The Phenomenology of Hope

American Philosophical Quarterly 59 (3):313-325 (2022)
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Abstract

What is the phenomenology of hope? A common view is that hope has a generally positive and pleasant affective tone. This rosy depiction, however, has recently been challenged. Certain hopes, it has been objected, are such that they are either entirely negative in valence or neutral in tone. In this paper, I argue that this challenge has only limited success. In particular, I show that it only applies to one sense of hope but leaves another sense—one that is implicitly but widely employed in the hope literature—untouched. Moreover, I argue that hope construed in this latter sense is inherently positively valenced. The paper concludes by discussing some of the implications of this defense of hope's positive phenomenology, including the ontological question of whether hope is an emotion.

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Jack M. C. Kwong
Appalachian State University

Citations of this work

How to theorize about hope.Jack M. C. Kwong - 2022 - European Journal of Philosophy 30 (4):1426-1439.
Hoffen wider die Hoffnung.Christoph Jäger - 2024 - Zur Debatte 54 (1):84-95.
The Mirror Account of Hope and Fear.Carl-Johan Palmqvist - forthcoming - Canadian Journal of Philosophy:1-15.
Despair and Hopelessness.Jack M. C. Kwong - 2024 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 10 (2):225-242.

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References found in this work

What is it like to be a bat?Thomas Nagel - 1974 - Philosophical Review 83 (4):435-50.
What is it like to be a bat?Thomas Nagel - 1979 - In Mortal questions. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 435 - 450.
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.

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