A Brief History of Hope

Even those with 20/20 vision could not have foreseen the dramas and traumas of this calendar year, these pandemic times.

As we enter the year-ending religious holiday season, the season of hope, are we becoming hopeful about soon-arriving vaccines and a potential “roaring 20s” relief rally in our lives, or will we remain quite sober and even somewhat hopeless about the suffering in our nation and our world?

Before answering, let’s ponder some deeper understandings of this thing called hope, including its religious and philosophical considerations as well as its role in contemporary debates about our political and personal lives. Unwrapping the many meanings of hope may provide a precious gift of inspiration this year. 

Hope as a Philosophy

The commitment to hope, moving ourselves forward from darkness into light, was one of the big gifts of Jewish civilization to the world. According to Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, who sadly passed away this year, this hope “at the heart of Judaism” was “so fundamental to Western civilization that we take it for granted, yet it is anything but self-evident.” That is, the arrival of the ancient Jews into history moved humanity beyond the mere repeating of ancient patterns to the invention of evolving hope for the future.

Early Western philosophers built upon this idea when they began to contemplate the nature of hope — its types and motivations. They then set to discover the value of hope. The standard account held that hope was a compound attitude, consisting of a desire for an outcome and a belief in that outcome’s possibility.

Importantly, hope is an orientation, not a prediction. It is not the same as optimism, the belief that something likely will happen. “Hoping against hope” is an expression that reveals we may have hope even without optimism. Rather, hope is the opposite of despair — the belief that something can never happen — which is hopelessness. Alternatively, one may experience fear yet maintain hope at the same time.

Hope also is not the same as mere desire. One may desire to do the impossible, like enjoy dinner with Benjamin Franklin, but one doesn’t hope to do so, for hope is best understood as desiring an outcome which is uncertain but possible.

Greek thought dismissed hope as wishful thinking or without basis in knowledge. The famous tale of Pandora, in which evils escape from a jar, leaving only hope behind, has been debated to regard hope as good (“to comfort man in his misery and a stimulus rousing his activity”) or as evil (“idle hope in which the lazy man indulges when he should be working honestly for his living”).

Christian thinkers considered hope a theological virtue, like charity and love, which, when oriented toward the good, was redemptive and ennobling. In “The City of God,” Saint Augustine distinguishes the actual earthly city from the heavenly city, which only exists in the hope placed in God.

Enlightenment philosophers considered hope a passion, related to anxiety (René Descartes), thinking about rational expectations (Thomas Hobbes), countering fear (David Hume and Baruch de Spinoza) or reason and a belief in the divine (Immanuel Kant).

Critics of hope, such as Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche and Albert Camus essentially rejected hope not as irrational but as a misguided attempt to avoid the demands of human existence.

Modern secular political theorists promote hope as instrumental to motivation for the public good and as foundational to the self-respect necessary for self-government in a free society. Practical defenders of democracy promote hope as a basis for civil society, while Marxists manipulate the idealistic hope of utopian revolution to remake society.

In his 2002 book, “A History of Hope: When Americans Have Dared to Dream of a Better Future,” NYU historian James Fraser explored the mobilizing movements for social change (revolution, abolition, women’s suffrage, worker rights, civil rights), and the leaders who embraced them, like Abraham Lincoln (“My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth”) and Martin Luther King, Jr.  (“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope”).

Similarly, in his 2019 textbook for American schoolchildren, “Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story,” Professor Wilfred M. McClay offers both an honest and inspiring account of America, a history lesson that motivates patriots. 

In our times, we’ve seen liberal politics appeal to “hope and change” in the campaign of Barack Obama and in the title of his autobiography, “The Audacity of Hope.” These appeals to emotion are meant to empower political action. We see a similar use of hope on the conservative side. “Make America Great Again” (a campaign slogan of both Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump) not only looks back but forward, with an appeal to brighter days.

Political advocates all seek to place hope, along with “reform,” “greatness” and “the future,” on their side. For example, the great Vaclav Havel, the poet-politician who fought for the freedom of Central and Eastern Europe in the twentieth century, noted:

I am not an optimist, because I am not sure that everything ends well. Nor am I a pessimist, because I am not sure that everything ends badly. I just carry hope in my heart. Hope is the feeling that life and work have a meaning. You either have it or you don’t, regardless of the state of the world that surrounds you. Life without hope is an empty, boring, and useless life. I cannot imagine that I could strive for something if I did not carry hope in me. I am thankful to God for this gift. It is as big as life itself.

And yet, on the other hand, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps named the Iranian nuclear program “Amad,” or “Hope.”

The meaning of political hope, therefore, is certainly in the eye of the beholder.

The meaning of political hope is certainly in the eye of the beholder.

Hope in the Day-to-Day

Of course, beyond the halls of philosophy, hope plays a dominant role in our personal lives. Take hospital patients, for whom hope has been an integral motivator for healing and recovery (the psychological anticipation of better times). It is not coincidental that The City of Hope is a major cancer center. Helen Keller, who famously overcame so many physical challenges, believed in hope not just for the possible, but for the seemingly impossible. “Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible,” she said.

On the other hand, letting go of “unrealistic” hope may benefit those seeking permission to accept truths, inner peace and meaningful time with loved ones. This reminds us of the Buddhist release of apprehension, a freedom from hope, which offers contentedness or acceptance.

Compare the widely accepted positive role of hope in physical healing to the more debated role of hope in our financial lives. “Hope is not a strategy” is a popular business concept aimed at discarding delusions, illusions and false premises, while demanding focus and practical efforts at improvement.

Alternatively, the Business Innovation Factory annual meetings often feature presenters who affirm realistic hope and lessons learned as a strategy to empower a philosophy of trust and innovative success.

We hear echoes of the positive thinking of Dale Carnegie, who said, “Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.”

Hope in Our Religious Lives

Finally, for faith believers, and even for casual holiday celebrators alike, as we light candles during Hanukkah and enjoy the lights of Christmas, and as we literally bring light into the darkness, we also philosophically affirm our choice to believe in better days.

This commitment to hope has always been especially true for Jews. Rabbi Sacks, author of two books about hope, “The Politics of Hope” and “From Optimism to Hope,” well summarizes the Jewish roots of our Western ethos:

It is no accident that so many Jews are economists fighting poverty, or doctors fighting disease, or lawyers fighting injustice, in all cases refusing to see these things as inevitable. It is no accident that after the Holocaust Jews did not call it Al Naqba, nursing resentment and revenge, but instead turned to the future, building a nation whose national anthem is Hatikvah, “the hope.” It is no accident that Judaism has been opposed by every empire that sought to deny people the freedom to be equal-but-different. It is no accident that Israel is still today the only free society in the Middle East.

Judaism is a religion of details, but we miss the point if we do not sometimes step back and see the larger picture. To be a Jew is to be an agent of hope in a world serially threatened by despair. Every ritual, every mitzvah, every syllable of the Jewish story, every element of Jewish law, is a protest against escapism, resignation or the blind acceptance of fate. Judaism is a sustained struggle, the greatest ever known, against the world that is, in the name of the world that could be, should be, but is not yet. There is no more challenging vocation. Throughout history, when human beings have sought hope they have found it in the Jewish story. Judaism is the religion, and Israel the home, of hope.

As we contemplate our lives this year — philosophical, political, and personal — the religious season invites a renewed sense of hope even in difficult times. Hanukkah’s heroes, the Maccabees, are meant to inspire us in their fight to maintain their commitment to the Jewish story and to survive as a distinct and contributing culture, believing in the eternal power of the Jewish message of hope.

Larry Greenfield is a Fellow of The Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship & Political Philosophy.