Hostname: page-component-54dcc4c588-r5qjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-05T00:42:16.158Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Virtue of Hope in a Turbulent World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2022

Cathy Mason
Cathy Mason*
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
*
cm865@cam.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

I argue that hope is an ethical virtue. Hope, I suggest, is necessary for engaging in a broad kind of project which is essential for living a meaningful human life, and this gives us reason to think that it is non-instrumentally valuable in our lives. Specifically, I claim that hope is well understood as a ‘structural virtue’ without which we are prone to slip into despair, fantasy and cynicism. Moreover, I argue that this virtue will be particularly significant in turbulent times, when we may not be in a position to have outright (positive) expectations about the future.

Information

Type
Paper
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 92: Values and Virtues for a Challenging World , October 2022 , pp. 293 - 306
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Adams, Robert Merrihew, A Theory of Virtue (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aristotle, , Nicomachean Ethics, ed. Crisp, Roger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).Google Scholar
Cobb, Aaron ‘Hope as an Intellectual Virtue?’, Southern Journal of Philosophy 53 (2015) 269–285.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foot, Philippa, Virtues and Vices (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kadlac, Adam, ‘The Virtue of Hope’, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 18 (2015) 337–354.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, Adrienne, How We Hope: A Moral Psychology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014).Google Scholar
Mason, Cathy, ‘Hoping and Intending’, Journal of the American Philosophical Association (forthcoming).Google Scholar
McCormick, Miriam, ‘Rational Hope’, Philosophical Explorations 20 (2017) 127–141.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snow, Nancy, ‘Hope as a Democratic Civic Virtue’, Metaphilosophy 49(2018) 407–427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Solnit, Rebecca, Hope in the Dark (New York: Nation Books, 2004).Google Scholar