Finding hope

Abstract

This paper defends a theory of hope according to which hopes are composed of a desire and a belief that the object of the desire is possible. Although belief plus desire theories of hope are now widely rejected, this is due to important oversights. One is a failure to recognize the relation that hope-constituting desires and beliefs must stand in to constitute a hope. A second is an oversimplification of the explanatory power of hope-constituting desires. The final portion of the paper uses an enhanced understanding of the psychology of hope to make progress on normative questions about hoping well.     

Fromm's Spirited Values and Analytic Neutrality

The analyst and the patient must feel enough hope to sustain their active effort. A significant aspect of the analyst's role is inspiring hope. This seems to require that the analyst take a life-affirming position that violates traditional notions of analytic neutrality. Yet, in facilitating the patient's full self-expression, we do not want to lose the benefits of neutrality. Fromm's work can inspire us to try to integrate an attitude of spirited hope with interpretations whose content neutrally encourages the patient to reveal his whole self.     

Holy Movement and Holy Place: Christian Pilgrimage and the Hajj

Abstract : This article uses a comparative theological model to explore the concept of pilgrimage—holy movement and holy place. It examines Christian pilgrimage exemplified by John Paul II's pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 2000 and Islamic pilgrimage exemplified by the Hajj. It then re‐visions Christian pilgrimage by suggesting how three features of the Hajj (danger and hardship, ritual nature, and gathering) can be used to deepen the Christian experience and understanding of pilgrimage.     

Hope

Summary

The author describes her treatment of her first alcoholic client and observes how the process of providing hope to this client heightened the author's personal capacity to hope. Hope as an aspect of healing is considered and personal reflections on psychotherapeutic work with alcoholics are discussed.     

The Agent‐Relative Probability Threshold of Hope

Nearly all contributors to the philosophical analysis of hope agree that if an agent hopes that p, she both desires that p and assigns to p a probability which is greater than zero, but less than one. According to the widely‐endorsed Standard Account, these two conditions are also (jointly) sufficient for ‘hoping that’. Ariel Meirav has recently argued, however, that the Standard Account fails to distinguish hoping for a prospect from despairing of it – due to cases where two agents equally desire an outcome and assign to it the same probability, yet one hopes for the outcome while the other despairs of it. I argue, against Meirav, that these putative counterexamples depend crucially on the assumption – previously unquestioned – that the degree of probability necessary for hope is invariant across individuals. If the probability threshold is instead understood as agent‐relative, the difficulty disappears. Further, I argue that there is strong independent reason for taking the probability threshold of hope to be agent‐relative, based on similarities to the widely‐accepted agent‐relative probability thresholds of industriousness and risk aversion. And I conclude by noting how the agent‐relative modification to the Standard Account is better equipped than is Meirav's positive view to yield intuitive results. ¹      

Hopeful + Hoping = Hope: unique experiential features in the measurement of emotion

Abstract

Distinct differences have been found between hope and optimism based on retrospective stories. This study sought to replicate those findings when anticipating outcomes in real-time and examine whether they are affected by different lexical formulations of the word hope. One-hundred and two participants read two first-person, chronological vignettes. They rated their hope, optimism, fear, and worry about the anticipated outcome following each part of the story; they also rated their appraisals of importance, likelihood, and perceived control. Half of the participants read adjective forms of the states (e.g. hopeful) and half read verb forms (e.g. hoping). Differences in ratings for the adjective and verb forms were found for hope but not the other anticipatory states, and both forms of hope were found to differ from optimism. Implications of these lexical differences for understanding and measuring the experience of hope are discussed.     

The Legacy,Leadership, and Hope of Pan‐African Women as a Missional Focus for Theological Education

This article analyzes the experience and self‐understanding of Pan‐African women of faith, who have often been viewed at the margins of church history and in the larger context of this history. This article challenges this marginal location. It argues that through the theological lens of the ecumenical Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace—and under the tenets of via positiva, via negativa, and via transformativa—the historical, present, and future pilgrimage of Pan‐African women of faith and their vision of hope needs to be further examined for a more inclusive embrace and accompaniment of the ecumenical community. Theological education should be a priority in preparing leaders for advancing the agenda of justice and peace. The article concludes by detailing the past, recent, and future work of the Pan‐African Women's Ecumenical Empowerment Network (PAWEEN) and its partners.     

Deception,Catholicism, and Hope: Understanding Problems in the Communication of Unfavorable Prognoses in Traditionally-Catholic Countries

The doctor's use of deception in appropriate circumstances has commonly been considered a necessity of the medical art. Resistance to full and frank communication is typical of many traditionally Catholic countries, and particularly of Italy, a western country where Catholicism remains particularly influential. The Catholic teaching on truth and lies, and the problem of telling the truth to a severely ill patient is discussed. It is suggested that the contemporary Catholic model of gradually telling a terminal patient the truth, which looks reasonable and feasible in theory, is rarely followed in practice, as in the majority of cases the truth is not told tout court. Problems stem from the way in which medicine is currently practiced in Italy; from the synergism between Catholicism and the medical tradition's grounded paternalism; and from the ambiguity of the term ‘hope’. Catholic ethics in fact recommends that the truth must be told without destroying hope, but the Catholic meaning of ‘hope’ is very different from its meaning in current language.     

New pilgrims on a medieval route: mobility and community on the Tro Breiz

Throughout Catholic Europe there has been a resurgence of interest in pilgrimage since the 1990s, despite dramatic declines in regular attendance at mass and other indicators of religious practice. One of the less well known European pilgrimages is the Tro Breiz, or tour of Brittany, a medieval long-distance walking pilgrimage in northwestern France that has recently been revived (or recreated). On the basis of ethnographic research carried out in 2012, I argue that the Tro Breiz fulfils participants' desires for connection to a community that transcends the self and is intimately linked to a particular regional heritage and identity.     

Aquinas and the Virtues of Hope: Theological and Democratic

A prominent political historian has recently identified unwarranted optimism and unwarranted pessimism as democracy's “dual dangers.” While this historical analysis highlights the difficulties that accompany democratic hope, our prevailing conceptual vocabulary obscures the resources needed to address them. This essay attempts to recover these resources by excavating insights from Thomas Aquinas, who supplies one of the most systematic accounts of hope in the history of religious and political thought. By appropriating the conceptual structure of Thomas's theological virtue of hope, this essay reconstructs a democratic virtue that perfects acts of hoping in fellow citizens to achieve democratic goods and thereby enables citizens to respond properly to difficulties that tempt presumption and despair.     

Comment on Hans-Peter Krüger’s paper

Abstract

In my Mind and World I appeal to second nature, which, according to Hans-Peter Kru¨ger, plays a central role in Plessner's philosophical anthropology. But I think this convergence is less significant than Kru¨ger suggests.This note differentaties my purpose–to disarm the temptation to think perceptual experience, natural as it is, could not figure in what Sellars called “the space of reasons”–from Plessner's, which is to disarm the temptation to hope for an ahistorical insight into what is properly authoritative over the shape of our lives,     

Experiential Learning

SUMMARY

The following article is about three things: my impressions of Virginia Satir's work, my personal experience of her, and the profound connection between the work of Virginia Satir and Dr. Eugene T. Gendlin's Focusing work.

My attraction to both of these great teachers is not surprising. They both share a type of wisdom which in metaphysics is often described as “intelligence lovingly applied.”

In this article I hope to convey what I see as an organic and compatible overlap between Satir and Gendlin which will hopefully be useful to the readers of this publication.     

Pedagogies of Hope

Hoping is an integral part of what it is to be human, and its significance for education has been widely noted. Hope is, however, a contested category of human experience and getting to grips with its characteristics and dynamics is a difficult task. The paper argues that hope is not a singular undifferentiated experience and is best understood as a socially mediated human capacity with varying affective, cognitive and behavioural dimensions. Drawing on the philosophy, theology and psychology of hope, five modes of hoping are outlined: patient, critical, sound, resolute and transformative. The key aim of the paper is to illustrate how different modes of hoping are associated with different pedagogical strategies. Phrased differently, the paper seeks to delineate a range of pedagogies of hope. The phrase ‘pedagogy of hope’ is very much associated with critical theory—one thinks instantly of, for example, Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux or bell hooks. There are many pedagogies of hope, however, and an explicitly conservative text such as William Bennett’s Book of Virtues has as strong a claim to the title as Freire’s radical and utopian ideas. A broader argument, therefore, is that there is nothing inherently radical or subversive about a pedagogy of hope. Pedagogies of hope can serve to reproduce social relations as well as to transform them.     

Francis Xavier: Figure of Exile and Holiness

Abstract

Francis Xavier was one of the great Christian figures of the 16th century. The aim of this article is to delineate some of the important, and sometimes underemphasised, influences on his life in order to help shed light on the motivation which inspired his activities. It sets him first within a brief account of his family background, university education and life-changing friendship with Ignatius Loyola, which is described as generating ‘the undying archetype of the twin, with Loyola at the centre of the universe and Xavier at its periphery, complementing each other as perfectly as the point and the circle’. Against the background of ‘ever-present’ Islam, it then addresses Xavier's experiences with the corrupt and rather secularised Portuguese colonial environment in India and East Asia, and the royal ecclesiastical patronage exercised under the Padroado system, which led him to the role of a ‘counter-figure’ an exile or castaway, lançado or degregado. Japanese culture and religion and Xavier's fascination with China are two further areas explored. Permeating this account is the question of the nature of Xavier's spiritual life and personal holiness, within which his adventurous voyages may ultimately be seen as an immense pilgrimage and as the sign of a sanctity that was augmented rather than diminished by the obscurity of his death.     

Psychometric properties of the French version of the Herth Hope Index assessment (HHI-F)

IntroductionThe feeling of hope is an important factor in the well-being and mental health of individuals. The 12-item Herth Hope Index (HHI) measures different dimensions of hope and assesses the state of motivation to overcome situations with strong stressful or life threatening factors.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of a French adaptation of the HHI.MethodBased on a French translation of the HHI made during a translation and counter-translation process (HHI-F), 247 higher education students completed an online survey on their mental health state during the COVID-19 pandemic, which included the HHI-F. A principal factor analysis (PCA) and several confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) were conducted to compare the structure of the HHI-F with that of the original scale. Internal consistency and convergent validity were also assessed.ResultsThe best model relates to a two-factor solution, corresponding to the Spanish translation of the HHI. Internal consistency was very satisfactory, with a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of .895 and a McDonald's Omega coefficient of .898. Significant correlations were observed between the HHI-F score and the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-21), Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R) and Brief Resilient Coping Scale (BRCS).DiscussionThe HHI-F showed good psychometric qualities, although its structure does not fully correspond to the original version of the HHI. This scale should thus facilitate research in mental health psychology among French-speaking audiences.     

Between art tourism and ‘Protestant pilgrimage’: individual journeys to artworks in two churches of Reformed denomination near Bern,Switzerland

ABSTRACT

Can an individual trip to an artwork in a Protestant church, that evokes experiences of transcendence, be understood as a ‘Protestant pilgrimage’? The question is discussed with a historical example from the eighteenth century and a contemporary example from the twenty-first century, both of which refer to the transcendental dimension of (religious) art and raise the question about the interrelationship between art tourism and pilgrimage. Although the motivation for such journeys is often aesthetic and not spiritual, visitors may be deeply touched by the artworks and experience feelings that transcend the mundane present. If these examples are considered as ‘pilgrimages’ (and not only in a merely metaphorical sense), attention must be paid to their ecumenical, potentially heterodox character. For in the Reformed tradition, the importance of the pilgrimage is the journey itself, and not the final destination.     

The Necessity of Thinking Historically – Heidegger After Nietzsche

ABSTRACT

This paper is concerned with the turning that occurs within the work of Martin Heidegger. In particular it seeks to reveal it as a turning that takes place within the notion of history as it is elaborated by Heidegger in the difference between Nietzsche and Hölderlin, that is, in the difference between philosophy and poetizing. It locates the necessity for such a turning in Heidegger's dissatisfaction with his own thinking up to the early 1930s (as suggested in his Black Notebooks). In particular the paper focuses on Heidegger's confrontation with Nietzsche over the question of nihilism in the hope of drawing out the different approaches of each thinker in trying to think this problem historically, and how this confrontation helps move Heidegger's thought towards a more poietical way of thinking. The paper concludes that Heidegger, in seeking to distinguish his thought from that of Nietzsche's, not only owes a debt to Nietzsche but that Heidegger's non-public texts of the late 1930s and early 1940s are also formally indebted to him.     

‘He is among us,get it into your head,he is alive and always here’: saintly presence at the pilgrimage centre of Padre Pio and the importance of ‘being there’

The paper will focus upon the issue of saintly presence and the ways in which this is felt, experienced and enacted at the pilgrimage centre of Padre Pio. This issue will be examined in relation to the material and spatial structures of the pilgrimage centre and in particular the Sanctuary of Santa Maria delle Grazie, at the crypt of which the tomb of Padre Pio was until recently emplaced. In examining the issue of saintly presence in relation to the sanctuary's materiality, the paper will also explore the relationship of two of the dimensions Eade and Sallnow ([1991] 2000, ‘Introduction’, in Contesting the Sacred: The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage., 2nd ed., edited by John Eade and Michael J. Sallnow, 1–29, Urbana: University of Illinois) propose for the examination of pilgrimage, namely person and place. Drawing on ethnographic data gathered during fieldwork (2004–2005), it will argue that the feeling of saintly presence is mainly generated by the knowledge people have of Padre Pio having lived and being buried there. This knowledge shapes their pilgrimage experience.     

Simulation and Irrationality

Abstract

In this paper, I hope to show how a recent theory in the philosophy of mind concerning how we ‘read’ the minds of others—namely, Heal's version of simulation theory—is consistent with the view that the kind of understanding we bring to bear on the irrational is different in kind from the way we understand one another in the course of everyday life. I shall attempt to show that Heal's version of simulation theory (co-cognition) is to be favoured over its rival ‘theory theories’ in the light of its accommodation of deeply irrational mental states. I claim that simulation theory preserves an asymmetry of psychological explanation which is not similarly preserved by a theory theory account, and I argue that this preservation of asymmetry is an advantage of Heal's account.