Despair and Hopelessness

Journal of the American Philosophical Association 10 (2):225-242 (2024)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

It has recently been argued that hope is polysemous in that it sometimes refers to hoping and other times to being hopeful. That it has these two distinct senses is reflected in the observation that a person can hope for an outcome without being hopeful that it will occur. Below, I offer a new argument for this distinction. My strategy is to show that accepting this distinction yields a rich account of two distinct ways in which hope can be lost, ways that map onto the two senses of hope: A person can lose hope either by ceasing to hope for an outcome (hopelessness) or by ceasing to be hopeful that it will obtain (despair). Thinking about these negative attitudes in these two ways, I contend, is explanatorily rich and fruitfully reveals how they differ in phenomenology, behavioral differences, and the ways in which a person can escape them.

Other Versions

No versions found

Similar books and articles

How to theorize about hope.Jack M. C. Kwong - 2022 - European Journal of Philosophy 30 (4):1426-1439.
Hope and Hopefulness.Jack M. C. Kwong - 2020 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 50 (7):832-843.
What is hope?Jack M. C. Kwong - 2019 - European Journal of Philosophy 27 (1):243-254.
Hoping and Democracy.Sarah M. Stitzlein - 2018 - Contemporary Pragmatism 15 (2):228-250.
Despair.Michael Milona & Katie Stockdale - forthcoming - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy.
The phenomenology of despair.Anthony J. Steinbock - 2007 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 15 (3):435 – 451.
Hope and the Problem of Divine Silence.Aaron D. Cobb - 2016 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 8 (4):157--178.
Epistemological Aspects of Hope.Matthew A. Benton - 2019 - In Claudia Blöser & Titus Stahl (eds.), The Moral Psychology of Hope: An Introduction (The Moral Psychology of the Emotions). Rowman & Littlefield International. pp. 135-151.
Analysing hope: The live possibility account.Carl Johan Palmqvist - 2020 - European Journal of Philosophy 29 (4):685-698.
What is it to lose hope?Matthew Ratcliffe - 2013 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 12 (4):597-614.

Analytics

Added to PP
2023-02-28

Downloads
503 (#47,281)

6 months
201 (#14,292)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Jack M. C. Kwong
Appalachian State University

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

A Perceptual Theory of Hope.Michael Milona & Katie Stockdale - 2018 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 5.
The value of hope.Luc Bovens - 1999 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 59 (3):667-681.
What is hope?Jack M. C. Kwong - 2019 - European Journal of Philosophy 27 (1):243-254.
How to theorize about hope.Jack M. C. Kwong - 2022 - European Journal of Philosophy 30 (4):1426-1439.
What is it to lose hope?Matthew Ratcliffe - 2013 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 12 (4):597-614.

View all 15 references / Add more references