An image of Aristotle looking at birds in flight
Essay
By Invitation
The Humanities as a Hope Educator
1. Questions

When considering the question “Is hope a necessary and positive component of our lives?” nearly everyone responds with an unequivocal affirmation. Human plans, deliberations, and actions, all of which project towards the future, are inherently intertwined with hope, or the capacity to envision a favorable future despite the uncertainty of luck. This intertwining occurs on many levels. For instance, hoping aids us in identifying paths toward realizing our practical goals. But hope also contributes to shaping our framework of goals, distinguishing genuine practical ends from objects of mere wishful thinking. Moreover, it serves as a motivational force propelling us toward the accomplishment of our objectives. These aspects of hope are iterative and cumulative, meaning that the more hopeful our view of the future, the greater our motivation becomes, and the broader our goals expand, and vice versa. 

People who mistrust hope may argue that it can be misguided or distorted, but such conditions are inherent in all aspects of practical life, including judgments, deliberations, and actions, whether from intellectual errors or detrimental desires and emotions. It is important to remember: hope in itself is never evil.

Allow me to pose a second question: “Are the humanities a necessary and positive component of our lives as a source of hope?” Regrettably, the answer to this question may not seem evident or straightforward to many; it may not even be fully intelligible. However, it’s crucial to recognize that by affirming the importance of hope in our lives, we implicitly commit to a positive response to the second question as well. Indeed, only the humanities can effectively serve as a hope educator.
Why do we need a hope educator in the first place? To understand why, we must start by explaining the nature of hope.

2. What Hope Is

We often make false assumptions about hope: one assumes hope is synonymous with optimism. However, optimism can be analyzed as a desire for a particular outcome coupled with a belief that the outcome is more likely than not or more likely than the evidence suggests to others. Yet people with identical beliefs and desires may hold vastly different hopes. For example, two patients with the same illness and the same beliefs about the potential efficacy of a new therapy may exhibit differing levels of hope. Likewise, in everyday discourse but also in the pertinent scholarship, one often mistakenly perceives hope as an emotion or a desire, which cannot be accurate for several reasons. Emotions and desires typically indicate our motivation to pursue an end because we perceive it as beneficial or advantageous. However, hope does not affirm the intrinsic goodness of our goals; rather, it only emphasizes their feasibility. Further, while hope does have a motivational impact, it is inherently dependent on existing emotions or desires. Consider this: when I express hope for a certain outcome, it doesn’t explain why I desire that outcome or what motivates my desire.

In reality, hope is an intellectual faculty. It involves a conviction regarding the future’s receptivity to our plans and actions, akin to a perceptual judgment about the future in its elusive and imperceptible nature. Why are we often reluctant to recognize hope as an intellectual faculty? For we assume a false exclusive distinction in the following lines: “hope” is either an inert mental state (in other words, a merely theoretical anticipation, forecast, or prognosis of a future state of affairs) or an emotion. But there is a third possibility; practical rationality, though entirely intellectual, is goal-oriented and dependent on desires and emotions, without being itself a desire or an emotion, and without including an emotion as a component of its structure.

Consider the example of cowardice, where an individual is excessively fearful and lacks confidence. Such individuals perceive the world through a distorted lens, and see intimidating obstacles hindering their plans, even when there may be no real cause for fear. They are blind to the inherent nobility of practical objectives, a nobility that resonates deeply with courageous individuals, drowning out the noise of perceived threats or seeing threats in their true scale. For the same reasons, they are incapable of hoping well and envisioning positive pathways for achieving their goals, which ultimately hinders their ability to act. All these sorts of blindness affecting our judgments, perceptions, and hopes, describe intellectual flaws.

As mentioned earlier, hope can be likened to a form of perceptual judgment regarding the future's receptivity to our plans and actions. We now have a clearer understanding of what this entails: hope provides us with a perspective on the world that reveals directions supporting, facilitating, or promoting the continuity between our agency and the fortuitous elements influencing the outcomes of our future actions. The virtuous individual possesses the ability to discern these avenues reliably, despite being fully aware of the elusive nature of the future and the unpredictability of luck. To use a metaphor: just as expert chess players can anticipate remote future moves in the game, individuals who hope well can accurately envision a future that is conducive to their plans. The key distinction lies in the fact that our practical selves and actions are engaged in a game that is open-ended and in which luck plays a critical role.

Why does it matter to explain that hope is not an emotion or a desire and does not amount to mere optimism either? Here we come to realize that hoping well is not a matter of éducation sentimentale; it rather requires the sort of cultivation that is special to rational capacities.

3. Scientific Discourse and Philosophical Insights

Positive psychology assumes that hope’s significance lies in its capacity to advance the objectives of any individual. For instance, in Charles R. Snyder’s positive psychology, hope is viewed as an intellectual faculty with motivational impact. Snyder's Adult Trait Hope Scale focuses on success, particularly how individuals in various domains such as academics and athletics will achieve their objectives. However, the equation remains unchanged even when considering high-hope individuals engaged in illicit activities such as theft or abuse. These individuals may be equally certain of their success, regardless of the goodness of the objectives pursued. Thus the concept of high hopes becomes reduced to a tool for mere thriving. In this context, hope as a means to success is seen as a remedy for despair or low self-confidence.

Philosophers have long recognized that all approaches to hope like the one proposed by positive psychology are neither correct nor a true remedy for despair. Some prominent examples underscore this point.

Aristotle, the founder of Western ethical and political philosophy, adamantly asserts that only virtuous individuals possessing practical wisdom can truly hope well. Conversely, ignorance of actual stakes or vicious practical ends undermine hope’s correctness. For instance, irascible people may possess the cleverness to envision positive scenarios for seeking revenge in the future. However, their hopefulness falls short of hoping well because they fail to recognize their own injustice and the need for their anger to cease. Their cleverness serves as a vehicle for stubbornness rather than justified hope.

St. Paul, who significantly shaped the Christian notion of hope, also emphasizes the interconnectedness of hope with faith and love. This triad reflects the conviction that our subjective hope for salvation is firmly rooted in our faith, which acknowledges the objectivity of hope, namely, the historical reality of Christ’s resurrection. St. Paul introduces a completely novel framework: hope encompasses patience and absence of shame (denoting an unwavering commitment despite the absence of worldly justification for Christian hope) and it is recognized as a divine gift bestowed upon us through divine generosity. 

Immanuel Kant also recognized the significance of hope. According to Kant, if the highest good entails both goodness and the realization of our ends, then our hope for the highest good must begin from acknowledging that goodness serves as the condition or foundation of the highest good itself. Notably, Kant posits that hope is justifiable only “within the boundaries of mere reason” and must be grounded in the acknowledgment that only a virtuous community, rather than separate individuals, possesses the potential to someday, if ever, materialize the highest good.

Ultimately, the dilemma strikes a chord deep within us for it amounts to a choice between mere success and successful goodness. This choice holds profound significance, resonating not only with me but also, I trust, with you.

4. The Humanities as a Hope Educator

Why do we need a hope educator? The answer should now be clear: while nobody disputes that hope is a constitutive component of our lives, not only do most people not hope well but they possess a false understanding of what hope truly entails. For many, the concept of hope education may even seem paradoxical.

How can we teach hoping well? Such teaching necessitates equipping young people with a multifaceted intellectual capacity that encompasses several elements. These include fostering a trust in experience, engaging in rational assessment of facts, avoiding wishful thinking that cultivates the illusion of omnipotent control over one’s destiny, developing a quasi-perceptual ability to discern barely visible avenues for realizing future goals, fostering rational faith in the goodness of others and their willingness to offer assistance, cultivating flexibility in redirecting hopes towards new objectives when initial ones prove unattainable, and, above all, instilling an awareness that while hope and luck may be indifferent to goodness, only goodness fosters hoping well.

In cases involving multifaceted capacities, such as practical perception and judgment, that strongly depend on our emotional apparatus and mirror our whole character, education primarily, if not exclusively, occurs through the provision of examples. In our context, this entails illustrating examples of a meaningful life and of people who achieved hoping well amidst an uncertain future. Such examples can only be fully conveyed through narratives.

It is crucial to acknowledge that disciplines within the humanities are grounded not exclusively in arguments, proofs, and experiments, but in narratives and meta-narratives. To be succinct, allow me to provide select illustrative instances from a myriad of possibilities.

Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War serves as a narrative illustrating how hope, exemplified by the astute leadership of Pericles, propelled Athens to its zenith of achievement, while the misjudged hopes of subsequent political leaders led to the city’s downfall. In the United States, Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 speech delivered at the March on Washington, a poignant ode to political hope, significantly contributed to the recognition of the political rights of Black people. It is only thanks to the science of history—isn’t it?—that such works find the scholarly attention they warrant, thereby enabling students and citizens to discern and counteract deceptive political rhetoric surrounding hope.

Philosophy also provides unparalleled insights into the interpretation of narratives of hope. In his seminal work Fear and Trembling (1843), Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard offers a paradigmatic analysis of hope in Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, elucidating its existential and metaphysical implications. Similarly, in his recent book Radical Hope (2007), the philosopher Jonathan Lear constructs a narrative of the survival and prosperity of the Crow tribe and delves deeply into the importance of the capacity of its leader Plenty Coups to hope well. It is only thanks to philosophy, isn’t it?, that students cultivate the ability to scrutinize and critique flawed conceptualizations of hope and uncover their hidden presuppositions.

Only in a Department of Language or Literature can students acquire the capacity to fully appreciate and methodically decipher works such as Cervantes’ Don Quixote, which offers profound insights into the complexities of human hopes. Likewise, it is only within a Department of Arts—isn’t it?—that students have the opportunity to gain profound insights into films that offer captivating narratives of hope’s fulfillment, such as The Shawshank Redemption by Frank Darabont (USA, 1994, 142’) or Capernaum by Nadine Labaki (Lebanon, 2018, 126’). And it is through such an education that they are expected to develop a discerning attitude towards mainstream art that more often than not presents a superficial and emotionally manipulative portrayal of hope, ultimately leading to disillusionment and despair.

It's time to conclude: if indeed human beings are, by nature, generators of hopes, then philosophy, history, theology, the study of language, art, poetry, literature, and other fields in the humanities serve as exemplary educators. Their flourishing is as existential for humanity as it is for humanity to aspire towards mastering the art of hoping well.

Join the colloquy
Colloquy

Hope: The Future of an Idea

In a troubled age, hope may seem an elusive feeling. Alongside its history as a virtue, a political concept, and a psychological state, it enjoys a vivid presence as a necessary but poorly understood experience in everyday life. To reframe it in the context of this Colloquy, we might ask: how has hope been defined and critiqued? Where does it lie latent or unacknowledged? And how does the work of the humanities depend on hope, and perhaps arouse it? 

more

This year at the Stanford Humanities Center, we asked our fellows to reflect on questions of this kind. Their work ranges from the esoteric to the immediate, from the deep past to the present moment, and across the disciplines from music and art history to philosophy and education. Our aim here is to create a repository of informal thinking about the presence of hope in what we do, not only as scholars, artists, and practitioners but as people living in the twenty-first century. 

It is natural to say we live in a hopeless time, as climate change, war, authoritarianism, and other dangers loom over us. Without dismissing the force of despair, this Colloquy proposes to recover the grain of hope, not as a two-dimensional response to three-dimensional problems but as a complex problem on its own. The title of the Colloquy, in which we call hope an idea, is meant to signal this approach. 

The contributions collected here, while conceived from many distinctive intellectual and personal positions, are best discovered in twos and threes. Read or watch one, then another and another, at random. Imagine these items as belonging to a virtual conversation, which stands in for the exchange of ideas that takes place every day at the Center. Some of the contributors are professionally connected to the problem of hope—for instance, the historian of philosophy Pavlos Kontos is now writing authoritatively about hope in Aristotle’s thought—while others accept our invitation to fold the topic into their projects or their lives as scholars. Some simply register the place of hope in their lives. 

Finally, we bear in mind that, even when it is concerned with historically remote cultures or recondite questions, research in the humanities is always about the present and the future. It is through the lens of the present that we address every question, which means that, except for the most circumscribed topics, we seldom produce definitive answers; instead we tend to offer arguments and interpretations that work for our moment, to be improved by the knowledge and perspectives of our successors. Anticipating that conversation with the scholars of the future, we send off the fruits of our research hopefully to posterity. This Colloquy aims to render hope where the present meets the future.

Join the Colloquy

My Colloquies are shareables: Curate personal collections of blog posts, book chapters, videos, and journal articles and share them with colleagues, students, and friends.

My Colloquies are open-ended: Develop a Colloquy into a course reader, use a Colloquy as a research guide, or invite participants to join you in a conversation around a Colloquy topic.

My Colloquies are evolving: Once you have created a Colloquy, you can continue adding to it as you browse Arcade.