Hope

In Our Time: Philosophy

BBC

History

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 22 November 2018

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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. With Beatrice Han-Pile Professor of Philosophy at the University of Essex Robert Stern Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield And Judith Wolfe Professor of Philosophical Theology at the University of St Andrews Producer: Simon Tillotson

Transcript

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0:47.2	Hello according to the poet Hesseaud Hope was all that remained in Pandora's
0:52.0	jar once all the e evils inside had escaped and spread across the world.
0:56.0	He wrote that in the 8th century BC and ever since philosophers have been divided over hope and why it remained. Was it something valuable
1:04.4	that would help humanity deal with those evils or was it another of those evils perhaps
1:08.8	the worst? To Heshord it was for the gullible but St Paul and Thomas Aquinas turned it into one of the
1:14.7	three virtues along with faith and love. Kant made it a cornerstone of his philosophy,
1:19.7	while Nietzsche argued it was a delusion, and the debate continues. With me to discuss the
1:24.6	philosophy of the University of Hope are Beatrice Hanpile, Professor of
1:26.9	Philosophy at the University of Essex, Robert Stern, Professor of Philosophy at
1:30.8	the University of Sheffield, and Judith professor of philosophical theology at the University of St Andrews.
	...

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