Concept
Hope
Overview
Hope is an optimistic state of mind that is based on an expectation of desirable outcomes with respect to events and circumstances in one's own life, or the world at large. As a verb, Merriam-Webster defines hope as "to expect with confidence" or "to cherish a desire with anticipation".
Among its opposites are dejection, hopelessness, and despair.
Hope finds expression through many dimensions of human life, including practical reasoning, the religious virtue of hope, legal doctrine, and literature, alongside cultural and mythological aspects.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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A body of men and women so inspired will conquer—first the difficulties and perplexities of their individual lives, then, in time, though perhaps only in a long time, the outer world. Wisdom and hope are what the world needs; and though it fights against them, it gives its respect to them in the end. When the Goths sacked Rome, St. Augustine wrote the “City of God,” putting a spiritual hope in place of the material…
Bertrand Russell, Why Men Fight
Names Hope several times; states what Hope is.
Joy, delight, merriness, hope are emotions in which the predominant feeling is pleasure; anger, grief, sorrow, and fear are emotions in which displeasure predominates. Now in both these series of emotions the exciting and quieting feelings and the feelings of strain and relaxation in many cases often play an important part.
Wilhelm Max Wundt, An Introduction to Psychology Translated from the Second German Edition
Names Hope several times; states what Hope is.
Holy Writ speaks of hope in two ways: as the object of the emotion, and hope as the emotion itself. In the first chapter of the Epistle to the Colossians we have an instance of its first use: “For the hope which is laid up for you in heaven,” i.e., the thing hoped for.
Martin Luther, Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians
Names Hope several times; opens on Hope.
Philosophers who discussed Hope
Related ideas
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- Hesiod
- Heaven
- Vedas
- Emily Dickinson
- Karma
- Moksha
- Positive psychology
- Marxism
- Desire
- Richard Rorty
- Mental state
- Psychology
- Prometheus
- Bhagavad Gita
- Greek mythology
- Postmodernism
- Paul the Apostle
- Psychotherapy
- Works and Days
- Schizophrenia
- Metanarrative
- Bible
- Zeus
Place in the tradition
Part of Thomism.