## 1. Introduction



Compared with more widely discussed attitudes like belief and desire,
the phenomenon of hope presents some unique challenges for both
theories of the mind and theories of value. Hope is not only an
attitude that has cognitive components--it is responsive to facts
about the possibility and likelihood of future events. It also has a
conative component--hopes are different from mere expectations
insofar as they reflect and draw upon our desires. A classic analysis
of hope--the so-called "standard account" (see
 section 3)--takes
 hope to be a compound attitude, consisting of a desire for an outcome
and a belief in that outcome's possibility. But not all outcomes
that we believe to be possible and that we desire are thereby objects
of our hope. In order to hope one not only has to consider an outcome
possible, one also has to affectively engage with this outcome in a
distinctive way. This raises the question as to whether hope can be
reduced to beliefs and desires.



Popular discourse often takes hope to be synonymous with optimism. But
while optimism can be usefully analyzed as a desire for an outcome
together with a belief that the outcome is more likely than not (or
more likely than the evidence leads other people to believe), many
philosophers hold that hope, properly understood, is independent of
probability assessments (see
 section 3).
 One can hope for outcomes that one considers to be very unlikely and
that one does not expect to happen, such as a miraculous cure of an
illness. In such cases, optimism is not an appropriate response.



It is an open question whether the contribution of hope to human
agency is to be identified with that of the underlying desires or
whether hope makes an independent contribution to motivation or
reasoning. If one assumes that hope cannot make any independent
contribution to practical reasoning but still motivates, this raises
the suspicion that it distorts rational agency. While such an
assessment can be found across the history of philosophy, many past
and contemporary philosophers provide analyses of hope that add
further elements to the belief-desire analysis and use these elements
to explain why acting on one's hopes is (sometimes)
rational.


## 2. The Philosophical History of Hope



Historically, evaluations of hope change together with the prevailing
view of the relationship between human action and the future. As long
as the human condition is seen as essentially unchangeable, hope is
more often treated as arising from mere epistemic uncertainty and as
having ambivalent effects on human happiness. In philosophical
contexts where either the possibility of a future life beyond this
world or the idea of human progress is emphasized, hope is more often
seen as an appropriate and even virtuous attitude that enables humans
to direct their agency towards these possibilities (see Miceli and
Castelfranchi 2010).


### 2.1 Ancient Accounts of Hope



Although there are few explicit and systematic treatments of hope
(*elpis*) in ancient Greek philosophies, they nevertheless
contain important approaches to the nature of hope and its role in the
good life and practical deliberation (Gravlee 2020). Ambivalent
evaluations of hope can be found in many texts. On the one hand, hope
is often seen as an attitude of those who have insufficient knowledge
or are easily swayed by wishful thinking. It thus has a negative
reputation (Vogt 2017) as an attitude that (at least potentially)
misleads actions and agents. Even Solon focuses on empty hopes (see
Lewis 2006: 85; Caston and Kaster 2016). On the other hand, hope is
praised as a response to despair, e.g., in the dialogues of
Thucydides, who advances a nuanced view of the potential dangers and
advantages of hope (Schlosser 2013). An ambivalent evaluation of hope
is also reflected in Hesiod's version of the tale of Pandora.
When all the evils had escaped from Pandora's jar, famously,
only hope (*elpis*) remained ("Works and Days",
SS90). This seems to suggest that hope can also sustain human agency
in the face of widespread evil. It must be noted, however, that there
are many competing interpretations of why *elpis* remained in
the jar (Verdenius 1985): Was it to keep hope available for humans or,
rather, to keep hope from humankind? Is hope consequently to be regarded as
good ("a comfort to man in his misery and a stimulus rousing his
activity", Verdenius 1985: 66) or as evil ("idle hope in
which the lazy man indulges when he should be working honestly for his
living", Verdenius 1985: 66)? These different interpretations of
Pandora's myth are taken up throughout the history of Philosophy
(especially among existentialist authors, see
 section 2.5).



In Plato's dialogues, we find negative as well as positive
assessments of hope. In particular, Plato even argues that hope can be
rational. In the *Timaeus*, Plato adopts a rather negative
attitude towards hope by recounting a myth according to which the
divine beings give us "those mindless advisers confidence and
fear, (...) and gullible hope" (*Timaeus*, 69b). In the
*Philebus*, by contrast, he seems to also allow for a more
favorable view of the role of hope in human life. The relevant
discussion of hope takes place in the context of an argument about
"false pleasures". Against Protarch's objection that
only opinions can be true or false, but not pleasures, Socrates
develops an analogy between opinion and pleasure (*Philebus*,
36d). In this context, he describes "pleasures of
anticipation", that is, expectations of future pleasures, that
are called hopes (*Philebus*, 39e3). As Frede (1985) argues, in
the case of such pleasures of anticipation what we enjoy at present is
only a thought. As there can be a discrepancy between the thought that
we enjoy and what is in fact going to happen, the pleasure can be
true--in which case it seems appropriate to say that the
corresponding hope can be rationally endorsed--or false (Frede
1985: 174f.). The *Philebus* also presents hope as essential to
human agency: Plato seems to suggest that all our agential
representations are concerned with the future, which connects them to
hope (Vogt 2017). Plato's positive view of hope can also be
found in the *Apology* and the *Phaedo*, where he argues
that hope for the afterlife is rational (Gravlee 2020).



Aristotle's treatment of hope in the context of his discussion
of the virtue of courage has received some attention (Gravlee 2000;
Lear 2006), as well as the role of hope in his practical philosophy in
general (Kontos 2021a). On the one hand, Aristotle describes the
relationship between hope and courage as a contrast. He identifies two
sources of hopefulness that are non-courageous: First, it is possible
to be hopeful "at sea [...] and in disease", but this hope
does not involve courage, insofar as, in such situations, there is
neither "opportunity of showing prowess", nor is death
"noble" in these cases, according to Aristotle
(*Nicomachean Ethics* 3.6, 1115a35ff.). Second, one can be
hopeful based on one's experience of good fortune
(*Nicomachean Ethics* 3.8, 1117a10ff.). In this case, the
belief in the probability of a good outcome is not well grounded, but
founded on mere induction. Both kinds of hopefulness are
non-courageous. On the other hand, there is also a connection between
hope and courage via the concept of confidence (Gravlee 2000). For
example, Aristotle says:



> 
> 
> The coward, then, is a despairing sort of person; for he fears
> everything. The brave man, on the other hand, has the opposite
> disposition; for confidence is the mark of a hopeful disposition.
> (*Nicomachean Ethics* 3.7, 1116a2)
> 
> 
> 



Thus, even though not every hopeful person is courageous, every
courageous person is hopeful. Hopefulness creates confidence, which,
if derived from the right sources, can lead to the virtue of courage.
Gravlee (2000: 471ff.) identifies two further considerations that are
relevant for hope's value in Aristotle's thought. First,
hope underlies deliberation, which is needed for any exercise of a
virtuous disposition. Second, hopefulness is also presented as
valuable in its connection with youth and the virtue of
*megalopsychia* (high-mindedness): Hopefulness spurs us to the
pursuit of the noble. Kontos (2021a, 2021b) focuses both on the
phenomenology of hope in Aristotle's thought, and the normative
question of what the conditions are for "hoping-well": He
argues that hoping-well constitutes a correct engagement with moral
luck, and it requires drawing on past experiences in a proper way as
well as reliably perceiving the present reality.



Perhaps unsurprisingly, hope received a less favorable treatment by
the Stoic philosophers. In particular, Seneca emphasizes hope's
relation to fear (an idea that is later taken up by Spinoza, see
 section 2.3):



> 
> 
> [t]hey are bound up with one another, unconnected as they may seem.
> Widely different though they are, the two of them march in unison like
> a prisoner and the escort he is handcuffed to. Fear keeps pace with
> hope. Nor does their so moving together surprise me; both belong to a
> mind in suspense, to a mind in a state of anxiety through looking into
> the future. Both are mainly due to projecting our thoughts far ahead
> of us instead of adapting ourselves to the present. (Seneca, Letter
> 5.7-8; in: 1969: 38)
> 
> 
> 



According to Seneca, we should avoid both fear and hope and instead
focus on the present and cultivate tranquility of the soul.


### 2.2 Christian Authors on Hope



Pre-Christian accounts see hope mostly as an attitude to reality that
is based on insufficient insight into what is true or good. By
contrast, Christian philosophers such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas
analyze hope as one of the most central virtues of a believer: Hope,
precisely in virtue of its capacity to justify action in a way which
is not bound to knowledge, is a part of rational faith.



Even in Saint Paul's argument for the extension of the Christian
community beyond the Jewish law, hope plays a central role. Paul
states that we can only hope for what is uncertain (Romans 8:24; see
also Augustine, *City of God*, book XIX, SSIV, 1960: 139).
Nevertheless, such hope can be the product of the experience of
suffering, if this experience is seen through the lens of faith
(Romans 5:3-5) and if the desire to be saved from this suffering
is supported by confidence in not being disappointed. Instead of
backward-looking law-conformity (associated by Paul with the Jewish
faith), it is such forward-looking hope that characterizes the
appropriate relation to God. As an illustration, Paul describes
Abraham as "hoping against hope" (Romans 4:18),
emphasizing the way in which hope goes beyond the evidence.



Augustine of Hippo discusses hope systematically in his
*Enchiridion on Faith, Hope and Love* (c. 420). Hope is
distinguished from faith--which is also based on incomplete
evidence--by two features: First, hope is necessarily directed to
future events, whereas faith can also relate to past events (such as
Christ's resurrection). Second, hope only relates to what is
good for the hopeful person, whereas faith can also relate to what is
bad (such as punishment for one's sins). Finally, hope, faith
and love are seen as interconnected. Only if one loves the future
fulfillment of God's will and thus hopes for it can one arrive
at the correct form of faith (*Enchiridion*, II.7). As love
provides the normative outlook that underlies hope and faith (and
thus, in some sense, the desire-component of hope), love is seen as a
more central virtue than hope (*Enchiridion*, XXX.114).



The hope for a life after death also plays an important role in
Augustine's political philosophy. In the *City of God*,
Augustine distinguishes the actual earthly city from the heavenly city
that only exists in the hope placed in God (*City of God*, book
XV, SSXXI, 1966: 541). The latter provides a reference point for a
Christian view of politics. Hope, however, not only provides for a
perspective on politics which surpasses the narrow perspective of
classical politics (Dodaro 2007), but an appropriate theorizing of
hope also modifies the understanding of traditional political virtues,
as it redirects their purpose from the earthly to the heavenly
city. One example of such a modification concerns punishment: Through
hope, a Christian 'statesman' will redirect punishment
away from an exclusive concern with proportionality towards the
potential reform of the criminal (*City of God*, book V,
SSXXIV, 1963: 263).



In one of his letters to Macedonius, a public official, Augustine
finally emphasizes that the hope for a future life underlies all true
human happiness, both on the level of the individual and of the state
(Letter 155, *Political Writings*, SS4-8, pp.
91-94). Thus, hope is not just of concern for individual
believers but also for political leaders that are concerned with collective
happiness, as paying attention to hope allows them to pursue a
political constitution that allows true virtue of citizens to emerge
(see also Dodaro 2007).



While Augustine is more or less exclusively concerned with the
significance of hope for our pursuit of a good Christian life, Thomas
Aquinas' *Summa Theologiae* contains a systematic
discussion of (ordinary) hope as a passion (ST I-II, q. 40) and as a
theological virtue (ST II-II, qq. 17-22). The former is directed to
finite, earthly goods, whereas hope as a theological virtue is
directed to ultimate happiness in the union with God. Even though the
two kinds of hope are clearly distinct, Aquinas provides a unified
account of the formal features of their objects (I-II, q. 40, art.1)
(see Bobier 2020a). The object of hope, he argues, is always thought
to be good and future. Further, in contrast to mere desire, the
objects of hope must be difficult to obtain but nevertheless in the
realm of possibility (ST I-II 40.1). This rules out hope for that
which is trivial to procure.



Regarding the rationality of hope, Aquinas has a nuanced view. On the
one hand, he admits that a lack of experience can make one unaware of
obstacles. This tendency (and drunkenness, ST I-II 40.6) can promote
(irrational) hope. On the other hand, he assumes that hope can promote
rational agency: As hope incorporates both knowledge of the possible
and knowledge of the difficulties to reach the desired outcome, it can
motivate agents to devote energy to their activities.



Because of this ambivalence, hope in the ordinary sense is not a
virtue for Aquinas. As a passion, humans can display an excess and a
deficiency of hope (ST II-II 17.5); furthermore, passions are not
virtues by definition (Bobier 2018). This changes, however, as soon as
we examine theological hope, i.e., the hope we can put in God. First,
as primarily directed towards God, such hope does not know any excess.
Second, we cannot understand theological hope as a passion. We must
analyze it as a habit of the will. While hope as a passion can only be
incited by sensible goods (and subsequently motivates action insofar
as the subject takes herself to be capable of realizing that good), we
can also hope for God's assistance (ST II-II 17.1) in reaching
eternal happiness (ST II-II 17.2). As eternal life and happiness are
not sensible goods, this kind of hope cannot be a passion but must
reside in the will (ST II-II 18.1). Note, however, that Aquinas
describes the theological virtues as habits of the will of a special
sort: They cannot be acquired by habituation, but can only be given by
God's grace (ST II-II 17.1, see Pinsent 2020 for an
interpretation of hope as an "infused" virtue).



Because of these two features, hope is a theological virtue (ST II-II
17.5; see also 1 Corinthians 13). While love (or charity) is directed
to God for the sake of unity, faith and hope are directed towards God
with a view to some good to be obtained from that unity: Faith relates
to God as a source of knowledge, hope relates to God as a source of
goodness (ST II-II 17.6).



The rationality of theological hope can only be properly understood,
according to Aquinas, when we acknowledge that hope has to be preceded
by faith (which underlies the belief in the possibility of salvation),
but, given faith, hope for the good of salvation is rational. In
contrast to most modern discussions of hope, Aquinas and other
Christian authors therefore see hope as compatible with confidence or
even certainty about the hoped-for outcome while still excluding
knowledge (Jeffrey 2020: 44). Despair, as caused either by the absence
of faith or the desire to be saved, is sinful (ST II-II 20.1). As hope
is, by definition, future-directed, it is only possible for human
beings who are uncertain of whether they are blessed or damned,
whereas love can persist even after their ultimate fate has been
revealed (ST II-II 18.2-3).


### 2.3 Hope in 17th and 18th Century Philosophy



In 17th and 18th century philosophy, many
philosophers reject Aquinas' division between different kinds of
passions in favor of a moral psychology which classifies emotions and
desires together as passions that generate action, of which hope is
usually conceived as a species. Almost all authors mentioned in the
following also embrace some version of the idea defining for the
"standard account" that hope is based on uncertainty in
belief together with a representation of an object as desirable
(Bloser 2020a).



According to Descartes, hope is a weaker form of confidence
(*Passions of the Soul*, [1649] 1985: 389) and consists in a
desire (a representation of an outcome to be both good for us and
possible) together with a disposition to think of it as likely but not
certain (*Passions of the Soul*, [1649] 1985: 350f, 389). This
means that hope and anxiety always accompany each other (in contrast
to both despair and confidence which are absolute opposites). Hobbes
adopts a similar analysis. For him, hope is a complex passion or a
"pleasure of the mind", i.e., a pleasure that arises not
from direct sensation but from thinking. For Hobbes, the simplest
building block underlying hope is appetite, and "appetite with
an opinion of obtaining" is hope (*Leviathan*, 36,
I.VI.14). As in Descartes, hope serves as a building block for more
complex mental phenomena, such as courage or confidence
(*Leviathan*, 36f, I.VI.17/19). But hope also plays a role in
the mental activity of deliberation which is defined as the
alternation of hope and fear with appetites and aversion
(*Leviathan*, 39, I.VI.49; see also Bobier 2020b). Hope--a
term which Hobbes often uses more or less synonymously with
(justified) expectation--plays an important role in the political
application of his moral psychology: Not only is the equality in the
state of nature defined as an equality of hope (*Leviathan*,
83, I.XIII.3)--which makes it rational for everyone to pursue
their individual advantage--the laws of nature also command one
to seek peace where one has hope for obtaining it (*Leviathan*,
87, I.XIV.4). Both the collective agency problem in the state of
nature and the solution to it thus depend on what hopes individuals
can rationally entertain.



Spinoza also defines the passion of hope as a form of pleasure
(*Ethics* III, P18, Spinoza [1677] 1985: 505) or joy that is
mingled with sadness (due to the uncertainty of the outcome, see
*Short Treatise*, book II, ch. IX, Spinoza [c. 1660] 1985:
113). In contrast to more modern definitions, Spinoza distinguishes
the pleasure that is involved in hope from desire. Hope (in the
*Ethics*) is thus not necessarily connected to desire, but
rather a way in which the mind is affected by the idea of a future
event. In contrast to Hobbes and Descartes, Spinoza understands hope
as fundamentally irrational. He argues that it must be the result of
false belief inasmuch as it does not correctly represent that
everything is governed by necessity (*Short Treatise*, book II,
ch. IX, [c. 1660] 1985: 113). Additionally, in the *Ethics*,
Spinoza describes hope as one of the causes of superstition,
especially as it is always accompanied by fear (*Ethics* III,
P50, [1677] 1985: 521). Such fear necessarily precludes it from being
intrinsically good (*Ethics* IV, P47, [1677] 1985: 573). This
is also the reason why we should attempt to make ourselves independent
from hope (although Gatens et al. (2021: 202) argue that Spinoza also
has room for the idea of reasonable hopes).



Spinoza agrees with Hobbes, however, by ascribing political
significance to hope. As he explains in the *Theological-Political
Treatise*, the fact that people are governed by hope and fear makes
them easy victims of superstition and false belief
(*Theological-Political Treatise*, [1670] 2002: 389); however,
good laws can also take advantage of this and motivate people by
arranging outcomes such that they can be motivated by hope
(*Theological-Political Treatise*, [1670] 2002: 439; see Gatens
et al. 2021 for a discussion of the political significance of hope in
Spinoza). The same importance he places on hope also underlies his
social contract argument. Like Hobbes, he argues that the only reason
why people remain faithful to the social contract or carry out the orders
of a sovereign has to be found in their hope of obtaining a certain
good this way (*Theological-Political Treatise*, [1670] 2002:
529). Even a people as a whole is always united by common hopes and
fears (*Political Treatise*, [1675] 2002: 700), but hope rather
than fear is dominant in the case of *free* peoples (ibid.).
This leads Spinoza to proclaim hope and fear as the basis of political
power in the *Political Treatise* ([1675] 2002: 686).



Hume's account is another example of an analysis of hope as a
passion--modified, however, by the specific approach he takes to
human psychology. For Hume, hope is a "direct passion"
that is produced when the mind considers events that have a
probability between absolute certainty and absolute impossibility.
Hume describes probability-beliefs as an effect of the mind
entertaining contrary views--of an event or object as either
existent or non-existent--in quick succession after another. Each
of these views gives rise to either joy or sorrow (when the object is
something good or bad) which linger longer in the mind than the
original imagination of the object's existence or non-existence.
When considering objects that are probable, but not certain, the mind
is thus affected by a mixture of joy and sorrow that, depending on the
predominant element, can be called hope or fear.



> 
> 
> It is after this manner that hope and fear arise from the different
> mixture of these opposite passions of grief and joy, and from their
> imperfect union and conjunction. (*Treatise*, [1738] 2007:
> 283)
> 
> 
> 



As Hume sees hope as a necessary effect of the consideration of an
uncertain event, it follows that we cannot but hope for any positive
outcome about which we are uncertain. The uncertainty in question can
be based on the actual uncertainty of the event but also on uncertain
belief.


### 2.4 Immanuel Kant



While hope is primarily discussed as a feature of the psychology of
individual humans in the 17th and 18th century
and, as a non-cognitive attitude, taken to be neither essentially
rational nor irrational, it is given much greater significance by
Immanuel Kant who adopts a much more substantial (and complex) view of
the connection between hope and reason.



Kant's definition of hope as an "unexpected offering of
the prospect of immeasurable good fortune" (AE 7:255) in the
*Anthropology* seems to remain within the traditional discourse
about hope. However, Kant eventually accords hope a central place in
his philosophical system by focusing on hope as an attitude that
allows human reason to relate to those questions which cannot be
answered by experience. In the *Critique of Pure Reason*, Kant
states the question "For what may I hope?" as one of the
fundamental questions of philosophy, after "What can I
know?" and "What should I do?" (A805/B833). This
question, as far as its answer depends on claims regarding the
consequences of moral righteousness and the existence of God, is
"simultaneously practical and theoretical" (A805/B833) and
it is answered by religion (AE 9:25). Kant's account of hope
consequently connects his moral philosophy with his views on religion.
He emphasizes the rational potential of such hope, but he also makes
clear that rational hope is intimately connected to religious faith,
i.e., the belief in God.



Kant considers three primary objects of hope in his writings: (1)
One's own happiness (as part of the highest good), (2)
one's own moral progress (in the *Religion*) and (3) the
moral improvement of the human race as a whole (in his
historical-political writings).



(1) In the *Canon* of the *Critique of Pure Reason*,
Kant states clearly: "all hope concerns happiness"
(A805/B833). However, it is not the hope for one's own happiness
*simpliciter* that is at stake, but the hope for happiness that
one deserves because of one's moral conduct (A809/B837). Kant
argues that there is a *necessary connection* between the moral
law and the hope for happiness. However, this connection exists only
"in the idea of pure reason", not in nature (A809/B837). A
proportionality between happiness and morality can only be thought of
as necessary in an intelligible, moral world, where we abstract from
all hindrances to moral conduct. In the empirical world of experience,
there is no guarantee for a necessary connection between moral conduct
and happiness. Thus, Kant concludes, we may reasonably hope for
happiness in proportion to morality only if we introduce the
additional non-empirical assumption of "a highest reason, which
commands in accordance with moral laws, as [...] the cause of
nature" (A810/B838). This way, Kant connects morality and
happiness in the object of hope and secures its possibility in a
highest reason, i.e., in God. Kant calls the connection between
"happiness in exact proportion with the morality of rational
beings, through which they are worthy of it" the *highest
good* (A814/B842). A peculiarity of Kant's treatment of hope
in the *Canon* is that hope for the highest good is apparently
considered necessary for moral motivation (A813/B841)--a thesis
he rejects in his later writings.



Kant's account of hope for happiness presents hope as very
closely connected to Kant's concept of faith. This becomes
obvious in the *Critique of Practical Reason*. Kant argues that
in order to believe in the possibility of the highest good--and
we have to believe in this possibility, as it is prescribed by the
categorical imperative--we have to *believe in* or
*postulate* the existence of God and the immortality of the
soul. Kant himself uses both the concept of belief or faith
*and* the concept of hope in explaining the content of the
postulate of immortality: we must *presuppose* immortality in
order to conceive of the highest good as "practically
possible" and we may therefore "hope for a further
uninterrupted continuance of this [moral] progress, however long his
existence may last, even beyond this life" (AE 5:123). Thus,
Kant can be understood as arguing in favor of a traditional religious
form of hope--hope for a life after death or immortality of the
soul. However, he points out that immortality is not a 'mere'
hope (i.e., a hope for an outcome where we lack evidence for the claim
that it is really possible), but that reason makes it necessary (as a
consequence of the categorical imperative) to assume that immortality
is possible.



Whereas some Kant interpreters do not clearly distinguish between hope
and faith (Rossi 1982, Flikschuh 2010), Andrew Chignell emphasizes
that hope is an attitude that is distinct from faith or belief and
that Kant follows an "assert-the-stronger" policy: He
asserts the strongest justified attitude towards *p* (justified
belief), even if one holds also weaker attitudes towards *p*
(hope) (Chignell 2013: 198). O'Neill interprets Kant as holding
that hope provides a *reason* for religious belief: Belief in
God and immortality is not "merely possible", but a matter
of "taking a hopeful view of human destiny" (O'Neill
1996: 281). According to O'Neill, the reason for faith is the
hope that moral action is successful, i.e., that our moral intention
can make a difference to the natural order.



(2) In the *Religion*, Kant envisages one's own moral
improvement as an object of hope, which requires that one change
one's fundamental maxim from a bad one to a good one. The
problem is that on the one hand, we have a duty to improve morally and
hence must be capable of doing so (AE 6:45), but on the other hand, it
is unclear how this can be possible if one's fundamental maxim
is corrupt. Since we cannot know how this is possible, moral
improvement remains an object of hope. Kant suggests two alternative
hopes: the hope to, through one's "own efforts",
become a better person (AE 6:46) and the hope that what exceeds
one's power will be taken care of by God (AE 6:52).



(3) In his political and historical writings, Kant considers another
object of reasonable hope: the hope for historical progress towards a
morally better, peaceful future. We find a similar relationship
between rational belief and hope as with regard to God and
immortality: Kant sees the moral improvement of the human race as a
hope that is based on a transcendental assumption (in the mode of
faith) in a teleological order of nature. Kant assigns "hope for
better times" an important function for moral motivation by
claiming that without it, the desire to benefit the common good would
"never have warmed the human heart" (AE 8:309). Kant
recommends a view of human history with a "confirmation
bias" (Kleingeld 2012: 175), i.e., with a view to the
realization of moral demands.



Aside from these systematic issues regarding hope in Kant's
philosophy, it is worth summarizing some general features that Kant
touches upon concerning hope. Regarding a *descriptive* account
of what it means that a person hopes that *p*, one can extract
two necessary conditions from Kant's remarks that are in line
with the standard account of hope: The object of hope must be
uncertain, and the person must wish for it. Both conditions can be
found in the following passage from *Perpetual Peace*:



> 
> 
> [R]eason is not enlightened enough to survey the entire series of
> predetermining causes that foretell with certainty the happy or
> unhappy consequences of humankind's activities in accordance
> with the mechanism of nature (although it does let us hope that these
> will be in accord with our wishes). (AE 8:370)
> 
> 
> 



In regard to the *normative* conditions under which hope is
rational, Kant is sensitive to a theoretical and practical dimension:
He focuses on hopes that are (necessarily) connected with a moral duty
and thus involve a *practical necessity*. From a theoretical
point of view, Kant's main concern is to show that these hopes
are not impossible. While he holds that empirical evidence permits
hoping as long as there is no proof to the contrary (AE 8:309f.), this
minimal criterion is connected to the idea that hope is based on
transcendental assumptions (i.e., the existence of God, immortality,
and a teleology of nature) (Bloser 2020b).



Kant's account of hope has recently attracted considerable
interest, both regarding matters of Kant scholarship and the
application and development of a Kantian notion of hope in various
contexts. As to Kant scholarship, During and Duwell (2017) follow
Beyleveld and Ziche (2015) in emphasizing the relevance of the
*Critique of Judgment* for an understanding of Kantian hope
-- they view hope as *aesthetically structured*.
Zuckert (2018) argues that Kantian hope is a *feeling*.
Danziger (2020) makes the case that hope plays a role even in
Kant's theoretical philosophy.



As to the application and development of Kant's account of hope,
Chignell (2018) reconstructs Kant's moral argument for faith in
the existence of God (where hope plays a crucial role) and explores
its relevance for political contexts (the food system), where the
chances that an individual will make a difference are very low.
Similarly, Huber (2019) argues that Kantian hope can be seen as
playing an important role in preventing demoralization and sustaining
the commitment to political action when the prospects of success are
dim. Dineen (2020) delineates a Kantian conception of hope that might
inform practical education, because it warrants us in thinking that we
are able to set and achieve ends, even in light of imperfection and
vulnerability. Speight (2021) shows how Walter Benjamin took up and
transformed Kant's account of hope by shifting from a personal
to a collective perspective on hope and to a concern with the
past.


### 2.5 Post-Kantian Philosophy and Existentialism



In Post-Kantian philosophy, the role of hope is disputed. One can
identify two distinct approaches. On the one hand, there are authors
like Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche and Albert Camus who
reject hope, not so much as epistemically irrational but as an
expression of a misguided relationship to the world that is unable to
face the demands of human existence. On the other hand, authors like
Soren Kierkegaard and Gabriel Marcel take hope to be a means to
overcome the limitations of ordinary experience.



Kierkegaard examines hope primarily as it is connected to religious
faith. However, whereas Kant aims to show that our belief in God and
hope for the highest good is possible within the limits of reason,
Kierkegaard is keen to emphasize that (eternal) hope must transcend
all understanding. As an antidote to despair, hope plays a positive
role in Kierkegaard's work, culminating in his advice: "a
person's whole life should be the time of hope!"
(Kierkegaard [1847] 1995: 251). In *Works of Love*, Kierkegaard
defines hope in its most general form as a relation to the possibility
of the good: "To relate oneself expectantly to the possibility
of the good is to *hope*" (Kierkegaard [1847] 1995:
249).



Most interpreters of Kierkegaard emphasize a distinction between
"heavenly" (or eternal) hope and "earthly" (or
temporal) hope (Bernier 2015; Fremstedal 2012; McDonald 2014). In some
passages, Kierkegaard indeed seems to assume that there is also
"natural hope" (Kierkegaard [1851] 1990: 82) or hope
"for some earthly advantage" (Kierkegaard [1847] 1995:
261). However, strictly speaking, Kierkegaard considers this the
"wrong language usage" (Kierkegaard [1847] 1995: 261). He
completes his definition as follows: "To relate oneself
expectantly to the possibility of the good is to *hope*, which
cannot be any temporal expectancy but is an eternal hope"
(Kierkegaard [1847] 1995: 249). On Kierkegaard's view,
hope--strictly speaking--is thus always directed towards the
eternal, "since hope pertains to the possibility of the good,
and thereby to the eternal" (Kierkegaard [1847] 1995: 249). This
is connected to Kierkegaard's account of time. Hope, as a form
of expectation, is an attitude towards the possible. While
expectation, generally speaking, relates to the possibility of both
good and evil (Kierkegaard [1847] 1995: 249), hope relates only to the
possibility of good. The possibility of the good, on
Kierkegaard's account, is a feature of the eternal ("in
time, the eternal is the possible, the future").



While the expectation of earthly goods is often
disappointed--either because it is fulfilled too late or not at
all (Kierkegaard [1843-1844] 1990: 215)--eternal hope
cannot in principle be disappointed (Kierkegaard [1847] 1995:
261-3, Kierkegaard [1843-1844] 1990: 216). Eternal hope
means "at every moment always to hope all things"
(Kierkegaard [1847] 1995: 249). Kierkegaard mostly equates eternal
hope with Christian hope (McDonald 2014: 164).



In order to understand the relation between earthly and heavenly hope,
it is helpful to consider the dialectical progression of hope that
Kierkegaard presents in the *Nachlass* (Malantschuk (ed.) 1978:
247). There is a kind of hope that occurs spontaneously in youth,
which appears to be a pre-reflexive hope, a kind of immediate trust or
confidence (Fremstedal 2012: 52). It is followed by the
"supportive calculation of the understanding", i.e., by
hope involving the reflection about the probability of the hoped-for
outcome. This (earthly) hope is often disappointed by the lateness or
non-arrival of the expected goods. This disappointment is necessary in
order to acquire eternal hope, which "is against hope, because
according to that purely natural hope there was no more hope;
consequently this hope is against hope" (Kierkegaard [1851]
1990: 82). Kierkegaard's interpretation of Abraham's story
in *Fear and Trembling* can be understood as an illustration of
this kind of hope (Lippitt 2015).



Whereas earthly hope is judged by the understanding according to its
probability, eternal hope exceeds the limits of understanding. It is
therefore commonly judged as irrational or as "lunacy"
(Kierkegaard [1851] 1990: 83). Kierkegaard does not explicitly take up
the question of when hope is rational--presumably because eternal
hope exceeds reason--but he frames the question of good or bad
hope in terms of "honor" and "shame"
(Kierkegaard [1847] 1995: 260f.). He observes that a person who
entertained an earthly hope that has not been fulfilled is very often
criticized as imprudent (or "put to shame" (Kierkegaard
[1847] 1995: 260)) because this is supposed to show that she
"miscalculated" (ibid.). Kierkegaard objects to this
perspective of "sagacity" that judges hope only with
regard to its fulfillment. Rather, we should pay attention to the
value of the hoped-for ends (Kierkegaard [1847] 1995: 261). Eternal
hope, on this account, "is never put to shame"
(Kierkegaard [1847] 1995: 260, see also 263). Further, and in line
with the Christian tradition, he argues that the value of hope depends
on its relation to love: We hope for ourselves if and only if we hope
for others, and only to the same degree. Love



> 
> 
> is the middle term: without love, no hope for oneself; with love, hope
> for all others--and to the same degree one hopes for oneself, to
> the same degree one hopes for others, since to the same degree one is
> loving. (Kierkegaard [1847] 1995: 260)
> 
> 
> 



Thus, similarly to Kant's account, one's hope stands in a
proportional relationship to an ethical demand. However, Kierkegaard
does not see hope *limited* by our meeting an ethical
demand.



> 
> 
> Rather, Kierkegaard sees the proportional relation as determining
> whether we are *in fact hoping*, and the actual degree of our
> expectancy. Our hope for ourselves is only realizable in and through
> our hope for another. (Bernier 2015: 315)
> 
> 
> 



As already mentioned, Schopenhauer represents the opposite approach in
post-Kantian philosophy. Even though he holds that it is natural for
humans to hope (*Parerga and Paralipomena* II, 1851: SS313), he
also claims that we generally ought to hope less than we are inclined
to, calling hope a "folly of the heart" (ibid.).
Ambivalent remarks concerning the value of hope (he interprets
Pandora's box as containing all the goods, *Parerga and
Paralipomena* II, 1851: SS200) can be found throughout his
writings, but on the whole, criticism prevails. There are two aspects
to his critical evaluation of hope: hope's influence on the
intellect and its role for happiness. In Schopenhauer's
dichotomy of the will and the intellect, hope is an expression of the
will or, more precisely, an inclination. One reason why hope is
problematic with respect to its influence on the intellect is that it
presents what we wish for as probable (*The World as Will and
Representation*, vol. 2, [1818] 1958: 216, 218). Schopenhauer
concedes that hope sharpens our perception insofar as it makes certain
features of the world salient. But he links this thesis to the
stronger claim that hope may make it (often) *impossible* to
grasp things that are relevant. Hope thus distorts cognition in a
problematic way because it hinders the intellect in grasping the
truth. However, Schopenhauer also concedes the possibility of a
positive effect of hope, namely as motivation and support of the
intellect (*The World as Will and Representation*, vol. 2,
[1818] 1958: 221).



With regard to its contribution to personal happiness, Schopenhauer
mentions a positive role of hope in his comparison of the life of
animals with that of humans. He states that animals experience less
pleasure than humans, because they lack hope and therefore the
pleasures of anticipation. But hope can not only lead to
disappointment when the hoped-for object is not realized, it can even
be disappointing when it is fulfilled if the outcome does not provide
as much satisfaction as was expected (*The World as Will and
Representation*, vol. 2 [1818] 1958: 573). Schopenhauer also
criticizes Kant's idea that we may hope for our own happiness in
proportion to our moral conduct (the highest good). This conception of
hope, according to Schopenhauer, leads Kant to remain implicitly
committed to a form of eudaimonism (*Basis of Morality* II,
SS3, 34).



Thus, even though Schopenhauer occasionally hints at positive aspects
of hope, his overall evaluation of hope is negative. This is
consistent with his view that life is filled with unavoidable
frustration and suffering, and that suffering can be reduced only by
getting rid of one's desires. Ideally, this amounts to the
"negation of the will to life" (*The World as Will and
Representation*, vol. 1, [1818] 2010: 405). The "temptations
of hope" (*The World as Will and Representation*, vol. 1,
[1818] 2010: 419) function as obstacles to the negation of the will,
whereas hopelessness can help to transform one's mind and
acquire "genuine goodness and purity of mind" (*The
World as Will and Representation*, vol. 1, [1818] 2010: 420).
Interestingly, Schopenhauer does have sympathies with the idea of
salvation, which lies in the denial of the will (Schopenhauer [1818]
1958: 610), that is, he seems to subscribe to a kind of transcendent
hope for an end of all suffering (Schulz 2002: 125). Even though he
does not say so, one could characterize his view as a "hope for
the end of hope".



Nietzsche is perhaps the most famous critic of hope in the
post-Kantian tradition. In the third preface to *Zarathustra*,
he warns: "do not believe those who speak to you of
extraterrestrial hopes!" (*Zarathustra*, [1883-85]
2006: 6) Similarly, in *Beyond Good and Evil* (1886) he opposes
all notions of hope "in hidden harmonies, in future blessedness
and justice" (*Beyond Good and Evil*, [1886] 2008: 562).
In his interpretation of Pandora's myth *(Human, All Too
Human*, 1878: SS71), he calls hope "the worst of all evils
because it prolongs the torments of man". However, a closer look
reveals that, outside his criticism of religious and metaphysical
hopes, he also hints at a positive perspective on hope:
"*that mankind be redeemed from revenge:* that to me is
the bridge to the highest hope and a rainbow after long
thunderstorms" (*Zarathustra*, [1883-85] 2006: 77).
Nietzsche counts hope among the "strong emotions"
(Nietzsche [1887] 2006: 103), next to anger, fear, voluptuousness, and
revenge. Furthermore, he repeatedly characterizes hope using the
metaphor of a rainbow: "hope is the rainbow over the cascading
stream of life" ["Die Hoffnung ist der Regenbogen uber
den herabsturzenden jahen Bach des Lebens"] (as cited in
Bidmon 2016: 188). However, the metaphor of the "rainbow"
is ambivalent. On the one hand, it is connected to Nietzsches vision
of the "overman": "Do you not see it, the rainbow
and the bridges of the overman?" (*Zarathustra*,
[1883-85] 2006: 36). On the other hand, however, the rainbow is
elusive and withdraws itself--Nietzsche calls it an
"illusory bridge" (*Zarathustra*, [1883-85]
2006: 175; see also Bidmon 2016: 188f.). In *Beyond Good and
Evil*, he finally claims that we should "fix our
hopes" in "new philosophers", "in minds strong
and original enough to initiate opposite estimates of value"
(*Beyond Good and Evil*, [1886] 2008: 600). In *Human, All
Too Human*, he similarly envisages change of the social order as
an object of hope:



> 
> 
> [W]e are only reasonably entitled to hope when we believe that we and
> our equals have more strength in heart and head than the
> representatives of the existing state of things. (*Human, All Too
> Human*, 1878: SS443)
> 
> 
> 



Reasonable hope is thus grounded in a trust in one's capacity to
bring about the desired outcome. However, Nietzsche adds that usually
this hope amounts to "presumption, an
*over-estimation*" (ibid.).



Camus follows Nietzsche in declaring (religious) hope the worst of all
evils (Judaken and Bernasconi 2012: 264). His critique of hope is
linked to the idea that the human existence is absurd.
The "elusive feeling of absurdity" (Camus 1955: 12) is
characterized by a discrepancy: The human mind asks fundamental
questions about the meaning of life, but the world does
not provide answers. Camus' understanding of the absurd is best
captured in the image of Sisyphus, who exemplifies life's
absurdity in his "futile and hopeless labor" (Camus 1955:
119). The assumption that life is absurd goes hand in hand with the
denial of religious hope for salvation. In his early writing
*Nuptials* ([1938] 1970), Camus opposes religious ideas about
the immortal soul and hope for an afterlife. In fact,
"[*h*]*ope* is the error Camus wishes to
avoid" (Aronson 2012). Even though Camus is often regarded as an
existentialist, he distances himself from this movement.
One reason is precisely his disagreement with the account of hope of
the existentialists, Kierkegaard in particular, of which he says that
"they deify what crushes them and find reason to hope in what
impoverishes them. That forced hope is religious in all of them"
(Camus 1955: 32).



As already mentioned, one kind of hope that Camus flatly rejects is
religious hope for a life beyond death. A second kind of hope,
primarily discussed in *The Rebel*, is the hope founded on a
great cause beyond oneself, i.e., "hope of another life one must
'deserve'" (Camus 1955: 8). The problem with hoping for
social utopias, according to Camus, is that they tend to be
dictatorial. A further reason to reject such hopes seems to be that
they distract from the life of the senses, from the here-and-now and
from appreciating the beauty of this life. We also do not need hope to
cope with the hardships of life and death: Instead of hoping for a
life after death (or committing suicide), one should be conscious of
death as "the most obvious absurdity" (Camus 1955: 59) and
"die unreconciled and not of one's own free will"
(Camus 1955: 55). Sisyphus exemplifies the attitude of lucidity and
consciousness that Camus recommends. Even though he does not hope for
a better future,--or rather *because* he does not hope for
a better future--"[o]ne must imagine Sisyphus happy"
(Camus 1955: 123).



Despite his criticism of hope, Camus states that it is (nearly)
impossible to live without hope, even if one wishes to be free of hope
(Camus 1955: 113). Presumably this claim is only descriptive, stating
a fact about human psychology. However, in a letter to his friend and
poet Rene Char, Camus called *The Rebel* a "livre
d'espoir" [book of hope] (Schlette 1995: 130). On that
note, it has recently been suggested that Camus allows for a positive
view of hope--a kind of "etrange espoir" [strange
hope] that is directed towards the possibilities inherent in the
present (Schlette 1995: 134) and that is characterized by humanism and
solidarity with all human beings (Bidmon 2016: 233).



Whereas the positive role of hope in Camus is at best hidden, it
surfaces prominently in the writings of Marcel. At the heart of
Marcel's account of hope is the distinction between "'I
hope...', the absolute statement, and 'I hope
that...'" (Marcel [1952] 2010: 26). Marcel is mostly
interested in a general, absolute hope, which he conceives as
"the act by which [...] temptation to despair is actively or
victoriously overcome" (Marcel [1952] 2010: 30f.). One way in
which Marcel characterizes the "mystery" (Marcel [1952]
2010: 29) of hope is by alluding to the connection between hope and
patience (Marcel [1952] 2010: 33). Hope implies the respect for
"personal rhythm" (ibid.) and "confidence in a
certain process of growth and development" (Marcel [1952] 2010:
34). Marcel takes up the question of the rationality of hope in asking
whether hope is an illusion that consists in taking one's wishes
for reality (Marcel [1952] 2010: 39). He answers that this objection
against the value of hope applies primarily to hopes that are directed
towards a particular outcome ("to hope that X"), but it
does not apply when hope transcends the imagination. Because the
person who hopes *simpliciter* does not anticipate a particular
event, her hope cannot be judged with regard to whether it is likely
to be fulfilled. Marcel illustrates this with the example of an
invalid (Marcel [1952] 2010: 40). If this person hopes that he will be
healthy at a certain point in time, there is the danger of
disappointment and despair if it does not happen. However, absolute
hope, Marcel explains, implies a "method of surmounting":
The patient has absolute hope if he realizes that "everything is
not necessarily lost if there is no cure" (Marcel [1952] 2010:
40). Being a "theistic Existentialist" (Treanor and
Sweetman 2016) like Kierkegaard, Marcel ultimately connects this
possibility of absolute hope to the existence of God. Absolute hope is
necessarily connected to faith in God and is a "response of the
creature to the infinite Being to whom it is conscious of owing
everything that it has" (Marcel [1952] 2010: 41).


### 2.6 Pragmatism



Even though hope rarely features explicitly in pragmatist writings, it
has been suggested that pragmatist accounts of hope can be found in
the works of William James and John Dewey (Fishman and McCarthy 2007;
Green 2008; Koopman 2006, 2009; Rorty 1999; Shade 2001). As Patrick
Shade notes, the issue of hope is "implicit in most pragmatic
philosophies", as it is related to central pragmatist topics,
such as meliorism and faith, and particular hopes for social progress
(Shade 2001: 9f.). Sarah Stitzlein (2020) argues that a conception of
hope as a set of habits unites the understanding of hope in the
writings of the classical pragmatists (Charles Peirce, William James,
John Dewey) and is further developed in the social and political
writings of recent pragmatists (Richard Rorty, Judith Green, Cornel
West, Patrick Shade, Colin Koopman).



Indeed, James' concept of faith in *The Will to Believe*
is closely linked to hope. In his essay, James aims to offer a
"justification of faith, a defense of our right to adopt a
believing attitude in religious matters" (James [1897] 2015: 1).
Even though his primary subject is religious faith, he points out that
a structurally similar justification of faith or trust can be applied
to social questions. It can be rational to believe that the other is
trustworthy or likes us, even though we may not be able to prove it.
Three criteria have to be fulfilled for faith to be rational: the
question cannot be decided scientifically, the belief may be true, and
we are better off (even now) if we believe. In his argument, James
draws a link to the concept of hope when claiming that the skeptic or
agnostic attitude is not more rational than the attitude of faith. The
skeptic holds "that to yield to our fear of its being error is
wiser and better than to yield to our hope that it may be true"
(James [1897] 2015: 27). James criticizes this attitude: "what
proof is there that dupery through hope is so much worse than dupery
through fear?" (James [1897] 2015: 27).



A pragmatist conception of hope has often been seen as closely linked
to the idea of meliorism and progress (e.g., in Dewey's work,
see Shade 2001: 139). In his lectures on *Pragmatism*, James
situates the doctrine of meliorism between pessimism and optimism:
"Meliorism treats salvation as neither necessary nor impossible.
It treats it as a possibility" (James 2000: 125). For Dewey, the
object of hope or meliorism is first and foremost democracy, which is
"the simple idea that political and ethical progress hinges on
nothing more than persons, their values, and their actions"
(Dewey [1916] 1980: 107).



Drawing on James' account of conversion in the *Varieties of
Religious Experience*, Sheehey argues that James can be seen as
advocating a concept of hope that does not rely on the idea of
progress, but relies on a "temporality of crisis" that
allows for an understanding of historical change beyond progress or
decline (Sheehey 2019).


## 3. The Standard Account and the Rationality of Hope



The contemporary debate about hope in analytic philosophy is primarily
concerned with providing a definition of hope, explicating standards
of rationality and explaining the value of hope. The debate takes as
its starting point what has been called the "orthodox
definition" (Martin 2013: 11) or the "standard
account" (Meirav 2009: 217), which analyzes "hope that
*p*" in terms of a wish or desire for *p* and a
belief concerning *p*'s possibility. R.S. Downie is
representative of this position:



> 
> 
> There are two criteria which are independently necessary and jointly
> sufficient for 'hope that'. The first is that the object of
> hope must be desired by the hoper. [...] The second [...] is that the
> object of hope falls within a range of physical possibility which
> includes the improbable but excludes the certain and the merely
> logically possible. (Downie 1963: 248f.)
> 
> 
> 



Similarly, J. P. Day writes:



> 
> 
> "*A* hopes that *p*" is true iff
> "*A* wishes that *p*, and *A* thinks that
> *p* has some degree of probability, however small" is
> true. (Day 1969: 89)
> 
> 
> 



The desire-condition captures the intuition that we only hope for what
we take to be good (at least in some respect) or desirable. The belief
component is meant to capture the intuition that we do not normally
hope for what we think is impossible (or certain), whereas this is not
a problem for desires or wishes (in e.g., "I wish I could
fly").



Most authors implicitly assume that the hoped-for event is in the
future. In ordinary usage however, people often express hopes
regarding past events of which they do not have complete knowledge. An
example is the hope that someone did not suffer excessively when they
died. While some authors consider this use of language to be parasitic
on the future-directed case (McGeer 2004: 104), others argue that
these are genuine cases of hope (Martin 2013: 68).



Another question in this context concerns the concept of possibility
that is at issue: It seems clear that we cannot hope for the logically
impossible, but can we hope for the physically impossible, e.g., that
the dead will rise tomorrow? Downie, for example, holds that logical
possibility is not enough (Downie 1963: 249), whereas Chignell does
not exclude the possibility of hope for something which is physically
impossible (Chignell 2013: 201ff.). Whatever the answer to this
question, all views (except Wheatley 1958) allow for cases of hope in
which the outcome is extremely improbable; in other words, no lower
bound to the probability is required for hoping (Meirav 2009:
219).



Objections have been raised against the idea that the standard
definition provides sufficient conditions for hope. There are two main
lines of objections: the "despair objection" and the
"substantial hope objection" (Milona 2020a: 103).
According to the "despair objection", two people can have
identical desires and beliefs about the possibility of an outcome, and
yet one of them may hope for the outcome while the other despairs of
it (Meirav 2009). The "substantial hope objection" holds
that even though the standard definition might capture a minimal sense
of hope, it fails to explain the special value of more
"substantial" kinds of hope. In particular, it fails to
explain how hope can have special motivating force in difficult
circumstances, especially when the probability of the desired outcome
is low (Pettit 2004; Calhoun 2018). These objections either lead to
the claim that the standard definition must be revised or motivate the
proposal that hope is entirely different from desire and belief, and
hence irreducible to them.



Luc Bovens suggests that besides desire and belief, hope also involves
*mental imaging* (Bovens 1999). However, it has been objected
that mental imaging is already entailed by desire (and hence, that the
standard definition can account for this) and that it is still not
able to distinguish hope from despair, since a despairing person can
still form mental images about the desired outcome. Andrew Chignell
suggests a variant of Bovens' account, although he does not
require imaging but a specific kind of attention: A subject who hopes
is *disposed to focus on the desired outcome under the aspect of
its possibility*, while a despairing subject focuses on the
outcome under the aspect of its *improbability* (Chignell
forthcoming).



According to Meirav's "External Factor Account"
(Meirav 2009: 230), hope also involves an attitude towards an external
factor (e.g., nature, fate, God) on which the realization of the
hoped-for end causally depends. "If one views the external
factor as good, then one hopes for the prospect. If one views it as
not good, then one despairs of it" (Meirav 2009: 230). However,
it is doubtful whether Meirav's account is applicable to cases
of hope where the realization of the outcome depends on luck (e.g.,
hoping to win the lottery). Further, it seems that one might hope even
in circumstances where one believes the external factor to be bad,
e.g., in unjust political circumstances.



While Meirav aims to answer the despair objection, Philip Pettit and
Cheshire Calhoun suggest solutions to the substantial hope objection.
In order to capture the motivating power of hope, Pettit distinguishes
the "superficial" kind of hope described by the orthodox
definition from a more "substantial" hope (Pettit 2004:
154). He construes substantial hope as acting on a belief that the
agent does not really hold:



> 
> 
> Hope will consist in acting as if a desired prospect is going to
> obtain or has a good chance of obtaining, just as precaution consists
> in acting as if this were the case with some feared prospect. (Pettit
> 2004: 158)
> 
> 
> 



However, in typical cases, a hopeful person does not describe herself
as acting *as if* the chances were higher, but as taking the
chances *as they are* as good enough to try (Martin 2013: 23).
Cheshire Calhoun (2018) shares Adrienne Martin's criticism and argues
that we need to distinguish a 'planning idea' from a
'phenomenological idea' of the future: The third component
of hope besides desire and belief, according to her, is "*a
phenomenological idea of the determinate future whose content includes
success*" (Calhoun 2018: 86). This phenomenological idea,
she argues, has motivational effects independently of the
agent's desires.



According to Martin's suggestion (Martin 2013), hope involves
two more elements in addition to belief and desire: First, the agent
must see or treat her belief about the possibility of the
outcome's occurring *as licensing* hopeful activities,
i.e., as not advising against some specific activities. Second, the
agent must treat her attraction to the outcome *as a practical
reason* to engage in the activities characteristic of hope. Martin
calls her account the *Incorporation Thesis*, which refers to
the fact that the hoping person incorporates the desire-element into
her rational scheme of ends.



Martin's proposal has been criticized as being overly reflective
and unable to account for "recalcitrant" hopes where the
hoping person does *not* see herself as justified in her
hopeful activities (Milona and Stockdale 2018). Milona and Stockdale
offer an account of hope that is inspired by the philosophy of
emotions: They describe hope as a kind of perceptual state that
involves a "hopeful" feeling.



There is an ever-increasing number of accounts that aim to remedy the
shortcomings of the standard definition (see also Kwong 2019,
Palmqvist 2021). The discussion seems to come full circle with Michael
Milona's return to the standard definition: Rather than
augmenting the standard account, he suggests that one should employ a
rich notion of desire and a suitable account of the *relation*
between the desire and the belief--the belief in the possibility
of the outcome must be in the "cognitive base" of the
desire (Milona 2019).



The view that hope can be reduced to desires and beliefs (and a third
factor) is not without alternative, however. Segal and Textor (2015)
argue that hope is a primitive *mental state* that can be
characterized by its functional role; Bloser (2019) argues that hope
is an irreducible *concept*. This latter view is compatible
with ontological variety and the view that different manifestations of
hope are related in terms of family resemblance.



As for the norms of hope, there is consensus regarding the point that
there is a theoretical (or epistemic) and a practical aspect to the
rationality of hope. On the theoretical side, the question is whether
the outcome is indeed possible (this amounts to evaluating hope in
terms of its correctness) and whether the person is justified in her
taking the outcome to be possible (this amounts to evaluating hope in
terms of justification or responsiveness to reasons). One question of
debate is whether the outcome must also be *probable* to a
certain degree in order for hope to be rational (for an affirmative
answer, see Moellendorf 2020 and Stockdale 2021). Andy Mueller
captures the epistemic rationality of hope by specifying the idea that
"hoping that p" is rationally incompatible with
"knowing that not-p" (Mueller 2021: 45). (On the relation
between hope and knowledge, see also Benton 2021).



On the practical side, most authors focus on the *instrumental*
rationality of hope. Martin holds that hope is rational
"so long as it promotes her [the agent's] rational ends to
do these things [i.e. engage in hopeful activities such as acting to
promote the end, fantasizing about the outcome, entertaining certain
feelings of anticipation]" (Martin 2013). Similarly, Pettit
emphasizes the instrumental value hope has for the pursuit of our ends
(Pettit 2004: 161).



However, the practical rationality of hope does not seem to be
exhausted by instrumental considerations. Bovens argues that in
cases where hoping has no instrumental value (because we cannot help
bring about the desired state), hope can still have *intrinsic*
value in virtue of its concomitant mental imaging: This characteristic
of hope is responsible for its intrinsic value in three respects:
First, hope has intrinsic value because the mental imaging connected to it (that is, the imaginative anticipation of the fulfillment of one's hope) is pleasurable
in itself (Bovens 1999: 675f.). Second, hope has epistemic value
because it increases one's self-understanding. Third, hope has
intrinsic worth because it is constitutive of love towards others and
towards oneself, which are intrinsically valuable activities. It is in
virtue of mental imaging that hope is intimately connected to love,
because spending mental energy in thinking about the well-being of
another person is constitutive of loving her. Bloeser and Stahl (2017)
argue that certain hopes--fundamental hopes--can be rational
in virtue of their contribution to the practical identity of the
hoping person.



Finally, it is a matter of debate how the theoretical and the
practical dimension of rationality are related. On Martin's
account, the practical dimension has priority. Miriam Schleiffer
McCormick, by contrast, holds that the theoretical and practical
dimensions equally contribute to hope's overall rationality and
are intertwined (McCormick 2017).



Another approach to the value of hope explores the prospects of
understanding hope as a virtue. Michael Milona interprets hope as a
*moral* virtue along the lines of "getting one's
priorities straight" (Milona 2020b). (For another attempt to
understand hope as a moral virtue, see Han-Pile/Stern, forthcoming;
for a critical view of such an enterprise, see Bobier 2018.) Michael
Lamb aims to apply the structure of Thomas Aquinas' theological
virtue of hope to argue that hope can be a *democratic* virtue
that perfects acts of hoping in fellow citizens to achieve democratic
goods (Lamb 2016). Nancy Snow (2013) proposes that hope can be
understood as an *intellectual* virtue. (For a critical
assessment of Snow's approach, see Cobb 2015.)



Accounts of hope as a virtue suggest that not all instances of hope
can be described as "hope that *p*", i.e., as
propositional hopes that the standard definition and its successors
aim to analyze. There are two kinds of non-propositional hope that are
subject to debate (see Rioux 2021): First, as Lamb's account
suggests, we might have hope *in* a person, which Adrienne
Martin calls "interpersonal hope" (Martin 2020). Second,
it has been suggested that there is an attitude of indeterminate hope
that is able to survive the loss of particular, determinate hopes. The
distinction between "hope that" and hope without a
determinate object has been introduced into the philosophical
discourse by Gabriel Marcel and has recently been taken up (with or
without explicit reference to Marcel) by otherwise different accounts.
Joseph Godfrey calls hope without object "fundamental
hope" and bases his account on an analysis of Bloch, Kant and
Marcel (Godfrey 1987). Patrick Shade's pragmatist theory
distinguishes particular hopes and hopefulness as "an openness
to possibilities that are meaningful and promising for us"
(Shade 2001: 139). Jonathan Lear similarly describes "radical
hope" as a sense of a future in which "something good will
emerge" (Lear 2006: 94), even though all particular hopes were
destroyed; and Matthew Ratcliffe takes such radical hope as an
instance of "pre-intentional hope", which is



> 
> 
> a kind of general orientation or sense of how things are with the
> world, in the context of which intentional states of the kind "I
> hope that *p*" are possible. (Ratcliffe 2013: 602)
> 
> 
> 


## 4. Analyses of Hope in the Psychological Literature



Psychologists and psychoanalysts have systematically investigated hope
since the 1950s (Frank 1968, for an overview, see Gallagher et al.
2020). In many of these first studies, hope was seen as a cognitive
process of directing agency that rests on the perception of an outcome
as important for an agent to achieve and as having a certain
probability (Stotland 1969). While this understanding of hope deviates
from the standard philosophical account (see section 3) by requiring a
minimal probability, it continues to play a major role in the current
psychological literature.



Currently, the most influential psychological approach to hope is
Charles Snyder's hope theory (for an overview, see Rand and
Cheavens 2009). Snyder defines hope as follows:



> 
> 
> Within a goal-setting framework, we propose that there are two major,
> interrelated elements of hope. First, we hypothesize that hope is
> fueled by the perception of successful agency related to goals. The
> agency component refers to a sense of successful determination in
> meeting goals in the past, present, and future. Second, we hypothesize
> that hope is influenced by the perceived availability of successful
> pathways related to goals. (Snyder et al. 1991: 570)
> 
> 
> 



On this basis, Snyder and others have developed various measures of
hope, such as the Adult Hope Scale (ibid.), and the State Hope
Scale (Snyder et al. 1996) that have received strong
experimental support and are widely used globally (see Gallagher et
al. 2020: 193-196 and Rose and Sieben 2018 for discussion of other
measures).



Several objections have been raised against Snyder's analysis of
hope. One is that the "perception of agency" relates both
to the past and the future and therefore measures a general trait of
hopefulness rather than the hope for specific outcomes. As a response,
psychologists have developed further "domain-specific"
hope scales (Lopez et al. 2000: 61). A second question concerns the
issue of whether Snyder's definition of hope is sufficiently
distinct from optimism (see Miceli and Castelfranchi 2010; Aspinwall
and Leaf 2002). Snyder wants to distinguish hope from optimism by
linking hope to beliefs about self-efficacy (Snyder 2002; Snyder, Rand
and Sigmon 2018; Magaletta and Oliver 1999) and reserving the term
"optimism" for generalized expectations about positive
outcomes. However, the ordinary use of the term is better captured by
the idea that hope can be upheld even if one does not assign a high
probability to the outcome.


## 5. Hope in Political Philosophy



Hope can play three distinct roles in politics (see Stahl 2020): It
can be instrumentally valuable insofar as its motivating influence
makes it more likely that people achieve politically desirable goals.
It can also be constitutive of politics, in that it is necessary for
certain hopes to be present for the space of the political to emerge
at all. For example, Spinoza argues that citizens can only act
together politically if they have civic hope, through which they see
each other as sources of potential benefits (Steinberg 2018: 90).
Lastly, hope can also play a justificatory role, insofar it is
possible that certain policies can only be publicly justified by
reference to hopes that those promoting them reasonably entertain.



The potential for hope to both motivate and mislead is widely
discussed in ancient and modern philosophy, but systematic accounts of
the political relevance of hope stem only from the 20th century (for
an overview, see Bloser, Huber and Moellendorf 2020). Many of these
contributions can be understood as raising questions about the
possible justifications of being guided in one's political
agency by hope, on the one hand, and about the benefits and risks of
hope for politics on the other.



Regarding the first question about the justification of hope, one of
the earliest and most ambitious accounts can be found in Ernst
Bloch's *The Principle of Hope*. Bloch advances his
argument in the context of a debate in early 20th-century Marxism,
distinguishing between what he calls the "cold" and the
"warm stream": The first designates the materialist
insight that all historical developments are conditioned and
constrained by concrete, existing material conditions, "strict
determinations that cannot be skipped over" (Bloch
[1954-59] 1986: I:208), whereas the second acknowledges a
processual constitution of reality which is captured by hope. Hope, in
other words, is justified by its correctly grasping facts about the
world. In particular, Bloch describes hope as always related to the
"not-yet-conscious" that in turn reflects "objective
possibilities". This idea is related to Bloch's processual
metaphysics, according to which objective tendencies and possibilities
interact with "closed" matters of fact, such that the
moment of potentiality surpassing into actuality always opens up
opportunities for the interventions of active decision-making. The
right way to relate to these opportunities is, according to Bloch,
"militant optimism", i.e., not a mere assumption that
things will develop in a desirable direction, but an active attitude
towards real tendencies with the goal to realize them (Bloch
[1954-59] 1986: I:201). Arguing from these premises, Bloch
develops an integrated theory in which hope is not merely a subjective
combination of desires and beliefs about probabilities or facts, but
rather a reflection of metaphysical possibilities in the world and
part of a range of human capacities that make it possible to relate to
that which is not yet, but which is already prefigured in the
objective potentials of reality.



While most contemporary political philosophers acknowledge that many
of our political hopes are grounded in reality, few go as far as Bloch
to also see a general attitude of hopefulness as justified by
metaphysical considerations. In *Law of Peoples*, Rawls, for
example, holds that political theories need to develop a
"realistic utopia" of justice to reliably guide our
political agency and to "support and strengthen" our
political hopes (Rawls 2003: 23). Howard (2019: 300) argues that such
a utopia refers to an outcome that is possible and reachable under
favorable conditions, but which may be extremely improbable
nevertheless. Following Kant, Rawls seems to assume that the main
justification for our political hopes for justice seems to come from
the fact that we need such hopes to be able to continue to be moved by
considerations of justice, and that it would be unreasonable to give
up political hope for that reason. Bourke (forthcoming) takes a
closer look at the similarities and differences between Kant and Rawls
regarding their justifications of belief and hope.



In similar terms, some contemporary authors think of a disposition to
have certain hopes as a democratic virtue that can be fostered or
undermined by states. Moellendorf (2006) makes an argument to this
effect that is restricted to societies transitioning from severe
injustice towards justice: Because citizens need hopes to be
motivationally capable to engage in the risky activities necessary to
pursue societal change, and because hopes for a more just future can
support their self-respect under unjust circumstances, institutions of
transitional societies must supply the "institutional bases of
hope", such as possibilities for free political campaigning and
open debate. Snow (2018: 414) argues that societies that do not offer
citizens "secure attachment" create "worrier"
citizens that are more likely to succumb to paranoid nationalism,
whereas "carers" who are hopeful citizens are more likely
to embrace a more inclusive national identity. More narrowly, Snow
defines "civic hope" as an "entrenched disposition
of openness to the political possibilities a democratic government can
provide. Hope must include the belief that the ends of democracy are
possible" (2018: 419) and argues--drawing on the pragmatist
tradition (see section 2.6 above)--that this disposition is a
virtue that contributes to the flourishing of their lives as citizens
as well as of the state they live in.



While most contemporary liberal views follow these arguments in
replacing Bloch's metaphysical foundations of hope with moral
justifications, defenders of "unjustifiable" political
hope, such as Richard Rorty, argue for the more radical claim that we
cannot, as a matter of principle, provide any fundamental
justification for the desirability of the outcomes that we hope for.
As Rorty famously rejects the idea of a political philosophy that is
based on privileged knowledge or insight, he argues that
"liberal hope" (i.e., hope for the emergence and
sustenance of liberal societies) similarly cannot be based on any
foundations--such as knowledge about probabilities. Rather, it is
an attitude by which those who have it express their commitment to
certain forms of future interaction and their belief in their
possibility. In *Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity*, Rorty
correspondingly contrasts two forms of liberalism: The "liberal
metaphysician" expects social cooperation to be based on
scientific or philosophical insight that penetrates individual
idiosyncrasy and aims at the adoption of a universal, final vocabulary
that then leads to solidarity. By contrast, the "liberal
ironist" renounces the idea of a final vocabulary and instead
assumes that only the contingent overlap between "selfish
hopes" can be a source of the solidarity that grounds the
commitment to liberal principles (Rorty 1989: 93). As Smith (2005)
notes, Rorty does not intend to argue for unjustified hope (hope for
which there is no adequate justification, although such justification
is possible). Rather, he must refer to a form of hope for which the
question of an ultimate justification does not arise, since it does
not incorporate the idea that it is based on any such
justification.



While the authors surveyed so far all agree on a positive role of hope
in politics, there is also a more skeptical tradition in political
thought that either questions whether hope in the standard sense is
always available to political agents or argues that, at least
sometimes, hope ought to be abandoned for political reasons.



One set of arguments revolves around whether the positive aspects of
political hope are accessible to everyone as classic liberal accounts
of hope seem to assume. Stockdale (2021) argues that many hopes of
members of oppressed groups are not forms of pleasurable anticipation,
but "fearful hope", that is, hope for avoiding the worst
effects of their oppression. In this sense, hope is not always
something that ought to be preserved. Of course, this does not exclude
more positive hopes, such as hoping for a less oppressive future. A
more radical challenge to the idea that specific, objectual hopes are
always available as a response to injustice is to be found in
Lear's (2006) reflections on "radical hope". Lear
considers a situation--such as that which members of the Crow
nation may have faced after they were forced to live on reservations
and, as a consequence, their traditional form of life became
impossible--where, as a result of historical catastrophe, the
vocabulary with which a group makes sense of the good collapses, and
the only thing they can hope for is that a new version of a good life
will become possible--a version they currently lack the words to
conceptualize.



A second, skeptical argument is concerned with the objection that hope
in politics might serve to encourage wishful thinking or undermine a
realistic, critical evaluation of social reality (see Bloser, Huber
and Moellendorf 2020 for an overview): It is often equated with
optimism (see Eagleton 2015 for an argument that does not do so) and
thus a naive approach to politics. It is said to disempower since hope
involves seeing the outcome as dependent on factors beyond one's
control, and to misdirect our agency towards Utopian goals. As
Moellendorf (2019: 154) argues, all hope imposes opportunity costs,
since it precludes alternative attitudes which may be more
instrumentally valuable. Political realists (such as Sleat 2013) argue
that hope may be a necessary element of politics, but will by
necessity go beyond that which is actually possible and thus mislead
our political agency. Although these arguments draw attention to the
dangers of hope in politics that have to be taken seriously, a
balanced judgment must also take into account the dimensions of value
discussed above. Indeed, philosophers working in the field of climate
change often emphasize the instrumental value of hope in sustaining
action where the attainment of the ultimate goal--managing
climate change--is uncertain (McKinnon 2014, Roser 2019).
Moellendorf highlights the need to develop hopeful politics when
discussing climate issues (Moellendorf 2022).



A third argument finally confronts the fundamental issue of whether
hope and hopefulness are always as desirable in politics as much of
the preceding arguments have assumed. Warren (2015), for example,
argues that the discourse and the valuation of political hope in Black
American politics, serves to appropriate a theological notion of hope
and uses it to enforce a "compulsory investment" of Black
people's hope in the political--although the resulting
politics only prolongs and reinforces the racist structures towards
the ending of which their political hope is ostensibly directed.
Instead, Warren advocates for "Black nihilism", that is,
the rejection of the metaphysical and political framework in which
political hope operates (see Lloyd 2018, Winters 2019 for discussion).
But even Warren leaves space for "spiritual hope" as a
hope for the end of political hope.