Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T20:24:50.356Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hope and Hopefulness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2020

Jack M. C. Kwong
Jack M. C. Kwong*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy and Religion, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC, USA.
*
Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper proposes a new framework for thinking about hope, with certain unexpected consequences. Specifically, I argue that a shift in focus from locutions like “x hopes that” and “x is hoping that” to “x is hopeful that” and “x has hope that” can improve our understanding of hope. This approach, which emphasizes hopefulness as the central concept, turns out to be more revealing and fruitful in tackling some of the issues that philosophers have raised about hope, such as the question of how hope can be distinguished from despair or how people can have differing strengths in hope. It also allows us to see that many current accounts of hope, far from being rivals, are actually compatible with one another.

Keywords

Hopehopefulnessdespair
Type
Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 50 , Issue 7 , October 2020 , pp. 832 - 843
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Canadian Journal of Philosophy

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Blöser, Claudia. 2019. “Hope as an Irreducible Concept.” Ratio 32 (3): 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1111/rati.12236.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bovens, Luc. 1999. “The Value of Hope.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 59 (3): 667–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calhoun, Cheshire. 2018. Doing Valuable Time: The Present, the Future and Meaningful Living. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Day, J. P. 1969. “Hope.” American Philosophical Quarterly 6 (2): 89–102.Google Scholar
Govier, Trudy. 2011. “Hope and Its Opposites.” Journal of Social Philosophy 42 (3): 239–53.Google Scholar
Kwong, Jack M. C. 2018. “What Is Hope?” European Journal of Philosophy 27 (1): 243–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, Adrienne M. 2014. How We Hope: A Moral Psychology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Meirav, Ariel. 2009. “The Nature of Hope.” Ratio 22 (2): 216–33. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9329.2009.00427.x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milona, Michael. 2018. “Finding Hope.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 49 (5): 710–29. https://doi.org/10.1080/00455091.2018.1435612.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milona, Michael, and Stockdale, Katie. 2018. “A Perceptual Theory of Hope.” Ergo 5 (8): 203–22.Google Scholar
Pettit, Philip. 2004. “Hope and Its Place in Mind.” The Annals of the American Academy 592 (1): 152–65.Google Scholar
Ratcliff, Matthew. 2013. “What Is It to Lose Hope?” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 12 (4): 587–614.Google Scholar
Segal, Gabriel, and Textor, Mark. 2015. “Hope as a Primitive Mental State.” Ratio 28 (2): 207–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stockdale, Katie. 2019a. “Social and Political Dimensions of Hope,” Journal of Social Philosophy 50 (1): 28–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stockdale, Katie. 2019b. “Emotional Hope.” In The Moral Psychology of Hope, edited by Blöser, Claudia and Stahl, Titus, 115–34. London: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar