Abstract

This chapter discusses how to disinguish between hope and hopelessness (despair) by considering their different relations to time and possibility as well as their different emotional valence. In this connection, the chapter discusses whether hope and despair are future-directed or not. Although hope is typically about the future, it is nevertheless possible to hope for past events that one lacks knowledge of. But even such hopes arguably involve a sense of future (e.g., the future can show whether the hope is already realized or not). However, it is much less clear in the literature if despair is directed towards the future or not. Here I argue that despair may not just presuppose a sense of future, but that it can even undermine it in some cases. Whereas radical hope takes the future to be open and hospitable to our desires and efforts, radical despair takes it to be closed off and inhospitable instead. As such, radical hope and radical despair represent fundamentally different existenal feelings.