Pedro Tabensky (Rhodes University, South Africa): Lecture

Pájaro de Esperanza [Bird of Hope]

Abstract:
I provide an account of hope based on Catholic existentialist Gabriel Marcel’s philosophy of hope and Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel The Road. Without hope we would become desperate. Hope feeds on the ongoing possibility of desperation (and we can only become desperate because we are able to hope).

So, although we are at our best when we are hopeful, the very possibility of hope points to the inherently tragic human predicament.

Both Marcel and McCarthy agree that hope in the superlative sense is hope beyond hope, hope where there is no reason to, where the refusal to accept what seems inevitable is what sustains us.