actions or objectives. With respect to character, typically, what one values (positively), one also desires; but one does not always value what one desires. The latter scenario may be viewed as a conflict between desires, or as a conflict between a desire and a value. A person having a desire for peace

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which she values, and a desire for revenge, has a conflict of desires. Such a person may reflect on her desires and get a desire that her desire for peace will ‘win out’ in this conflict of desires.57 If that happens, then she can start to hope that her desire for peace will mould her future character. At this point, there is no further work for a direct hope to do. One cannot, from a conceptual point of view, hope for that which is already an objective of hope. This would be like deciding to decide on peace, when peace has already been decided upon. Unlike as is the case with desire, in hope, an evaluation on a matter has already been made; and often that evaluation is connected to some (positive) values a person holds. Objectives of hope are open to prudential and moral scrutiny, but hoping itself is already to make a judgement of value in many contexts.

4.6

Summary

In this chapter, I have considered a number of ways in which hope shows its significance in human life and I have described the interplay between hope and character. I have also discussed giving and finding hope. The giving and the finding of hope between persons, either directly or indirectly, is one set of circumstances under which hope may appear to come from outside of oneself or to be given as a gift. Hope acquired in this way may sustain one’s already existing hope(s). If it is good hope, then it will contribute not only to survival but also to one’s flourishing. In the third part of this chapter, I have discussed the import of suffering inflicted by human beings upon one another. In cases where suffering is severe and unreflective trust is diminished or destroyed, I have provided an account of the ways in which hope relates to trust and changes its position relative to trust. All three of unreflective trust, indirect hope and direct hope coexist side by side when oneself is neither violated nor subject to a real threat on oneself. Indirect hope and direct hope do intermingle in experience. As I have argued, both are intentional; it is the nature of the objectives which differ. However, under conditions of violation, or of real threat to oneself of the same, then, from a first person perspective, indirect hope may replace unreflective trust as the approach one adopts towards the world in response to a temptation to despair. This can be understood from a third person perspective (and hope may be ascribed implicitly to an agent by an observer), 58 though the difference between approaching the world

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trustingly or with indirect hope does not announce itself in the observation of agency. I have argued that one can be beyond despair in hopelessness,59 but that when living in the light of hope, though it may be a thin light, it encompasses a real possibility of stepping out from a slide into hopelessness itself.

5 Meaning in Life: Confronted with Death

In this chapter, I will be concerned with hope in relation to suffering undergone rather than suffering inflicted by human hand or design. Suffering undergone has two main proximate causes, ill-health precipitated by accident or physiological factors (stimulated or mitigated by environmental influences) and crises of survival where natural disasters take a toll on individuals or communities. Although survivors of natural disasters often receive rescue help and medical care, I shall focus upon a carefully circumscribed medical situation as the issues which can be raised with regard to medical provision, practice and ethics are wide ranging and complex. I shall also make certain assumptions about the patient whose perspective I consider. First, I shall assume that although a patient may have contributed to her condition either by her general lifestyle or by some particular habit, the lifestyle or habit need not be thought of as the primary determining factor in causing the illness or condition with which the patient is confronted.1 That is, I presume that the cases I consider concern illnesses or conditions which could have happened to anyone, in principle. Secondly, I shall assume that the patient has an interest in having her suffering ended or eased. That is, the patient I have in view does not have an interest in promoting suffering as a means of purging her soul, for example, nor of aiming for some other form of cathartic release. I will begin this chapter by outlining some thoughts about death and dying, from a general point of view, in relation to the emotions and moods that have been discussed in previous chapters; and in relation to hope. Secondly, I further delimit the medical context and issues that I will address and I describe one kind of meaning which has significance in suffering. This kind of meaning is bound up quite specifically with a person’s values and the ways in which events and actions are interpreted 118

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as embodying significance. This in turn may contribute to the possibility of affirming one’s life. Thirdly, I consider what is involved in hoping for a good death, in part. I relate these aspects of a good death to some circumstances of patients confronted with a terminal illness. Here, I employ ideas and distinctions developed through thinking about hope in an ecological way, emphasising those concepts most relevant to this context.

5.1

Thinking about dying and death

Thinking about the prospect of dying and death can cause present existential suffering irrespective of whether or not current indicators signal the approach of one’s own decline and demise, or that of a loved one. However, it may be a comforting thought to many that those who can afford the luxury of thinking about dying and death abstractly (their own and that of others) are unlikely actually to be dying or facing death themselves. Let us consider for a moment some ways in which dying and death can stand in relation to the states, attitudes, feelings and emotions that have been discussed previously. Death can be thought of: (1) in relation to oneself, that is, one can reflect on the prospect of one’s own death, (2) in relation to others known personally to oneself2 or (3) in relation to persons who have no particular association to oneself. Though the death of distant others is likely to make a different kind of impact on an individual than the death of someone known personally, nevertheless the death of distant others can weigh on individuals in various ways. For oneself and others, near and far, death can be: (i) expected, (ii) hoped for, (iii) feared, (iv) despair inducing and (v) despaired of. I will take the example of thinking about my own death. Regarding the items (ii–iv) on this list, I may hope for my death, fear it or be in despair at its prospect. In hoping for my death or fearing it, I may vacillate from one to the other. If I am in despair at the prospect of my death, then such a vacillation is not to be expected, given the characteristics of the respective emotions (fear and despair), vis-à-vis hope. Despair may, of course, be overcome. If so, then some hope would be re-established. The difference in tempo between changes from hope to fear and vice versa, and hope to despair and vice versa, though noticeable elsewhere, is perhaps more prominent in relation to thinking about death. One reason for this may be that death marks a final boundary against which these changes are viewed. Whether I judge my response to the prospect of my death to be rational, or otherwise, will largely depend upon my circumstances. If

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I am generally healthy, living in a safe environment and enjoying some pleasures in life, then focusing on my death may seem either unnecessary or just plain morbid (at least, from an unreflective point of view). On the other hand, if I am in severe pain which I do not believe can or will be alleviated, then I may hope for death as a relief from suffering, whatever beliefs I may have about the sanctity of life and euthanasia. These comments refer to physical suffering. If the above conditions obtain but I am suffering some form of psychological pain or depression, then focusing on my death in certain ways may seem quite appropriate or natural. Items (i) and (v), on the list, that is, expecting to die and despairing of dying, are somewhat curious if not problematic, especially when taken in conjunction. At any point in my life, from as early as when I am able to reflect on the matter, I may expect my death or acknowledge that I will die someday. If I may expect my death with complete and utter certainty (even if the time, place and manner of my dying are not known to me), then how could I equally despair of dying, when to despair of dying would be to give up hope of it? Nevertheless, it is of course possible to despair of dying, though the circumstances under which one would typically do so are quite limited. In order to see this, what needs to be noted is the difference between expecting to die at some unspecified time (in a future open-ended in some respects), as opposed to hoping for death presently, or at a particular time in the relatively near future. To despair of dying, one would typically hope to die (for whatever reason) yet come to believe that one’s death will not occur as and when one had hoped, in the foreseeable future. There are at least two typical scenarios in which this difference may show itself. In depression, for example, someone may hope for death but be reluctant to commit suicide, thereupon becoming so careless with her own safety that she (and others) may wonder that she has not (yet) been involved in a life-threatening accident. One may have ‘luck’ when it is the last thing on one’s mind. The other scenario returns us to the case where someone is dying a painful but slow death, or is incapacitated to an extent where she feels life has mere quantity without quality, so when another day passes the patient knows she will die sometime, but she despairs of its being soon enough for her ease. Despair has been seen to inhabit the territory of an ecology of thinking about hope. The prospect of despair is not infrequently associated with thinking about death, and with the approach of death itself. Also, it is not unusual to find thoughts of hopelessness, and hopelessness itself, stalking this terrain. The mood of hopelessness typically gives a

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sense of desolation to the landscape on which it settles or through which it passes. Though there may be reason to hope for death, as well as there being the possibility of hoping to die in the light of hope, it would be unusual to find a confusion between hope-related thinking and these emotions and moods that are typically associated with thinking about death. We say, for example, ‘recovery is hopeless’, usually meaning that it is believed that there is no prospect of recovery, but we do not say that ‘death is hopeless’. We may wonder what this would mean. Alternatively, on some occasions we may say, for example, ‘death is pointless’ (or ‘death seems pointless’, referring perhaps to the death of a child), but we would not say ‘recovery is pointless’, unless some very unusual circumstances were to obtain. However, dying is not always pointless. Had one hoped to die, but then despaired of its being soon enough, dying would be very much to the point. It can be seen that the differences marked in Chapter 2 (Section 2.2), between emotions, moods, and judgements are relevant to thinking about death and what we say about death. 3 Let me recap briefly. The term ‘hopelessness’ names a mood, whereas the term ‘hopeless’ names a judgement upon a subject, for example, ‘he/she/it is hopeless’. Whatever the particular feel of dying, if such there be, it is doubtful whether it is identical with, or even similar to, the characteristic feel of hopelessness. Nor, it will be recalled, is there any distinctive feel to x’s being deemed hopeless. Hopelessness is, quite literally, a loss of hope. I have described it by referring to a physical sensation of deflation and a perceptible loss of an otherwise unnoticed and intangible support. Though typically unnoticed and intangible, that is not to say that the presence of hope is invisible. On a pre-theoretical level of understanding of feelings and moods, I would say that moods are more diffuse than feelings and tend to be enduring and pervasive rather than episodic, though the boundaries in this area are rather vague. When the onset of hopelessness is sudden, a sensation of deflation is often acutely felt. However, when its onset is stealthy, there will be some point in a cumulative process at which its more pervasive presence is noticed. 4 In Chapter 4 (Section 4.5), I noted one sort of difference between both hope and despair, versus hopelessness, concerning a variation in the energy required to sustain focused emotion and focused hope as opposed to that lower level of energy required to sustain an unfocused mood. Hoping both gives and takes energy, as being in despair tends to take energy, though despairing of x may give it, while hopelessness tends only to drain energy.

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5.1.1

Some differences between death and dying

Apart from these attitudes, feelings, moods and emotions which can be held or experienced equally in respect of dying or death, there are some quite obvious reasons why thinking about dying and death may arouse a number of quite distinct thoughts and concerns. To think of one’s death is to think of a world devoid of one’s own perspective. One’s own death cannot be other than personal, whatever significance or lack thereof it is perceived to embody by the person whose death it is. Even when thinking of the death of another (or others), near or far, one’s own perspective remains unavoidably central to the thinking, in one sense. It may be said that one can only think one’s own death hypothetically, yet even this is frequently a cause of concern to the thinker. The nature of this concern will depend, to a considerable extent, upon the particular non-religious or religious beliefs that a person holds.5 The possibilities regarding after death states are purely speculative and are as diverse as those represented in orthodox Christianity and in Theravada Buddhism. In Christianity there is a linear conception of time wherein at some point the Second Coming is expected to occur, and thereafter the blessed will ascend into heaven and the damned will descend into hell. There is a continuity of spirit envisaged although details of the nature of the continuity are neither fully specified nor agreed upon by different commentators nor different factions within the Christian Church as a whole. In contrast, there is in Theravada Buddhism a cyclical conception of time within which a wheel of rebirth is posited, and from which an enlightened human being is said to depart. However, an enlightened person goes nowhere and is considered to be extinguished at death. The question of where Buddha went at death (or where any other enlightened person goes), for example, is considered to be one which has no answer and is nonsensical, in a sense.6 The Theravada Buddhist perspective on enlightenment and death is compatible with those philosophical positions taking the view that ‘I’ do not survive my death. 7 The precise manner of the continuity of the world post-mortem, and the non-existence or existence and abode of one’s soul, may be of less concern, however, than the manner of one’s dying. The premortem world, the world in which one dies, is a world in which one is very much present, even if one’s presence may take on a variety of forms ranging from ordinary consciousness, through sleep, to temporary unconsciousness (due to other factors), or being in a persistent vegetative state.8 In what follows, I will be concerned only with those circumstances in which dying takes some time9 and the person whose death it is remains

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sufficiently lucid as to be aware of her surroundings and condition, for the most part. Where death is unexpected and swift, there is no time to consider hopes, fears or despairings, on the part of the one who dies. At the point where lucidity is absent, hope has no significant role to play as death approaches. Thinking about lucidity makes this an appropriate point at which to include a point about hope and the unconscious. In a post-Freudian world, talk of unconscious drives, desires and wishes has permeated the vocabulary of folk psychology as well as forming part of theoretical discussions. Some academics from the disciplines of psychology and anthropology have spoken of unconscious hopes.10 However, I think that a category of unconscious hopes is a questionable one. Given that hoping is a reflective response to current states of affairs, directed (by the hoper) towards the future, it is not clear in what sense hopes may be said to be unconscious. Certainly, one may try to suppress one’s particular direct hopes. This could be for a variety of reasons, for example, one may fear the anticipated pain of disappointment associated with the lack of fulfilment of a cherished hope, or one may be ashamed of what one hopes. However, ordinarily, suppressing something is quite a deliberate activity, whereas the psychoanalytic concept of repression seems to concern a process of which a person is generally unaware. 11 The fact that one feels guilt, for example, is taken to be indicative of repression having taken place.12 The idea of emotions like anger and fear being repressed is, by now, a familiar part of folk psychology, in addition to its part in theoretical work.13 In so far as some writers think that there are unconscious hopes, this may be because hope is viewed as an emotion alongside fear and anger. 14 Viewing hope as an emotion closely connected with desire may lead one to assume that it may be subject to a similar process of repression. Alternatively, speaking of the death of one’s hopes is only one metaphorical way of referring to hopes that I have otherwise referred to as hopes held in vain or hopes denied (by the outcome of events, not as some intrapsychic act). Now, however, it is the physical and conscious condition of individual patients themselves, and their surroundings in the premortem world, to which I turn in order to consider how hope may affect the manner of one’s dying.

5.2

A medical context for suffering

One of the first things to be noted about a medical context for suffering is that, in principle, those involved with the sufferer have a formally

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recognised interest in assisting the sufferer and alleviating her suffering to the extent that this is possible. The practice of medicine is a socially constituted activity involving a variety of institutional procedures that give formal expression to what Améry refers to as a taken-for-granted unreflective expectation of mutual aid when in distress, 15 one of the pillars of psychological life, it is said. A second point to be noted from an earlier chapter concerns issues of autonomy and authority. In Chapter 3 (Section 3.2.2), I distinguished three forms of authority which can have an effect on a hoper’s authority over herself, understood as relative independence from the control of others. I argued that hoping can be seen to have a role in the development of a person’s autonomy. 16 In the practice of medicine, two principles – the Principle of Autonomy and the Principle of Beneficence – are considered foundational principles for ethical considerations guiding clinical procedures and practices.17 Those practising medicine typically have authority over patients in respect of authority based on knowledge. However, the Principle of Autonomy includes a requirement regarding the informed consent of a patient, or a patient’s next of kin, to treatment and so on. This has been established, in part, to curtail and qualify any authority based on power. That power may be thought to accrue to physicians, clinicians and others providing care is due to various asymmetries involved in the condition and status of patients in relation to those engaged in providing varieties of medical care. In addition to these two kinds of authority, it is often the case that those in the medical profession and caring services acquire an authority based on respect also.18 In broad and general terms, a hierarchy of hopes can be specified on the part of those suffering and seeking medical assistance, and based on the assumptions I stated in the introduction to this chapter. First of all, it may be assumed that a patient with an interest in her future would hope for recovery. As a part of this recovery a patient would typically hope that both her psychological and physical pain, if any, would be alleviated or mitigated. Where medical professionals and patients alike have recognised that a condition is terminal, and is approaching its final stage, a patient would typically hope for a good death, in conjunction with other objectives of hope. With regard to health-related suffering, the idiosyncratic forms that hopes can take are legion, but in general a distinction can be made between primary hopes and secondary hopes. When accident and illness occur, one’s underlying primary hope would be for recovery (unless one’s prognosis were to constitute an imminent and unwavering death sentence). If and when one’s

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condition permits of palliative care, then one’s underlying secondary hope would relate to the idea of a good death. These primary and secondary hopes on the part of the patient are consistent with principles guiding medical practice and care with respect to giving treatment to aid recovery, and where recovery is not possible, treating patients so as to ease dying. 5.2.1

Relating suffering to meaning in life

First of all some words about meaning in life. It has to be acknowledged that whether one finds any meaning, as opposed to an abundance of meaning, in life depends to a large extent on what one means by ‘meaning in life’. I will try to clarify why I use the phrase ‘meaning in life’ and what I take it to signify. Firstly, I use the phrase ‘meaning in life’ to avoid some typical connotations of the common phrase ‘the meaning of life’. The phrase, ‘the meaning of life’ typically suggests one of these three things to a native speaker of English: (1) that there is only one meaning of life, (2) that the one meaning of life that there is has a theological orientation and (3) that the speaker is familiar with a Monty Python film of that name. The phrase may also suggest other meanings and associations but these are the three that I would avoid as primary connotations, hence my use of the alternative phrase, ‘meaning in life’. I should add a caveat at this point. It is not that I think meaning in life cannot be found or expressed in theological terms – indeed it may be. Finding meaning in life through participation in and allegiance to one of the established world religions or to a faith otherwise organised or personal faith 19 constitutes variations on one kind of meaning in life amongst many others. It is simply any implied exclusivity of meaning in life that I wish to avoid. In another sense, almost everything has a meaning. This meaning may be thought of as linguistic meaning. Native speakers and non-native speakers of a language (or languages), alike, manage to communicate with one another by recognising or deciphering meanings of words uttered, or otherwise conveyed by each other, to each other. This kind of meaning, a pre-reflectively taken-for-granted sort of meaning, will not be my concern. What I mean by ‘meaning in life’ is, in a general sense, similar to the notions of intelligibility and narrative unity of a life developed by Alasdair MacIntyre in After Virtue.20 In part, the idea of narrative unity is meant to capture a subject’s recognition of her life making some kind of sense in an ongoing and coherent way. That one has a view of oneself in life is one thing. How one then sees oneself is another matter, and it

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is related to the values one holds and the acts one performs, amongst other things. How one sees oneself, and the course of one’s life, is a reflection of how one evaluates one’s own character and actions, positively and negatively; also, of how one evaluates events and states of affairs in the world concerning oneself and others, again positively and negatively. These evaluations, and the judgements thereupon, will typically be made in relation to the positive values one holds. How persons fare in life in turn relates back to possible re-evaluations of themselves and their lives, and may lead to changes in values. 21 How individuals understand the various parts of their lives as fitting together (or not), and to the extent that those lives are seen to exemplify, or approximate, their positive values, typically, will contribute in no small measure to determining in what ways, and to what extent, they perceive there to be ‘meaning in life’. There is no single word which is adequate to describe the variety of values, experiences or circumstances to be met with in this sense of meaning. Let us consider a couple of fairly straight-forward examples. An event or a state of affairs may be considered important for varying reasons. Not all important or significant events can be viewed as goodapproximating. Losing a job in times of high unemployment could be considered to be an important and significant event. Typically it would not be thought so for its having any qualities in themselves positive. However, if it were to turn out that becoming unemployed became a catalyst to a career change itself bringing unexpected benefits in its wake, then having been made unemployed could be seen as a good thing, in retrospect.22 This case is an example of an event initially perceived negatively having been transformed into an element in life contributing positively to a subsequent rich texture of meaning in life. On the other hand, losing a child, for example, is one case that I think I myself would find inordinately difficult to transform into a positive meaning, though I can conceive of a possibility of finding some meaning in other things in due course, 23 as many other actual parents who have lost a child, or children, have done. In the event, not all scenarios have a happy ending. That is one reason why a place remains to be found for suffering in terms of meaning in life. Yet again, it is a further matter as to what place suffering is to be given. Suffering often becomes bound up with ideas about purposiveness in life and a testing of one’s character and values.24 In this way, the manner in which one handles suffering can be seen as a response to events, rather than as something which simply overtakes and engulfs one. At this

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point we are returned to some of the ideas already discussed in previous chapters. Often, though not always, what is lacking when people do not perceive any meaning in life is a sense of purposive engagement in projects in the world.25 It is not that life becomes unintelligible in the sense that one does not understand what is going on around one, but that a sense of meaninglessness pervades one’s perception of one’s situation and one’s doings in the world. This sense of meaninglessness is akin to the hopelessness described in Chapter 2 and as discussed in Chapter 4.26 It is not only a question of timing in regard to the possible transformation of matters of negative import into that which can be perceived as containing at least some positive meaning. There is also the question of a possibility of viewing matters in terms of depth of values, as well as in terms of values that endure, or in terms of new values that may emerge over time. That which may be of negative import on one level could, nevertheless, contribute positively to a perception of meaning in life on a different or deeper level. 27 In serious illness, meaning is often perceived as given, or as actively sought, through a transformation of negative evaluations into positive evaluations. This, in part, through transformations anticipated by sustaining or re-discovering hope (as may also be the case in the experience of trauma, according to Judith Herman).28 Amongst the many matters of concern to persons confronted with serious illness may be concerns about how one will comport oneself; whether one will succumb to fear, anxiety and despair, or if one will resist or manage these emotions with some degree of composure acceptable to oneself. Other kinds of concerns include things like: (1) sorting out one’s practical affairs, (2) attending to any family, or other, matters of a personal nature that one may wish to address in some way, (3) deciding upon one’s preferred form of leave-taking from any relevant others, should there be an opportunity for this, and last but by no means least, (4) thinking about one’s responsiveness to and tolerance of therapeutic regimes, some effects of which may take a toll on one’s emotional and physical resources even as they may assist in improving or managing one’s condition. 29 The possible objectives of direct hope that do not particularly concern one’s personal important values (i.e. expressive hope) are manifold. However, expressive hopes are also likely to be plentiful in this kind of scenario, in so far as one retains sufficient energy so as to sustain hope. In experience, the circumstance of serious and terminal illness is one primary context in which these aspects of hope would typically appear as fused, to the agent. In this context,

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the import of one’s hopes could be summed up in a phrase from Václav Havel, Hope is not optimism. It is not a conviction that something will turn out well, it is a certainty that something has a meaning – quite independently of what will happen.30 In a medical context, when one says ‘I will not despair of a cure being found’, one may be not so much assessing the probability of a cure being found by researchers during the time span of one’s need, as expressing a commitment regarding how to comport and conduct oneself each day henceforth. From the perspective of an observer, much would have to be known about the hope-expressing individual and her circumstances before an observer would be warranted in interpreting a hope thus expressed as a direct hope alone or as an expressive hope. 31 Knowing which aspect of hope is emphasised may be, but need not be, evident in a given context. Early in Section 1.4.1, I distinguished between hoping for a better future and hoping to sustain the status quo in the light of a perceived threat or possible deterioration. One can live as healthily as possible given one’s constitution, environment and personal history, but this is not necessarily to say that one enjoys good health or that deterioration, accident or illness will be avoided. In a medical context, the management of an illness or the struggle against decline often assumes paramount importance. In cases of terminal illness, change and deterioration will come inexorably, but struggling for small successes, measured in the time span of one day, or by the hour, is a feature of living with illness 32 and of dying in hope, I would say. In the circumstances of palliative care, living in the light of hope and dying in the light of hope constitute two perspectives on a single-sided phenomenon. One can be said to die in the light of hope in so far as one dies neither in hopelessness, despair nor fear. In effect, dying in hope can be viewed as dying in the absence of negative emotions or moods. 5.2.2

Finding meaning in suffering

In speaking of hope as one of the principal emotions alongside fear, grief and joy, Thomas Aquinas writes that ‘Hope is a movement of appetite aroused by the perception of what is agreeable, future, arduous and possible of attainment’,33 and in addressing the question of whether hope is a virtue, Aquinas again refers to the object of hope as

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‘a future good, difficult but possible to attain’.34 The idea of striving to overcome an obstacle, or obstacles, is given as a constitutive part of hope by Aquinas and it is the notion of struggle that comes to the foreground in thinking about hope in a medical context and in terms of mortality. Not only do individuals struggle with ideas about mortality to come to a fuller understanding of its significance for human life per se, but also with infirmity of many kinds generated by illness. Struggling with infirmity, or against a too rapid deterioration, often concerns those daily tasks which would scarcely have been noticed once upon a time, as one prepared to act upon one’s chosen projects. It need not be thought that a spurious ‘meaning’ is invested in ordinary tasks (a hocus-pocus construction, elevating it and them to a sphere of fantasy). Nor is it that meaning is recalcitrantly hauled into areas wherein it did not dwell before, for example, in dressing oneself as opposed to being dressed, in feeding oneself rather than being fed and so on. Rather, it is that typically, even in the world outside of ill-health and medical institutions, meaning is to a large extent bound up with the perspective of the perceiver; at least, or especially, in regard to a sense of significance and meaning in life. Those who would adventure to discover the fabled Yeti, the abominable snowman of Tibet, for example, may singularly and consistently fail to perceive any significance or meaning in the weekly cleaning of windows that a young, healthy and house-proud person may perform. That is not to say, however, that the window cleaning has no meaning, or that it has only a spurious kind of quasi-meaning. There is a difference between saying: (1) meaning resides in these activities and (2) meaning is expressed by these activities or (3) meaning is embedded in these activities. In (1) and (2), meaning may be thought separable from the activities in question, that is, meaning could have resided elsewhere, or be expressed otherwise, whereas in (3), what is suggested is that meaning is constituted in the activity. Typically, meaning emerges from a pattern of interwoven and shifting strands such that a precise and fixed meaning (in the sense of significance) cannot necessarily be segregated from an agent’s or observer’s matrix of beliefs, desires, hopes, fears, events and so on, and the perspective from which one presently apprehends a current or prospective state of affairs.35 An operative difference between pre-illness and post-illness is that previously meaning was not noticed when there were struggles of significance elsewhere, for example, to save one’s marriage or to retain one’s employment. 36 In illness one may exchange one type of struggle for another, or one’s struggles may simply be multiplied.

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I emphasise this point because there may be a tendency to view meaning in some medical contexts as an artificial construct which provides a simulacra of an earlier pre-illness real meaning (as though present but different struggle does not really signify anything anymore, except the construction of a protective illusion). In illness one’s struggles may concern one’s personal qualities directly. One may strive to remain as one knows oneself, or to change aspects of oneself in certain ways. Hope focused on some objectives that once would have counted as direct or expressive hopes in the ordinary world, may lose their significance for a patient. On the other hand, what once were less than hopes in the everyday world (from an agent’s perspective) may become objectives of expressive hope precisely because an outward manifestation of a struggle proves to observers, and to the agent herself, that she remains engaged with interest in affirmations of her life, regardless of how circumscribed those actions may (have) become. In illness, attending to the minutiae of everyday life may transform it into objectives of hope of an extraordinary significance.37 Hoping which is significant almost always involves other persons in various relationships. Recall the distinctions amongst forms of orchestration of hope that I have employed, viz.: (1) agent-orchestrated hope, (2) mutual-orchestrated hope, (3) other-orchestrated hope and (4) worldorchestrated hope. Only in (4), where the causality of nature is at issue, would other persons be ruled out directly. In (3) and (2), others are ruled in, directly. In (1) others may be involved indirectly, especially if an agent’s objective is complex and extended over considerable periods of time. In a medical context, all forms of hope orchestration may come into play. However, it is (3), other-orchestrated hope, which typically predominates in this type of situation. In the following section, I will address some issues arising from thinking about giving different kinds of hope in a medical context. All these are concerned with various ways in which situated agents stand in relation to each other.

5.3

A healthy approach to unhealth and dying

In this section I start with a blend of notions concerning some ideas about what societies and individuals may be thought to require if each is to be said to be healthy. These notions range from ideas about cultures of despair to thinking about relationships between hope, despair and hopelessness as death approaches for individuals. I introduce these ideas with some general remarks about health and growth.

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The natural disposition of a newborn baby, in health, is for growth. The idea of growth itself is not connected with any particular value. When growth is thought of in terms of progress or improvement, then values are fused in the notion. Persons may progress or improve, but tumours only grow, strictly speaking. When tumours grow they spread rather than progress or improve. If we say that a tumour has ‘improved’, that is generally taken to mean that it has shrunk or receded rather than that it has grown. Viruses, like tumours, also spread. Just as some physical pathogens can spread, so too, can a psychological pathology. We may speak of despair infecting a community or sweeping through ranks of soldiers facing certain death. Two writers from two different disciplines, with their respective theoretical vantage points, have recently addressed similar concerns on the health of society and the individual. Each response is to a perceived spread of despair and its corollaries like apathy, a ‘do-nothingism’. Hope is a key element in each of these works that argue for resistance to despair and pessimism. 5.3.1

The health of society and individuals

In Enemies of Hope, Raymond Tallis defends an Enlightenment framework of thought, modified by a number of qualifications.38 Tallis propounds his view as an alternative to what he considers to be various forms of pessimism. One of the ‘evils’ of pessimism, according to Tallis, is a ‘do-nothingism’, which typically follows as a consequence of pessimism.39 Similarly to Tallis, Sharon Welch is concerned with ethico-political perspectives and social consequences for individuals in societies in which a culture of despair may be said to be growing. Welch, too, pays attention to particularities of circumstance and she stresses a need for informed individual and collective action in local contexts to resist oppression. In A Feminist Ethic of Risk,40 Welch criticises what she calls cultured despair. Her description of cultured despair resembles Tallis’s critique of theoretical perspectives that he views as supporting a climate of thinking on matters of public interest ultimately leading to apathy and despair. Welch cites a Hippocratic principle instructing physicians to do no harm. She goes on to consider what may happen if, as a consequence of being unable to discover with certainty what doing good consists in, nothing is done.41 Depending on what type of case is at issue, doing nothing itself may often constitute harm. This notion is particularly relevant to the kinds of ethical and political cases which are Welch’s main concern – ‘doing nothing’, may often be a way of aiding oppressors much more so than their victims. Welch discusses an approach to ethics and action having a different starting point from

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traditional philosophical moral deliberation. It is described, in part, by her thus, In this moral tradition action begins where much middle-class thought stops. The horizon of action is recognition that we cannot imagine how we will win. Acknowledgement of the immensity of the challenge is given.42 Although Welch is addressing social ills, some parallels can be drawn between this context and a medical context. By analogy, it can be said that in aiming to overcome, or to manage and live with, a life-threatening illness, one perhaps cannot imagine how one will win through, especially initially. It is not only that perhaps one cannot form an accurate picture of the steps constituting treatment and its attendant benefits or hazards, 43 but that one cannot imagine how one will bear it successfully. That is where hope comes in; in acknowledging the immensity of a personal challenge and trying to meet it according to one’s own history and resources. I have taken the view that hoping involves both a grasp of present reality and an outstripping of present reality, yet in a medical context, hope has sometimes been viewed (by others) as that which protects one from reality. What is really possible is something which needs to be tested out against present reality. This is true in terms of engendering cooperative and coordinated action in resisting oppression, but it is also true of the way in which scientific development proceeds. 44 Further, it is also true of many trials of one’s character and other psychological states, for example, discovering one’s pain threshold. Proceeding in hope, whether collectively or individually, involves taking risks. With regard to much of what Welch writes in the first part of her book, the ‘ethic of risk’ she outlines could aptly be renamed an ‘ethic of hope’. She writes, and I insert, Such a situation calls for an ethic of risk [hope], an ethic that begins with the recognition that we cannot guarantee decisive change in the near future or even in our lifetime. The ethic of risk [hope] is propelled by the equally vital recognition that to stop resisting, even when success is unimaginable, is to die. The death that accompanies acquiescence to overwhelming problems is multidimensional: the threat of physical death, the death of the imagination, the death of the ability to care.45 The ability to care is amongst a nexus of prerequisite capacities for living healthily as an individual and in community with others. Communities

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will flourish all the more if and when its members individually and collectively aspire to physiological and psychological well-being. Living healthily is a pursuit which informs all areas of human life, if it is to be approximated. One’s health is often taken-for-granted when ill-health does not force itself on one’s attention. In daily life, when health is considered, it may be thought that one can set aside some small portion of time to ‘attend to health’, while in the remainder of one’s life one may live as-if unconcerned with the ways in which lifestyle and habits may impact on one’s condition, especially in the longer term. In taking the stairs once a week, for example, instead of taking the elevator, a person may think that she has attended to health, but typically persons will neither be, nor remain, healthy unless appropriate attention to wellbeing is paid across a range of situations and circumstances. However, health for all is not a prescription easily dispensed. Living healthily is typically as individual a matter as dying is personal.46 5.3.2

A personal approach to dying

In her book, It All Begins with Hope,47 Ronna Jevne discusses hope in a medical setting. She focuses on two central concerns: (1) the nature and quality of the relationship between physicians and patients and (2) the particular nature of each patient’s struggle with illness. Jevne’s book includes interviews with patients living with serious illness.48 Patients describe their experiences – expressions of hope as diverse as the individual patients are unique. Jevne refers to illness as a great equaliser since each individual is only a diagnosis away from becoming ‘the patient’ herself. The inevitable decline of old age,49 or a diagnosis of a terminal illness, means that there is no hope of reversing a process, or of a recovery per se. There may be an arrest of decline, and management of a condition or illness, or periods of remission, but the fact that one’s death inhabits the relatively near future, or that dying is already underway is not in doubt. Many of Jevne’s patients are not hoping for recovery as a protective illusion from an unpalatable reality. Many are hoping to live each day of the remainder of their lives without a complete capitulation to despair. That is, from an observer’s perspective, it may be said that they are hoping to die with hope. This overarching hope organises subsidiary hopes on a daily basis, for example, the hope to walk down the street and back in the sunshine,50 or to share in a family occasion.51 On the basis of her empirical observations, Jevne makes the claim that ‘Hope is given and received through human relationships’.52 This medical empiricalbased claim is consistent with a general account of what is involved between persons in an ‘I–you’ relation which can be generated by

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mutual-orchestrated or other-orchestrated hope. 53 That hope has a value in a medical context is not in doubt, in general. However, as Jevne notes, one challenge for caregivers is to give hope that is helpful. 54 Recall the discussion from Section 4.2, concerning good hope. It was argued that if one is to give hope successfully, one must attend to the particularity of persons and circumstances as hope cannot be doled out as carelessly as a vitamin supplement might be casually dispensed from a trolley. It has been seen that temporality is of the nature of hope, but having hope takes no time, even though one may have a particular direct hope for a certain period of time. However, giving hope takes time, and appropriate attention to a ‘you’ to whom hope would be given.55 Giving, receiving and having good hope is, in one sense, a very personal matter. To say this is to draw a connection between the idea of good hope and a sphere of personal relating as discussed and developed by moral philosopher, John Macmurray. 56 Briefly, what is personal, according to Macmurray, is neither what is individual, nor what is social. It is not captured by a first or third person perspective. Rather, the sphere of the personal concerns a second person perspective, an ‘I–you’ view of a separate and distinct other to whom one stands opposite though in mutual regard. 57 Jevne comments on an enabling capacity of hope. Those with hope report having more zest for life, even if they are not the most physically energetic, though people fuelled by hope are more likely to be active in various ways than those not so propelled. Recall that at the beginning of this chapter, I reiterated the idea that hope is concerned with a basic energy for life and interest in it, and it should be remembered that despairing of x, too, can be energising. It seems that, prima facie, an optimal therapeutic regime for any given patient, with an aim of maximising psychological benefits and focusing on energy conservation, would consist in striving for a balance between hoping for x and despairing of y, while supporting a patient in avoiding being in despair over z. Hoping is typically thought useful in promoting well-being, and it appears actually to be so on numerous occasions, in experience. However, hopes held by others, but for oneself, may not always be benign in their effects (however well-intentioned they may have been). Some of these concerns are addressed in ‘Hope and Deception’, 58 by William Ruddick who argues for the development of a Principle of Hope – the said principle to be established as an independent principle in medical ethics alongside the Principles of Autonomy and Beneficence. Ruddick gives an account of hope showing much of its complexity. 59 He argues

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that hope’s complexity constitutes a central reason for not subsuming the giving of hope under a Principle of Beneficence. It is claimed that to assume that hope should always be given to patients is to assume that hope has a predictability of function and effect which experience does not bear out. Nor is there any reason, in principle, why it should. Whether hope will be a benefit to a given patient in particular circumstances will depend on what aspect of hope is at issue, and what sort of objectives of direct hope are encouraged. Ruddick identifies some of the prima facie benefits of hope: (1) a therapeutic placebo effect, (2) compliance with therapeutic regimes to exact maximum benefit from the same and (3) compliant or ‘good’ patients may receive more attentive care from medical staff.60 He then shows the converse, viz. that any placebo-like effects of hope could be expected to be very variable and therefore not a reliable benefit in terms of treatment. Secondly, the benefit of some therapeutic regimes is open to question, especially in cases of terminal illness (where the supposed benefits may be negligible). 61 And thirdly, while compliant patients may be treated more attentively, equally, compliant individuals are easy to ignore – if they are doing what is required of them spontaneously, cannot they be left alone to get on with it? In an analogous classroom situation, a ‘good’ pupil may receive a positive comment on her annual report card, but it is generally troublemakers in class who receive a greater amount of a teacher’s daily attention, if not her approbation. How much more may this be the case, if, as Ruddick considers, false hope is often given to patients.62 Since the possibility of an individual having direct hope depends on her subjective belief(s), a patient may entertain false hopes, believing the impossible possible, if this belief is stimulated by medical staff. It is at this point that proponents of the primacy of the principle of autonomy cross swords with proponents of the primacy of the principle of beneficence. A resolution of this conflict is no easy matter. As Ruddick points out, hope given benevolently but based on patient deception undercuts patient autonomy (when information is withheld or the patient is misled), but not all such false hope harms the patient, nor is the giving of full information always a benefit to the patient. Ruddick gives the example of a patient worrying over regretted past events instead of putting her affairs in order and continuing to attend to the present, as far as she is able. Also, any false hopes associated with matters of concern to a patient that she lives to see fail may produce more harm than not having hoped about them in the first place. Further, as has been seen, not all instances of not hoping are necessarily cases of despairing. The effects of discovering deception should also be

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considered, but again these are not necessarily one-sided. On the one hand, discovering deception may result in a loss of trust in the deceiver; though on the other hand, like a possible re-energising in some cases of despairing of x, discovering some deception may lead to the opening up of new possibilities. These considerations are amongst a number of reasons given by Ruddick as to why hope should be viewed independently from autonomy and beneficence; even though hope often contributes to autonomy and may frequently be considered a good, in experience. Ruddick distinguishes two broad forms of autonomy: (1) that of rational, informed choice and (2) that of leading a life one embraces. He writes, On this latter view, [(2)], Autonomy requires the capacity (or capacities) for leading a life informed by reflective values. What matters is not the usual rational, informed choices among options: there may be few of those, especially when ill. Rather, what Autonomy requires is the ability to continue, so far as circumstances allow, the life one embraces (or if that is impossible, the capacity to make another life or, failing that, to end one’s life). 63 The patient who does not hope for recovery may yet hope for many things. In a medical context, the difference between hopes whose fulfilment is highly probable compared to hopes whose fulfilment is merely possible, may loom larger than in other areas of life. Consider, for example, a scale of difference between the mere possibility of a cure being found and its actual probability. Though a difference in a given case may not be that great, differences in some cases may be such as to suggest to medical staff and carers that certain hopes would be better abandoned, in the interests of a patient. However, patients may cling tenaciously to them. In cases of terminal illness, hoping for recovery beyond a certain point in time as a particular illness grows in severity will become a matter of hoping in vain, from an objective point of view. 64 Even so, hoping for a good death may remain a viable hope, both subjectively and objectively. 5.3.3

Having a good death and dying in hope

What constitutes a good death is perhaps not quite as varied as what constitutes a good life, but it is open to discussion. What is thought to constitute a good death will depend partly on one’s cultural norms, values and the practices surrounding death. Also it will depend on one’s specific secular or religious beliefs, and partly on one’s character and temperament.

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Unless one is simply fortunate, actually having a good death usually requires some preparation on the part of the patient, for example, discussing the issue of pain management in advance. Any given patient may have a marked preference for lucidity over pain control, or vice versa, and part of a good death would surely consist in such a significant preference being observed. If pain is not at issue, then resources of character like equanimity, fortitude or a sense of humour will be of service in preparing to die (though clearly these cannot be infused at the last moment). In a recent dramatic adaptation of the life of author Lytton Strachey, his last words were ascribed as ‘if this is dying, I don’t think much of it’. In the context of his character and life, this represents an ironically amusing review of his experience of approaching death. In her book, On Death and Dying, Elizabeth Kübler-Ross observes that patients are typically reassured when informed of a malignant tumour if a physician has considered her or his own attitude to death. She writes, If we cannot face death with equanimity, how can we be of assistance to our patients? We, then, hope that our patients will not ask us that horrible question. We make rounds and talk about many trivialities or the wonderful weather outside and the sensitive patient will play the game and talk about next spring, even if he is quite aware that there will be no next spring for him. These doctors then, when asked, will tell us that their patients do not want to know the truth, that they never ask for it, and that they believe all is well. The doctors are, in fact, greatly relieved that they are not confronted and are often quite unaware that they provoked this response in their patients.65 Clearly, in a medical context a patient’s hopes are not the only hopes to have an impact on the nature of the communication and resultant understanding between doctor and patient. A patient’s hope of a good death is all the more likely to be fulfilled if effective channels of communication exist. At the beginning of this chapter I noted that all dying is personal, whatever kind of significance is attached to dying, for the one who dies.66 And just as with expressions of hope, or conceptions of living healthily, the requirements of a good death cannot be itemised and ordered for all. Not only is death personal in the sense of being of a particular person but the furnishing of a good death may be unique to an individual. In terms of psychosocial growth, Erik Erikson identifies eight major stages of psychological development.67 In the very first stage of life, a conflict is posited between basic trust and basic distrust, from which

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hope emerges as a basic psychosocial strength. Hope is said to sustain subsequent interactions and development. Erikson’s model may be viewed as quasi-Hegelian in form; 68 at the first stage a thesis of basic trust and an antithesis of basic distrust are posited, the conflict between them being said to result in a synthesis from which hope emerges. Although hope itself does not become the thesis for the next stage, it is nevertheless viewed as being retained and transformed in various ways through each successive synthesis throughout the eight stages identified by Erikson. The stages are said to culminate in a thesis of integrity, versus its antithesis of despair, with wisdom emerging from the resultant synthesis. In the eighth stage hope is viewed as supporting integrity, and as mitigating against despair. Erikson’s empirical psychological account of a primary relationship between trust and hope is compatible, in outline, with the philosophical perspective on hope developed herein.69 Having direct hope can, though it will not necessarily, foster agential development and psychological progress till death. Indirect hope, however, will typically improve one’s prospects of surviving some ordeal. In so far as one may hope, then despairing of particular direct hopes may also contribute to agential development. Hope may be viewed as a factor in individual progress from first to last. 5.3.4

Taking a view on dying with hope

It has been seen that there are many aspects to dying in hope and to dying in the light of hope. Typically, when undergoing suffering, a patient places her hope in her doctor and other carers, thus a patient has other-orchestrated hope. Other-orchestrated hope turns doctors and other carers into hopes for patients, that is, doctors and carers are those others who can give effect to the objectives of a patient’s hope. It is a further step as to whether being a hope for someone is affirmed by the person who becomes a hope for another. In principle, medical staff and carers are considered to have voluntarily placed themselves in formal roles which generate obligations of treatment and care that coincide with a patient’s hope for mutual aid in the alleviation of suffering. Therefore, doctors and carers may be considered as having affirmed becoming a hope for patients, in general. This presumption of affirmation implies a commitment to a patient with ensuing responsibilities concomitant with formal obligations of treatment and care. Within this triadic relation between patient, doctor and notions of commitment, scope arises for thinking about ways in which commitments may be fulfilled. Recall the discussion of agency and authority in Chapter 3.70 The authoritative ways in which commitments may be

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met can bear upon: (1) any objectives of direct hope a person may adopt, (2) the ability of a patient to sustain indirect hope and (3) the relationship between trust and hope. Firstly, if a doctor were to exercise an authority based on power, predominantly, then scope for a patient forming objectives emphasising or embodying any of hope’s aspects would be restricted to some degree by that doctor’s authoritative view of reality. In this case a doctor could be said to assert what is possible. A patient may disagree, personally, but may not be in a position to have her own private view of what is possible be made public. Secondly, if a doctor were to exercise authority in fulfilling his commitments based on real knowledgeable authority,71 then one thing a doctor would know would be that although she knows many medical facts about a patient’s illness and condition, it is not the case that all possible facts about an illness can be considered to be known. In addition, a knowledgeable doctor would know that although knowing something of the nature and form a particular illness will take, what could not be predicted in advance is its significance and meaning, if any, for a given patient. Typically, doctors with a knowledge of some limits as to what can be known respect what they themselves know they do not know. A doctor exercising this form of authority opens up many possibilities for a patient in terms of objectives of direct hopes, and may foster a patient’s ability to sustain indirect hope. Thirdly, there is a form of authority related to authority based on real (limited) knowledge. This kind of authority primarily concerns respect. It is often bound up with the knowledgeable authority described above, but there is a difference. To illustrate this I will turn to the world of fiction for a moment. Consider two characters, Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty. Both of these characters are portrayed as men of intelligence, skill and resourcefulness. Holmes is a brilliant detective while Moriarty is a very clever villain. Holmes considers Moriarty to have real knowledge of criminal procedures and Holmes respects his skill, in one sense. However, Holmes considers the knowledgeable Moriarty to be his arch-rival. This is not because they are competing for the same prize but because Holmes would solve crimes whereas Moriarty would commit them. From a third person perspective, the granting of a respectful authority would apply to Holmes. That is, when an agent acknowledges another person’s authority on this basis of respect, it is a matter of character and conduct that is conducive to flourishing, understood in an Aristotelian sense. A doctor who treats her patients with technical skill combined with a perceptiveness to the needs or concerns of individual patients is a doctor who would gain this kind of authority, ceteris paribus.72

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Patients who were treated by physicians and other carers whom they could acknowledge as authoritative, based on a respectful authority, would have the most to hope for, in principle. Before any person becomes ‘the patient’, as Jevne expresses it, most persons are occupied by comporting and conducting themselves in the ordinary everyday world. I will assume that in this pre-reflective world, conditions are neither like Rousseau’s state of nature nor like that of Hobbes’ state of nature. It is a world in which persons may comport themselves trustingly, for the most part. It is a world also in which people have hope. In this world, unreflective trust is ‘taken-for-granted’, typically. It may be said that indirect hope, too, is ‘taken-for-granted’, typically. However, this means something slightly different in each case. On the one hand, unless and until unreflective trust is diminished or destroyed, it is seldom noticed in experience. Whereas, on the other hand, indirect hope is noticed through one’s interest in the world, one’s sense of engagement with it and one’s level of energy.73 Direct hopes, of which a person in this pre-reflective world typically has many, are experienced through desire and through the imagination. The imagination allows one to anticipate objectives of hope and thinking allows one to consider the likelihood of its fulfilment. Direct hope itself is quite readily visible in the world although its objective is uncertain. That is, having once grasped one’s objective anticipatorily, one returns to it over and again unless and until it is fulfilled or abandoned. It may be said that indirect hope is noticeable in comparison with unreflective trust but unnoticed in comparison with direct or expressive hope. All in all, this makes hope a reflective phenomenon in experience as opposed to an unreflective phenomenon. In the ordinary everyday world there are many local contexts in which hope and trust stand side by side. Indeed, there are also local contexts in which having unreflective trust may amount to indirect hope being thought unnecessary. However, typically, hope and trust coexist and complement each other. As was seen in Chapter 4, in cases of suffering inflicted where unreflective trust is destroyed, then indirect hope may stand in its place. In a medical context, a person who becomes a patient is relocated from the ordinary world to a world of extraordinary circumstance. It is here that the ordinary takes on an unusual significance. However, the ‘taken-for-granted’ mutual aid is on hand, in principle. Not only may a patient place her hope in her physician and other carers, she may also place her trust in them. A physician who acquires an authority based on respect from a patient will typically have a patient’s trust. Her hopes

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will be placed in the doctor also. A physician who has a knowledgeable authority may also have a patient’s hopes placed in herself or himself. Trust may also be placed herein, though it may rest on a doctor’s technical skill, primarily. As has been noted, a patient would have least to hope from a physician whose authority may be based on power, with respect to the formation and fulfilment of direct hopes in particular. However, with trust potentially under threat, indirect hope may be viewed as all the more necessary and desirable if and when a patient meets with a doctor whose authority is asserted.74 That the above is recognised in practice, if not expressed similarly on reflection, is part of what makes many people the good physicians and carers that they become through comporting and conducting themselves appropriately. In this way, physicians and carers play a part in the hope of those who hope for a good death, and those who hope to die in the light of hope. Dying is all the easier, I myself would imagine, when done with some kind of hope rather than none. Let us consider what there is to be said about both dying in hope and dying in the light of hope, that is, death in relation to both direct and indirect hope(s). The finality of death introduces the expectation of death as a factor against which hopes are shaped in this context. I will take possible combinations between a desire to die and a desire not to die, in relation to expectations regarding death. First, there is the case where a person wants to die but expects not to die (within the foreseeable future); such a person could adequately have a direct hope to die. Secondly, there is the case where a person does not want to die but expects to die (within a future to think about); such a person could have a direct hope for non-death. 75 Thirdly, a person who does not want to die, and expects not to die, would either be rather young (presumably) or be a person who considers herself immortal or otherwise invincible. Such a person would have no need of either direct or indirect hope. It is only in the second case that dying in the light of hope is an interesting phenomenon. Someone who dies in the light of hope is a person who expects to die. What is excluded by dying in the light of hope is the negative emotions and moods previously discussed. So, first of all, dying in the light of hope excludes dying in hopelessness, despair or fear. For someone dying in the light of hope there would be an absence of negative states concerned with death. The exclusion of these negative states is a condition which could be engendered by the absence of a desire necessarily to live. That is, a person who dies in the light of hope would have no desire to die, but equally, this person would have no desire not to die.

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It should be noted that having no desire not to die is not to be equated with having a desire for death. These are two things, and not one and the same. From what has now been said, the possibility of a very specific direct hope can easily be envisaged. A person who does not want to die and abhors the thought of her or his extinction may well have a direct hope to become able to die in the light of hope. If she or he succeeds in this, then this specific direct hope is no longer there. In the end, dying in the light of hope amounts to a number of absences.

5.4

Summary

In this chapter, I have described differences of perspectives on ideas about death and thinking about dying. In a medical context I have considered how and in what ways one’s approaching death, and the manner in which one dies, may be said to have meaning for the one who dies. I have emphasised the relationship between character and values as being of signal importance in contributing to the possibility of perceiving meaning in life. It is in a medical context where the ordinary becomes extraordinary most noticeably – other-orchestrated hope is foregrounded and hopes are typically shared. A medical context provides an arena in which good hope also is emphasised. I have taken a view on dying in hope and dying in the light of hope. As with living in hope and living in the light of hope, a difference is marked between two perspectives on one event. The difference concerns a matter of one’s orientation and comportment. I find hope to be consistently an anticipatory approach to viewing the world irrespective of whether one anticipates the prospect of a sunny day or whether one anticipates the prospect of one’s death.

Summary

This work investigates the significance of hope and develops the view that, minimally, a two-part analysis of hope is required to account for the variable appearance of this complex and multifaceted phenomenon. To this end, a distinction is made between living in hope and living in the light of hope. A set of further distinctions concerning modes of agency and the expression of values is made in the course of this analysis with respect to living in hope and living in the light of hope. It is argued that in addition to its motivational potency, hope has axiological implications that may be thought of as latent in hope, and thereby pass unnoticed, until hope is called upon in circumstances that are challenging or extraordinary in some way. Further, to account for differences in the nature of relationships between hope and a variety of other phenomena, both negative and positive, the notion of a concept ecology is introduced. The term ecology is used because the connections between the concepts in question do not have the force of logical necessity, but rather, the various concepts inhabit the same territory and thrive under the same conditions as the concept of hope, to the extent that it would be distinctly odd to find any one of them entirely isolated from each other in experience. The resulting view of hope, as a phenomenon which by its nature shows an active and judgemental approach to the world on the part of situated agents, is developed by reflections on hope across a range of limited, but diverse, contexts. As befits hope itself, this perspective on hope is offered to the reader who is invited to share it. The first chapter deals with hope at its most accessible point. A variety of everyday situations are considered in which people speak of hoping and despairing. Also considered are cases where these phenomena are exhibited in conduct. Parameters of hope and despair are drawn out from these familiar examples with special attention being given to 143

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temporal orientation, and ideas of possibility and uncertainty. This examination reveals what is entailed in our latent understanding of hope and despair. This chapter introduces some terminology for identifying different focal points of agency with respect to a range of objectives of direct hope(s). Contrary to the tendency of many philosophers to discuss hope in terms of expectation and wishing, I claim that hope contains anticipation, not expectation. The second chapter further develops some structural differences between hoping and despairing around an axis of uncertainty. The notion of uncertainty is also used in describing related phenomena like fearing and trusting. It is argued that hope counters moods like hopelessness and anxiety as well as emotions like fear and despair; a distinction is made between the emotion of despair and a judgement of despair. In contradistinction to many philosophers and psychologists, I argue for the view that hope is not an emotion. In Chapter 3, issues of agency are viewed through the lens of hope. Considering agency from the perspective of hope is not only giving a redescription of some of its aspects, but it is also bringing to the foreground aspects of agency which otherwise tend to pass unnoticed. Agency is discussed from first and third person perspectives. A first person perspective yields an agent’s own view whereas a third person perspective yields an observer’s view of action. It is a perspective an agent may take to herself, reflectively. Subsequently, reference is made to a second person perspective as the view of a person other than the agent who is addressed by the agent, and who bears the consequences of the agent’s actions, for good or ill. An ‘I–you’ relation is described in terms of commitment and responsibility. Issues of authority and autonomy are taken up in a discussion of everyday social practices which nevertheless are imbued with personal and social significance. In this chapter, I argue that not only does hope motivate action from a first person perspective (‘I’ and ‘we’), but that it also commits us to some responsibilities entailed in addressing another person as a ‘you’. Philosophers who do not distinguish between direct hope and indirect hope face difficulties in accounting for the value of hope in action. This distinction alleviates some of those difficulties. Hope motivates action and modifies an agent’s comportment in the world. Chapter 4 is concerned with some aspects of agency and autonomy under conditions of hardship and suffering when that suffering is instigated and imposed by some human beings upon others. In this regard, experiences of torture and rape are reflected upon. Torture is discussed as an example of suffering inflicted in extraordinary circumstances,

Summary

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while rape is considered as an example of suffering inflicted in ordinary circumstances. An analysis of some ways in which trust and hope relate to each other in both of these scenarios is given. Surviving such experiences is discussed in terms of living in the light of hope, in the abeyance or absence of unreflective trust. I argue for the view that a kind of hope, that is, living in the light of hope, should be situated between unreflective trust and direct hope. I claim that identifying living in the light of hope will make a positive contribution to developing a more adequate phenomenology of hope. Reflecting on the matter will improve our understanding of the relationship between forms of trust and hope in the world. In the fifth and final chapter, a reflective view is developed on some perspectives on perceiving meaning in agency under conditions of hardship and suffering when that suffering is undergone, as opposed to its being inflicted by human hand or design. Ideas about dying and death are discussed in relation to questions about meaning in life. Attention is paid to a medical context. Within this context, the circumstances of terminal illness requiring and permitting palliative care are taken under consideration. This chapter argues for an inherent complexity of relatedness between hope and despair until the very end of life. A proposal is made of a way of viewing hope as an absence, yet without hopelessness, or despair. Applying the distinction between direct and indirect hope(s) to thinking about death shows how aspects of hope can complement each other in regard to thinking about the end of life and perceiving meaning in life. In summary, the results of this philosophical investigation provide a descriptive account of secular hope, and related phenomena. In aiming to show the contours and significance of hope in life, a taxonomy of hope has been developed in order to contribute to clarifying what is at issue when hope is brought into focus either through issues in agency, or through questions of meaning in life. I think the axiological nature of hope indicates its normative implications and potential. The development of this work has resulted in an aspect of hope being identified and located on a map belonging to ecological thinking about hope, life and death.

Appendix

In ‘Hope and the Structure of Philosophical Systems’ Paul Ricoeur discusses the practical and theoretical orientations of Kantian and Hegelian philosophical systems. Differently from the Cartesian issue of appropriate starting points in philosophy, Ricoeur raises the problematic nature of the closing point, or horizon of philosophical discourse, as he states the matter. I do not take issue with the alternative ways in which Ricoeur situates hope in relation to these diverse philosophical systems. However, I do question two points made by Ricoeur regarding the place of hope in theological and philosophical discourse, and the ascribed salient features of hope with respect to rationality and irrationality. In his preliminary discussion entitled ‘The Task of a Biblical Theology of Hope’, Ricoeur states that hope ‘does not primarily belong to philosophical discourse’.1 He claims that past theologians were correct to classify hope as a theological virtue alongside faith and love. Ricoeur writes, ‘Under that title they preserved the dimension to which hope belongs.’ 2 At this point in his text, Ricoeur is outlining the task of a biblical theology of hope, as his subtitle indicates, and there is no reason prima facie to suppose that his comments on eschatological theology as opposed to a theology of logos, or manifestation, are not viable in terms of discussing hope within a theological discourse. What is puzzling, from a philosophical point of view is why priority is accorded to theological discourse in respect of hope. It is the case that as a matter of historical fact, theological discourse has served as the main repository of recorded thinking about hope that has survived over time in textual form, but this is a contingent matter. What is specific to theological discourse regarding hope is the point that what makes a virtue a theological virtue is that the said virtue takes God as its object. 3 God is said to be hope’s final cause ‘in so far as it expects happiness from its enjoyment’. 4 While I have argued that one does not hope for that which one does not desire, where the objective of hope is arduous to attain one may neither expect nor anticipate enjoyment qua enjoyment from its fulfilment. What is specific to hope is the uncertainty that sets its parameters in agency and meaning. Even when hoping is seen as the expression of value(s), and possibly the final such expression in the face of overwhelming circumstances, there is the possibility (or typically, probability) that its objective may not be fulfilled. I have resisted an explicit classification of hope, suggesting that in some sense hope is in a class of its own, notwithstanding that it is a multifaceted phenomenon standing in relation to other phenomena that are more readily classified as emotions, attitudes, judgements or decisions. Although there is a striving in hope5 that I have discussed throughout, especially in Chapter 2, hoping has an anthropological orientation as its core. Hoping is what humans do. The objectives of hope are what humans aspire to achieve. It is humans whose hopes may fail, at various points in the structure of hoping, and for a variety of reasons. God may 146

Appendix 147 be a possible object of hope from a theological point of view, though God as an objective of hope, qua objectives, is difficult to envisage, let alone pursue or attain, from an anthropological perspective. Ricoeur himself refers to the idea of an existential anthropology and cites St Paul and Kierkegaard with respect to it. Calling on St Paul’s interpretation of two christological events (i.e. the Cross and the Resurrection) as antinomic, Ricoeur argues that what is represented is the death of the old man and the birth of the new man, from an existential point of view. He states, This second birth is the eschatological event in existential terms. Now this eschatological event cannot be expressed by the means of a logic of identity. We must express it as a break, as a leap, as a new creation, as a wholly other.6 Again, referring back to St Paul, Ricoeur identifies what he takes to be the different and salient features of hope when he says, ‘The logic of crime and punishment was a logic of equivalence (“the wages of sin is death”), the logic of hope is a logic of increase and superabundance (“When sin increased, grace abounded all the more,” 5/20–21).’7 Hope, it turns out, is equated with ‘the “superabundance” of meaning as opposed to the abundance of senselessness, of failure and of destruction’.8 The imagery is dramatic and the metaphors extravagant as Ricoeur tries to capture what he takes to be distinctive features of hope. Ricoeur’s notion of superabundance as meaning, or as he also phrases it, ‘the excess of sense over non-sense which gives rise to thought’ 9 does capture something of the character of hope in permitting the expression of value(s) when confronted with disaster or desolation. However, in terms of the one who hopes, an eschatological event as an existential rebirth is nevertheless contained within a logic of identity. In cases of ‘conversion’ – though not necessarily religious conversion – typifying rebirth, for example, one standardly commits to new and different values than those held previously. There is no need here of Lockean thought experiments regarding princes and paupers. Body and brain remain though the person changes. Such commitments as are made in conversion are exemplified in action over time ceteris paribus. There is a difference between making a fresh commitment to alternative values in an act of conversion and sustaining such a commitment into an uncertain and indefinite future. If memory and imagination do not falter, the new man is engendered not in terms of the old man, but against the old man, and carried into the future in this way. The existentially reborn man may feel sure of his new commitment from a first person perspective but this kind of surety offers no guarantee of sustaining new values in action. Unless one is able to remember or envisage a state of affairs different than the present, one cannot hope to become or remain a man reborn, that is other than who one was or who one is. As has been seen, hope is a response in the present towards what is and what will (or better, may) become. Yet hope is inextricably linked to the past. Without both memory and imagination there is no purchase for hope in the present and towards the future. A person’s hope may engender change and subsequently sustain it but this is possible because of the past rather than in spite of it. Ricoeur states that hope is hope for ‘the superabundance of life in spite of death’10 and this may be so. Many would argue that it is only in the

148 Appendix light of death that life has meaning.11 However, this is a different point than that concerning the identity of the one for whom life has meaning. From an anthropological point of view, oneself, even when reborn, has a past as well as a future that can be expressed within the terms of a logic of identity that encompasses change.

Notes 1

An analysis of everyday hope

1. Oxford English Dictionary, eds J. A. Simpson & E. S. C. Weiner (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989). 2. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, tr. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983), Pt. II, (i), 174e. 3. I address the relationship between hope and fear in Chapter 2 as well as making distinctions between moods, feelings and emotions. 4. This point will be discussed further in Chapter 2 when I consider the respective positions of Spinoza, Descartes and Hume on hope and uncertainty. 5. While it is possible that A may be lying to B, or deceiving herself, I am here concerned with instances of straight-forward sincere communication. 6. J. P. Day, ‘Hope’ in American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 6, no. 2 (1969), pp. 91–92, distinguishes between the estimative and desiderative aspects of hope. He does not, however, distinguish between anticipation and expectation as I have done. I adopt his terminology because it permits an abbreviated expression of two different aspects of hope. I reiterate some of the words used by Day (‘fervent’, ‘high’) to indicate how we speak about these aspects. 7. Here it is contextually implied that I am using belief in the ordinary sense of belief, as the term is used pre-theoretically in the everyday world, and not in a philosopher’s sense of belief. More precisely, this belief might be termed a ‘taking-for-granted’. 8. See Ernst Bloch, Principle of Hope, trs N. Plaice, S. Plaice & P. Knight (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1986), Vol. 1, pp. 45–77. I myself have adapted rather than adopted two insights to be found in Bloch’s Principle of Hope. First, in that work, Bloch speaks of anticipatory consciousness (‘das antizipierende Bewusstsein’), of which he claims hope is an important part. I, on the other hand, view anticipation as a part of hope; I argue that hope should be carefully distinguished from wishing and imagining (unlike Bloch and some analytic philosophers). Second, Bloch considers hope to be an expectant emotion whereas I do not consider hope to be emotion-like. However, I do find Bloch’s distinction between expectant and filled emotions useful in contributing to different ways in which we may view relations amongst emotions like fear, anxiety and despair. In analytic philosophy, discussion of hope tends to be conducted in terms of wishing, desiring, believing and expecting, for example, Day, ‘Hope’, pp. 89–102. James L. Musykens, ‘The Sufficiency of Hope’ in Philosophical Monographs (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1979), pp. 42–48. Colin Radford, ‘Hoping, Wishing, and Dogs’, Inquiry, Vol. 13 (1970), pp. 100–103. J. M. O. Wheatley, ‘Wishing and Hoping’ in Analysis, Vol. 18, no. 6 (1958). 9. Immanuel Kant, ‘Conjectural Beginning of Human History’ as quoted by Philip J. Stratton-Lake, ‘Reason, Appropriateness and Hope: Sketch of a Kantian Account of a Finite Rationality’ in International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 149

150 Notes

10.

11.

12. 13.

14.

Vol. 1, no. 1 (1990), pp. 61–80, from Kant on History, eds L. W. Beck, R. E. Anchor & E. L. Fackenheim (Indianapolis, NY: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963), pp. 113–114. Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals (London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd.), p. 75, expresses a thought similar to that of Kant when he says, ‘And it is important that I should be able to envisage both nearer and more distant futures and to attach probabilities, even if only in a rough and ready way, to the future results of acting in one way rather than another. For this both knowledge and imagination are necessary.’ MacIntyre’s thought is clearly relevant to conceiving of a future with hope, though he does not use the word, for which both knowledge and imagination are required. Hope requires some knowledge, though less than full knowledge which would render hope redundant. For discussions of the role of hope in Kantian philosophy, see Susan Neiman, The Unity of Reason (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), Ch. 4. Onora O’Neill, ‘Within the Limits of Reason Alone’ in Reclaiming the History of Ethics, eds A. Reath, B. Herman & C. M. Korsgaard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 170–186. Stratton-Lake, ‘Reason, Appropriateness and Hope: Sketch of a Kantian Account of a Finite Rationality’, pp. 61–80. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, tr. N. K. Smith (London: Macmillan, 1982), A805/B833. Hope is not central to the schema of faculties and concepts expounded in the main body of the Critique of Pure Reason, though it features in the list of core questions which Kant takes to be of interest to reason and there is a brief discussion of the connection between hope and the summum bonum in the ‘Transcendental Doctrine of Method’. I agree with O’Neill that the positioning of hope in such a place is relevant to what Kant thinks of the role, or function, of hope with respect to the employment of reason. As O’Neill points out, the modality of the question of what may be hoped is permissive compared to a discussion of what must be hoped in I. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, tr. L. W. Beck (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1956). O’Neill argues that this leaves open the question of possible objectives of hope in the structure of Kant’s thought. For my own purposes, I read ‘I’ in a generic sense, where the term ‘one’ could be substituted in English, standing for ‘any individual human being’ and not in the sense of ‘I’, ‘Immanuel Kant’ or ‘Jayne Waterworth’. Ibid., A805/B833. This point is Aristotelian in orientation. See Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, tr. H. Rackham (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1982), Bk. I, xiii, pp. 15–20, for Aristotle’s remarks on self-restraint and the development of character. What may superficially appear to be a possible exception to this concerns maintaining hope in the face of defeat or doom. As such circumstances tend to be more marginal or extreme in various ways, I reserve my discussion of these issues (in Chapters 2 and 4 particularly), until the notion of ordinary everyday hope has been more fully explored. Briefly, many, though clearly not all, hopes are concerned with the expression of values. In these cases, the aim of hope is not the successful ‘bringing off’ of an overt action, but the conveying of a value, or values, or the maintenance of a certain orientation towards others and the world and this may be demonstrated in a variety of ways.

Notes 151 15. See J. J. Godfrey, A Philosophy of Human Hope (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987), p. 8. Godfrey notes the difference between hoping in and hoping that, in his introductory remarks and I agree that the former are not reducible to the latter. I make a number of further distinctions within hoping in and give priority to hoping in over hoping that, contrary to Godfrey’s position. Though acts and objectives of hope are combined in experience, without some conceived of means of fulfilment, a hope would be inert. In effect it would be indistinguishable from a wish. 16. Although the causality of nature differs from human agency, I use the term world-orchestrated hope for two reasons. The unphilosophical reason concerns consistency. The second reason is that although that which gives effect to the hope is different in kind between ‘world’ and ‘the rest’, the term worldorchestrated is a reminder of how the agent views her relationship to the world and possible future states of affairs therein. It retains the notion of anticipation intrinsic to hope. 17. Subsequently, in Chapter 3, I will discuss that which is possible through human agency, and show the complexity of the interpenetration between the different kinds of possibilities. 18. ‘The cow jumped over the moon’ is a line in a long-standing English nursery rhyme entitled, ‘Hey Diddle-Diddle’. 19. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Pt. 1, §390. 20. As was stated previously, what constitutes a sound hope may be contested depending upon the type of possibility under consideration. There is the further complication that in terms of human agency, what is judged sound hope may also be connected to notions of human flourishing and moral judgements. I address these latter aspects of hope in later chapters. 21. Under the term ‘popular psychological manner’ I include: (1) a presumption by many that hope is an emotion and (2) a failure to discriminate sufficiently between hoping, wishing, imagining and daydreaming. Discussion of these various points will be taken up in the development of the work. For now, let it suffice that the focus is on situated hopers who are subject to constraints on imagining, hoping and believing. 22. Types of possibility and their relations is an aspect of the question of what can be hoped soundly. Since my focus is on human agency and meaning I will not address these demarcations in themselves comprehensively, but rather refer to types of possibility as and when they bear upon particular contexts of hope under discussion. 23. In these examples there is a hope for x, followed by a despair of x. This is in accordance with the OED usage. One despairs of x when, and because, one comes to believe that x is not possible, that is, one believes that x will not occur. The hope that x may occur is given up. 24. I use the term ‘object’ as an abbreviated way of saying both, or either, of the following (and the context should make clear which is the more appropriate, often it will be inclusive): (1) state(s) of affairs or (2) things/objects or (3) persons. 25. J. H. Hick, Philosophy of Religion (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1990), p. 17. Hick discusses this point in his introductory text on philosophy of religion, but it is a point which has wider application to our thinking about how human practices are constituted or envisaged, and how this relates to our hopes and expectations of them.

152 Notes 26. 27. 28. 29.

I will discuss reasons for treating the issue this way in Chapter 5. Or she hopes that others will stand in a certain relation to those states of affairs. Godfrey, A Philosophy of Human Hope, pp. 11–14. Hoped for future states of affairs, especially those indeterminate in one way or another, are typically characterised as new and better futures. Not only is the satisfaction of desire and the fulfilment of hope thought good, in general, but the objectives of hope are typically cast as good in themselves, for example, those who are hungry hope to be fed, those who are enslaved hope to be free, and those who are brutalised hope to be healed. Objectives of hope like these are part of a conception of a better world, a world from which various forms of suffering have been vanquished. However, the connection between hope and good(ness) is in the hoper (primarily), rather than the hope. I shall take up some related issues in later chapters. 30. Changing the description of an event may alleviate despair, for example, losing one’s job in hard times may prompt despair, but regarding the same event as an occasion to discover or create new opportunities may alleviate the despair. How ‘realistic’ the redescription is considered to be is a moot point. However, opportunities can be created and are not simply found. 31. A. Benjamin, Present Hope, Philosophy, Architecture, Judaism (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 154–161, stresses the importance of the present time in which one hopes as a response to circumstances, while I emphasise the futuricity of hope, especially with respect to agency. There is a shared concern as to the import of hope for the present, though I retain a more significant role for the future-directedness of hope. For a discussion of related issues concerning a view of oneself over time, see Dan Zahavi, ‘The Fracture in Self-Awareness’ in Self-Awareness, Temporality and Alterity, ed. D. Zahavi (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998), pp. 21–40.

2

Phenomena in the neighbourhood of hope

1. This is with respect to ordinary everyday direct hope and despairing of x. 2. St Augustine, The Essential Augustine, ed. V. J. Bourke (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1964), pp. 171–172. St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, tr. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Chicago: William Benton, 1971), Vol. 2, Pt. II, Second Part, pp. 456–464. 3. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, pp. 474–478. 4. Philosophical essays on hope have appeared under the rubric of hermeneutics, for example, see Paul Ricoeur, Essays on Biblical Interpretation, ed. with an intro. by L. S. Mudge (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980). Also by Paul Ricoeur, ‘Hope and the Structure of Philosophical Systems’ in Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, Vol. 44 (1970). A contemporary theological account of eschatological hope is given by Jurgen Moltmann, in Theology of Hope, tr. J. W. Leitch (London: SCM Press, 1967). Both authors are discussed by David Jasper, ‘The Limits of Formalism and the Theology of Hope: Ricoeur, Moltmann and Dostoyevsky’ in Journal of Literature and Theology, Vol. 1, no. 1 (1987). In relation to critical studies, hope is discussed by Jeanne A. Schuler, ‘Reasonable Hope: Kant as Critical Theorist’ in History of European Ideas, Vol. 21, no. 4 (1995).

Notes 153 5. Benedict de Spinoza, On the Improvement of the Understanding, The Ethics, Correspondence, tr. R. H. M. Elwes (New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1955). René Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Vol. 1, trs J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff & D. Murdoch, The Passions of the Soul (Les passions de l’âme) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 325–404. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975). 6. Day, ‘Hope’, p. 89. 7. Benedict de Spinoza, The Ethics and Other Works, ed. E. Curley (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 152. 8. For those resisting a reductive atomistic view of emotions from different perspectives see Naomi Scheman, Engenderings, Constructions of Knowledge, Authority, and Privilege (New York: Routledge, 1993), Ch. 3. Sue Campbell, Interpreting the Personal: Expression and the Formation of Feelings (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), Ch. 1. A cognitive view of the emotions is developed by Martha Nussbaum, ‘Emotions as Judgments of Value’ (Gifford Lecture presented on Ethics and Emotions Graduate Course, Oslo University, 1996) (no. 1). Errol Bedford gives a similar view from an alternative perspective in ‘Emotions’, Essays in Philosophical Pyschology, ed. D. F. Gustavson (London: Macmillan, 1967), pp. 76–98. 9. Such an account is given by Descartes, The Passions of the Soul, pp. 331–332. 10. Spinoza, The Ethics, p. 130. 11. Ibid., p. 176. 12. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. C. B. Macpherson (Harmondsworth: Penguin English Library, 1982). 13. This point is argued by Day, ‘Hope’, p. 89. 14. Spinoza, The Ethics, p. 177. 15. Ibid., p. 177. 16. This may be for a number of reasons, that is, one may be either unable or unwilling to credit doubt. I will pursue this issue below when discussing trust in more detail. 17. See John Cottingham, Philosophy and the Good Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), Ch. 3, for an account of the role of ethics in Cartesian philosophy. 18. Descartes, The Passions of the Soul, §25, p. 337. 19. The English language version of the Cartesian text I will quote from is that already cited, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Vol. 1, trs J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff & D. Murdoch, which has become a standard reference work in the English speaking world of philosophy. 20. Descartes, The Passions of the Soul, §69, p. 353. 21. Ibid., §57, p. 350. 22. Descartes, The Passions of the Soul, §58, pp. 350–351. 23. Some arguments for this view were presented in Section 1.2. 24. Descartes, The Passions of the Soul, §58, p. 351. 25. Ibid., §165, p. 389 (my emphasis). 26. I insert ‘in fact’ here to indicate that I am referring to what is factually possible at this point as opposed to what is logically possible, or what may be metaphysically possible. 27. Descartes, The Passions of the Soul, §166, p. 389 (my emphasis).

154 Notes 28. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. II, Pt. III, §IX, p. 438. Hume writes, ‘’Tis easy to observe, that the passions, both direct and indirect, are founded on pain and pleasure, and that in order to produce an affection of any kind, ’tis only requisite to present some good or evil.’ 29. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, p. 438. 30. Ibid., pp. 439–440. 31. Ibid., p. 444. 32. Ibid., p. 441. 33. The feeling of awe, for example, is best described as a mixture of wonder tinged with fear as when one stands in awe of a glacier, a storm or a powerful warrior. In awe, it is often strength and beauty together at which the beholder marvels. 34. Day, ‘Hope’, p. 90. 35. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, p. 442. For the most part, Hume does use the term ‘passion’ in his discussion in Bk. II of that title, ‘Of The Passions’. However, he also uses ‘affection’ and ‘emotion’ interchangeably, as he does, for example, on this page. 36. Day, ‘Hope’, p. 89. 37. Ibid., p. 89. 38. Day recognises a number of the distinctions I make concerning hope and he views the relationship between hope and its objectives similarly. Day’s arguments are stated propositionally, for example, he writes, ‘In other words, “A hopes to V” is equivalent to “A hopes that A will V,” but not to “A hopes that B (or X) will V” (V is a deed-variable, and X is a thing-variable.).’ Day also cites Anthony Kenny, Action, Emotion and Will (London: Routledge, 1963), who also argues this general point. 39. For a fuller discussion of this point see Ilham Dilman, Love and Human Separateness (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), pp. 27–35. 40. Dilman, Love and Human Separateness, p. 29. 41. See Scheman, Engenderings, p. 26. In Chapter 3 ‘Anger and the Politics of Naming’, Scheman discusses ‘Discovering That One Has Been Angry’. Scheman’s theoretical standpoint gives her a different perspective on the ‘so-called’ characteristics of anger. She writes, ‘We may find ourselves angry and wonder why; it is so uncalled for and childish. But the difference between someone who is irrationally angry and someone who is not may not be a difference in what they feel so much as a difference in what sorts of feelings, under what sort of circumstances, they are ready to take as anger. [ . . . ] If we take ourselves to be angry, whether justifiably or not, our anger changes. We begin to see things differently, as it were through the anger; it colors our world, both inner and outer. We find, because we are looking for them, more reasons for our anger and more feelings we can take as anger, which we may before have labeled differently or not have noticed. Our feelings, judgments and behavior become organized around the fact of our anger.’ 42. Day, ‘Hope’, p. 90. Day uses the term ‘wishes’ interchangeably with ‘hope’ and ‘desire’ in his discussion. Though this accords with popular uses of the terms in certain contexts, I think there is good reason for greater precision in a philosophical analysis. Both desiring and hoping entail a disposition to bring about P, and wishing may do also, but even in popular use, a wish most commonly denotes a preference that the world would, or could, be

Notes 155

43.

44.

45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

53. 54. 55. 56.

57.

58. 59.

otherwise than it is while realising that it is not or will not become so. That is, desires and hopes motivate persons to attempt to bring about change in the world whereas wishes tend to leave the world as it is. See Section 1.2 for a further discussion of this point. In discussing Day’s reasons for thinking that hope is not an emotion, I have employed the terms he uses. However, given the variety of kinds of objectives of hope, and the array of particulars in each kind with their attendant modes of pursuit, the idea of characteristic behaviour is somewhat wide of the mark, although it is the case that one tries to fulfil one’s hopes. It will be recalled that effecting the objective of hope in world-orchestrated hope is largely or entirely out of the hands of the agent hoping. However, that one anticipates the conduciveness of the world to one’s hopes may be shown in very many ways. This point is made in agreement with Gabriel Marcel, Homo Viator, Introduction to a Metaphysic of Hope, tr. E. Craufurd (Gloucester: Peter Smith, 1978), Ch. 1. Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, tr. H. Rackham (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1982), Bk. III, vi–viii. Robert Gordon, The Structure of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), Chs 1 & 4. It is fear that is Gordon’s main interest. Gordon, The Structure of Emotions, p. 65. Ibid., p. 32. Ibid., p. 36. I will not take issue with Gordon’s terminology nor his classificatory system though I would mark the fact that I do not find either wholly plausible. However, my main concern is with the motivational results he construes from his framework, and these I find decidedly unconvincing. Gordon, The Structure of Emotions, p. 8. Ibid., p. 8. Ibid., p. 67. It should be noted that the farmer’s beliefs are about the rain, but his concern is for his crops. It seems to me that even if the farmer fears it may not rain and he sets out his pipes, he may still hope that it does rain (for a variety of reasons). Also, if knowledge that his strategy will save his crops precludes hope, from a first person perspective, should it not put an end to farmer A’s fear, too? Gordon does not mention this aspect of the farmer’s action, its consequences for himself, but if one of the conditions of an epistemic emotion is ‘not knowing’, then the shift to ‘knowing’ should cancel the emotion, if the farmer is rational. The difference in the way Gordon treats fear and hope is similar to a distinction drawn by G. E. M. Anscombe, Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind, Collected Philosophical Papers, Vol. II (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981), Ch. 8. Anscombe distinguishes between forward-looking motives that are intentions, backward-looking motives and motive-in-general (see pp. 77–80). Although explanations and interpretations can be quite distinctive, Anscombe gives an example (see p. 78), in which explanation and interpretation occur together. Gordon, The Structure of Emotions, p. 85. Ibid., p. 85.

156 Notes 60. Gordon, The Structure of Emotions, p. 65. 61. Ibid., p. 32. Fear is taken to cover also ‘is afraid, is terrified, is worried’. 62. O. H. Green, The Emotions (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992), Ch. 6. 63. Ibid., p. 88. 64. Ibid., p. 78. 65. For an outline of the full terminology that I use in developing this view of hope see Section 2.3.4. The distinctions that I make within hope and the relationships between hope and other phenomena, especially trust, arise successively throughout the work as different scenarios with their attendant features and aspects are examined. My method is to build on what is ordinary and familiar as a platform for scrutinising the more complex and less obvious roles and relations of hope in agency and meaning. 66. The prior hopefulness is logical rather than temporal. One may meet with a person or situation and immediately think ‘Hopeless case!’. 67. Plato, Meno, tr. W. K. C. Guthrie (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1982), pp. 130–135. 68. See Chapter 1 for an outline of mutual-orchestrated hope in Section 1.3.2. Briefly, it consists in hopes shared and acknowledged as such by some number of agents cooperating together. 69. A question may be asked as to whether it is hoping from which pleasure arises, or the fulfilment of a hope. No doubt the fulfilment of a hope can give pleasure, especially when in reality it answers with a high degree of precision to one’s anticipation of it – but what about hoping itself? When persons are pursuing hopes, they are typically enthusiastically engaged in projects designed to bring about its fulfilment. I would say that hoping for x brings a trail of attendant subsidiary pleasures in its wake in pursuit of its culmination. Even where hopes are arduous and persistence is required, pleasure may be taken day by day, and not only when one’s objective is achieved. 70. However, as claimed in Chapter 1, hoping can be expressed in look, gesture, decision or the contours of a life lived in hope. 71. It should be noted that future possibilities and possible futures are not mutually exclusive and one may entertain both with respect to one and the same person or state of affairs. I expect, for example, to visit my daughter in the summer and I imagine some of the things we will do during that time, not all of which will materialise. The possible futures for us include one in which our hope of travelling in South America is fulfilled. This possible future is latent in the present whereas we feel certain of our summer possibilities. This is not purely a point about temporal extension but it concerns the whole nexus of time, uncertainty and anticipation versus expectation. 72. In Chapter 4, I pick up the thread of the relationship between hope and trust when discussing responses to suffering inflicted by individuals, and groups, upon one another. I use unreflective trust as an umbrella term to refer to a kind of trust that various other authors have referred to as ‘natural’, ‘existential’ or ‘basic’ trust. 73. Notice, however, that when travelling, for example, strangers regularly make and accept offers to guard each other’s belongings – against ‘other’ unknown persons, when they themselves are unknown to each other. Baggage that

Notes 157

74. 75. 76.

77.

78.

79.

80. 81.

82.

83.

84.

appears to be unattended ‘looks like’ a gift to thieves, or like a threat to security services, but the person asked to guard the luggage may be a thief or a threat. But we typically trust that this will not be so. Typically here it means that we estimate whether or not we can trust them by how they look, or talk and behave. There is no mystery, nor a paradox here. Hobbes, Leviathan, Pt. 1, Chs 14–16, pp. 198–217. For Hobbes, cooperation is ‘not impossible’ though it is ‘highly improbable’. Philip Pettit, ‘The Cunning of Trust’ in Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 24, no. 3 (1995), discusses what I have termed instrumental trust in his article. Pettit seeks to give an account of the mechanism(s) by which trust is generated in society. This account revolves around the notions of trustworthiness and the incremental ‘benefits’ that follow from this. When A acts as-if B is trustworthy and B responds positively, this gives B a social benefit and encourages A to act accordingly towards C and so on. The central thought is that the as-if trust manufactures trust proper. Instrumental trust cannot beget all trust since it puts the cart before the horse, so to speak. One can only act as-if one trusts another when one already has a conception of what trust is from elsewhere. Although it may indeed be argued that all trust is qualified by uncertainty, in principle, when one trusts another person, one feels certain that this person will not betray one’s trust, in practice, and this feeling of certainty allows one to adopt a certain attitude to doubt, concerning this person. In philosophical literature this trust is referred to as natural trust, by Knut Ejler Løgstrup, The Ethical Demand (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), p. 8. As existential trust by Hildur Kalman, The Structure of Knowing, Existential Trust as an Epistemological Category (Umeå: Acta Universitatis Umensis, 1999), p. 132. And as basic trust by Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery (New York: Basic Books, 1992), p. 51. Here, I am thinking of conditions of possibility for activity and development on the part of a human infant, not of the highly differentiated and complexly related experiential possibilities (with a history and preferences) of an adult person. This point is discussed by Jean Améry, At the Mind’s Limits (London: Granta Books, 1999), Ch. 2 on ‘Torture’, p. 28. This kind of example is discussed in some depth by Olli Lagerspetz, Trust, The Tacit Demand: A Study in Trust (Åbo: Filosofiska Institutionen, Åbo Akademi, 1996), Ch. 4. For an analysis of love see Robert Brown, Analysing Love (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), Chs 1 & 3. Also, Dilman, Love and Human Separateness, Chs 4 & 6. Robert C. Solomon, ‘The Virtue of (Erotic) Love’ in Philosophical Perspectives on Sex and Love, ed. R. M. Stewart (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 241–255. James Conlon, ‘Why Lover’s Can’t Be Friends’ in Philosophical Perspectives on Sex and Love, ed. R. M. Stewart (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 295–299. William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 as quoted by Naomi Scheman, ‘Feeling Our Way toward Moral Objectivity’ in Mind and Morals, eds L. May, M. Friedman & A. Clark (Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1995), pp. 221–236. Bernard Dauenhauer, ‘Hope and Responsible Politics’ in Philosophy Today (Summer, 1986), pp. 87–107.

158 Notes 85. Dauenhauer, ‘Hope and Responsible Politics’, p. 92. 86. Ibid., p. 92.

3

The domain of agency and its perspectives

1. This is a general point about ascribing an act of hope to another or others. 2. I am not claiming that all activity is purposive, only that purposive activity has a telos. There are many actions performed in everyday life which are performed intentionally but not necessarily purposively, in the sense of constituting significant ends (or ends in themselves). This can be seen in ordinary circumstances, for example, as my aim is to complete this manuscript, I may judge that I should arrive at my office at a certain time to work, so, I arise, breakfast, shower and so on. Each of these acts is done intentionally, but they are subsidiary to completing the manuscript which is the telos. The question as to what extent the difference between an intention and a purpose holds across a variety of contexts is not one I will address. The related question whether, or in what way, the agent is aware of performing these actions is one that admits of different answers depending on where one draws the line between attending to what one is doing as opposed to viewing what one is doing in a certain light. For my purposes, it is sufficient to think of purposive activity as having a target at which one aims. 3. I remind the reader that priority is given to agent-orchestrated hope and mutual-orchestrated hope (see Section 1.3.2). 4. There are some hopes that are primarily agent-orchestrated but which cannot be pursued without the cooperation or support of others. 5. Morton Smith, Hope and History, An Exploration (New York: Harper & Row, 1980), p. 35. 6. Such literature as there is on the specific topic of hope seems almost ‘automatically’ to commence with individuals and their hopes. Ample reminder of the social context of shared hope can be found in Bloch, Principle of Hope, Vol. 1, pp. 65–77. Evidence of this is to be found throughout the threevolume work but these pages give an early account of socio-historical hope of the proletarian class. 7. I discuss a value aspect of hope in Chapters 4 and 5 in relation to different kinds of suffering. Where the possibilities for agency are constrained, one may nevertheless live with hope; when living in hope is challenged, living in the light of hope can remain a real possibility. In indirect hope one is primarily oriented towards one’s response to obstacles and to difficulties in the present. 8. This claim relies on the criteria of uncertainty as discussed in the Section 2.1. Recall the view of Spinoza, particularly, claiming that hope and fear are always mixed. I recast this as ‘she who has reason to hope also has reason to fear’. In principle, until one’s objective is confirmed or lost, uncertainty points to a tension between hope and fear with the hope eventually being fulfilled or denied (as the outcome of events – not as some intrapsychic act) and vice versa for fear. In this sense, hope’s fulfilment is fear’s denial whereas fear’s realisation is hope’s denial. In practice, however, this relation will not be borne out where those who fear x also believe that x is unavoidable.

Notes 159

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

In a narrative retelling of the history of the Maya, historian Micheal Woods states that the prophetic books of Yucatan Mayan cosmology foretold a cyclic pattern of catastrophe every two hundred and fifty-six years. Spanish conquistadors timed their attack in 1697 to take advantage of this belief. Mayan resistance is said to have been minimal, in part, because they ‘knew’ that they stood on the brink of being overcome. Such a nexus of ‘knowing’, ‘believing’ and fearing leaves no scope for hope as there is no perceived possibility of alternative outcomes. In Chapters 4 and 5, I consider the phenomenon of indirect hope. However, it is important to develop an account of the more tangible aspects of hope first (as I do in the first three chapters), in order that quite prominent and regular hopes can be of use in characterising another more nebulous aspect of the phenomenon of hope. Individuals may deny hopes on moral or prudential grounds. It should be noted that I may wish to view a volcanic eruption although I would not hope for it. The objective of a hope may be of such a nature that it could only have been fulfilled at one point in time, or it may be such that it can be fulfilled at some future time. Hoping to be in London on New Year’s Eve at the turn of the century is a hope that could only be fulfilled at one point in time, whereas hoping to visit London is a hope which could be fulfilled at any point in the remainder of my life. At this point it is worth distinguishing between goals and ends. Goals and purposes tend to be thought of as analytically related so that a wedge cannot be driven between them. Thus, to conceive of oneself as having a goal that cannot be pursued purposefully would be to conceive of oneself as not having a goal. If that is the case then one cannot assert, for example, that one has a purpose but no goal, and conversely, that one’s goal can be pursued purposelessly. However, from an agent’s perspective (or a first person perspective), it makes sense to say that an individual may have a terminus in view, which she may conceive of as inevitable though she in no way pursues this end point purposively, that is, deliberately or with intent. Think of the child who is ‘destined’ to follow in her parental footsteps, be it a military, medical or legal career. Such offspring may have ends (parentally ordained), without necessarily pursuing them purposefully. There is a difference also between pursuing an end purposefully and having a sense of purpose, from within. This important feature of hope is noted by Smith, Hope and History, An Exploration, p. 35. As seen in the quote from Smith in Section 3.1, Smith holds the view that the nature and limits of human knowledge are defined by ‘our notion of success [which is] a function of hope, that is, of the proposed goals’. However, consider what Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, tr. J. O’Brien (London: Penguin Classics, 2000), p. 109, has to say. Camus writes, ‘If this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious. Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him? [ . . . ] Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition, it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time

160 Notes

15.

16.

17.

18. 19.

20.

21.

22.

crowns his victory. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.’ Camus writes of scorn as that through which Sisyphus affirms himself as his own master rather than his becoming a defeated plaything of the gods. Camus imagines the possibility of Sisyphus returning down the hill in joy, as well as in sorrow. I imagine the possibility of Sisyphus hoping to deny the gods their victory by sustaining his scorn into an indefinite future, for himself. Those who argue that rational persons should strive only for that which is attainable so as to avoid the disappointment of failure ignore a feature of human psychology which can pay dividends that a rational accumulator should take into account. Such a view is discussed by Luc Bovens, ‘The Value of Hope’ in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. LIX, no. 3 (1999). This point is a rejection of a Platonic conception of the ‘Forms’ as foundational for human knowing and doing. The colloquial ‘God’s eye view’, stemming from medieval philosophers and associated with Plato’s conception of the ‘Forms’, constitutes a kind of knowing that is altogether different from that available to human beings, as argued by empiricists, and by Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason, and many others since. See Stratton-Lake, ‘Reason, Appropriateness and Hope: Sketch of a Kantian Account of Finite Rationality’, for a paper addressing this point. Stratton-Lake also outlines a Kantian alternative to a Platonic–Hegelian type of philosophical structure. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, tr. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 119–138. The structure of a Hegelian-type philosophical system is contrasted with the structure of a Kantian-type system by Ricoeur in ‘Hope and the Structure of Philosophical Systems’, pp. 59–69. Ricoeur argues that a Kantian-type philosophical structure has an epistemic openness required to admit hope and to retain a place for it in the application of reason to human affairs, contrary to a Hegelian-type system. On this point I am in agreement with Ricoeur. See Section 3.1.2, for comments on a difference between goals and ends. Onora O’Neill, ‘Reasoned Hope’ and ‘Interpretation Within the Limits of Reason’ (Harvard University, 1996). Also, O’Neill, ‘Within the Limits of Reason Alone’, p. 179. Kant’s own examples of ‘alien’ authorities are the Church and the army (as well as desires). See Immanuel Kant, ‘An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?’ in Kant’s Political Writings, ed. H. Reis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 56. Also, Immanuel Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, trs T. M. Greene & H. H. Hudson (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), pp. 3–13 & pp. 79–84. See Genevieve Lloyd, The Man of Reason (London: Methuen, 1984), Ch. 5. Nancy Tuana, The Less Noble Sex (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), pp. 157–172. Diane Russell, Women, Madness and Medicine (Oxford: Polity Press, 1995), Chs 1–4. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper:’ Charlotte Perkins Gilman , eds T. L. Erskine & C. L. Richards (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1993), pp. 29–50. Although the role of ‘husband’ is a formalised one, as is that of ‘wife’, they each belong to a notion of the family which has traditionally been considered a social unit of the ‘private’ realm as opposed to the ‘public’ realm of (largely) overtly political activity. For discussions of changes in conceptions

Notes 161

23.

24. 25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

of the public and private domains, see Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1958), Ch. 2. Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Oxford: Polity Press, 1988), Ch. 6. It should be noted that this particular comment is specific to the example. The nature of the oppression, that is, the relationship between the husband’s authority and the wife’s struggle against it, would have been the same had her husband been a clergyman, for example, and primarily concerned with the ‘health’ of her soul. An individual can adopt a third person perspective to herself, reflectively. Gilman, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, pp. 29–50. Hope is a factor not only in what individuals aspire to and attempt to become, but also in the kinds of communities in which they desire to live and/or seek to establish. Gilman, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, pp. 29–30. In lines 19–21, Jane can be seen to express her own thoughts about her ‘condition’, then she accedes to the authority of her husband in determining what she should do and how she is to interpret ‘cause and effect’ with respect to her feelings and condition. The ‘if/so’ clause is unfulfilled and the rupture signifies the shift from her own authority to that of her husband. This view of marital relations is clearly expressed in John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1986), Ch. 7. See Edmund Leites, ‘Locke’s Liberal Theory of Parenthood’ in Having Children, Philosophical and Legal Reflections on Parenthood, eds O. O’Neill & W. Ruddick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 306–318, and John Charvet, Feminism (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1982), pp. 23–25, for differing perspectives on the political implications of Locke’s position. See also, Carole Pateman, ‘Women and Consent’ in Political Theory, Vol. 8, no. 2 (1980), pp. 149–168. The fact that it may also be the case that Jane strives to write in order to take herself seriously, as a person who has something to say, is not a counterindication that she strives to take herself seriously while her husband and brother ‘automatically’ take her seriously. That is, although Jane’s struggle could be self-imposed and self-centred, in principle, the context and content of the story makes it clear that this struggle is interpersonal and social. Being recognised as a person and being recognised as an autonomous agent are not coextensive in terms of scope or qualities. There can be unrecognised persons. However, it is difficult to function as a person if one does not have the requisite recognition in various spheres. These responses are context dependent and culture specific as all particular hopes would be. These particular examples show hopes of individuals not subject to duress or want, though the hope of a full belly and freedom from wanton violence may be a daily hope for many people. Whether subsistence or political recognition is a predominant hope will depend on the circumstances a hoper finds herself in, and her response to it. This hope may be explicit or implicit in any given individual. Concerning recognition: a child may hope to be taken seriously by its parents, when the child desires to be viewed as a contributor to the family in some way (rather than being viewed primarily as a recipient of certain goods and resources). The child with this hope does not want to be rendered incapable of contributing by being viewed as a mere child. So too, adults may hope to be taken seriously when presenting themselves to some group as a potential

162 Notes

32.

33.

34.

35.

36.

37.

contributing member, whether this be in a choir, the theatre, in business or in the academic sphere. That is, the hope for recognition is a hope to be received as being on a par with those with whom one wishes to engage. Or, to be viewed as one who can develop the appropriate capacities and acquire the relevant skills. Recognition is many layered and these examples arise at quite a sophisticated level of social interaction. Underlying the hope to be recognised as a potential member of a particular group is the hope to be recognised as one of a kind, humankind, whose type specific attributes and needs will be respected. For a discussion of issues of consent see, Onora O’Neill, Constructions of Reason, Explorations of Kant’s Practical Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 105–112, where O’Neill distinguishes between significant and spurious consent. Biographical and background information is presented by Gilman, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, pp. 53–75. Also, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, ‘The Hysterical Woman: Sex Roles and Role Conflict in Nineteenth Century America’ in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper:’ Charlotte Perkins Gilman, eds T. L. Erskine & C. L. Richards (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1993), pp. 77–104. This edition also contains a number of articles providing interpretation and commentary on Gilman’s text. It is not my intention to discuss possible, or rival, interpretations on the whole, or part, of this story, but to point out that it provides an illustrative account of implicit hopes and the role they play in our understanding of the actions and condition of others who we encounter. S. Weir Mitchell, ‘Fat and Blood’ and ‘Wear and Tear’, Selections, in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper:’ Charlotte Perkins Gilman, eds T. L. Erskine & C. L. Richards (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1993), pp. 105–111. Gilman was treated by Dr S. Weir Mitchell, who, as a consequence of Gilman’s later work, altered some aspects of his therapeutic treatment of hysterical and mentally disordered women. The injustice of gender discrimination, and its recognition as such by men as well as women, is discussed from various perspectives, by women and men, in Men Doing Feminism, ed. T. Digby (New York: Routledge, 1998). Using the phrase ‘knowledgeable authorities of the day’ may give the impression that such authorities are recent and in all likelihood transient because ill-founded and ‘populist’, or the asserted view of a vocal minority. Could it not be said that ‘tradition’ and ‘social institutions’ have an inertia which overrides ‘knowledgeable authorities of the day’? The problem is that some ‘traditions’, or parts thereof, are ‘constituted by’ or do ‘constitute’ the ‘knowledgeable authorities of the day’, for example, the legacy of Aristotle’s biology on the nature of women. It was ‘traditional’ to presume women to be inferior to men, for approximately two thousand years. That ‘fact’ of the inferiority of women was taken for granted in any subsequent research of human nature. All that was required was to find the ‘correct’ explanation of this ‘fact’. That this has been so in Western societies under the influence of the Christian Church does not necessarily mean that ‘knowledgeable authorities’ cannot exercise a benevolent influence in society in general, or regarding women in particular. It is recognised that the status quo is not a condition of absolute stasis or rigidity, so it might be said that what is at issue is the rate of change as

Notes 163

38.

39.

40. 41.

42.

43.

44.

45.

opposed to whether there should be any change at all. However, it should be noted that it is only those who are already epistemically, socio-politically or economically privileged who can afford to think in terms of centuries rather than decades, or years and months, when thinking about change. It may be asked why one would not hope that injustice would prevail, however that might be represented, for example, one hopes for a future where women/men are in bondage, or the wealthy have slaves. That is, there is no necessary connection between hoping on the one hand, and goodness, rightness or justice on the other. It may be supposed that if the devil himself is like a human being, he is motivated by hope – except for devilish things. I will take up aspects of these issues more fully in Chapter 4. For now, it is sufficient to note that where injustice does prevail, a capitulation to despair will only endorse it, indirectly, whereas retaining hope provides a focal point around which to resist injustice, directly. The ought that I refer to in speaking of the relationship between hope and justice is a moral ought. In so far as one may hope for a more equal world (with agent-orchestrated hope), I take it to be a matter of social justice and of moral implication. For a discussion of this point, see Stratton-Lake, ‘Reason, Appropriateness and Hope; Sketch of a Kantian Account of a Finite Rationality’, pp. 61–80. With respect to the possibility of change, it might be asked what a determinist would say. On the assumption that a determinist can detect a difference between the past and the present, then presumably a determinist may say that the future could change, in principle, from the present (if only to revert to how it was in the past – whether or not the past may be thought better than the present). Where a determinist and a hoper would differ would be regarding judgements about the relative independence and efficacy of hope vis-à-vis actual outcomes. Whereas a hoper takes her hope to be partially efficacious in all but world-orchestrated hope, a determinist would take any fulfilled hopes to be a happy coincidence for the hoper. A determinist is in a similar position to Hegel’s phenomenological observer because he firmly believes that whatever happens could not have happened otherwise. In Aristotelian terms, such ‘strength of character’ would equate with the moral virtues supporting the exercise of phronêsis, or intellectual virtue. For a discussion of an Aristotelian perspective see D. J. Allen, ‘Aristotle’s Account of the Origin of Moral Principles’ in Articles on Aristotle: 2. Ethics and Politics, eds J. Barnes, M. Schofield & R. Sorabji (London: Duckworth, 1977), pp. 72–78. This is the thought behind Kant’s view of the two standpoints from which we are bound to see ourselves. See Immanuel Kant, The Moral Law, tr. H. J. Paton (London: Hutchinson University Library, 1981), pp. 111–118. I assume the presence of sexual desire on the part of the marriage partners and a mutual enjoyment of a passionate element in the marriage. I raise this point for clarification only. I do not intend to engage in a detailed discussion of the tangled web of relations between love, desire, sexuality, eroticism, passion, and care and concern. My own concern is with hope and agency here. Having children is also typically viewed as a desirable and major part of marriage, by women and men.

164 Notes 46. For a social constructivist account of what counts as love, see Scheman, ‘Feeling Our Way toward Moral Objectivity’, pp. 223–225. 47. I do not refer to the ‘respect’ which leaves another person enclosed in her or his sphere of individual liberty, but the more fulsome notion of ‘respect’ which includes a regard for the spouse’s welfare and a desire to be a part of that welfare. 48. See Pateman, The Sexual Contract, Ch. 2, for a discussion of patriarchy and its relation to contractarianism in political philosophy. 49. See Sheila Jeffreys, The Spinster and Her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality 1880–1930 (London: Pandora Press, 1985). And, Charvet, Feminism, pp. 83–96. Also, Linda le Moncheck, Loose Women, Lecherous Men, A Feminist Philosophy of Sex (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), Ch. 2. 50. Ronald L. Hall, The Human Embrace (Pennsylvania: Penn State Press, 2000), Pt. I. 51. In his reading of Kierkegaard, Hall takes Kierkegaard to consider the aesthetic and ethical modes of existence contrary to the mode of existence in existential faith (or religiousness B), which is also contrasted to the mode of existence in religions of resignation and refusal (or religiousness A). These refusals in religion are said to have counterparts in philosophy. See Hall, The Human Embrace, p. 10. 52. See Hall, The Human Embrace, Pt. II, for his account of Stanley Cavell’s view of remarriage. Remarriage is also viewed as an existential mode of relating to a ‘you’ as opposed, for example, to the formal participation in a second marriage ceremony alone. 53. It may be objected that in circumstances where there is no formal option for divorce, there remains the possibility that a married couple can live lives as-if divorced, perhaps continuing to share only an address. However, the possibility of this option depends entirely on the idiosyncrasies of the persons involved in the marriage relation and it would require a considerable degree of cooperation on behalf of each party to make it viable. Such an arrangement, though available in particular cases, cannot be relied upon theoretically or substantively to yield the real possibility of divorce. 54. These considerations concern a divergence between theory and practice, or to put it another way, between an existential approach to states of affairs and an ethico-political approach to those states of affairs. 55. Notions of intelligibility and narrative unity with regard to understanding human agency have recently been expounded by Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (London: Duckworth, 1981), Ch. 15, particularly. In general terms I agree with MacIntyre in his characterisation of humans as story-telling animals. However in such stories, where MacIntyre stresses the duration of views and values as a marker of their respective significance, I would add the reminder that views and values may be held deeply despite a short duration as in the case, for example, of religious or political conversion.

4

Meaning in life: confronted by suffering

1. I will outline these ideas in the discussion below. Briefly, I take social or psychological death to refer to a state or condition arising when a person

Notes 165

2. 3.

4. 5. 6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

survives an experience of suffering and afterwards is in a position to recognise that they are no longer the person they once were, in a deep and abiding way. It is not just that one changes, but that one changes in certain ways which make the person one once was inaccessible, though present, in some sense, alongside the person one has become. Though my main concern is with hope and trust here, rather than this psychological state or condition itself, it should be noted that it is the destruction of trust which is said to give rise to such a state or condition. John Kekes, Facing Evil (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 11. Here I stress the wholesome nature of good hope; its act(s), pursuit and fulfilment of objective(s) conceived of as that which benefits the hoper and does not engender harm to others in the process. Good hope is no mere sustaining hope per se, as hopes for bad outcomes (for others) may be equally sustaining to the hoper. Rather, it is hope which sustains one in a way conducive to flourishing for oneself (and others). I discuss the idea of hope being perceived as a gift in Section 4.2. See Section 2.1. Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning and New Atlantis (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), pp. 287–298. And Bertrand Russell, New Hopes for a Changing World (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1951), pp. 202–218, in which Russell summarises his discussion of human beings in relation to nature, to each other and intrasubjectively. For an account of a socio-political utopia, see also the book of that name by Thomas More, Utopia, tr. P. Turner (London: Penguin Classics, 1965), pp. 75–106. In Bk. II, More gives a ‘realistic’ account of a utopia which nevertheless requires a leap of the imagination in hope to conceive of its possibility, in real terms – his topics range from the organisation of labour and commerce to issues of leisure and pleasure, and matters of health. The present day book by Richard Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope (London: Penguin Books, 1999), Ch. 4, is a socio-political work of a rather different nature wherein Rorty gives an account of his own philosophical perspective on socio-political issues of current concern. Chapter 4, for example, deals explicitly with the topic of globalisation and social hope. P. Medawar, The Hope of Progress: A Scientist Looks at Problems in Philosophy, Literature and Science (New York: Anchor Books, 1973), pp. 120–138. Medawar summarises a constructive account of ways of relating the practice of science to philosophy. One problem with ‘good hopes’ of the non-philosophical type is that pursuit of these aims which seem laudable, prima facie, may turn out to occasion unforeseen and unintended consequences that themselves are detrimental in some way to human flourishing. Henceforth, under the heading of ‘good hope’, I shall refer to that sustenance which I have specified as wholesome hope. See Kekes, Facing Evil, pp. 50–55, for a discussion of the notions of simple and complex evil where simple evil is that which causes simple harm to those who do not deserve it and complex evil depends on conceptions of good lives and is historically conditioned. Briefly, simple evil is not simple in the sense that it is not a severe harm, but simple in the sense that its manifestly harmful nature commands widespread agreement across historical and cultural variations in social practices and other values.

166 Notes 11. The ‘can’ here is conceptual. If I know you will not affirm the objective of hope, then I cannot hope for x, for you. That would be no different than hoping for the impossible. I can, however, hope that you change your mind about x and come to affirm it in the future, but that is a different matter than hoping for x for you now. 12. See Section 3.3. 13. Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Bk. II, vi–vii. 14. Bovens, ‘The Value of Hope’, p. 670. 15. Ibid., p. 670. 16. Ibid., p. 670. 17. This is not to ignore the psychological fact that it may be a painful thing to do if and when one gives up one’s hope of an objective over which one has no control, either in other-orchestrated or world-orchestrated hope. 18. Although one does not ‘will to hope’, hope is like the will in so far as one intends by it (in agent-orchestrated and mutual-orchestrated hope). Where one cannot form an intention of one’s own concerning the objective of hope, one assents to its fulfilment (by means other than one’s own agency), and in this way one assumes ‘authorship’ of the hope. 19. See Section 2.4. 20. See Dauenhauer, ‘Hope and Responsible Politics’, p. 92, who discusses this point. Dauenhauer points out the converse that several acts of hope may be performed within the duration of another single act. He gives an example, ‘in the course of an unwavering conviction that the future will be transformed for the better, one might perform several acts of hope whose object is to ally oneself with the agent of that transformation’. 21. It should be noted, therefore, that ‘living in the light of hope’ does not necessarily mean that one lives in ‘lightness’, ‘brightness’ and ‘goodness’, as a series of associated positive ideas gathered together suggestive only of ‘sweetness and light’ or ‘sugar “n” spice and all things nice’. I use this phrase to indicate that one acknowledges some engagement with life and conceives of at least some possibilities. What one conceives of, and perceives by the penumbra of hope’s light may not be such as to occasion unalloyed joy. 22. Consider, for example, a scenario related to some issues of control raised at the beginning of this section. If human psychology cooperates with controlling hope in the sense outlined above, it also cooperates with attempts to control other human beings too. From a psychological perspective, dashing someone’s hope is one way of increasing control over another human being. Take a prison scenario; a prisoner making a bid for freedom (and known to the authorities, but not herself knowing they know) is allowed to get to the perimeter fence before being apprehended. Being caught at this point is typically more crushing of hope than if the prisoner had been apprehended at the end of the first cell block – ‘so near yet so far!’ A little progress fuels hope for a subsequent attempt. Having success snatched from one’s grasp is much more demoralising. It may be objected that this speculation in empirical psychology is somewhat idle, since what, an objector could ask, is to prevent a different person from responding differently? Perhaps, by saying with determination, ‘Next time, next time I will!’ Clearly this is possible. A given person’s response may depend more upon the personality of the person rather than on a characteristic of hope per se. Controlling others

Notes 167

23. 24.

25. 26. 27.

28. 29.

30.

31. 32.

through intimidation engendering fear (thereby playing on the converse of hope) is a ploy known to Machiavelli and to others both before and after him. See Machiavelli, The Prince, tr. G. Bull (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1980), pp. 61–66. This example shows that not only can hoping be beneficial for an agent in motivating action, but also that hope(s) can be manipulated, and to the detriment of the hoper. This is probably not news to tyrants schooled in the practical exercise of power, but it is an aspect of hope seldom noticed in everyday affairs. A continuing regard and care for others may be part of the significant matters of concern to an individual. In any given situation the relationship between hope and reality may be ambiguous. Hopes because of reality will transcend what is given in present reality in some way, otherwise any hopes for some emergent future would be superfluous to requirements. Also, hopes in spite of reality will definitely transcend what is given, and as latent in a situation may transcend that which will probably be given for some time to come. Hoping in spite of reality, or hoping against hope, is the hope most likely to be very long term and range at the far end of the barely possible though highly valued, as opposed to the probability hopes because of reality and closer to home. In the context depicted in the film, the viewer, with her or his perspective on circumstances and events, infers that what ‘actually’ happens would have been impossible in practice. An observer would say, amongst other things, that the father has luck, in that reality does not contradict his story. Whether hopes are because of reality or in spite of reality, the events of reality may support the view that one’s hope will likely be fulfilled, though ultimately this anticipation may still be denied. Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (New York: Washington Square Press, 1984), p. 104. Jean Améry, At the Mind’s Limits, discussed in the chapter, ‘Torture’. As cited by Godfrey, A Philosophy of Human Hope, p. 1. Godfrey cites Tadeusz Borowski, a writer and Auschwitz inmate, cited by Manes Sperber in Than a Tear in the Sea (Bergen Belsen Memorial Press, 1967), p. xiii, as quoted by Emil Fackenheim, God’s Presence in History: Jewish Affirmations and Philosophical Reflections (New York: New York University Press and London: University of London Press, 1970), p. 104. P. Levi, The Drowned and The Saved, tr. R. Rosenthal with an intro. by P. Bailey (London: Abacus, 1989), pp. 121–136. The thought that outward compliance merges into inward compliance lurks behind ‘programmatic’ approaches to training certain groups of professionals where ‘drilling’ occurs whether this be in training army troops or in training the police force to contain civil unrest. Susan J. Brison, ‘Outliving Oneself: Trauma, Memory and Personal Identity’, in Feminists Rethink the Self, ed. D. T. Myers (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1997), p. 19, cited from C. Delbo, Auschwitz and After, tr. R. C. Lamont (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995). Améry, At the Mind’s Limits, p. 25. The only access that prisoners had to the world outside the camps, which would provide them with some benchmark for conceiving of real hopes (as opposed to hopes that are conceptually possible alone), was through

168 Notes

33. 34. 35.

36.

37. 38.

39.

40.

memory. (See the distinctions regarding possibility made in Section 1.3.2.) What an observer would judge ‘extravagant’ hopes, perhaps, especially direct hopes of any form of orchestration, may be held with a high estimative degree (as a corollary of a high desiderative degree), in the absence of any check from reality. I refer to the sexual abuse of rape not because I think there are rapes which are not abuses, but because not all rapes are predominantly sexual in motivation. See Jonathan Glover, Humanity, A Moral History of the Twentieth Century (London: Jonathan Cape, 1999), p. 33–34. For an account of the concept of oppression and rape, see Marilyn Frye, The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory (Freedom, California: The Crossing Press, 1983), Ch. 1. See Sheila Jeffreys, The Idea of Prostitution (Melbourne: Spinifex Press, 1997), Chs 9 & 10. Also Brison, ‘Outliving Oneself: Trauma, Memory and Personal Identity’, pp. 12–39, and Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery (New York: Basic Books, 1997), p. 31 & p. 78. Also, B. Toner, The Facts of Rape (London: Arrow Books, 1982), pp. 69–88. Toner refers to the connection in popular imagination between fantasies of rapture and submission associated with a handsome knight on a white charger and so on. Naomi Scheman, ‘Rape’ in The Encyclopedia of Ethics, ed. L. C. Becker (New York: Garland, 1992), pp. 1059–1062, discusses the etymological links between the words ‘rape’ and ‘rapture’. In concluding her discussion of a social context of rape Scheman writes, ‘The existence and the comprehensibility of rape require that male sexual desire be constructed and generally understood in ways that make the prospect of debasing and humiliating someone sexually stimulating. If societal sexual attitudes and the construction of male sexual desire are changeable – and there is no reason to believe that they aren’t – then we can imagine a world in which we would simply fail to comprehend rape, because we would fail to understand either the sexiness of the violation of personhood or the peculiar aptness of forced sex as an expression of hatred and contempt. The elimination of rape would require not that we eliminate violence but that we cease to find sex inherently violent and violence inherently sexy, and such a change, although enormous, is surely imaginable.’ And Transforming a Rape Culture, eds E. Buchwald, P. R. Fletcher & M. Roth (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 1993). Améry, ‘Torture’, p. 28. See Section 2.3.3, for my initial remarks on a trusting other human beings. See also Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, ‘Consciousness: A Natural History’ in Journal of Consciousness Studies, Vol. 5, no. 3 (1998), pp. 260–294, for a discussion of the importance of touch and kinesthetic experience in developing a range of human potentialities. Frye, The Politics of Reality, pp. 7–16. One and the same limit may benefit some and burden others depending on how they are situated with respect to it. Limits may be imposed by oneself or by others and either may inhibit or promote human flourishing. Not all possible self-imposed limits contribute to one’s own flourishing, nor do all limits imposed by others on oneself detract from it. As referenced in note 36. In addition, Ian Hacking, Rewriting the Soul, Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory (Princeton: Princeton University

Notes 169

41.

42.

43.

44.

45.

46. 47. 48.

49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

54.

Press, 1995), p. 55 & p. 212, refers to Herman’s work in his discussion of what he calls ‘memoro-politics’. Although Hacking is not addressing undisputed cases of torture or rape, his critique of a certain theoretical conception of oneself has implications for research in this area. One may imagine that either torture or rape would be difficult to mistake for anything other than what it is. However, especially with regard to rape, the view of rape as obvious and unmistakable is a view which disregards varied perspectives and subtleties that may obtain in the ordinary social contexts within which most rapes occur. Also, legal definitions of rape change over time and are sometimes in dispute. This kind of phenomenological account of the boundaries of one’s body is given by Kalman, The Structure of Knowing, Ch. 3, in her development of Micheal Polanyi’s work. Kalman makes the point that one can experience oneself as phenomenologically reduced as well as extended. For a different paper discussing a related example of this, see also, Cecilie Høigaard, ‘The Victim as Expert: Active and Captive’ in Nordic Journal of Women’s Studies (No. 1, 1993), pp. 51–64. According to Toner’s analysis of empirical studies, a rapist is more likely to be the boy next door rather than a stranger to the victim. Toner, The Facts of Rape, pp. 106–109. I write about rape as a male on female act since the overwhelming majority of actual rapes take this form. Also, rape is thoroughly gendered symbolically, as is shown, for example, in studies on prison violence and rape. See Jeffreys, The Idea of Prostitution, Ch. 9, and Vladislav Ruchkin, Roots of Juvenile Delinquency: A Russian Experience (Umeå: Umeå University Medical Dissertations, 1998), Paper II. For an interesting discussion of a moral dimension of rape and its social situatedness, see the article by Mats Furberg under the title ‘“Thou art the man” – An Essay on Incipient Responsion’ in The Dalhousie Review, Summer, 1999. That is, perform an act of rape, in this case, but this holds as a more general point regarding other acts and beliefs about one’s character. Améry, ‘Torture’, p. 28. See Brison, ‘Outliving Oneself’, p. 12. A survivor of the Holocaust is cited thus, ‘One can be alive after Sobibor without having survived Sobibor’ whereas a survivor of rape reports, ‘I will always miss myself as I was.’ Bruno Bettelheim, The Informed Heart (London: Penguin Books, 1991), Ch. 4. Ibid., p. 112. Ibid., p. 147. One can, however, decide not to remain in life. Looking at the present and to the future, one decides that one wants to stay in life. Having survived an ordeal, one looks back on it and says that one decided to stay alive. Another way of expressing this would be to say that one decided for life and against an early death. Under the circumstances of camp life, the temptation to despair must have been great. Living in the light of hope may have been no great comfort but it could contribute to survival. Of course, rape is not the only event which destroys or diminishes a person’s unreflective trust in the world but it is an unambiguous example

170 Notes

55.

56. 57.

58. 59.

5

of one of the ways in which trust can be set in abeyance. My remarks on this example may be applied to a number of other cases. Ricoeur, ‘Hope and the Structure of Philosophical Systems’, pp. 55–69, poses a question about the rationality of hope and suggests that taking what he calls a Kierkegaardian view of the ‘absurd logic’ of hope need not require a renunciation of rationality. However, in cashing out this ‘absurd logic’, Ricoeur claims that ‘this existential interpretation is fundamentally antinomic: death of the old man, rebirth of the new man. This second birth is the eschatological event in existential terms. Now this eschatological event cannot be expressed by the means of a logic of identity. We must express it as a break, as a new creation, as a wholly other’, p. 57–58. It is open to question whether this relation could indeed be captured by anything other than a ‘logic of identity’. Be that as it may, one significant difference to be noted between Brison’s concerns and Ricoeur’s interests is the very different responses persons typically make to: (1) viewing themselves as they formerly were being taken from them, in some sense and (2) the view one takes of oneself formerly when one has voluntarily renounced one’s earlier identity with its values and associations. Both speak in terms of the death of oneself formerly, though that death has a markedly different significance in each case. See Appendix for further discussion. See Sections 2.3.3 and 2.3.4. H. G. Frankfurt, ‘Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person’ in Freewill, ed. G. Watson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 81–95. I do not intend to address general issues concerning the notion of second order desires. I include this point to show a difference between desires and hopes, and a way in which they interact with respect to character. See Sections 3.1 and 3.2. It is possible that one may be beyond despair somewhere other than in hopelessness. If this is so, then it is not clear what a general phenomenological approach may have to say on the matter.

Meaning in life: confronted with death

1. As I have already done throughout the text, I will use the pronoun ‘she’ where I do not use ‘one’. The majority of my discussion in this chapter concerns issues and points that are to a large extent gender-neutral. That is, I assume that men as well as women have an interest in having their suffering alleviated and so on. 2. It should be noted that any others known personally to oneself may include rivals or enemies, as well as loved ones, friends and other acquaintances. Thus it is to be expected that one’s thoughts about the death of those differently related to oneself will be viewed with at least some differences. 3. When I say ‘what we say’, I am referring to the ways in which native speakers of English express themselves with regard to the topics at issue. For a philosophical discussion of an authoritative perspective in native language use as an approach to doing philosophy, see Stanley Cavell, Must We Mean What We Say? A Book of Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), Ch. 1. Also, Mats Furberg, ‘Philosophical Polyglottism and First Person

Notes 171

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12. 13.

14. 15.

Perspectives’ in Theoria, Vol. LIX (Thales, 1993), pp. 53–79, and J. L. Austin, ‘A Plea For Excuses’ in Philosophical Papers, Third Edition, eds J. O. Urmson & G. J. Warnock (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 175–204. This may be through noticing a difference between ‘now’ and ‘then’, as a felt decrease of interest in, and sense of engagement in, one’s activities (see Section 5.2.1). It is not my aim to discuss to great extent the significance of death itself in the abstract nor in general, in relation to conceptions of the meaning of life, its absurdity or its futility, in terms of philosophical perspectives which may be brought to bear on the topic. For a varied collection of papers on the import of death, see Death and Philosophy, eds J. Malpas & R. C. Solomon (London: Routledge, 1998). W. Rahula, What the Buddha Taught (London: Gordon Fraser, 1978), pp. 41–42. For more extended discussions of the Theravada concept of nirvana, see F. J. Hoffman, Rationality and Mind in Early Buddhism (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1987), pp. 105–118. Also, V. P. Varma, Early Buddhism and Its Origins (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1973), pp. 252–254. And, K. N. Jayatilleke, Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1980), §783 & §784. See Ivan Soll, ‘On the Purported Insignificance of Death’ in Death and Philosophy, eds J. Malpas & R. C. Solomon (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 36 (original emphasis), where Soll distinguishes between the event of dying and the state of being dead, and concludes that there are no dead persons. I do not intend to discuss philosophical issues concerning personal identity as it is discussed, for example, in J. L. Mackie, Problems from Locke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), Ch. 6, so I will not address questions of personhood regarding those, for example, in a persistent vegetative state or in a coma. Strictly speaking, death is an event which takes place at a particular point in time. However, reaching the point of death may take varying periods of time. See Z. Vendler, Linguistics in Philosophy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), p. 107, who refers to dying as an achievement. Vendler makes genus and species level distinctions amongst verbs concerning their temporal implications. Vendler’s ‘achievement’ terms refer to those events which occur at a particular point in time. In contrast, recovering from illness is referred to as an accomplishment. ‘Accomplishment’ terms have a logically necessary set terminal point. See E. Fromm, The Revolution of Hope (New York: Bantam Books, Harper & Row, 1968), p. 9, and L. Tiger, Optimism: The Biology of Hope (New York: A Touchstone Book, Simon & Schuster, 1979), Ch. 1. It is my understanding from reading, S. Freud, Civilisation and Its Discontents (London: The Hogarth Press & The Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1982), that repression is conceived of as a process of which the individual is unaware. Freud, Civilisation and Its Discontents, pp. 68–76. Ibid., pp. 55–61. Initially the idea of repression was developed with respect to impulses understood as sexual. In Civilisation and Its Discontents, Freud discusses a conflict between eros and thanatos. See Chapter 2, the first three sections, for an extended discussion as to why I think this is not the case. See Section 4.4.

172 Notes 16. Conclusions from my discussion concern the role of indirect hope in contributing to autonomous agency. It is recognised that abandoning some direct hopes, that is, despairing of x, may also be a mark of the development and exercise of autonomous agency, augmenting authority over oneself. 17. For a selection of short papers on issues of patient autonomy see, Bioethics, An Anthology, eds H. Kuhse & P. Singer (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1999), Pt. IX. Also, Onora O’Neill, ‘Paternalism and Partial Autonomy’ in Journal of Medical Ethics, 10, 1984, pp. 173–178. Hilde Lindemann Nelson, ‘Knowledge at the Bedside: A Feminist View of What’s Happening with This Patient’ in The Journal of Clinical Ethics, Spring, 1996, pp. 20–28. Edmund D. Pellegrino, ‘Integrity and Autonomy’ in Ethics in Medicine (New York: Raven Press, 1990), pp. 3–21. Lisbeth Sachs, ‘Integrity and Autonomy from an Anthropological Point of View’ in Ethics in Medicine (New York: Raven Press, 1990). 18. I will return to this point when discussing trust and hope, below. 19. Although a person who participates in an organised religion has a faith which is personal, in the sense that it is a faith of that particular person, I have referred to participating in an organised faith as being a member of that faith. I use the term ‘personal’ faith for what may pre-reflectively be called a private faith. I avoid the use of the term ‘private’ due to a distinction made by I. Kant concerning the ‘public’ and ‘private’ uses of reason. Kant views a Church congregation as participating in a ‘private’ use of reason because certain tenets are taken as authoritative. See, Immanuel Kant, ‘An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?’, p. 55. 20. See MacIntyre, After Virtue, Chs 2 & 15. In terms of intelligibility, MacIntyre argues against what may be called an atomistic view of understanding actions in terms of ‘basic actions’. He stresses the interplay between various aspects of contexts and observable physical movements, required to understand what actions have been performed and what is their meaning, significance and so on. This needs to be mentioned because there are differing ways of understanding and applying the term ‘intelligibility’. 21. For a discussion of similar issues in terms of ‘weak evaluations’ and ‘strong evaluations’ made in respect of the relative seriousness of one’s character traits in terms of one’s identity, see Charles Taylor, Human Agency and Language, Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), Ch. 1. 22. If one were to conceive, at the time, that becoming unemployed could yield new opportunities, in principle, then one may have a (range of ) direct hope(s) in addition to relying on indirect hope with which to resist a temptation to despair. 23. In my own case, with regard to this example, I can conceive of such a possibility. Nevertheless, it seems like an idle entertainment of a thought, the sort of thing one may concoct in a thought-experiment. It does not seem as though it would be really possible, albeit conceivable as a real possibility. Herein lies one difference between a conception of a real possibility and a perception of a real possibility (in psychological terms). How and when one shades into the other is unclear, and this boundary is ill-defined. However, it is the case that searching for a real possibility may make a conceptual possibility really real. 24. It should be noted, though, that typically one’s character and values may be tested in many ways on an almost daily basis. Tests of character and values

Notes 173

25.

26. 27.

28. 29.

30.

31.

32. 33.

are not unique to conditions of illness, although they may be both more prominent and even more acute under those circumstances. For an exposition of one’s sense of a loss of purpose, see Leo Tolstoy, ‘My Confession’, in Life and Meaning, ed. O. Hanfling (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987). Tolstoy writes of his financial ease and happy family, his literary success and his ruddy physical prowess – but having all this, he recounts having a sense that life held no meaning for him. See Sections 2.2.8 and 4.5. MacIntyre considers that values held over time are of primary significance. While durability is frequently an indicator of the relative importance of things, occasions of conversion show that significant values may change rapidly without the significance being lost. See J. Herman, Trauma and Recovery (New York: Basic Books, 1997), p. 101. This incomplete list of likely concerns is compiled from the perspective of someone reflecting on illness and death rather than as someone imminently facing the prospect of her own death, nor again as someone whose occupation brings her into close contact with those who are approaching death. Both Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, On Death and Dying (New York: Macmillan, 1969), pp. 112–120, and Joan M. Erikson, The Life Cycle Completed (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997), pp. 105–114, write of ways in which one’s perspective and concerns alter as death and old age approach (respectively, in each text). It is said that these changes cannot be adequately described or imagined in advance, although they are continuous with other aspects of experience in some sense, but are not, in fact, what one would expect. There are some similarities here between these observations and Améry’s reflections on what he terms, abstractive imagination, as opposed to the experience of his suffering in torture of which he said that ‘[his] flesh becomes a total reality’. Améry contrasts both of these perceptual conditions with the reflective view he takes to experience. See Améry, ‘Torture’, p. 25, p. 33 & pp. x–xi, respectively. This quote is taken from Václav Havel, Fjärrförhör: samtal med Karel Hvízdála Bonn-Prag 1985–86, tr. K. Mossdal (Stockholm: Månpocket, 1990). The Swedish is given as ‘Hopp är inte optimism. Det är inte en övertygelse om att något kommer att gå bra, det är en visshet om att något har en mening – utan hänsyn till hur det kommer att gå’. Ingvar Johansson made the translation from Swedish into English. This point is similar to that made by Austin concerning when one person is warranted of saying of another that he knows of his anger. See J. L. Austin, ‘Other Minds’ in Philosophical Papers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 104–112. Ronna F. Jevne, It All Begins with Hope (San Diego: Lura Media, 1991), pp. 17–19. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1a2ae. 40, 1–1a2ae. 40, 8 (my emphasis), as quoted by J. P. Day, ‘Hope’, p. 94. See Sections 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 for reasons for not thinking of hope as an emotion. The development of an ecology of hope in Chapters 3 and 4 also supports this view. What is of interest here is Aquinas’ mention of objectives of hope as arduous and difficult. Various examples of hoping, discussed throughout the preceding chapters, have indicated that very many objectives of hope do involve

174 Notes

34.

35.

36.

37.

38.

considerable striving or struggle, of one form or another, in pursuit of their objectives. However, clearly not all objectives of hope involve striving and struggle. Nevertheless, hopes involving striving and struggle are those that bring issues of agency and meaning into the sharpest relief. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Pt. II, Second Part, 9, Questions XVII– XXII (Chicago: William Benton, 1971), p. 416 (my emphasis). Day, ‘Hope’, pp. 89–102, notes Aquinas’s point about difficulty, and Godfrey, A Philosophy of Human Hope, p. 14, asks whether difficulty is an essential feature of hope’s objectives? Clearly, many action-focused hopes, whether agent-orchestrated or otherwise, do not feature significant difficulty. Other-orchestrated hopes, on the other hand, typically involve difficulty in some form since one characteristically places one’s hope in another when one’s own capacities for agency are not adequate to the fulfilment of one’s hope. This is true also for mutual-orchestrated hopes which of necessity involve an agent with others in cooperative and coordinated action. This is not to say that there can be no stability in meaning as related to values held over time, either as indicated by the persistence of those values, nor in the way certain events tend to be interpreted in the light of those values. Recall the discussion and examples from Chapter 3 concerning acting with autonomy, and with what may aptly be termed ‘a struggle for autonomy’ (see Section 3.2). See J. R. Averill, Rules of Hope (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1990), who seems to belong to what may be termed the ‘realism’ school in analysing hope. He classifies hope as an emotion, claiming that it does not feature in contemporary theories of emotion due to cultural-historical biases (this in itself is contradicted by a number of contemporary works, some cited herein). He argues that hope should be regarded as rule bound and restricted to that which is clearly available within the confines of present reality. Such a view of hope seems to fail to notice aspects of hope concerning values. And this despite the fact that he refers to a study on ‘Cross-Cultural Variations’ (his own Ch. 4), presenting some empirical support for the view that hope is related to other phenomena and values differently in differing contexts. One is tempted to ask the rather obvious question that if one knows that some objective is already readily available in the world, why would one hope for it, as opposed to simply desiring it? A version of this question was posed some time ago, in a rather different context, by St Augustine, viz., ‘Hope that is seen is not hope; for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?’ [Rom. 8:24–25], ‘Enchiridion’, 8, as quoted in The Essential Augustine, ed. V. J. Bourke (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1964), p. 172. Although Augustine’s context is theological, the idea of that which is seen (and by implication unseen) need not be thought of as veiled in metaphysical mystery. Rather, if one substitutes ‘certain’ for ‘seen’, and ‘what a man is certain of’ (i.e. what he feels certain is within his grasp), then there is a puzzle. What would be mysterious is why anyone would hope for that which is perceived as not uncertain. One cannot hope for that which is certain, from a conceptual point of view. Raymond Tallis, Enemies of Hope, A Critique of Contemporary Pessimism (London: Macmillan Press, 1997), p. 405.

Notes 175 39. John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy and Essays, ed. J. A. Boyston with an intro. by R. Ross (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988), p. 181, supports Tallis’s view of pessimism and its perceived social disadvantages. In discussing the problem of evil, Dewey points to a paralysing effect inherent in doctrines of pessimism. 40. Sharon D. Welch, A Feminist Ethic of Risk (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000). 41. Welch, A Feminist Ethic of Risk, pp. 23–24. 42. Ibid., p. 45. 43. As a matter of psychological fact, one may be able to envisage treatment and its effects very clearly. 44. See Peter B. Medawar, The Hope of Progress, pp. 13–18. 45. Welch, A Feminist Ethic of Risk, p. 46. 46. These ideas are similar to some thoughts expressed by Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy p. 175. According to Dewey, health is not a fixed good or end, therefore, one cannot attain health, period, although one can seek to live healthily. 47. Jevne, It All Begins with Hope, pp. 145–163. In this section Jevne gives her reflections on hope in medical practice and care. 48. Many of these patients are cancer patients. 49. See E. Erikson & J. M. Erikson, The Life Cycle Completed (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997), Ch. 5. In this edition Joan Erikson gives an account of a ninth stage of psychosocial development, in which she gives a phenomenological-type description of experiencing an aging body. 50. Jevne, It All Begins with Hope, p. 18. 51. Ibid., pp. 26–27. 52. Ibid., p. 149. 53. This was discussed in Section 3.3, and thereafter its significance was shown in so far as the idea of an ‘I–you’ relation formed one of the parameters for discussion of topics in Chapter 4. 54. Jevne, It All Begins with Hope, p. 146. 55. Alan R. White, Attention (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1964), Chs 1 & 2. White stresses the importance of paying attention to attention. What is at issue in this context is a variation on this theme. 56. J. Macmurray, Reason and Emotion (London: Faber & Faber, 1995), pp. 53–67. 57. Macmurray himself gives priority to a second person perspective which he views as a perspective that may both encompass and transcend what is given from either a first, or third, person point of view. The idea is that one cannot give good hope, which contributes to flourishing in an Aristotelian sense, if one does not pay attention to a person in an appropriate way where hope is intended to be given. 58. W. Ruddick, ‘Hope and Deception’ in Bioethics, Vol. 13, no. 3/4 (1999), pp. 343–357. 59. However, as his title suggests, Ruddick focuses upon the consequences of a relationship between hope and deception (and this itself is not straightforward), whereas I have focused more on describing structural features of hope, its changing topology in differing circumstances and its relations to other phenomena. These two perspectives on hope complement each other in a number of respects. 60. Ruddick, ‘Hope and Deception’, p. 344.

176 Notes 61. However, in her study of hope in nursing practice, Eva Benzein, Traces of Hope (Umeå: Umeå University Medical Dissertations, 1999), makes the point that sometimes continuing chemotherapy and radiation treatment is the only means of keeping a patient clean and comfortable although no therapeutic benefits in terms of recovery are expected. 62. At this point I use the term false hope, as opposed to ‘hoping in vain’ or ‘hope denied’, in order to indicate that it is the perspective of the giver of hope at issue. Under conditions of mental and physical pain, a patient may be less well able than is usual to identify the (anyway) vague and shifting boundary between apparent possibilities and real possibilities. Where medical staff feel certain that some nomological possibilities are ruled out through limits and conditions of finitude, then hope given is false hope. 63. Ruddick, ‘Hope and Deception’, pp. 347–348. 64. However, ‘hoping for recovery’ or ‘to come through this’, understood as an expressive hope, may simply reflect a particular patient’s approach to her life, regardless of her recognition that her death approaches inexorably and so on. 65. Kübler-Ross, On Death and Dying, pp. 31–32. 66. See Section 5.1.1. 67. E. Erikson, The Life Cycle Completed, pp. 56–57. 68. Erikson’s empirical psychological dialectic bears a number of similarities to a Hegelian dialectic as developed in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Each of Erikson’s stages is characterised by a bi-polar opposition from whose tension a dynamic synthesis emerges which is carried forward into the next stage of psychosocial development. During his lifetime, Erikson developed an eightstage account of human psychosocial growth. Joan Erikson has since added a ninth stage concerning very old age (completed in 1997). 69. That is, in general terms I take a relationship between trust and hope to be a component basic to the ways in which human beings come to view themselves as having characteristics of humanness in a shared world. 70. See the Sections 3.2 and 3.3. 71. I use the term real here to distinguish between the assertion of power through an assumption of knowledge, and what may be termed a more humble view of limits as to what can be known. It should not be taken to imply that real knowledgeable authority refers in any way to a Platonic realm of Forms. 72. While it may be argued that one cannot become a good doctor without developing both kinds of attributes, the case of Holmes and Moriarty shows that skill and good character do not necessarily coincide. 73. I have stressed levels of energy in this chapter because it is in cases of illness where levels of energy are most easily and visibly depleted. However, the notion of energy as a way in which indirect hope is experienced should be understood in a broad sense. That is, it should be taken in conjunction with the ideas of ‘interest’ and ‘engagement’. I have also used the word ‘zest’, as in ‘zest for life’. Again, this comes close to describing indirect hope, though no single term here seems sufficient. 74. I want to emphasise that these ‘forms of authority’ are construed as ways in which individual doctors may comport and conduct themselves as and when they are engaged in responding to a commitment to patients with regard to carrying out formally specified duties and responsibilities that

Notes 177 coincide with an implied commitment to be a hope for patients. I am not referring to any institutional hierarchies concerned with training or particular kinds of clinical experience. Rather, it is a matter of how a doctor may approach a patient, and a question of how a patient may respond in hope or trust. 75. By ‘non-death’ I do not mean that a person desires to live forever in this world. What is to be understood by this term is the idea of a hope to stay in life a somewhat longer time rather than a shorter time. Consider, for example, a case where other persons may expect the death of someone imminently; yet the person who hopes for non-death surprises one and all by staying in life longer than anyone (else) would have thought possible.

Appendix 1. P. Ricoeur, ‘Hope and the Structure of Philosophical Systems’, p. 56. 2. Ibid., p. 56. 3. See Aquinas, Summa Theologica, pp. 456–460. Hope is defined as a theological virtue in respect of its association with an efficient cause and a final end. God is presupposed as the efficient cause and final end, so in theological terms it appears necessary that hope is a theological virtue. However, if one does not presuppose God as efficient cause and final end, there is no necessary connection between hope and God as its object. Logically, it is possible that hope is a theological virtue but from a metaphysical and epistemic point of view the contention is unproven. 4. Ibid., p. 459. Referring to hope in this way depersonalises the hoper from the hoping. Throughout the text I have shown the significance of a first person perspective for hoping and its relations to second and third person perspectives in terms of acting and communicating with others, and understanding the agency of others. 5. This striving may have connotations of ‘more’ or ‘better’, or at least ‘no worse’, than the here and now. 6. Ricoeur, ‘Hope and the Structure of Philosophical Systems’, p. 58. 7. Ibid., p. 58. 8. Ibid., p. 58. 9. Ibid., p. 59. 10. Ibid., p. 59. For superabundance one could read ‘meaning’. 11. See Malpas and Solomon, Death and Philosophy, for a collection of articles arguing for and against the significance of death in engendering meaning in life.

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Index activity, 9, 14 adversity, 97 Améry, J., 96, 105, 106 anticipation, 8 Aristotle, 162–3, 166 assent, 100 attention, 61, 102 authority, 75, 124–38 knowledgeable, 82, 139 power-based, 82, 139 respectful, 83, 139 autonomy, 75, 124, 136 aversion, 34, 57 Bettleheim, B., 111–12 Bloch, E., 149, 158 Bovens, L., 98–9 Brison, S., 106 brute feels, 51, 57 care and concern, relation of, 34, 61, 84 character and temperament, 15, 94, 126 character traits, 28 circumstances, extraordinary, 104 circumstances, ordinary, 107 commitment, 61, 84, 87, 90, 104, 138 comportment, 128 conduct, 5, 24, 28, 128 confidence, 35–6, 57, 61, 114 contingency, 68, 89, 95 conviction, 37, 65 Cottingham, J., 153 courage, 86, 97 Day, J. P., 32, 146, 154 decision-making, 111–12 Descartes, R., 153 desire, 4 despair, 4, 51 in, 17, 21–4 of, 21–4, 38

doubt, 33–5 dying, 118 in hope, 128, 138–42 in the light of hope, 128, 138–42 emotions, 8, 32, 40, 49 energy, 100, 121 engagement, 100 evaluation, 23, 28, 58 evil, 34, 106, 110 expectation, 4 extraordinary significance, 130 fear, 31 Frye, M., 108 Furberg, M., 169 Gilman, C. P., 76–8, 80–1 goals, 6, 26, 68, 74 Godfrey, J. J., 27, 151 good death, 124–5, 136–8 Gordon, R., 45–9 Green, O. A., 49–50 Hall, R. L., 89 health, individual and social, 130–3 hedonic tone, 56–7 hope desiderative aspect of, 11–12, 36, 40–1 direct and indirect, 65, 72–3, 100–1, 138–42 estimative aspect of, 11–12, 36, 40–1 evaluating one’s, 115–16 everyday, 40–1, 50 explicit, 70, 76–7, 103–4 expressive, 72, 93, 105, 128 finding, 101–4 forms of orchestration of, 20 giving, 101–4 good, 95, 102–3, 134 implicit, 70, 76–7, 103–4 183

184 Index hope – continued indirect, 65, 72–3, 94–5, 100–1, 115–16, 138–42 investment in one’s, 12 living in, 101 living in the light of, 101, 115 subsidiary, 24 hope and reality, 21 hopelessness, 53, 73, 115, 120–1 hoping against hope, 16 human projects, 14 Hume, D., 38–40 imagination, 31, 64–6, 106 imaging, 64–6, 106 imperfect knowledge, 68–9 independence, 79 infirmity, 129 intelligibility, 125–6 interest in life, 100–1 intersubjective act, 17 invitation, 86 involuntary condition, 23 judging, 51–2 Kant, I., 14–15 Kekes, J., 95, 96 knowledge, 16, 71–2, 74–5 MacIntyre, A., 150, 164, 172, 173 Marcel, G., 155 marriage, 87–90 meaning in life, 125 meaninglessness, 126–7 memory, 31, 64, 69 mutual aid, 111, 124, 140 narrative unity, 125 non-striving, 26, 48 objectives/objects, 26 O’Neill, O., 11, 160, 162, 172 participation, 86 passivity, 13 personal, the, 134 pessimism, 131–3 Plato, 52–3, 75

pleasure and pain, 34 possibility, types of, 22 purpose and unity, 55 purposiveness, 20, 126 rape, 104, 107–11 reciprocity, 17 recovery, 124–5 response, 86 responsibility, 83–4 responsible agency, 75 Ricoeur, P., 148, 152, 170 Ruddick, W., 135–6, 175 Scheman, N., 153, 154, 157, 164, 168 self-control, 98, 115 Smith, M., 71, 158, 159 Spinoza, B. de, 33–5, 158 Stratton-Lake, P., 149, 160, 163 striving, 26, 48, 64 struggle, 129 suffering inflicted/undergone, 118 man-made, 104, 107 natural, 133 physical, 119–20 psychological, 119–20 temperament, 38, 96 temporality, 6, 100 tenacity, 97 torture, 104, 108 traumatic response, 109 trust, 59, 94, 105, 113 instrumental, 59–60 unreflective, 60, 109, 114, 140 uncertainty, 8, 13, 73 value-laden, 23 values, 6, 93, 99, 126 violation, 109 vulnerability, 68 wishing, 12–14 Wittgenstein, L., 5, 21 zest, 134