Philosophers and intellectual historians generally recognize pragmatism as a philosophy of progress. For many commentators, pragmatism is tied to a notion of progress through its embrace of meliorism – a forward-looking philosophy that places hope in the future as a site of possibility and improvement. I complicate the progressive image of hope generally attributed to pragmatism by outlining an alternative account of meliorism in the work of William James. By focusing on the affectivity and temporality of James’s meliorism, I argue that James offers a non-progressivist version of hope that is affectively tempered by melancholy and oriented temporally toward the present.

哲学家和思想史学家普遍认为实用主义是一种进步哲学。对于许多评论家来说，实用主义通过拥抱乐观主义而与进步的观念联系在一起。乐观主义是一种前瞻性的哲学，它将未来寄希望于可能性和进步。通过概述威廉·詹姆斯的作品中关于光荣主义的另一种说法，我使普遍归因于实用主义的渐进的希望形象复杂化了。通过关注詹姆斯的善恶主义的情感性和时间性，我认为詹姆斯提供了一种非进步主义的希望版本，这种希望被忧郁的情感所调节，并在时间上面向当前。