Abstract
Inherent in the self–other dynamic structure are the mechanisms to reduce the other to the self, to surrender the self to the other, to place an insurmountable wedge between them, and to effect a harmonious, mutually beneficent relationship. In this paper, I explore the varied self–other relations between the self in hope, confronting the prospect of its death as other. I also endeavour to unravel a possible eclipse of the above self–other patterns, which can serve as an indication of the uniqueness and perhaps the mystery that surround our attempts to come to terms with the reality of our own mortality.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
For a helpful survey of different writers’ comments on hope, see Terry Eagleton (2015).
Philo Judaeus of Alexandria (1st cent./1935, p. 9) asserts that having the capacity to hope and overcome despondency is a true mark of a human person.
Ariel Meirav (2009) rightly observes that the stated minimum conditions cannot distinguish hope from despair. To address this problem, he adds in another feature—the hoping subject’s confident attitude towards “external factor/s” such as God, nature, or other people to facilitate the attainment of the hoped-for object.
This opinion is shared by Adrienne Martin (2014, p. 5), who also views the situation of hoping for something dearly treasured yet very unlikely to attain as the core of the phenomenon of hope, which imparts considerable sustaining power to the subject who hopes.
Kant (1787/1991, pp. 457–459) writes:
If I act as I ought to do, what may I then hope? ... so it is equally necessary according to reason in its theoretical use, to assume that every one has ground to hope for happiness in the measure in which he has made himself worthy of it in his conduct, and that therefore the system of morality is inseparably (though only in the idea of pure reason) connected with that of happiness.
Kant contends that the virtuous person has rational justification to assume that he or she deserves the reward of happiness. This does not mean that a non-virtuous person cannot actually hope for happiness; having the right to hope for happiness is another matter entirely.
Other scholars have taken up Marcel’s ‘absolute hope’ and created similar notions. See for instance Jack Coulehan’s (2011) ‘deep hope’.
Benedict Spinoza (1910, pp. 92–93) takes hope to be a passion that is basically irrational because it surfaces from wrong ideas. Marcel (1945/1951, pp. 64–65), on the other hand, urges us to consider the perspective of the subject rather than that of the observer when deciding on whether such and such a hope is rational or otherwise.
According to Coulehan (2011, p. 146), the phrase ‘false hope’, especially when considered in the context of terminally ill patients who continue to have hope, qualifies a kind of hope that brings about excessive harm to the patient, rather than a hope strictly founded on highly improbable outcomes. An example of the presence of false hope is found in a cancer patient who unreasonably subjects himself or herself to aggressive chemotherapy to the extent of suffering severe iatrogenic side effects even though there is no evidence of any therapeutic worth of such a treatment. On the other hand, there is the remarkable case of George Griffin’s, Harvard professor and renown pathologist, recovery (as reported in Groopman 2004, pp. 58–79). Griffin was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer. Despite all the odds, he endured unimaginable suffering by opting to undergo aggressive chemotherapy even though the scale between cost and benefit of this treatment tilted heavily towards the former. It may seem as if Griffin was nurturing a false hope of his recovery, but can anyone deny another person his or her right to hope?
It is worth mentioning that there are Buddhist teachings that propose an abandonment of hope in the sense of not fixing set desirables to be attained, and instead, be open to the unexpected. Pema Chödrön (1997, pp. 38ff.) associates hope with craving and attachment and says: ‘If we are willing to give up hope that insecurity and pain can be exterminated, then we can have the courage to relax with the groundlessness of our situation.’ (p. 42). I doubt that this advice advocates a total submission to despair. Instead, it has to be understood within an overall Buddhist doctrine of overcoming suffering.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1921/2001, 6.4311, p. 87) expresses it most succinctly: ‘Death is not an event in life’.
Lest we assume that everyone desires the afterlife, there is at least one person, Antony Flew, who does not believe in life beyond death, and says:
‘I want to be dead when I’m dead and that’s an end to it’, he told The Sunday Times of London. ‘I do not want an unending life. I do not want anything without end’.
- quoted in William Grimes (2010)
It can be reasoned that there is comparatively less to fear if death marks an absolute end to the self than when an afterlife is in store for the self. In the latter case there is no guarantee that suffering and torment will be totally absent in the next life.
I do not confine the term ‘spiritual’ to the domain of theism.
Fremstedal (2012, p. 54) states that for Kierkegaard, spiritual hope can be found in human nature and that this hope reveals the divine image in us.
Jean-Paul Sartre (1957/1991, pp. 46–47) maintains that one can be conscious of oneself in an implicit or non-positional way. For example, even though I may be so absorbed in contemplating a beautiful lake, I am tacitly aware that I am not the lake.
References
Bernier, M. (2015). (2015). The task of hope in Kierkegaard. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chödrön, P. (1997). (1997). When things fall apart: Heart advice for difficult times. Boston: Shambala.
Coulehan, J. (June 2011). Deep hope: A song without words. Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, 32(3), 143–160.
Derrida, J. (1992/1995). The gift of death. Trans. David Wills. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Downie, R. S. (Dec. 1963). Hope. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 24(2), 248–251.
Eagleton, T. (2015). Hope without optimism. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
Epicurus. (4th cent. BCE/1926). Epicurus: The extant remains. Trans. Cyril Bailey. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Forman, R. K. C. (Ed.). (1990). The problem of pure consciousness: Mysticism and philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press.
Fremstedal, R. (2012). Kierkegaard on the metaphysics of hope. Heythrop Journal, 53(1), 51–60.
Garrard, E., & Wrigley, A. (2009). Hope and terminal illness: False hope versus absolute hope. Clinical Ethics, 4(1), 38–43.
Grimes, W. (2010). Antony flew, philosopher and ex-atheist dies at 87. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/17/arts/17flew.html?_r=0Accessed 17 December 2016.
Groopman, J. (2004). The anatomy of hope: How people prevail in the face of illness. New York: Random House.
Heidegger, M. (1927/1962). Being and time. Trans.JohnMacquarrie and Edward Robinson. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Kant, I. (1787/1991). Critique of pure reason (2nd ed.). Trans. John M.D. Meiklejohn. London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., Everyman’s Library.
Kant, I. (1788/2002). Critique of practical reason. Trans. Werner S. Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co.
Kant, I. (1924/1997). Lectures on ethics. Eds. Peter Heath and J.B. Schneewind. Trans. Peter Heath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kierkegaard, S. (1845/1993). At a graveside. In H. Hong & E. Hong (Eds. and trans.), Three discourses on imagined occasions (pp. 69–102). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kierkegaard, S. (1851/1944). For self-examination and judge for yourselves and three discourses, 1851. Trans. Walter Lorie. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Marcel, G. (1945/1951). Homo Viator: Introduction to a metaphysic of hope. Henry Regnery Company: Trans. Emma Craufurd. Chicago.
Marcel, G. (1947/1970). The philosophy of existentialism. Trans. Manya Harari. New York: The Citadel Press.
Marcel, G. (1951/1967). Presence and immortality. Trans. Michael Machado. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.
Martin, A. M. (2014). How we hope: A moral psychology. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Meirav, A. (2009). The nature of hope. Ratio, 22(2), 216–233.
McCormick, M. S. (2017) Rational hope. Philosophical Explorations: An International Journal for the Philosophy of Mind and Action 20:sup1, pp. 127–141.
McGeer, V. (2004). The art of good hope. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 592, 100–127.
Peters, C. (1993). Kant’s philosophy of hope. New York: Peter Lang.
Pettit, P. (2004). Hope and its place in mind. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 592, 152–165.
Philo. (1st cent./1935). On Abraham, On Joseph, On the Life of Moses I and II. Trans. F.H. Colson. Cambridge, USA: Harvard University Press.
Pruyser, P. W. (1963). Phenomenology and dynamics of hoping. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 3(1), 86–96.
Sartre, J.-P. (1957/1991). The transcendence of the ego: An existentialist theory of consciousness. Hill and Wang: Trans. Forrest Williams & Robert Kirkpatrick. New York.
Spinoza, B. (17th cent./1910). Spinoza’s short treatise on God, man, and his wellbeing. Trans. and ed. . Wolf. London: Adam and Charles Black.
Viale, T. (2016). Gabriel Marcel: Hope and love in time of death. In I. Dalferth & M. Block (Eds.), Hope: Claremont studies in philosophy of religion, Conference 2014 (pp. 159–172). Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
Walker, M. U. (2006). Moral repair: Reconstructing moral relations after wrongdoing. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Waterworth, J. M. (2004). A philosophical analysis of hope. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Watkin, J. (1990). Kierkegaard’s view of death. History of European Ideas, 12(1), 65–78.
Wittgenstein, L. (1921/2001). Tractatus logico philosophicus. Trans. David F. Pears and Brian F. McGuinness. London & New York: Routledge.
Acknowledgements
I truly appreciate the helpful comments and suggestions offered by the anonymous reviewers of my manuscript. I am also grateful for receiving USM’s Short-term Research Grant, and for the feedback given at my participation in a ‘Self and Other’ seminar in Far Eastern University, Manila.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Gan, P. ‘Hope and Death, Self and Other’. SOPHIA 60, 123–138 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-019-00737-9
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-019-00737-9