This is the PDF-PowerPoint which I used for my exposition held on Saturday, 21st August 202 at the SOCIETAS ETHICA´S 57th ANNUAL CONFERENCE, 19-21 August 2021, Time of Crisis – Time of Hope ZEIT DER KRISE - ZEIT DER HOFFNUNG. The title of...
moreThis is the PDF-PowerPoint which I used for my exposition held on Saturday, 21st August 202 at the SOCIETAS ETHICA´S 57th ANNUAL CONFERENCE, 19-21 August 2021, Time of Crisis – Time of Hope ZEIT DER KRISE - ZEIT DER HOFFNUNG. The title of my lecture was: “Hope opens perspectives”.
Keywords: crisis, hope, transformation, plurality of meanings, subject, expectation, Moltmann, activity, Spinoza, passion, emotion, disposition, mind, New Creation, action, future
Any time or any occasion of crisis whatsoever represents a challenge for hope. In my paper, I would like to analyse some aspects of hope as a kind of antidote against the crisis and against the effects of crisis on the individual mind.
Throughout the history of thought, the concept of hope has known positive and negative judgments: Spinoza, for instance, does not give hope a positive evaluation: he states that ‘Hope is nothing else but an inconstant pleasure, arising from the image of something future or past, whereof we do not yet know the issue.’ - Ethics, III, Prop. XVIII, Note II -; he asserts that ‘Hope is an inconstant pleasure, arising from the idea of something future or past, whereof we to a certain extent doubt the issue.’ - Ethics, III, Definitions of the Emotions, XII -.
On closer inspection, we can see that the concept of hope is not a univocal one, and that hope can have, actually, many meanings. Spinoza’s criticism is directed against an interpretation of hope as an emotion, as an ephemeral condition of mind, so that his strategy corresponds to the project of mind’s emendation from the factors of instability. An alternative interpretation of hope can, on the contrary, show that hope represents a stable formation of the individual mind and, as a consequence, constitutes a factor of stable disposition of mind towards the external reality.
I shall propose an interpretation of hope as a disposition of mind which completely transforms the subject as regards his attitude towards history, events, and crisis moments. Thereto, I shall refer to Moltmann’s theology of hope: in Moltmann’s view, hope in Revelation and in God’s promise of a New Creation implies a radical modification of the subject. Hope in the New Creation entails a refusal of the present conditions of the world and promotes action in order that reality be modified in the form of the anticipation of the New Creation. The promised New Creation is the criterium of judgment in order that it can be observed what does not function in the present reality and what ought to be changed therein. Hence, hope is not an emotion, is not a passion; it is a mind disposition, an internal constitution of the subject immediately connected with a programme of transformation of the present.
Thus, for the individual, to have hope in the New Creation is to receive and possess a complete formation and a disposition of mind involving a general orientation in life.
Hope is not, therefore, for the individual, a temporary condition of mind, it is not an ephemeral state of the soul; hope is an overall outlook on life, reality, and history. Hope becomes the shape of mind itself of the individual, since it is, for the individual mind, the source of interpretation of the whole reality. The hoping subject knows that the dimension of the present is not an inescapable one. The present is only temporary: it does not represent the fullness of time. Hope is the attitude through and thanks to which life is expanded and enlarged both with the expectation of a different future and with the activity directed to the realisation of a new future. Thus, hope represents, for the individual mind, a form of liberation of the thought from the present, since hope is the awareness that the conditions of the present are not an inevitable tie for the individual; there will be an alternative reality; a new reality will be anticipated by the action of the individuals.
Through hope, the future becomes an autonomous dimension in comparison with the past and present: the future will not be the repetition of truths which have been already expressed or of orders of society which have been already established. Through the announcement of the New Creation, the believer receives an antidote against all manipulation strategies aiming to convince him that the fullness of time has already been reached and that no alternative reality is possible, to persuade him that reality is unmodifiable and that it must be accepted so as it is. Hope tells that the order of the present is not a destiny. Hope, therefore, opens and broadens perspectives.
References
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Moltmann, Jürgen. Ethik der Hoffnung. Gütersloh, 2010.
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Moltmann, Jürgen. Theologie der Hoffnung, in Entwürfe der Theologie, herausgegeben von Johannes B. Bauer. Graz – Wien – Köln, 1985, pp. 235-258.
Moltmann, Jürgen. Trinität und Reich Gottes. Zur Gotteslehre. München, 1980.
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Robert Harvey Monro. The Chief Works of Benedict De Spinoza, Translated From The Latin, With An Introduction by R. H. M. Elwes, Vol. II, De Intellectus Emendatione – Ethica, Revised Edition, London 1901.