A Guide to Hope

Abstract

In this thesis I analyse the concept of hope through a historical lens, looking at three different authors from different philosophical traditions, and attempting to show how there are elements of hope that are present throughout all of these. I analyse Thomas Aquinas, David Hume, and Kierkegaard, looking at how they characterise hope, and later laying them side by side to see how their accounts compare. My main aim is to show how hope is something that regards a probably future good, which has fear as an opposite, and which tends to have an antithesis that moves us to inaction where hope itself moves us to realize the future good we envision. Ultimately I try to show the possibility for a comprehensive unified notion of hope, which I cannot work out here, but which I hopefully show is worth exploring further.