Hope
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophy of hope. To the ancient Greeks, hope was closer to self-deception, one of the evils left in Pandora’s box or jar, in Hesiod’s story. In Christian tradition, hope became one of the theological virtues, the desire for divine union and the expectation of receiving it, an action of the will rather than the intellect. To Kant, ‘what may I hope’ was one of the three basic questions which human reason asks, while Nietzsche echoed Hesiod, arguing that leaving hope in the box was a deception by the gods, reflecting human inability to face the demands of existence. Yet even those critical of hope, like Camus, conceded that life was nearly impossible without it.
Guests
- Beatrice Han-Pile
4 episodes
Professor of Philosophy at the University of Essex - Robert Stern
2 episodes
Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield -
Judith Wolfe No other episodes
Professor of Philosophical Theology at the University of St Andrews
Reading list
-
Thomas Aquinas
Summa Theologia, Ave Maria Press, 2000 (Ave Maria Press, 2000) -
Ernst Bloch
The Principle of Hope, Blackwell, 1986 (Blackwell, 1986) -
Terry Eagleton
Hope Without Optimism, Yale University Press, 2015 (Yale University Press, 2015) -
Immanuel Kant
Critique of Pure Reason, Cambridge University Press, 1999 (Cambridge University Press, 1999) -
Immanuel Kant
Kant: Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason: And Other Writings, Cambridge University Press, 2018 (Cambridge University Press, 2018) -
Soren Kierkegaard
Works of Love, Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2009 (Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2009) -
Gabriel Marcel
Homo Viator: Introduction to the Metaphysic of Hope, St Augustine's Press, 2010 (St Augustine's Press, 2010) -
Alan Mittleman
Hope in a Democratic Age, Oxford University Press, 2009 (Oxford University Press, 2009) -
Jurgen Moltmann
Theology of Hope, SCM Press, 2010 (SCM Press, 2010) -
Erwin Panofsky
Pandora's Box: The Changing Aspects of a Mythical Symbol, Princeton University Press, 1956 (Princeton University Press, 1956) -
Richard Rorty
Philosophy and Social Hope, Penguin, 1999 (Penguin, 1999) -
Saint Augustine
Confessions, Penguin, 2002 (Penguin, 2002)
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Programme ID: m00017vl
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00017vl
Auto-category: 170 (Ethics)