But a recent critique of 'blind hope' compels me to reevaluate the very concept of hope.
What we need in the face of what Nietzsche calls 'a strict, hard factuality,' is not hope, but 'courage in the face of reality,' wrote Simon Critchley recently in the Times (4.19.14), speaking against a 'blind hope' that represents 'a form of moral cowardice that allows us to escape from reality and prolong human suffering.' He seems as critical of political hope-mongers as of fear-mongers. 'The theological idea of hope has migrated into our national psyche to such an extent that it blinds us to the reality of the world that we inhabit and causes a sort of sentimental complacency that actually prevents us from seeing things aright and protesting against...moral and political lapses...'
'The remedy...is a skeptical realism, deeply informed by history. Such realism has a abiding commitment to reason and the need for negotiation and persuasion, but also an acute awareness of reason's limitations in the face of violence and belligerence...'
'Thinking without hope might sound rather bleak; it needn't be so. I [Critchley] see it rather as embracing an affirmative, even cheerful, realism.' He goes on,'You can have all kinds of reasonable hopes, it seems to me, the kind of modest, pragmatic and indeed deliberately fuzzy conception of social hope [of, say,] Richard Rorty. But unless those hopes are realistic we will end up in a blindly hopeful (and therefore hopeless) idealism.'.
So what is the hope of my blog succeeding, and even more significant, what is the hope of the hope that the framework posits will remain relevant in the days ahead?
An important distinction in this regard, it seems to me, is between wishing and hoping. Wishing is an expression of forlorn desire: 'I wish I were rich; she wishes I would stop drinking'. (Note the association with the subjunctive would). Wishing is closely related to the "something will turn up" hopefulness that Critchley scorns with justification. The "It'll all turn out somehow" denial of what we can clearly see and reasonably calculate going on around us is a prescription certainly for disappointment, often for disaster. This is when indomitable turns dumb.
Hope is a more agile attitude: something good that can happen will happen, as in 'She hopes to be here tomorrow; I hope it doesn't rain.' What exactly that something is may change as its grounds change or are forsaken by facts; but that there will always be grounds for grounds for hope is a fundamental premise of God-in-love. (By grounds for hope, I don't mean the coffee that brightens my outlook every morning.)
Hope, like a thing with feathers, can flutter to a new tree when the branch it had rested on is foreclosed by an emergent impossibility or very long odds. It may be hopeless, for instance, to expect someone to recover fully from a mental illness but maybe not to look for something new arising which improves the situation. (I'm hoping this at the moment.)
Hope spurs action, and action sometimes reveals new loopholes in impossibility and systems for beating the odds. At the very least, it prepares the situation for new grounds which may host new flocks of hopes for encounters of hospitality, friendship, exploration.
The Other of hope is the 'strict, hard factuality' that confronts my expectations of something good to come. The frontal zone between the two is dynamic and often contested. One hope for 'something good to come' may be replaced by or transformed into another, but hoping goes on (as well it might).
Why not? Reality is still being mapped; the future is certainly not fully predictable. The grounds for this or that hope may change or disappear (let's be alert to this) but the grounds for hope itself may have deep, deep foundations. I certainly hope so.
So what is the hope of my blog succeeding, and even more significant, what is the hope of the hope that the framework posits will remain relevant in the days ahead?
An important distinction in this regard, it seems to me, is between wishing and hoping. Wishing is an expression of forlorn desire: 'I wish I were rich; she wishes I would stop drinking'. (Note the association with the subjunctive would). Wishing is closely related to the "something will turn up" hopefulness that Critchley scorns with justification. The "It'll all turn out somehow" denial of what we can clearly see and reasonably calculate going on around us is a prescription certainly for disappointment, often for disaster. This is when indomitable turns dumb.
Hope is a more agile attitude: something good that can happen will happen, as in 'She hopes to be here tomorrow; I hope it doesn't rain.' What exactly that something is may change as its grounds change or are forsaken by facts; but that there will always be grounds for grounds for hope is a fundamental premise of God-in-love. (By grounds for hope, I don't mean the coffee that brightens my outlook every morning.)
Hope, like a thing with feathers, can flutter to a new tree when the branch it had rested on is foreclosed by an emergent impossibility or very long odds. It may be hopeless, for instance, to expect someone to recover fully from a mental illness but maybe not to look for something new arising which improves the situation. (I'm hoping this at the moment.)
Hope spurs action, and action sometimes reveals new loopholes in impossibility and systems for beating the odds. At the very least, it prepares the situation for new grounds which may host new flocks of hopes for encounters of hospitality, friendship, exploration.
The Other of hope is the 'strict, hard factuality' that confronts my expectations of something good to come. The frontal zone between the two is dynamic and often contested. One hope for 'something good to come' may be replaced by or transformed into another, but hoping goes on (as well it might).
Why not? Reality is still being mapped; the future is certainly not fully predictable. The grounds for this or that hope may change or disappear (let's be alert to this) but the grounds for hope itself may have deep, deep foundations. I certainly hope so.
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