Quest for Meaning, Conestoga College, Fall 2014

The Hopeful Self: Nothing and the Future

The Slavic word for hope is nada. The same word in Spanish means nothing. Perhaps the link
between hope and nothing can help to forge a new meaning for this much-abused concept. How do we get
beyond the need for hope? Can we free ourselves from the need to navigate between hope and hopelessness?
Hope functions within unfreedom. If I am free, I have no need to hope. I simply do. Politicians often
invoke public hope. Many naively believe that a new face in an old office will effect change. Public hope when
simply spoken does not carry a performative force. The decree may change nothing. The person who says,
this isnt what I hoped for shows what is wrong with hope. Its orientation may not be enough. Hope can be
manipulated to serve the private goals of those who are supposedly in the public service. The world is full of
public hope, private hope and collective hope, yet poverty, sickness, war, disease, famine, etc. are present.
In his poem, Burnt Norton, T.S. Eliot expresses the view that human kind cannot bear very much
reality. In this inability to bear ones cross, hope asserts itself as the final straw to clutch. Is it better to have
not hoped when X does not arrive or is it better to still go on hoping even when you are aware that X will never
arrive? If I am confident, I do not require hope. I have my anticipation, my illumination and the fulfillment of
my desire. Hope is felt by those who suffer and do not know why. In this sense, hope is related to ignorance.
The wise person does not hope. The wise person does something. The wise person performs an action.
In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant asks the following three questions: What can I know? What
ought I to do? And for what may I hope? While Kant does not give us a full treatment of hope, he declares
that hope is linked to living happily. For what may I hope? The question is asked by Kant but not many
answers have been given. If one acts, there is no need for hope. Instead of inspiring hope or allowing hope to
breath, one should inspire action. In this manner, we avoid the feeling of helplessness in the face of adversity.
If the first path is blocked, hope waits rather than find another way. Hope does not lead to emancipation, action
does. Action transforms the conditions of our situation. Hope dreams that the conditions can be transformed.
Hope building strategies are like giving a fishing pole to a person in the desert and then telling them that all they
need is a lake full of fish, and a colorful lure. Hope deceives us especially when it is done through marketing
and spin-doctored into the next best thing. Hope linked to economy alone distorts justice and becomes a system
for taking advantage of others. In other words, the logic of hope can lead to totalitarianism where the promise
of equality manifested itself in the gulag and grave. Hope has nothing to do with cognitive resolve. Hope does
not think. Hope resolves nothing. Hope sits. The avalanche of facts dissolves hope into a stream of incapacity.
Rather than revert to hope when faced with the adversity of life we might consider another response that does
not daydream its future away on false expectations.
In Human All Too Human, Nietzsche argues that hope in truth is the most evil of evils because it
prolongs mans torment. Here Nietzsche reads the story of Pandoras Box differently. When Pandora opened
1
the box, she released all the evils except hope. The Greeks did see hope as dangerous, but it would accompany
human beings as they navigated their troubles. When Pandora returned, she let hope out of the box as well.
Hope is the last thing to leave the box. This makes it either the worst of evils or that which can do nothing to
overcome evil. It is the last thing to emerge out of the box. The hidden and unrealized come to fruition through
action, not hope. Hope chases what it cannot obtain. It is utopian. The question of what I am and what must I
do with my life is not answered by hope. It is answered by action.
In Greek mythology, Elpis or Hope was said to be the child of Nyx, goddess of the night. Hope was the
mother of Pheme or the goddess of rumor. Hopes genealogy allows for a revealing disruption. Hope is related
to the night. She is birthed from the night. Mother night gives birth to Momus (blame), Ponos (toil), Moros
(fate), Thanatos (death), Hypnos (sleep), Nemesis (retribution), Apate (deception) and Eris (strife). Hope is a
shadowy figure. Traditionally seen as the last goddess. Hope is the last resource available to us when night and
her children come to devour what remains. Hope was depicted as hitching her skirt while holding flowers and
the horn of plenty. Hope is the final seduction and the final disappointment for this muddy vesture of decay
as Shakespeare writes in The Merchant of Venice.
To live well means to act.An act is a performance that leads to a definite result. The act is a thing done.
Act also related to the energy that is directed toward a goal. The goal always concerns living on. Nietzsche
says our goal is to become what we are. Becoming is a process of change. For the most part, we remain stuck
into being something we are not. To act real is the goal, but society has always rewarded fakery. To pretend
may be suitable for a staged performance when acting out a scene, but to pretend with ones life is to live in a
state of being deceived by ones own deception. Following Nietzsche, Adorno in his Minima Moralia writes,
There is no way of living a false life correctly. Instead of flourishing, we are forced into line. The opposite of
hope is not despair but action.