Review of Kazantzidis, Georgios, and Dimos G. Spatharas, Hope in Ancient Literature, History, and Art (Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2018), Emotions: History, Culture, Society 3 (2019) 333–335 (original) (raw)

Hope in Archaic and Classical Greek

The Moral Psychology of Hope , 2020

Survey of approaches to elpis in Plato and Aristotle with discussion of the extent to which these thematize what we should call 'hope'.

Metaphors for Hope in Archaic and Classical Greek Poetry

In R. R. Caston and R. A. Kaster (eds.), Hope, Joy, and Affection in the Classical World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 13-44

As I began to write this paper, the country I live in (one that David and Pura know well) was divided in a contest between hope and fear. 1 On both sides, citizens sought to imagine the kind of future that would result from a vote in favour of Scotland's independence. 2 The relevant scenarios varied in the level of detail they involved, but all entailed projections of hypothetical economic, social, political, and ethical conditions. The formation of these projections, in turn, evoked evaluations and motivations based, fundamentally, on one's calculation of the risks and opportunities involved. At the same time, attitudes towards risk were heavily conditioned not only by one's political and moral standpoint, but also (as polls and psephological profiles showed) by gender, age, and especially social class (and no doubt also by personal psychological style and the various forms and degrees of cognitive and affective bias that always play a role in such situations). 3 Yet it is still true to say that this was a contest between hope and fear: 4 emotions are like that – the concepts that we typically locate in the broad and vaguely defined category of 'emotion' can enlist all the above factors and more. They themselves are broad, inclusive, and multifactorial, deeply embedded not only in subjective psychophysical experience, but also in the interaction of individual psychology with the ethical, social, and political worlds.

Can We Find Hope in Ancient Greek Philosophy? Elpis in Plato and Aristotle

Emotions across Cultures: Ancient China and Greece, 2022

The aim of this chapter is not simply to investigate the various approaches to the Greek concept of elpis in Plato and Aristotle, but to orient that investigation with regard to the emotion that we in English call hope (§3). This is a project that calls for two preliminary steps: first, a brief attempt to pin down what is distinctive of the English-language concept of hope (this §), followed by an outline sketch of the semantic range of elpis in Greek (§2.1), and especially of the ways in which elpis and hope show significant degrees of overlap (§2.2).

Hope and Leadership in Ancient Rome

Teoria, 2013

Nothing but Hope stayed there in her stout, irrefrangible dwelling, under the lip of the jar, inside, and she never would venture outdoors, having the lid of the vessel itself to prevent her. Hesiod, Works and Days,[93][94][95] In ancient Rome hope [spes] was not confined to the domestic space, shut in the bottom of an empty jar. In ancient Rome hope played an important role not only as a domestic patroness regularly invoked at marriages and birthdays 2 , but also and above all in the public sphere where it was put on display and honored as a vital component of the religious, cultural and political life of the Romans. Under the Republic, hope was personified, deified, worshipped in temples within and outside the sacred boundaries of the city. During the imperial age, it was celebrated by poets, advertised on coins and inscriptions, possibly even hailed by the Roman people as an essential element of the imperial cult and propaganda.

Hope as a Virtue in the Middle Ages

Historical and Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Hope, 2020

As a theological disposition revealed in Scripture, the recognition of hope as an important virtue coincided with the radical transformation in virtue ethics in the early Middle Ages. As the ideals of pagan antiquity gave way to the Christian aspirations for the Kingdom of Heaven, early work on hope was strongly influenced by writers with a monastic background, such as Pope St Gregory the Great. The rise of scholasticism in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, however, gave an impetus to finding a coherent account of virtue ethics that would incorporate hope along with the other theological virtues and revealed attributes of perfection, such as the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit. This chapter examines, in particular, the attempt of St Thomas Aquinas to develop such an account and the role of hope in this account, drawing from new research in experimental psychology. The chapter concludes by considering briefly the transposition of the medieval account of hope to aspects of con...

Early Christian Thinking on Hope

2020

Recent classical studies on hope have sought to correct a long-standing overemphasis on negative aspects of hope in antiquity, setting up possible correlations with early Christian and New Testament studies. These studies, however, have focused more on the contemporary relevance of hope and the particular emphases of certain texts, without taking into account classical advances. This chapter proposes a more integrative model to make up for this lack. The chapter consists of three elements: a “bottom-up” approach, comprehensive textual analysis, and consideration of possible ancient frames. The aim is to facilitate understandings and nuances of hope. This model is then applied to the letter of 1 Thessalonians, arguably the earliest preserved Christian text. The results show to what extent the letter shares other developing conceptions and contexts related to hope, and how it specifically differs from them, with concluding observations for further study.

The politics of hopelessness: Thucydides and Aristophanes' Knights

TSOUMPRA, N. 2018. “The politics of hopelessness: Thucydides and Aristophanes’ Knights.” In Kazantzidis, G. and Spatharas, D. (eds.) Hope in ancient literature, history and art: 111-29, Berlin: De Gruyter – Trends in Classics Supp. Vol. 63.

Thucydides’ narrative offers a theoretical account of the concept of hope and its connection to (un)successful political action. Hope is considered as a bad basis for political decisions, insofar as it acts as an irrational force which drives people to overlook pragmatic considerations. Hope accompanied by strong emotions indicates delusional political thinking, which distorts the perception of reality and, finally, leads those who nurture it to their demise (cf. 4.108, 5.73, 6.31, 7.77 and especially throughout the Melian dialogue (5. 102-3, 5.111.1-2, 5.113)). Thus, Thucydides’ narrative presents an argument against hope-fueled politics which is viewed as dangerous and self-destructive. The Funeral Oration presents one of the very few instances in Thucydides where hope is imbued with positive nuances. In this speech Pericles presents a hopeful democracy, in which the citizens of the polis have reasons to fight because they have invested their hopes in the city. Hope takes on a positive angle because it is grounded in in the endurance of the demos as a whole and the empirical reality of the polis. And yet the advent of the plague which fails all hopes shows once more that the constructive side of hope always manifests itself together with its destructive twin. In this paper, I wish to examine these observations against the political background of Aristophanes’ Knights. The “great idea” typical of the comic genre is conceived in Knights as an antidote to a hopeless political model, after all ideas have been exhausted (prayers, escape, death, libations), with the aim of its rectification. Yet, in the one instance where the word “hope” appears it is only a slender one (1245 λεπτή τις ἐλπίς) right at the turn of the Old to the New World, that is when the Sausage-seller manifests his true nature and emerges as the successor of Paphlagon. I, therefore, wish to put forward a pessimistic interpretation of the politics of the play which very much resembles the overarching tone of pessimistic realism in Thucydides. I shall argue that the new political model in this play inspires no hope for change in the community, but, on the contrary, has damaging effects for it. Demos employs a delusional positive thinking which sustains false visions of having his desires met indefinitely in the future through a never-ending alteration of political advisors. Notwithstanding the festive mood at the end of the play, it becomes obvious that disillusionment is always destined to follow hope and that Demos, despite his attempts at rationalization of his political incentives (l. 1121-30), is unable to break free from this vicious circle. According to this interpretation, Athenian politics will never recover inasmuch as the demos abandons its power to doubtful politicians. This is a far cry from the aforementioned hopeful democracy of Pericles, while it evokes Thucydides’ statement on men’s tendency to use reason only to push away what they dislike, but taint what they like with feelings of thoughtless hope (4.108.4). Through this syncretic reading of Thucydides’ and Aristophanes’ respective models of hope I aim to show that a pessimistic political message emerges regarding the predominance of blind illusion over reality in contemporary politics and the limited ability of the people to predict and control the future.